Hi, you can call me AP. I've been playing this God-forsaken music discography disguised as a war crimes simulator disguised as an arcade flight sim since Ace Combat 2, and I occasionally play multiplayer these days. I'm not a 1v1 pro, I'm not really even a consistent pubstomper; I'd call myself okay, enough that I can grind up the nuggets, but I definitely struggle against people with real skill. I do, however, have the benefit of hanging around with people who are significantly better than me, and I at least know that in the grand scheme of things I'm nothing fancy. Which, I think, puts me in a decent position to at least impart some of the basic theory of multiplayer into the fresh blood that our community so desperately needs.

This is an expanded version of a guide I wrote up some time ago for and with the advice of the Ace Combat community Discord server.[discord.gg] It's full of great folks, and generally is a solid place to go for any questions and tips and to find a decent community.

I won't promise that this will turn you into a god among men or anything. But I can at least offer you an explanation for part of why it might feel like an uphill battle just getting started in multiplayer, and point you in the right direction to fix part of it. This guide has nothing to do with imparting skill, it's all theory on where to go for a basic starter build that can run with the big dogs. Or at least, has enough potential that failure after getting it set up is almost guaranteed to be just a skill issue, and not you setting up your plane wrong.

So, you're a fresh nugget who's just finished the single-player plane tree, and you're looking for more, and there's only one place left to go. You take a deep breath, navigate to multiplayer, select a plane and a weapon and your finest parts, and fearlessly charge right in... and get absolutely krumped. Your missiles just don't track, the enemy is always turning tighter than you and seem to have way more energy to play with. You end the game with maybe a kill, while XxXWomanSlayer69XxX (he's no longer an incel, his sex woman just goes to a different school, he's just a racist now) ran a train on the lobby inside of three minutes, flying the same plane. What happened?

Well, obviously, part of it was probably skill. You're a nugget, they're not, and some gitting gud is absolutely in order, and until then, you're just gonna have to live with the reality of this being something of a skill issue. But a big aspect of it would also have been that multiplayer parts are just way better than what you have access to in singleplayer (barring those chads running the all parts in singleplayer[www.nexusmods.com] mod).

Parts make an enormous difference in the performance of aircraft. For example, the difference between no parts and full parts is so vast that, if you exclude the statistical outliers for peak pitch rate (F-4E and F-104 on the low end, Rafale and F-15E on the high end), the worst-turning planes in the game, the F-16C and its statistical clones, will with a full set of parts slightly out-turn the best, the F/A-18E TGM, with no parts. Standard missiles with homing2 and datalink become capable of looping - maintaining lock after launch and continuing to chase - just shy of a full 180 degrees. The gun deals nearly double damage compared to stock with damage2. The list goes on.

Notably, the difference between single player parts and multiplayer parts is stark. Bulletproof Tank 1 gives 40 additional health, with planes averaging around 120 by default; Bulletproof Tank 2 yields a whopping 100. Light Blisk 2 has twice the effect of Light Blisk 1. New Flap Actuators 3 has triple the bonus of New Flap Actuators 1. High-Power Enhanced Shells 2 is almost 3.2 times as strong. So single player parts are to be upgraded from as quickly as humanly possible.

That leads us to a problem, though. Those parts are expensive. You're looking at many millions of MRP to get them all. And that's a problem. You want to play with the big boys as soon as possible, right? Then you'll need a plan to get competitive as quickly as possible, to minimize the time spent grinding MRP in singleplayer or in getting ground into the dust in multiplayer in inferior aircraft.

Fortunately, I'm here to help you with just that.

Oh, by the way. The in-game stat bars are, like, completely freaking meaningless. Do not trust them. Use either the Hidden Stats Spreadsheet[docs.google.com] (if you prefer the datamined hard numbers) or the community stat cards[docs.google.com] (if you like a visual presentation) as your basis; if you have further questions, feel free to ask around in the Ace Combat community Discord server[discord.gg].

First, we need to figure out roughly what capabilities we need. The first thing is to get ourselves a weapon actually capable of consistently scoring points. After all, a match is won by whoever scores the most points the fastest.

