This is for Air RB; I don’t know about Air AB or SB.
I think the F-18A is perfectly fine at 12.3.
In fact, I rather face the F-18A spam over the Mirage or Bison.
F-18 series famously have weak engines and cannot carry too heavy load without going subsonic (Sparrows weight may vary, but you get my point)
Radar missiles are easier to avoid than IRCCMs, which the F-18 does not get. You can multipath all the way and the F-18 is rendered useless; It’s Aim-9L isn’t IRCCM; unlike the seeker shutoff IRCCM missiles that demand complex movements to evade them (IOG of seeker shutoff) which may throw off your multipath streak.
It lacks the super lethal (historically accurate Soviet doctrine btw) R-27ET+ER (or R-77) combo that 12.7+ planes have. I think western planes can also pull this off, but doesn’t have as great range as R-27ET does.
All in all, it’s a missile bus whose hype point is the Aim-7P, which crashes the competition (pun!); perhaps Gaijin can distribute this missile to more planes to make it more even.
This is a very bad take at trying to defend compression, it should never be 12.3, do you really think 11.3 Jets who most of the time dont even have an all-aspect nor radar missile should face a missile bus?
In my matches today I didn’t see many F/A-18As so I can’t speak on their effectiveness, though they are severely overhyped and are (in my opinion) pretty much just a more maneuverable F-4EJ Kai.
I know you put “12.7+” but nothing below 13.3 has R-77s to my knowledge
You can consistently flare IRCCM missiles decently easily, it just takes more than it feels comfortable to fire. The harder one to avoid is the 9M, which is lowest 13.0, something you wouldn’t be seeing, assuming you’re using the MiG-23ML which I’m inferring from your other posts. The R-73 does not like to keep lock either if you fire enough flares. The only one that really is an issue is the Magic II which is practically unflarable in the little “golden spot” of the aft hemisphere of your aircraft. Any other angke and it’s laughable. R-27T/ETs are also decently flarable, they’re just kinda silent killers due to their ranges.
There’s a few planes that should get it, namely the Tomcat, but imo from test flight it’s a really great step up from the AIM-7F/M, and I wish it would be put on an airframe where it could be competetive and not on an $80 bundle of pixels or at 14.0
i giggled
Have you heard of the F-4J or F-4S or F-4EJ Kai? They all can see 11.3 (F-4J/S 11.0) and can carry more missiles than the F/A-18A. All it has going for it is maneuverability (and the radar)
Off topic but not sure how the F-18 radar performs. I’m betting it is similar to the F-20A? F-20A radar seems more reliable than the F-4EJ Kai (APG 66).
Sparrows seem to “go dumb” less with the F-20A, and I don’t seem to get loss of signal as much.
Yeah, if I’m not mistaken the F-20A and F/A-18s have the same radar. I can’t attest to the live server as I haven’t finished research yet but on the dev the radar performed pretty well, no F-4S style “wait-three-hours-painting-the-dude-and-get-slammed-by-an-R24” but it can take a moment to lock. I do think the A and C have a different radar, though don’t hold me to it
Yeah the Sparrows get a much clearer picture and in turn have a preference of working. It also helps being a more modern radar, as opposed to being an earlier PD
I had plenty of premium F/A-18C and TT A in the teams of the last battles.
None of them performed brilliantly, with many more being level 80 or above. Overall, half of them didn’t get a single air kill
lol F-18’s engines make it accelerate as fast as an F-16 while sustaining better than the F-16.
The fact you claim that R-27ER and AIM-7 aren’t lethal is hilarious.
Tis wild it sits at the same BR as the 16A which im spading rn and going for the 18A. I genuinely thought the F18 would be far worse when I see it at 12.3.
was pleasantly surprised when one was keeping up with me trying to out rate him.
did not end well.
Not really, we could really use some BR decompression so we can move the best 12.7-14.0 up and put the F-18A in 12.7. The F-18C early should sit between the current 12.7s and the 13.0s but due to BR compression there’s no space to balance a lot of jets.
Fully agree, both the m2k and the bison have far more effective loadouts that often you can do nothing about, and you can’t run from a m2k. I’m glad that most bison players are noobs because that think in the right hands is nasty
Yeah the bison having that good stats is not surprising, since its almost a 13.0 loadout at 12.3 on a fast jet which is also a very small target and has an easy time flaring any non-irccm missiles.
It’s not a great dogfighter but with that loadout one should be getting consistently 2-3 kills on average, 3-4 if you know what you are doing and your team doesn’t instantly crumble
Yeah naturally, because its OP, and its performance coasts on its amazing loadout which most noobs can use just fine. With the F-18A or F-16ADF (yes the 12.7 one) you need to be far more skilled and lucky to get similar consistent results.
But yeah, 2 wrongs don’t make 1 right, both should be higher in BR.
But without decompression, the F-18A will be a bad 12.7