Found if was launched far out it’d drop into the launch angles of midfield AA, but I also haven’t checked recently. May do so again, if I can bring myself to put up with their butchery.
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I target high alt players. I also don’t spam. I just fly straight till the 1st missile wave comes, notch it and go back in at Mach 2. This means that I am on equal footing, since I have 8 missiles and enemy has the same or less.
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Is nothing sacred to you and your cursed pontoons 😿
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I’m gonna leave a scar in every jet enjoyer’s mind.
To be fair though, pontoon jets would be cool. Horrifically dangerous, but cool. Just not the triangle ones, triangles have been punished enough.
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24 more Rafale from Indonesia possibly.
With an additionnal order, production should be headed to 5 a month as previously said by Trappier.
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Not really. The Rafales shortcoming in air to ground attack in this mode is its extremely poor quantity and quality of munitions for the mode in question, and afaik, none of the potential upcoming options for the Rafale would rectify this issue.
AASM’s can pretty easily be made to target high value targets such as GBAD systems in the mode as is, you just need to actually know what you’re doing, but due to their parameters in-game, they are easily intercepted. They aren’t fast enough, nor in large enough quantities to punch through the defenses of medium ramge sites like the Buk-M3/S-300’s seen during the event. In high alt launches they are intercepted by the S-300’s, while during low alt shorter range shots, they are intercepted by both the S-300 and SHORAD systems.
For depot strikes, you need to loose all 6 AASM’s to have a chance at knocking out all 3 SHORAD systems, and even then, you often only get 1-2, meaning 3-4 sorties are needed to knock out a depot (it takes 3 AASM hits to knock out 1 depot building iirc).
For convoys, you’ll need 2 runs, as AASM can outshoot the tunguska, but will require most/all munitions to do so, after which you need to RTB for more to finish off the convoy.
So AASM already just sucks at both SEAD/DEAD work, as well as depot strikes, and convoy work. You simply will need another aircraft to do SEAD/DEAD for you to be able to contribute in an efficient fashion. Making it easier to target GBAD batteries via ESM, although nice, wont fix that whatsoever.
Next up, the mention of SCALP. Unless SCALP is made to be untargettable by AA (which would be stupid, its stealthy, not invisible), it will have the exact same issue as AASM for SEAD/DEAD work, but be even worse in its inability to effectively deal with convoys/depots. The one argument you could make would be that a volley of 6 AASM’s against a depots SHORAD, followed by a quick weapon swap to SCALP to fire 4 right off takeoff could be doable, but you’re never getting over the fact that the Rafale just doesnt fit the ground attack profile of this mode. SCALP also has a dinky warhead by WT standards, so its not even clear if a single hit would kill a depot building, though gaijin could give them an anti-structure dmg modifier.
Its also not likely to do much in anti-ship work. As it stands, the ships in the mode had horrid defenses, and didnt have any real impact on the match. The only ships wotth anything were the carriers, and they required quite a few hits to kill, something you wont be doing in a timely fashion with a single exocet per run. Even loosing volleys of 6 AShM’s, I wasnt killing any of the carriers particularly quickly. I could on occaision kill some of the other ships though, but as I mentionned, with little to no impact to the actual game.
Its possible new systems like jamming might help it, but they’d also likely help the other jets that already have superior ground attack profiles to the Rafale for the needs of this mode, so the point is moot. New unprotected target types, or structures requiring AP weapons like SCALP could help it though, but a comparativsly “light” fighter with hyper limited anti-ground loadouts is just always going to struggle ina mode requiring specific munition capabilities and larger quantities.
Its also completely fine that the Rafale isnt good in this mode. It doesnt have to be the best jet everywhere in War Thunder. Its already had almost 2y of dominance in air RB, its fine that it sucks in a more high volume strike oriented mode with competant air defense. It works fine in air to air in the mode still, that just wont swing games as much as the actual objectives do.
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I know a funny way of making it better in this mode
/s
if it wasn’t obvious enough
On a more serious note, SCALP would probably help a bit just by the fact that it flies low, but afaik terrain following missiles aren’t a thing in game yet, so
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Tterrain following has been added to quite a few missiles. Best examples being AGM-84H, Kh-59M’s and KD-88’s.
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Idk if id call them “best” examples, since they all kinda suck in-game :p
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they’ll crash in a mountain if they encounter one still
What you describe would be more fitting for the “sea skimming” definition
Only because agility is abysmal. They do still attempt to avoid mountains.
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Excessive unrealistic behavior of SHOARDs doesn’t automatically make these missiles bad by themself. :P
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oh they do ?
Ok i’ve learn something new today
Yeah, given the fact they’re terrible at missing mountains, not too surprised you didn’t know it. They hit them 9 times out of 10 lol Still do try to avoid it tho.
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I meant they were bad cuz they have a hyper simplistic “terrain following” feature (works on direct radar alt instead of incoming radar alt) and fly way too high so they’re super easy to intercept
Can’t blame them
Going for a hike is nice from time to time i suppose X)
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When I launched all 6 AASMs at the two S-300 radar sites at high alt and 50km launch, it would result in 3-4 AASMs intercepted with 2-3 remaining that had went to the 2 S-300s and still destroyed it, but I had to waste time earlier and do an aiming point on each of the 2 S-300 radars before going back to my side and climbing. That still is 1 S-300 site destroyed “per sortie” although annoyingly done in a time-consuming way. Proper ESM implementation resolves the time-consuming issue.
This was initially missed in my post and yes that is a big issue as well.
Unfortunately, Rafale can only carry 3 SCALP at a time, but, the Rafale can carry 6 AASMs with 1 SCALP under the belly, so it can supplement the AASMs in targeting the S-300s. SCALP doesn’t need to be untargetable, just still stealthy and very low terrain following to be effective against S-300s.
As for anti-ship work, you’re completely right on everything you’ve mentioned. It would just have 1 anti-ship missile and won’t do much work and something you haven’t mentioned is that currently anti-ship missiles are bugged and phase through ships, or even just straight up goes around it. But just having that option available to players to do multiple different missions as they wish for fun and not necessarily effectiveness is still important. I don’t always advocate things for the Rafale to dominate things like people think, just that fun factor or flexibility is sometimes just as important if not more to advocate for.
I don’t disagree that the Rafale doesn’t have to be the best in this mode, and likely won’t ever be, that’s more than fine. They can still allow the Rafale to be much more easier to use than other planes while still having reduced effectiveness compared to other aircraft. Worst case scenario though, once the game progresses I don’t see why they can’t eventually add the ASMP missile which is a nuclear air to ground missile with ramjet. Daedalos may have been joking but I consider it as a very legitimate option for the future. The Rafale can only carry one of these, placed under the belly, and it would be able to delete the whole S-300 or even future S-400 battery, just make it targetable unlike current nuclear freefall bombs which can’t be targeted so that it still gets shot down occassionally like the KH-31PD.
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Depending on if they bother to model bail conditions (currently need to put the thing under water over crew bail in the mode by my experience), a fortunate hit or a light target would make a single exocet entirely fine for the role. Still wouldn’t compare to platforms like Gripen in a maritime role, but it’d be fine and pretty fun. Even in the current state, ammo racks aren’t too hard to achieve provided you launch from the correct angle, so could be a fun gamble.
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