While it's tempting to gun for the special weapons parts first, I think this is a mistake. Not all special weapons need the same parts, even if they usually share some in common, meaning you'll need to buy almost the whole spread to have a useful build for all the special missiles. This is, bluntly, expensive as hell. Plus, not every plane even has good air to air special weapons. For example, if you fell in love with the F-35, good luck with 4AAMs! They're usable, but among the worst.

Also, importantly, special weapon parts are extremely expensive, among the most expensive parts on the tree.

No, you're best off getting a standard missile build going first! Make absolutely certain that you're buying the MSL parts, not the Sp. W parts; they are not interchangeable, at all, and you will feel stupid if you buy them by accident here. Especially since MSL parts cost about half as much.

Oy. You. Yeah, you. Don't look at me like that. "Missiles are boring! QAAMs let me turn my brain off!" No, shut the ❤️❤️❤️❤️ up, you absolute goblin, sit down and listen. Missiles are an extremely viable weapon in Ace Combat 7, with some unique capabilities, and if you dismiss them in favor of the flashy special weapons, you're only hurting yourself.

For one thing, they don't run out of ammunition. You die, you go back to full ammo. Second, with the right parts, they can loop - that is, they can miss and then come back around and try and hit again. Out of all special weapons, only QAAM (limited ammunition), SAAM (generally considered bad), and WUAV (weird) can loop. Third, they're eminently spammable, coming back quicker than you'd think (very quick if you choose to run the reload part), which combined with their large ammo pool means they don't just run out when you get flared or miss, and lets you constantly keep enemies off balance and unable to level out for even a moment without getting thwacked.

Okay, so we need to make our missiles good. How?

Step one, they need to actually be able to turn. The High-Speed Data Link Antenna part buffs almost every part of missiles, so that goes here - and even if it didn't, you need to buy it before anything else anyway. Homing also goes without saying, so add Thrust-Adjusting Steering Device (MSL). Step two, they need to be able to actually do damage - damage equals points, period. So, naturally, the damage part, Directional Proximity Fuze (MSL).

Okay, that's easy enough. Now we need to figure out what stats are important on our plane itself.

This is, fortunately, mostly straightforward as well.

Ace Combat 7 dogfights tend to be rate fights - that is, you're turning and burning around each other in a circle trying to get on each other's tail with sustained rapid turns.

This means you need to be able to turn quickly, and you need to be able to not run out of speed in doing so. There are two parts that make you turn faster, New Flap Actuators and Superior Maneuverability, the first giving straight pitch rate and the latter improving all rates. Not running out of energy means acceleration; it's even more important for planes that have their turn rates max out at higher speeds, like the F-15S, F/A-18E TGM, and MiG-21, but all planes need it. Technically, all engine parts affect acceleration, because of the way it's calculated as a percent of your maximum speed, but the pure direct acceleration part, Light Blisk, is more impactful for most of the flight curve.

You also will want to improve your survivability. There's a few ways to do this, but my recommendation is straight up buffing your hitpoints with Bulletproof Tank. First, it directly makes it harder for the enemy to win. Remember, damage equals points... as a percentage of your maximum health. This means that with more HP, the same amount of raw damage dealt to you will be less points for the enemy landing the hit. Importantly, it also works even if you're bad; dodging only helps if you're good enough to not get hit, while armor works regardless.

And perhaps most essentially, it puts planes over one-shot thresholds. The most notable is having more health than the 210 damage dealt by a single upgraded EML, and the next is the 122.4 damage dealt by most upgraded special missiles. There are a surprising number of aircraft that will die in one hit to a max damage QAAM - pretty much all mid-range and below aircraft and a few late-game ones. And all aircraft without Bulletproof Tanks 2 will die to full power EML. Adding BPT2 will make most aircraft (all those with at least 111 base hit points) survive an EML on around 90-99%, which is still annoying but at least it's not an instant trip to the respawn timer, and it will make all aircraft survive one hit from all the missile special weapons except HPAA. This will make more sense if you're looking at the Hidden Stats spreadsheet.

The eagle-eyed among you will note that I've only bolded seven parts, and there's room for eight on a plane. This part slot is a bit of a flex slot.

