Lemme guess, top scorer of kills on the U.S. team was an F-4S or F-4J.
Bro you had people complaining en masse about the F-4J and F-4S in the latter half of the event because people were running that over the regular F-4E. The R-60 was better than the AIM-9L in the missile joust being able to rip off the rails quicker. So you had 4 AIM-7s that were functionally useless he was chasing another phantom into the vertical and 4 AIM-9Ls that would only work if a Mig-23 wasn’t paying attention and was gunning after another dude and you had his ass facing you.
In fact, they had to give the F-4E the 9Ls just to try and make it competitive against the Mig-23.
That’s the point we’re getting at. The Mig-23 steamed the F-4E. But the F-4S and J were able to compete because they got 6 radar missiles instead of just 2 R-24s. And multi-pathing can be difficult when you have 100m tall trees with hitboxes double the size of their visual model.
So you fired the missile up and Rod of God’ed your enemy. Mig-23 could only do that 2 times. But against F-4E’s it was no biggie as they could head-on with their R-60
Thats on a vacuum, sure the mig is faster, but if has worse supersonic handling with the wings back, the f4e can easily out turn it on the first few turns which was what it really mattered in the event as you cant really use the better sustainded turn of the migs, and sure the radar is “better” but it is still leages behind the one on the j/s, not to mention that every one was lawn mowing anyways.
Put your manual wing sweep at 75% and you nullified that advantage the F-4E had and you would still reach 1300kmh WAY quicker than the F-4E at the deck.
Not talking about the J’s, but the E. But for your information,the way MTI works, it effectively behaved gameplay wise as a PD. It wasn’t that the Radar was “Better” By any large margin on the F-4J or S. but that it’s a lot simpler to just lock onto a dude with the HMD vs using an ACM mode on the Mig-23 where it was sometimes easier to use the regular scan to score a lock as you would have a whole conga line of enemies. That was the biggest difference. Both scored locks effectively well, but you had to put more work on actually locking on the dude with the Mig-23 even if he was well and there on your radar. Especially as other enemies cluttered the screen.
It’s why on the top bracket the Mig-29 did pretty well because the HMD worked quite a bit. But the achilles heel for the Russians was the AIM-9M, as it was basically oppressive to most aircraft as IRCCM is hard to fight when the nuke capable vehicles only had so many flares to bomp. Unlike the AIM-9L that went stupid.
The R-60s were amazing in a head-on. Most of my kills werent even from the guns but the R-60 that ripped off the rails and instantly one-shotted a crap ton of F-4Es because it tore off so quickly. They dumped on the AIM-9L in levels of usefulness because the AIM-9L couldn’t pop off like that.
Literally a clip of an R-60 ripping off the rails and smacking at super close range
Oh and cuz of Mig-23 speed you could airfield rush very easily
Only in specific situations, the mig 23 radar is still extremely prone to just change modes as it does as soon as youre not looking down, it is unreliable at best and extremely annoying to use.
Like you said it worked agaisnt unaware enemies, if the f4 didnt fully commited and didnt preflare on the head ons it isnt really the missile being supperior, because that could be done as well with the aim 9L, i also got a lot of kills jousting mig 23 on head ons with them.
“Unaware” No. Unaware is “Mig-23 is preoccupied chasing F-4E and doesn’t have situational awareness.”
It’s because a lot of people didn’t preflare, and even if you did, if the missile was closing in enough, you were super close or you’re close enough to the ground, those flares just hit the dirt and insta exstinguish the R-60 could still hit anyway because it yanked so well off the rails.
You also had IRST which had a smaller ACM and you could then queue it up to the radar and get a lock that way. Which is better than the F-4E’s… Not being able to lock at all. Lol.
AIM-9L was effectively worthless for headons as the missile couldn’t pull into a fast approaching or maneuvering enemy while the R-60 could. You can literally see it in video.
You still could. Even if you get an MTI lock and lifted to rod the R-24 into the enemy you would still sustain lock.
The event was easy on both sides and in both F-4E and MLD I felt entirely competitive facing the other plane. I got MANY AIM-7E2 kills and also 9L kills. F-4E really was easy to play during the event.
which at least in my opinion seems irrelevant to the game performance, as a limited scale event with very heavy confines that do not mirror regular gameplay isn’t exactly a good way to evaluate performance, especially when it has a modified version of the TT aircraft as its base.
In terms of in-game performance, the F-4E is a fantastic, joyful plane to play. The 7E-2s are fantastic and the ACM is good. It performs well in every category and does not struggle to compete.
You fool, it is precisely the faustian CW seeker what will end in your downfall, because just like a tempted man, a sparrow will too chase thing different than his goal
