I think that two new planes have BRs that are too low for air SB:
MB-326B - it’s a jet plane with top speed (even carrying 6 gunpods) of iver 750km/h on deck and even with full bomb load of 6x500lb it can do 650km/h on deck.
Flown right it would be uncatchable to any fighter plane available but significant margin, even in worst case (full bomb load)
Hawk 209 - it’s currently 10.3 - this would make it the lowest BR plane equipped with all-aspect heat-seeking missiles while it’s flight model is arguably better than A-10 or Su-25 available at 10.7
At that BR many planes do not even have CMs.
the hawk 209 is like a-10a early, which is accessible to aim9Ls. hawk’s flight model is terrible (u will see it if u have tried british tech tree version), nobody will be afraid of it if play wisely.
Hawk 209 might cause some minor issues but armed with only 2x Aim-9-4s, its gunna be a rare issue, a lot of aicraft will probably outperform it at that BR anyway. Thats ontop of japan premiums being semi rare too.
Im personally not that worried, and have actually been trying to argue the Buc S2B should probably be 10.3 for a while now, its recent nerf is the final nail in the coffin for me personally
I disagree with Hawk being comparable to A-10 FM-wise. It’s more than 1.5x faster for once.
Also, problem is that if you give plane good enough missiles then it will be dangerous even if it’s FM is bad.
Take example of Harrier with AMRAAMs - terrible platform carried by its missiles.
Another example is Hunter F-6. 9.0 with AIM9s but 9.7 with SRAAMs
Hawk is better FM-wise than Su-25 and all aspect AIM-9P4s are better than R60Ms
The Hunter F6 is a substantially better FM than the Hunter F4 (J34) with both a better engine and better wing design, armed with the same A2A missiles and yet the J34 is a higher BR somehow, despite being a notably weaker aircraft. Their BRs should be swapped.
Im just pointing out that when it comes to Air Sim BRs and the Hunters, they have totally and completely lost their minds quite a bit. So using them as an example in this instance is a bit… shakey.
At which point the difference between the Hunter F6s isnt actually that great. The one with 4x notably better missiles and the marginally better engine is 0.3 higher, which just makes sense.
anyway, we have plany other examples of missiles lifting up plane.
While most are due to adding Fox-3s or better Fox-1s there are some examples of simply adding better Fox-2s increasing (rightfully so) BR:
-Mig-29 with and w/o R_73s
-same for Su-25
-various Mirage variants with and w/o magic (like Milan vs Mirage 5/Nesher)
-Kurnass vs Kurnass 2000
My point is- you can have airframe that is terrible in BFM and yet it will do much better if you give it very strong missiles.
Hawk is just an example of such - a mediocre/bad airframe with good missiles.
But Hawk aside - I hope we can at least agree on MB-326B
Yes, in that general philosophy I do agree, sometimes its okay, other times its not. Though im still not overally worried about the Hawk 209 and I personally do concur that it should start at 10.3 and be monitored, I just dont see what a Hawk 209 could do against a F-5C for example if it moved up to 10.7. To be honest, im not really sure what the 200 with 4x Aim-9Ls would or could do.
while I agree that perhaps it won’t be popular enough to break the game totally, but still -it takes one good pilot in too-strong plane to ruin game for everyone.
Also - it’s a terrible approach. If we have those problematic scenarios, GJ should put it at BR higher and see. Only then it should lower it’s BR if there is indeed need for it. But GJ being GJ, loving money, they will usually put premiums at too low BR to boost sales.
Then we all realise it’s a bad idea; they increase the BR or not and we either end up with rare but annoying premium or people who bought it get mad that GJ ruined their grind toy.
My personal experience, they’ll move stuff up substantially easier than they will move stuff down. So i have personal preference for starting things off a little too low and correcting it later, than the other way round.
My experience is the opposite given how long we’ve fought for decompression of BRs on jet ranks.
And as @pouletbidule-psn mentioned - we have already quite a list of very strong planes that GJ do not want to move.
I don’t know why, but those are fighter that are not just “strong”, many like J2M2 or Ariete are 100% OP at current BR and yet GJ is not moving them up.
Other than that, since rotation been introduced, GJ stopped adjusting BRs outside of super obvious cases. They only move stuff that is broken to a point that either even someone on day 1 can wipe lobbies or someone with 10+ years of experience can’t do anything even on a good day.
It’s like GJ lost track of stats due to rotation, they don’t trust community to know what they are talking about and they don’t have anyone at GJ playing sim actually to have any meaningful insight
They certainly do not care about it as much as for other modes, but they keep making sim-specific adjustments and changes, so it’s not totally abandoned.