On early game planes, or if you're willing to sacrifice usually Bulletproof Tanks 2 or rarely Light Blisk 2 or Superior Maneuverability 2, you can run one of a few other body parts - New Aileron Actuators 2 for increased roll rate, Multipurpose Stealth Coating 2 to make yourself disappear from enemy radars at the most inconvenient times (do not underestimate how annoying this is in a knife fight, particularly on planes that have a high innate stealth already, often as a substitute for Bulletproof Tanks), and ECU Software Update 2 to reduce the amount that you slow down when pulling high G turns (this last one being most useful on planes that like to maintain high speed like the F-15C/J). This is a bit advanced, but it's definitely well within reason and there's a few planes for which it's quite good. Still, you're more likely to want to add another weapon part. So, there's a few other suggestions I'd make in the weapons category.

First, more goodies for your missiles. Most universally applicable is the reload speed part, Multiple Enemy Detection Device 2 (MSL). It lets you pop out two missiles every 3.5 seconds, cutting the reload time by over a third, and makes you an absolute spamming menace. There's also the flight duration part, Ramjet Propulsion Device 2 (MSL), as a possibility, kicking your missile flight time to nearly 15 seconds (it stacks strangely with the Data Link, so that required some testing), which makes them a menace long after dodging the first time. Don't go with New High Energy Propellant 2; because of how missile turning works (in degrees per second), a higher flight speed translates to a wider absolute turning circle. My own personal taste is the reload time, but as we'll get to in the next section, there's nothing stopping you from trying it.

Second, I would be remiss if I didn't mention gun damage. High-Power Enhanced Shells kicks your gun damage up by a whopping 75%, and considering the gun is actually the highest-DPS weapon in any plane's arsenal already, that's quite terrifying. Using the gun is a skill you should absolutely learn; many of the best players absolutely swear by it, and by extension the gun damage part, and for good reason. It's up to you whether it's worth the flex slot in the beginning for you, however.

It's worth mentioning, by the way - the stability parts are all almost absolutely useless. Do not buy them, like, ever, until you have everything else. Their effects basically don't exist. The only exception to this is Roll Stability 2 (Cutting-Edge Large Ailerons 2) because it's a prerequisite for better parts.

Well, Nugget, we've got our immediate goals in mind. We want the following parts:

MANDATORY

• High-Speed Data Link Antenna
  
• Thrust-Adjusting Steering Device 2 (MSL)
  
• Directional Proximity Fuse 2 (MSL)
  
• Superior Maneuverability 2
  
• New Flap Actuators 3
  
• Bulletproof Tank 2
  
• Light Blisk 2

OPTIONAL

• ECU Software Update 2
  
• Multipurpose Stealth Coating 2
  
• New Aileron Actuators 3
  
• Multiple Enemy Detection Device 2 (MSL)
  
• Ramjet Propulsion Device 2 (MSL)
  
• High-Power Enhanced Shells 2

What's the cost look like?

Well, that's a bit complicated. Just looking at MRP cost for every part, that gives us 50k for Datalink, 150k for MSL Homing2, 150k for MSL Damage2, 450k for Maneuver2, 300k for Flaps3, 450k for Armor2, and 200k for Blisk2, giving us a total cost for your mandatory parts of 1.75 million MRP, and the optional parts add 250k for ECU2, 500k for Stealth2, 350k for Aileron3, 100k for MSL Reload2, 100k for MSL Ramjet2, and 200k for Gun Damage2, for another 1.5m, totaling out to 2.25m MRP. Simple enough, right?

However, there are prerequisite parts here that complicate things. For example, Homing2 requires every other missile part except the rather crappy Speed2. Which means that its true cost is actually 950k MRP (we're excluding Datalink just so we don't have to remember not counting it multiple times), and given that it's absolutely, no questions, one hundred percent mandatory, you cannot budge on it, the other missile parts are effectively free.

So let's try this again.

