12.7 - 13.7 Issue and Solution

Game Discussion Realistic Battle
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12.7 - 13.7 is near unplayable with the current planes in game. This is the BR range where planes with SARHM constantly fight planes with ARHM. The first 13.0 with ARHM was the harrier and it was fair and balanced because the harrier still a subsonic at the end of the day , reducing the effective range of the aim120A.

Nowadays at 13.0 you have planes like

  • the premium JA37DI with the aim120A
  • KfirC10 with the Derby
  • J8F with the PL12
  • F-5TH-TCU with the Derby
  • Tornado F.3 Late with the aim120B
  • F4F KWS with aim120A
  • F14A IRAF with fakour90

To make it worse , at 13.3 you have

  • The premium su30mk AMV with RVVAE (R77)
  • Mig29 SMT with r77
  • F16A ADF with aim120A
  • Mig29N with R77
  • J11A with PL12
  • Jf17 with SD10A
  • premium su30MKK with RVVAE

There are so many 12.0 - 13.0 planes that still use SARHM such as

  • AIM7 Sparrow
  • Super530D
  • Super 530F
  • R27R
  • R27ER

You could make the argument about the R27ER as it’s the best SARHM in the game , however the same does not apply to everything else and it still needs to be guided in till impact at the end of the day.

Why does the F15A/J get to be moved to 12.7 while it has

  • A good airframe
  • x4 AIM7F
  • X4 AIM9M or AAM3

While the others are left and forgotten at 13.0?
In no world is it “fair” and “balanced” to have to fight anyone with ARHM such as the AIM120 and R77 while you’re stuck with something like the super530D or aim7 sparrow.
You can be the first to fire in an engagement and all it takes is for them to shoot their ARHM and turn around while you have to fly in their direction to keep guiding your missile. Its Suicidal because their missile is faster , tracks better and doesn’t need a constant radar lock from the launching aircraft till impact.
With the current matchmaker and how poplar 13.7 , if you’re playing 12.7 - 13.0 , 9/10 you will see a 13.7 uptier and its unbearable to play.

What is my solution?

Move all planes with ARHM to 13.3 and place a soft lock on the BR so that planes with SARHM from 13.0 - 12.3 are never allowed to fight planes with ARHM from 13.3 to 14.0 in air RB
With the new 14.7 max battle rating the top tier aircraft will see a minimum of 13.7 and at that BR with similar loadouts though different radars and flight performance , the difference in capability is still more close to each other rather than these planes making late SARHM or IR only planes unplayable in the current state of Air RB.

Counter arguments and my Response

Wont this increase cue times?
Response: 13.3 - 14.7 is already very populated with a large amount of the player base there due to the concentration of top tier planes.
Separating SARH and ARH aircraft would not fragment the playerbase — instead, it would restore participation in the 12.0–13.0 bracket by making it playable again, which in turn stabilizes queue times rather than increasing them.

Not all ARHM airframes are equal
Response: Yes this is true. For example the tornado F.3 late is a brick , however the time needed to guide a aim120 into a range where you can turn around and defend is still shorter than the time it takes the enemy to guide a SARHM towards you till impact depending on the range of the engagement.

The R27ER balances early ARHM
Response: Not every nation has the R27ER. At the end of the day you can only fire and guide 1 at a time and it requires you to fly in the general direction of the enemy until impact.

That means 12.0 will see 13.0 each match
Response: We have 14.7 and more often than not 13.7 does not face 14.7 each match. This argument still falls short as regardless of the soft lock , 14.7 is till a BR which never gets uptiered so this already exists in the game.

If I left anything out or you disagree with my suggestion please share how you think this issue could be solved because it gets worse with each patch adding new 13.0-13.3 planes with ARHM.
If gaijin doesn’t want to increase the maximum br to 16.3 which would make it so that the last SARHM carrying planes would only see ARHM carrying planes in a full uptier , then this is my alternative solution.

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This technically isn’t true, you have games at 14.7 where the max BR is 15.0 because of the limit of 4 planes being the max BR in a match. Gaijin used to do your suggestion for 9.7 I think, and it led to matches being perma uptiers/downtiers.

The worst ARH users are still worse than the best SARH users IMO. Something like the F-4F ICE is an equivalent plane to the Su-27, and no amount of decompression would change that IMO. This isn’t even mentioning weak ARH carriers like the F-5TH or Sea Harrier FA2, which are objectively worse than planes like the F-2A or Su-27.

I think the problem can be solved with decompression, without the need for BR lockouts or hard limits.

Here is my decompression proposal and how I would decompress 12.7+.

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This is also a solution that would work , however as from what we have seen over and over again Gaijin doesn’t implement max Br ranges that fixes this type of compression. My hope was that the new BR increase from 14.3 would fix this issue or make it better , but all they did was set it to 14.7 and move some f16s that where IR only down to 12.7 and 12.3 which for the most part didn’t fix the core issue of this BR range. A BR increase to 16.3 based on your argument is more than valid however that depends if Gaijin finally does that instead of making the max BR 15.0 hoping this issue goes away with a minor increase in the max battle rating.

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So 1st of all the F4F KWS LV doesnt use the 120B but A, not to sound stingy.

