Battlefield 3 - Surviving a Round in AA

I inadvertently recorded a few rounds while playing. This is one of those rounds, unedited. 10 kills and 0 deaths and tons of vehicle disables and destroys, in the US Anti-Aircraft (LAV). The map is Kharg Island, the mode is Conquest Large.

My style of play with the AA is mostly defensive. My job is to take out enemy aircraft and keep the skies clear. If I venture out too far, I risk getting destroyed, and every second without AA on the ground is another second for enemy pilots to own the skies. It's not about rushing out to the front lines and killing a few people, then dying, then waiting for the AA to respawn and doing it again.

Thanks to the latest patch, AA is incredibly effective against infantry and they don't stand a chance (before they only stood a slight chance). AA is also effective against cars and jeeps. It can be a nuisance to tanks, but you never want to take them head-on. It's best to avoid their attention, but hit them if you can see their back (higher damage) or if they're getting pummeled by another tank or RPGs (work with your team to take him out quickly while he's distracted).

Vehicle specializations:
- Anti-air missiles; mostly useless in dealing damage since almost everyone has flares by now or knows how to dodge them, but they are good for harassing an enemy pilot and it can fluster them. You can shoot one missile and wait for them to drop flares then shoot the other after you lock again, but it takes too much time, and as you'll see, the belt guns are incredibly effective. The less time you spend with the belt guns, the worse.
- Zoom optics; I find thermal optics not that great when trying to shoot aircraft out of the sky, but it's very helpful in dealing with infantry. But this is an anti-aircraft vehicle, so I should be shooting jets, not ground units.
- Air radar; the best specialization ever. All vehicles (yes, even tanks and cars) show up on your map within range. Incredibly helpful for finding aircraft, and knowing when a tank or car loaded with C4 is bearing down on you.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• battlefield
• battle
• field
• anti
• aircraft
• air
• jets
• helicopters
• aa
• lav
• tunguska
• kharg
• island
• conquest
• large
• vehicle
• destroy
• disable

[uwmil13]

how come i never see the aa vehicle in that map

[MattyBoy714]

@uwmil13 This is the 64-player sized map on Conquest Large. You might be playing on a smaller version. Also, the Large version is on PCs only.

[uwmil13]

so do they have this vehicle on ps3 too?

[lsvagos]

@MattyBoy714 Actually I thought you DO need the latest stuff. Yeah SSDs are much more expensive though. But getting one with not much capacity just for Bf3 is acceptable.

[MattyBoy714]

@lsvagos Luckily you don't have to buy the best of the best equipment to get a solid experience. One thing I do recommend, which is pricey, is an SSD. Load times were pretty long when I first ran BF3 on a regular HDD and it was frustrating.

[lsvagos]

@MattyBoy714 Was just wondering because I need a new PC and I don't know what to buy...

[MattyBoy714]

@lsvagos NVidia GTX 460 1GB. The game seems to be more processor intensive, I have an Intel q9550.

[lsvagos]

@MattyBoy714 Which GFX card do you use?

[MattyBoy714]

@lsvagos on single player and co-op I can run it on ultra easily. On multiplayer I can run it ok but the framerate gets too low during a lot of action, so I just put it on high.

[lsvagos]

You run your Bf3 on ultra settings?