I am not seeing these “rafale is the most overpowered superplane in the entire game that wins all fights” claims and complaints at all with my experience.
My experience in RB is just constantly defending from long range missile launches; despite all the crying about how easy it is to notch missiles it still means you are defending while the enemy is pushing you and gaining a larger and larger advantage. I doubt it’ll get better with more missiles to throw around. People just don’t get close enough for a MICA launch with decent probability of kill.
Call me a brainlet and look up my stats+replays or whatever, but I don’t see the complaints having a basis in reality when AIM-120 launches even at 40+km still need to be defended and defending properly doesn’t let you do much when the other guy just turns around and speeds off at mach 1.8 in their spam eagle by the time you’ve defeated their triple volley of missiles.
Maybe it’s broken in SB, but SB is a hyper-niche gamemode with a constantly dwindling playerbase.
What I was told when I tried to report this was that the Harrier GR.7 was bugged when they tried to make two targeting pods work (one internal, one external) this lead to some issues so developers have decided to completely disable the internal pod if an external targeting pod is taken. I haven’t heard any update at all if they intend on making it work in the future, probably not.
With an AIM-120 carrying plane, I don’t mind the rafale. However, I’ve recently started to use the Su-27SM, and its pretty much hopeless against the rafale. It doesn’t have the flight performance or countermeasures to sustain a BVR fight against a rafale, getting close to it is hopeless, and the rafale can lock you on radar a long time before the Su-27SM can. What I find the most annoying with the rafale is the insane flight performance, and then the radar+ missile set. The combination of the AESA+ very good missiles (and up to 8 of them) nullifies planes that carry the R77, Derby and R-Darter, which have similar range and worse maneuverability
In my opinion that would indeed be a way to balance top (top) tier, since one of the main factor making the rafale so good compared to the EFT is the MICA (and the radar). Having the EFT carry said missiles (IRIS-T and ASRAAM depending on the nation) would bridge that gap even with the MICA IR for France. However, countries that do not have equivalent (like the US, let’s not pretend that the AIM9X is in the same category as those missiles) would be significantly impacted. And we would need a significantly higher BR ceiling as well
There was barely a BR difference for the F-16C with Aim-9M and Mig-29SMT with R-73 when they were added and most had to fight IRCCM without IRCCM for 3 months?
Id not put it past them for them all to be the same BR,
But with ASRAAM and MICA IR, you have to ask “How are they going to model the seeker”
I can easily see no LOAL and a max lock range of maybe 25km? If that (heck the game struggles to visually render aircraft at those kinds of distances , in the FLIR on the Tornado Gr4 aircraft dont appear to even render in until about 30-35km in my experience, at least they didnt when it was relatively new)
At which point, the main advantage both would have would be largely mitigated.
I raised this question before, but Im very curious to see how they handle the mix of options for the next step in IR missiles in-game.
I think the most logical step would be:
analogue bus ASRAAM/IRIS-T
Magic II mk2
R-73M
Python 4
PL-8B (fixed)
AIM-9X blk1 (analogue bus?)
That being said, we really don’t need any new IR missiles yet, particularly not on the maps we currently have access to and with the radar mechanics that currently exist making it so easy to get within range of these IR missiles. Itd just be miserable.
IIR, i’ve heard (R&R “leak”) is planned to be modeled like 2x IRCCM, so will probably have both Gate width and seeker shutoff, but wont be IIR.
But im just talking about attributes like lock range
Technically it is also a core capability of Aim-9 as well (and probably most IR missiles already in game). And most ARH missiles. so I dont put it past them
I was more on the datalink part. Fox 3 in game are « LOAL » in the sense that they can be guided by the plane until pitbul, but I know it’s not the actual LOAL capability, it’s just me not using the correct language sorry.
As for datalink capability, that is one of the main differentiator between the ASRAAM and MICA IR. I know late AIM9X also has it. IRIS-T does not and late r73 either. I don’t really know about the PL10 and Python tho.
I would expect datalink capable missiles will be able to launch without a hardlock while the other will require a hardlock, but then I really hope they work on the range of the seekers, because right know basically all of the modern seekers (from AIM9L, PL8, Magic 2…) to manpad missiles are stupidly underperforming
I specified the analogue bus IRIS-T (and ASRAAM), which basically act as AIM-9Ms on rail. To my understanding, they cant do over the shoulder LOAL shots, and due to basically being an AIM-9M when on rail, make both missiles significantly less capable pre-launch. Post launch they’d still be borderline unflareable though.
Afaik, there is no version of the PL-10 which act in a similar manner, so a fixed PL-8B with a mix of both FOV reduction and seeker shutoff (from what I understand) makes more sense as a counterpart imo.
One oddity ive noticed about the PL-10 is that it seems that it should be very similar to a MICA IR, having almost the same dimensions (160mm diameter, 3.0m length vs 3.1m of MICA, 105kg vs 112kg of MICA), along with a very similar layout, but is only stated to have 20km range vs the MICA’s 60-80km range when air launched. I wonder what the discrepancy is between the 2 that lead to such a range imbalance. It could be the difference in strakes, the slight extra weight of the MICA, rocket motor capabilities, seeker limits, or maybe trajectory shaping, but it could also just be the Chinese underselling its max range.
Spoiler
The PL-10 does have vastly superior gimbal limits compared to the MICA IR though (±90 deg vs ±60 deg). The MICA IR actually has unusually bad gimbal limits when compared to all other modern IR missiles, being inferior to every other one I know of, including the R-73 already seen in-game.
That’s a possibility, though itd be different when compared to current in-game IIR missiles. All current in-game IIR missiles only use FOV reduction, but the FOV reduction drops their FOV to 0.1 deg, down from 120 deg. As an interesting sidenote, the Kh-38MT is one of the few IR AGMs in-game NOT to have IRCCM, which is pretty odd when its the IR AGM in-game with the single best seeker.
If you mean “gatewidth” on missiles like AGM-65D, I don’t think it does anything
gatewidth is the FoV after lock-on
But if it’s the same value as the FoV before lock-on it shouldn’t make any difference …
Kh-38MT: "fov": 0.1,
AGM-65D:
"fov": 0.1,
"gateWidth": 0.1,
Magic 2 (as an example where it does make a difference):
Yes but that is because Germany, France and UK did not have planes to rival the f-16, f-15 and to an extent the su-27 that is the reason why rafaels and typhoons were added this early to the game. SU-30SM was added because USSR lacked radar and missiles at top tier Air battles.