MANDATORY

• High-Speed Data Link Antenna (50k MRP)
  
• Thrust-Adjusting Steering Device (MSL) (950k MRP)
  
• Directional Proximity Fuse (MSL) (Prerequisite)
  
• Superior Maneuverability 2 (1.7m MRP)
  
• New Flap Actuators 3 (Prerequisite)
  
• Light Blisk 2 (Prerequisite)
  
• Bulletproof Tank 2 (700k MRP, excluding Blisk 2 and Flaps 2, which are prereqs for Maneuver2)

OPTIONAL

• ECU Software Update 2 (Prerequisite)
  
• Multiple Enemy Detection Device (MSL) (Prerequisite)
  
• Ramjet Propulsion Device (MSL) (Prerequisite)
  
• Multipurpose Stealth Coating 2 (500k MRP)
  
• New Aileron Actuators 3 (700k MRP, excluding Blisk2, Flaps2, Aileron Stability 2 [lmao], and Aileron2, shared with Maneuver2)
  
• High-Power Enhanced Shells 2 (450k MRP)

Now we can at least get an accurate cost figure. The mandatory parts come out to 3.4m MRP, and you can pick one of the three top optional parts to fill out the build for free. Getting all of them adds another 1.65m MRP, for a total of 5.05m MRP. With these parts, you have a viable build in almost every aircraft in the game.

We can, however, go cheaper, if you're desperate to get into the action. The first step is probably to go down to Bulletproof Tanks 1, which is available from the single-player tree. This chops off 700k, bringing you down to 2.7m. Further, dropping from Maneuver2 to Maneuver1 is only a 3% (overall) difference in pitch, roll, and yaw, which, while absolutely noticeable, is... technically not the worst loss in the world, and saves another 450k, to 2.25m. Even cheaper, and starting to get to the point that I hesitate to recommend it, going from Flaps3 to Flaps2, losing another 6% pitch rate, saves another 850k, to a bottom end 1.4m MRP. I would strongly advise not to jump into multiplayer with any less than this. Do not under any circumstances cheap out on missile parts.

Thus, your bargain bin basement build would be like so:

• High-Speed Data Link Antenna (50k MRP)
  
• Thrust-Adjusting Steering Device (MSL) (950k MRP)
  
• Directional Proximity Fuse (MSL) (Prerequisite)
  
• Multiple Threat Detection System (MSL) (Prerequisite)
  
• Superior Maneuverability 1 (Single-player)
  
• New Flap Actuators 2 (200k MRP)
  
• Bulletproof Tank 1 (Single-player)
  
• Light Blisk 2 (200k MRP)

Other than my using the completed version of these parts, this is my go-to for pub lobbies if I'm running a missile build. It will work well enough for you.

Congratulations. Any failures on your part are now solely a skill issue on your end.

In all seriousness, these are only the basics. This is the most versatile and accessible starter build, not necessarily the best. You'll find moving forward that there are situations where some other parts might be better. For example, in post-stall duels, or when going up against IEWS users, missile lockon speed is actually an extremely good part, and that missile speed actually makes it possible to kill decent Dark Star users with just standards. On some planes, like the MiG-31, you can afford to just go balls-to-the-wall and load it up with all the speed parts. So on and so forth.

Likewise, I haven't touched at all on special weapons parts other than to say to hold off on them. On those... experiment, once you have more MRP to play with, and you absolutely will. You can make all sorts of wacky builds work in this game. My favorite off the wall but actually fairly decent concept is a hybrid FB-22 that, while somewhat starved for weapon part space, manages to slot gun damage 1 and ECU to be able to pick off anyone who's really devoted to ruining your LAAM fun by PSMing on them and gunning them down.

And lastly, but perhaps most importantly, pick what planes are fun for you. Yeah, the TGM Hornet, the Rafale, and the Su-35S are the dogfight meta kings. Yeah, the FB-22 and YF-23 are the peak snipers. Yeah, Fishbed MGP go brrrr. But if you like a plane, really gel with it, you can make most things work. I personally actually really like my Mirage, even though I know statistically it's pretty poor.

Just... do what's fun. Get some wacky skin mods and go nuts with some crazy off-meta nonsense. Don't take things too seriously, just do what you enjoy most.

Unless that's EML with all the parts.

If that's what you enjoy the most, the ejection handle is usually located between your legs attached to the seat front.