The F-14A’s radar in War Thunder struggles to track targets flying away against ground clutter, which feels unrealistic. In reality, the AN/AWG-9’s pulse-Doppler system should handle these conditions more effectively—even if rear-aspect locks are inherently harder than head-on. Other aircraft like the MiG-23MLA and F-4J don’t suffer such severe limitations in-game, which suggests Gaijin might have intentionally toned down the F-14A—possibly to balance its powerful debut with the AIM-54 and long-range TWS in 2022—rather than aiming for historical accuracy, And it has got worse over time to the extent that I personally feel like the F-14s are now unplayable.
It could also be an unintended modeling issue, where the clutter penalty disproportionately affects the F-14A despite its superior real-world Doppler filtering. Whatever the cause, the F-14A’s radar underperforms compared to both its real-life counterpart and other jets of the same era in War Thunder.
War Thunder is great because it combines realism with accessible controls, but it feels like we’re drifting away from that core identity. Personally, I’m not in favor of artificially nerfing modern vehicles just to reduce frustration. What about everyone else—do you support these kinds of balance adjustments?
BLACKRAGE44428, I’m not sure what you expect mods to do here or what your RIO comments are even adding to this. I’m trying to talk about a real issue with the F-14A’s radar in-game—do you care about sorting out broken mechanics like that, or are you just memeing to throw the conversation off track?
Perhaps you don’t mind broken aspects of the game?
I think he just want you to submit some reports. Generally he agrees with what you said and wants you to draw attention from developers (He said mods, but moderators could not help with this issue). Please keep conversation in order.
If you have some solid evidence could help improve how F-14A radar performs in-game and submit a bug report, that would be really helpful. For this topic, it could remain for discussing.
ive bug reported numerous things all getting shot down too for bizare reasons
we need higher up mods to view these as the regular bug mods seem to be biased not gonna lie
Damn… Transitioning from F-4J to F-14A was a blast in terms of radar perfomance. It can actually lock targets against the ground and TWS HDN is a godsend in the Fox3 era.
Well if anything it proves that the ALR-23 which the configuration that the F-14A is modeling [circa '77 SAC] had the option to mount has the capabilities so could be included, also as missile as are balancing consideration the TCS could also be extended to the F-14A if Gaijin deemed it necessary since what exactly is meant by Early isn’t clearly defined anywhere. So the addition of a feature from '83 wouldn’t be all that bad.
