BVR is what I suck at, though, so I feel challenged every time I attempt it. The Su-27 is my fallback for when it gets frustrating. I understand the concepts behind what I'm dealing with in BVR, like notching and ECM burn-through, but there's a lot more to think about because of all that so I'll sometimes forget something rather important along the way and **** it all up. Visual range is a much more straight-forward process of energy<->position exchanges.
My defensive flying in BVR is fine, but I can't attack worth a damn and honestly don't see the point in it if my target is aware of my presence. If whoever I'm shooting at is half as good at evading missiles as I am then I'm just throwing darts at the dirt. It's really a sort of precautionary measure and an idiot trap all in one. If I fire off a missile or two on my approach, all I'm really doing is ensuring that my target won't fly straight at me if he has half a brain. If he does fly straight at me, he's probably going to eat a missile. If he doesn't, we keep up this little game of dodgeball until somebody doesn't have enough energy to evade or we enter visual range. It's simpler in a Sukhoi because you don't have active radar missiles, so you're playing one-sided dodgeball. You don't get to throw anything in the first half of the game, so you can focus entirely on dodging.
