Neither SH nor Golden Egg will score hits against people playing with screen turned on, and both will score hits on paid actors taking no evasive actions.
As far as BVR is concerned, while ideally you want both speed and altitude, altitude alone already does most of the lifting. Therefore SH with its still good climb rate still can put enough energy behind missiles that will be notched anyway, while even C5 launched from F-15I at ±30km launch distance with ample speed and altitude still can be outrun by anyone capable of going cold
As for defense, SH with its slow speed and good nose authority actually I find to be decently survivable - you enter notch quickly, you bleed enough speed for angle gating to be non issue, making missile bite into chaff and you whip nose back to send AMRAAM out. To the point my stats in it contests Rafale which was flown in its prime, before current AESA SPAMRAAM meta.
All of this only applies to the initial missile spam though, the whole point of the current BVR meta is that each shot will get you closer to the MAR, the F/A-18E will always be at serious disadvantage because while it’s enemies can keep spamming Fox 3s at Mach 1.6+ you will be stuck at far lower speeds and the fact is it’s airframe just doesn’t have the acceleration to keep playing defensive all the time.
Let’s be abundantly clear in the idea that a fighter being 90% defensive isn’t a good thing, yes you can get to the notch quicker than an F-15, you have very good nose authority but none of that changes the basic fact that enemies will always get to shoot their missiles at you first which matters a lot in this meta.
I don’t disagree, but I guess this does get to the point that defensive play forces you to get way too close up and personal with whoever you are trying to fight. You can make the argument that maybe both of these aircraft should stick at 14.3, but with how the vast players are currently playing the game the obvious choice is speed and acceleration rather than nose authority and clearly I feel like neither are good competitors to Rafales, Eurofighters and Gripens.
Sure mate, that’s fine, good players can make bad vehicles work all the time, but it doesn’t change the balancing issues at hand, metrics for what makes a vehicle good should be objectively based not player performance based.
Except out of relevant competition only Su30SM(2) has missile quantity to actually afford spamming missiles, while R-77-1 remain rather easy to notch. Rafale that gets relatively close is much bigger threat, priority even due to MICA doing MICA things.
This is home turf Rafale excels at, letting people walk up to you, keeping potential offenders at edge of radar gimbal limit, ready to enter notch at moment notice while flicking nose back to throw baguette out. Then turned to 11 with SM2 having over the shoulder radar and R77s in OUR quantity.
And for all the trash people love to throw at AMRAAMs, they are good enough in currently happening medium/high alt missile fest, where encounters within 8-10km are rather infrequent and at this distance I wouldn’t trust AMRAAMs to connect in HOBS shot. At the same time, each degree you can bring nose closer to the target reduces minimal HOBS distance for 120s.
I haven’t said I’m good player nor consider myself as one, I just shoot the red ones.
I think you took my hyperbolic statement a bit too literally, I was simply saying they will continue launching missiles at you at higher speeds and they will reach you faster than yours will reach them even if your missile is only 10-15 seconds late to the party, that is already putting you defensive, that was my point. In the vast majority of situations the F-15 seems to be a better choice overall, most people would agree, and most people would not sacrifice speed and acceleration for nose authority. Now we could argue this forever and maybe the F/A-18 somehow fits your personal playstyle, I personally think my stance is the general consensus on the current state of the SH and I’d rather not turn this thread into 30 pages of F/A-18 vs F-15 goofy ahh debate.
I think people tend to be more upset about the fact Cs were presented as an upgrade to A/Bs and turned out to be actually worse at closer ranges and pretty much the same at BVR, I don’t think a buff would change things for the SH though, it will always be an underdog unless Gaijin adds the 174 but then it would become broken.
It will be “broken” because it will be notched like any other missile, while you trade two duds for one. I highly doubt Gaijin will alter ARH seekers in order to preserve current counterplay options.
And C5 on first dev of its life cycle was indeed neat upgrade over A/B, then Gaijin happened.
Remember most modern day missiles for BVR, climb to max altitude then go for then target. So they will have plenty of energy - my greatest paint 3d creation
The seeker is at the max look down in the loft so your best chances are at that time, notching a missile thats looking straight down at you is extremely hard.
Yes, the angle isnt perfect but together with GPS and advanced radar tracking its a very hard to notch that. My graph was only to show the best time to get the notch off. If the missile is in the terminal stage and coming down at you, its a matter of seconds before you’re a fireball falling to the ground.
Main reason for that is at that attitude even if it loses track it will most likely gain lock again very easily due to that fact of how high it is compared to the enemy aircraft. Effectively the missile still would have time to re acquire lock.
You already have two way datalink, as missile reports its seeker state to the launching aircraft.
If you’ve meant reconnecting datalink, this might be both gameplay reason and technical limitation - SARH with datalink ie AIM-7P and R27ER have this feature and it does allow missile to be redirected to entirely different target, which might slightly mess up with ARH and guiding multiple of them via TWS. And gives datalink SARH distinct advantage
We already have Derby as local space climber and, uh, its not good.
I thought 2 way datalink is unique to stuff like aim 120d, pl-15, r-77m/r-37m, mica em ng, etc
and their earlier versions don’t have this 2 way datalink
According to the US government (for US weapons) and MBDA (for European weapons), two-way datalink is stated to be missiles that have capability to be actively guided by other battlefield assets (such as friendly fighters, AWACs, SAMs, ships, etc.). The first two-way datalink air to air missile was AIM-9X Block 2 and then AIM-120D for the US*.
- my greatest paint 3d creation