At 12.0 you are facing F/A-18’s, F-16’s, JAS39, Flanker, J-8, and more… the gap between you and pretty much every other aircraft you’ll face is 20-something years. You are uptiered every game and even in a downtier this thing is mediocre at best.
Your radar, armament, countermeasures and flight performance are absolutely pathetic compared to what you face.
This, and the FG.1, are literally the only jet fighters available to you at Rank VII British air and the rest are strike aircraft that are completely obsolete.
In other words, it’s either suffer through probably the worst aircraft at its bracket, or pay to progress. I don’t know if it’s intentional due to the fact that Rank VIII holds lots of amazing aircraft and people will want to play them within their lifetime, or what.
For the love of god just get it away from the bracket of aircraft that are literally in widespread use today, it’s a fucking Phantom.
Compression. The strongest it should face in an uptier is F-18A, F-16A and Mig-29s. Half of what its at 12.7 let alone 13.0 most 12.0s shouldnt be facing
Loadout. It has Aim-7E-2s (equivalent) all the other Phantoms at that BR have Aim-7Fs. It could get Skyflash SuperTEMPS which would bring them on par. It has not yet recieved them.
Beyond just decompressing 12.0-13.0 (though a lot more than just that needs decompressing)
Solution 1:
Give the FGR2 Skyflash SuperTEMP and leave at 12.0
Move the FG1 and F4JUNK to 11.7
Solution 2:
Give the FGR2 Aim-9L and Skyflash SuperTEMP and move to 12.3
Give the FG1 Skyflash SuperTEMP leave at 12.0
Move the F4JUNK to 11.7
Either solution works, and there is no reason to keep the FGR2 and FG1 virtually identical.
Compared to the other Phantoms, it has better CMs, same radar and marginally better FM, the issue is almost entirely the laodout and compression.
Technically the FRS1e is a fighter, just has the wrong designation.
That entire bracket needs to be decompressed.
Any 12.0 is having an extremely crappy time.
Hell, played the Harrier Gr.7 earlier, it’s eating garbage non-stop
I would argue the FM is a sidegrade, F-4E and S have worse engines but their slats give them a ton of agility that makes them much more versatile. Spey Phantoms are less agile but the added power combined with their reduced agility helps keep the speed up when turning hard for extended fights. US Slat wing Phantoms can do a little more in a 1C but retain good 2C performance, while hard wing UK Phantoms get better 2C after a while, at the cost of 1C performance.
But yeah, better extended 2C performance isn’t enough to justify 12.0 for the UK spey Phantoms when the USA gets F-4J with way better missiles and HMD at the same BR and F-4S that is just a full FM improvement with the same missiles a single step above.
F/A-18A being 12.7 BR is also just a cruel joke, where it rinses everything below it in any dogfight easily and has the best SARH missiles, and great IR missiles that only lose to a few outliers with IRCCM or crazy fast acceleration.
As with many things, the only answer is decompression by a significant amount.
With 9Ls you just have a less advanced, slightly more agile Tonka F.3
I agree, I don’t know what I was thinking, some biltong seemed to fix things but decompression with current non-dev aircraft need to be 18.0 for top tier, air and ground
Yeah, the biggest imbalance issue imo is that we have Aim-7E-2s and all the other phantoms have Aim-7Fs.
In a 1v1 fight at 12.0, let alone an uptier, the British Phantoms are at a major and immediate disadvantage.
I do rather like the Tonka F3 and with the right buffs would be happy for it to move up, though that probably does need to be proceeded by a decompression.
As for the 13.0s… I dont really mind them actually, though I wish they couldnt see the F-15E
I didn’t include it because like you said it’s only a technicality. a 711mph max airframe facing Hornets and Flankers is not competitive, I’m still grinding towards it though so maybe I’m wrong.
Though the biggest issue facing the SHars isnt max speed. T-10/AV-8B(NA) and Gr7 and even to a degree FA2/AV-8B+ prove that subsonic isnt necessarily a death sentence. Its that the Harrier 1 airframes especially are underperforming considerably. In a rate fight, the SHar should easily beat an F-5 but at the moment its the other way round. Along with other issues. However that is only tangential to the topic.
Purely anecdotal as I have no historical knowledge of the (S)Harrier’s performance but they feel like they should be far more nimble than they actually are. I find myself getting regularly out-turned by flying buses that retain their energy much better. Is this how they’re underperforming?