Currently, win rates in high-tier simulator battles are heavily skewed in favor of the West. I believe one major factor contributing to this imbalance is the presence of invisible missiles on the Western side. These missiles are nearly impossible to detect; they appear as just a few pixels on launch, making it extremely difficult to counter them with flares unless you’re constantly pre-flaring. In reality, the AIM-9M missiles aren’t completely invisible—they have reduced smoke, meaning it’s either very faint or significantly minimized, but not entirely absent.
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They also should add different vapours depending on the conditions and altitudes
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Beside the fact hat 9Ms are not 100% invisible and at least in cold air they should produce clearly visible contrails, from a gameplay perspective it’s just super annoying and frustrating to fight something invisible.
You just explode without seeing it coming.
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Then the R-73 should loose TVC as that is a feature the Aim-9M doesnt have and its an unfair advantage that it can pull more Gs…
See how rediculous this argument is?
Reduced smoke / smokeless motors exist and the only change that might need to be done, is modeling contrails onto missiles, but that wont help most of the time on most maps.
Aim-9Ms though arent that great of a missile, they are just Aim-9Ls without smoke and with IRCCM (which is tenatively easier to defeat than R-73s or Magic IIs) They struggle in a turn fight.
Just wait for ASRAAM that have smokeless motors to be added :P
surely not a smoke…
Spoiler
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Have to disagree here.
9M has a higher range and is deadly in side aspect.
No one expects it to have the same heavy smoke trail as the 73, but at least a vague indication that there is something coming would be fair. Being completely invisible is just a bad for the game, as it takes away every possibility to react from the receiving player.
Im firing both missiles (Mig-29 and F-15) and killing someone with a 9M feels way more unfair, because in most cases they don’t even react and just explode.
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My general experience with Aim-9M. I probably would have killed the target with an Aim-9L and given how much the Aim-9Ms are underperforming. Nerfing them ahistorically even more would really suck.
And how do you determine how much smoke is “enough” ? If the motor is specified to not produce any smoke, then that is what should be modeled. The only change needed is the introduction of contrails for missiles, because that is all that is produced by these missiles.
Ahistorical nerfs just suck and should be avoided.
I know the 9M discussion is old a.f., but reduced smoke does not mean absolutely 0.000000000% smoke and completely invisible, instead of just difficult to see.
And in most videos I found about the 9M it is at least somewhat visible and definitely more visible than in the game at the moment.
This is not a red vs blue rant and I have no interest in nerfing one side into the ground and uselessness just to have an easy time on the other side as I play both sides anyway.
I just want to have balance so both missiles are similar annoying to fight.
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Every video ive seen that indicate “smoke” is likely contrails and not smoke.
What we don’t have in the game.
Instead we have a completely invisible missile in all conditions. How is that not unhistorical?
Edit: Again, I’m not arguing to nerf it on 9L level. It should have the stealth advantage and remain difficult to see (like in most conditions in RL).
But it’s just bad for a competitive game to have a 100% invisible missile, as it gives the other player no possibility to react. And that just feels frustrating. It’s like playing a shooter and being sniped from 2km without even seeing it coming.
You do it 3 times and then you loose interest in playing this stupid shit.
I have already stated this fact. But contrails likely wouldnt appear except on the cold maps or when at high altitude. Under most conditions normally encountered in game, they would produce no contrails and thus be virtually invisible under most conditions.
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Well, they would need to predict.
If youre having similar/close in case of seeker perfomance(lock range) missile - it would be even easier
Your missile locked → flare and change direction
Mostly works
9Ms are arguably the best missile, on account of the smokeless motor and IRCCM that works good enough against much of the competition, alongside superior range. My own personal experience is r73 and magic 2 are easier to defeat, both from the position of someone who uses them and the position of someone who faces them.
I do not oppose the smokeless motor, however, other smokeless missiles are not given the same treatment and if they aren’t going to maintain a decent standard on this, then it would be better smokeless motors be ignored.
like… with same sense(theres no sense) you can ignore R-73 TVC, aswell as other missiles “features”
Thrust vectoring is implemented across the missiles that had it, however poorly.
Smokeless/Smoke reduced motors are implemented on one AAM. If they’re comfortable ignoring it for other missiles, they should have no issue maintaining the same standard for 9M. If you read my statement, I’ve nothing against smokeless motors but I do have issues when they implement it for one missile whilst being quite comfortable ignoring it for others.
in 3: AAM-3 and AIM-9M, RB-74M(9M copy)
welp, imagine next level of complains: “invisible AIM-120 or AIM-54C killed me”.
Most likely gaijin holding it for Balance reasons
If AAM3 has it, then that’s one I didn’t know about. 74 is a copy paste 9M so I group it under the same.
If they were holding things for balance, 9M would not have smokeless motor. The IRCCM is superior, whilst having greater effective range. This means that short of predicting the launch, or MAWS alerting you, you will not be aware of the launch. MICA should have a smoke reduced motor, and also alerts your RWR which is notably more warning than the 9M.
“Balance” doesn’t cut the mustard here. If we’re defending smokeless motor on a missile that has very few ways of identifying the launch outside of familiarity or MAWS, there should be no issues with it being found on a missile with a notably sooner alert.
welp, maybe theyre holding it on FOX-3, idk why
but as multiple missiles got it already, but all of them - FOX-2