The issue i see with your solution is that yes planes of lower tier shouldnt face these missiles that are subjectively better than theirs in about every way

But besides these good missiles but there are a lot of things that make certain 13.0 planes with Aim 120s not as good as the ones at 13.3 with the same or equal types of missiles

The F4F KWs LV, Harriers with amraams and Tornado F3 are in like no way equal to the Su30 premiums with them, (and thats a as of now 0.3 b both in and type of flight performance or number of missiles

The iran f14 without its farkours is also a considerable brick that gets quite easily beaten by lower/equal br planes in flight performance

I understand the frustration but simply locking all planes with a certain type of missile at one br only facing eachother also creates new problems in the br Systems they now are in

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Blockquote

Having a substantial increase in BR would also be a valid way to eliminate this issue without placing a hard lock on the matchmaking. The issue is we have been waiting for this BR change to happen for a long time and all that has happened is more planes like the su30mk and mkk getting added to 13.3 and a br increase of 1 step from 14.3 to 14.7 while the leap on the capabilities of recent planes are beyond a simple 1 step increase in battle rating

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Solution is simple.

Lock the 12.0-12.7 mm and do the same thing with 13.0-14.0 until proper decompression happens.

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there are still 13.0 planes with SARHM , better to move the 13.0 ARHM planes to 13.3 and do a 12.0 - 13.0 lock instead.

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Chinese su30 will never use r77, because it is so much worse than pl12
Thus it is much stronger than the soviet one, but tbh both should be atleast 13.7

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true

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None of these are any better than the AV-8B+. They all have their own downsides.

This is a really silly idea. A long time ago the game did this between subsonic jets and supersonic jets and the game suffered for it because it created a new “top tier” that couldnt be uptiered that dragged all planes below it upwards and made an entire BR range redundant to play because you would only be uptiered. Furthermore, it ALSO made the EARLY SUPERSONICS entirely pointless to play because they could NEVER see downtiers and were ALWAYS treated as psuedo-reserve planes that ALWAYS saw FULL uptiers. Please consider the rammifications.

The only true solution is decompression of the BRs by stretching 7.0-14.7 into something like 7.0-16.0 or even 7.0-17.0.

We have had MANY metas in the past where the 1.0 range below top tier ONLY saw uptiers. Just because 13.7 is currently experiencing a decent time (due to both 13.7 itself being very popular but also because 12.7-13.3 premiums are spammed) does not mean they will continue to not see uptiers if you cut off 13.0 entirely from 13.3.

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It’s the exact same missile.

So why would anybody play 12.0-12.3 planes? Why would they not only play 12.7?

So why would anybody play 13.0-13.7 planes? Why would they not just play only 14.0 planes?

You would seek to kill off 2 entire BR ranges and make them useless to fly.

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We have waited for BR compression to fix this like you said , yet here we are with no change.
I was hoping the planned BR changes would change things but all that happened was top tier going from 14.3 to 14.7
If gaijin doesn’t want to introduce a 16.0 BR range to decompress ARHM and SARHM planes then this is the idea I propose as a solution to a problem they are failing to fix as is.

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Doing what you suggest would not be any sort of improvement because it just creates an equally large problem.

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Why would anyone use the current 13.0 jets ever again as you are facing much better jets every game?

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The problem is a lack of sufficient increase in the max BR , separating generational leaps in gameplay mechanics between current planes is a secondary solution. As of right now there is no reason to play any 12.3 - 12.7 plane with SARHM or none at all. 12.3 - 13.0 is a void that gets sucked up to 13.3 - 13.7 and the planes in this bracket are not equal in terms of the missile kit they carry which plays an ever more important role at top tier.
yes the current 13.0 ARHM carrying planes are pretty bad in terms of the airframe and avionics , but at the end of the day its still a platform carrying “modern” BVR and self guiding capable missiles compared to what it faces even in a slight downtier to 12.7

planes from 12.0 to 13.0 will have sparrows and the R27ER at worst which still need active guidance to the target and only 1 can be shot and guided at a time. Both of you have to keep exposed to each others missile to attack. Not overlooking that there are planes in this bracket with no SARHM to begin with.

This solution prevents unfair advantages that are more than just a quality of the airframe or gimmick that a specific airframe has.

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It’s not a solution. See:

There is more of a reason to play them currently than there would be for 11.7-12.3 if 12.7 never got uptiered. And again, I really need you to read this because it does not seem like you’re doing so, this would make every 13.0-13.3 extremely pointless to play.

The Sea Harrier FA.2 is worse than quite a few 12.7 jets. Why would this be forced into permanent uptiers?

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Agreeably a few acceptations can made as the game was fine with the sea harrier and F4F KWS along with all the other terrible 13.0 platforms.
If you go ahead and play 12.7 to 13.0 for a few matches you will realize how quickly it becomes hopeless flying these jets is.
IF say for example the 12.7 F18C could only see the su30mk in a full uptier this would be fine as there would be a maximum , non guaranteed amount of x4 of them on one team , however right now you have have x4 13.7 planes like the F15C and F16C and still have a lobby full of su30mk and mkk.

Im not saying my idea is perfect without its flaws , what im pushing for is an overall change such as the increase in maximum BR to 16.0 -16.3

if gaijin doesn’t want to increase the br , this is an alternative rather than just leaving the game in the current broken state it is and hope it fixes itself.

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Why would anyone want to play any 12.7 - 13.0 jet without ARHM or the R27ER right now if almost all you see is 13.7?

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You mean the same way it will be to every jet that is below these “unuptierable” jets?

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Because you CAN be downtiered sometimes? We are in a TEMPORARY META. Not but like a few months ago you could face nothing but downtiers at 12.7-13.0. It’s really obvious what the difference is when one can sometimes be downtiered (even if currently rare) and one cant ever be downtiered ever.

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