General Guide & Exploits

General Route:
M01 - Use the F-5, QAAMs will 1HK the bombers
M02 - Buy the bombs for the F-5 & use them
M03 - F-5 w/ QAAMs
M04 - Select Mission A (mission C will unlock the F-16. It's XMAAs may be preferable for M05.)
M05 - J-35 w/ SAAM
M06 - F-5 w/ UGB
M07 - Buy the Mirage & use it. The harrier base (northwest) seems to have the most points.
M08 - Select Mission A. Buy the XAGMs for the Mirage & use them.
M09 - Mirage w/ XAGM, attack Excalibur directly.
M10 - F-5 w/ QAAM
M11 - Buy the SU-37 & use it
M12 - SU-37
M13 - Buy the FAEBs for the SU-37 & use them. 
M14 - Select Mission A, SU-37 w/ FAEB
M15 - SU-37 w/ FAEB, hitting the Hresvelgr with a FAEB will wipe out all it's targets.
M16/17/18 - SU-37 w/ FAEB



Wingman usage:
Your wingman is pretty unreliable in this game. The only mission that I have been able to incorporate him into my strategy is M06, as he'll attack the mission TGTs fairly consistently as long as you order him to GRN-DSP (although it's still better to take them out yourself). You can also get lucky and have him wipe out 4 air targets with XMAAs, but that doesn't seem to happen often enough to rely on it. I've personally never seen Pixy use UGBs, so I think it's best to always give him XMAAs, and just focus him on air targets.  


Dogfighting tips:
Enemy aces have this "defensive mode" where they'll do all sorts of maneuvers that will defeat most missile shots. This can lead to some very lengthy fights as you hopelessly spam missiles. You can sorta time your missiles well enough to hit them as soon as their current maneuver ends. However, most of the time it's better to break off of your current target and attack someone else. Head-on attacks are the most consistent way of killing aces since they are focused on shooting at you instead of avoiding your shots. 

On the Very Easy difficulty, the AI is dumb enough that if you brake hard & turn, any chasing enemies will often overshoot and end up right in front of you for easy kills. On higher difficulties the AI gets smarter, which makes this maneuver much less effective.

Also, it's important to note that special missiles won't one-shot aces. QAAMs will also have difficulty hitting as an ace can just constantly dodge it until the QAAM runs out. Therefore they're kinda useless for boss fights. This also means that you want to turn off SP Weapons usage from your wingman so that he doesn't potentially put up to 4 of your enemies into defensive mode as soon as the fight starts.


Bomb Sniping:
The aiming system for unguided bombs is very accurate in this game. This basically allows you to snipe ground targets from any distance. 


Ceiling Skipping:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUxMVhDS6kY
AC0 is one of the few AC games where you can stall your plane at the altitude cap to gain a bit of speed past the soft cap. Simply stall the airplane at the altitude cap of 31.9k while holding acceleration. You will continue speeding up as you gain control of the aircraft, this allows you get get an easy extra 20% more speed in a short amount of time. 

Missions used: M03 traveling to the boss fight, M08 escaping the laser attack


Laser Skip (Mission 8):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po5ZJ8Wz1Vc
In mission 08 - Merlon, you can pass through the lazer if you are going fast enough, this is only really possible while using the altitude stalling glitch for enough speed. 


Excalibur strategy:
https://youtu.be/Q6OXIFMN4zI
You can simply skip past the jammers and attack Excalibur directly without lockon. XAGM's are my preferred weapon for this because: they are one of the most damaging A2G weapons, you can fire 4 at once, they will fire straight down the center without any delay.
It's possible to kill the tip of Excalibur is 1 salvo if all 4 XAGMs hit, but 99% of the time I need 2 passes to destroy it.


Excalibur insta-kill (IL only):
https://youtu.be/-Ts4FMcT6Qc
If activate the final target on Excalibur & then retry, that target will not deactivate, allowing you to attack it right from the beginning of the mission. Since this glitch requires you to play through the mission once to activate it, this will not work for single-segment speedruns.


Valley of Kings path:
https://youtu.be/0UkxN_M-f64
When you go too high a WARNING will popup, which will start a countdown until you get hit. This means that as long as you can drop down below the height limit in time, you can skip over sections of the valley without getting hit.



Playlist of various strats: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6H-vBV4rdfQh66IkgNBBsj7gwjP1SBzw
Aircraft List: http://acecombat.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_aircraft_in_Ace_Combat_Zero
Wingman Commands: http://acecombat.wikia.com/wiki/Wingman_Command

Credit to Thehealbus & Raelcun for the Ceiling Skipping & Laser Skip strategies.

New Game Any% Guide (WIP)

Plane stats, damage values, etc.

I looked into RAM values and such, to find the exact HP & damage numbers.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15TUDsbBowHTZeu27guE8upV944I3-fT0NdOg7JzDZbQ/edit?usp=sharing

Summary:
- Most planes have the same top speed (1188 mph), although there are some planes with different acceleration. The Mirage & F-14 have faster then average accel, while the X-02 & Typhoon are slower then average.
- The MIG-31 is the fastest plane by far (1296 mph). The J-35 has the same top speed, but it's acceleration is noticeably worse.
- Every plane's gun I've tested has the same damage & rate of fire.
- The gun does 12 damage per hit, standard missiles do 40.
- Certain enemies have special resistances. For example: Boss aces generally have 80 hp, and most SP A2A missiles do 80 damage, but aces only take 40 damage. Certain ground targets also only take 1 damage from the gun (the CTRL Tower in M07 & Excalibur in particular).

I got the idea of doing all this from the data on Mitoro's site. The data for AC5 is pretty similar, so you can view that here:
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/mitoro/page/ac5/data/performance.htm

Name	Author
General Guide & Exploits	superSANIC 9 years ago
New Game Any% Guide (WIP)	superSANIC 8 years ago
Plane stats, damage values, etc.	superSANIC 8 years ago
SP New Game: Ace	ED_Plays 1 year ago