That chart isn’t quite fair comparing a hornet armed with missiles to relatively clean F-15 and F-16, and it still beats them at relevant altitudes for war thunder.
You’re talking about a 50-60 m/s difference advantage from a missile that is going to accelerate ~850 m/s anyway.
If you wanted to make this argument I’d recommend time to climb, acceleration comparisons instead.
You’ve got the point. Perhaps I am being too obsessive about this absurd issue.
TWR is a good proxy for these, and the F/A is lacking compared to the others.
A clean F-15A with PW-100 engine on standard day is marked in yellow. I will check the F-16 later.
We’ve been over this, the F/A-18 has an advantage in T/W over certain F-16 models and superior turn rate depending on whether you want to match fuel % or fuel weight.
Time to climb is acceptable, not too much worse than these later model F-16s. Superior to the F-14, Mirage 2000, etc… and those are not considered incapable.
i don’t think so
Not really. You keep insisting on it without sources, and the only person I’ve seen agree with you is someone from your squadron who never used to use the forums. Not suspicious at all.
I think you misread the graph.
F/A-18C w/ GE-402 engines has 19+ deg/s turn rate with 60% fuel load and 2x AIM-9, 2x AIM-120 loadout. This is higher than the sustained turn of the F-16 with equivalent fuel weight and armament.
Additionally, the GAO report which cites this information was given and I am referencing in-game performance data for the F-16 (which is higher than real life performance courtesy of the removal of the G limits).
Power to weight for the GE-402 will vary depending on speed, as does the F-16. Saying the F/A-18 suffers in T/W is to say that the Mirage 2000, F-14, J-8, etc all suffer from the same issue… while this is somewhat true it is still leagues ahead of any prior generation fighter and the WVR performance is above the F-15 or F-16. The ability to carry 10 AMRAAM’s, while not having quite the same climb rate, acceleration, or top speed… is still beyond the scope of any other early Gen4 fighters with the exception of the Su-27 which in theory could carry a similar amount of R-77.
The argument as far as I am concerned was that the F/A-18 may not be the most meta vehicle when added even with the 10 AMRAAM’s because of some perceived performance deficit. I assure you, this is not the case. I am betting that the F/A-18C, with the GE-402 engines… it will be one of the best or most meta vehicles in the game when it comes… especially if given the full 10 AMRAAM loadout.
Nice double post.
The graph for the F-16 corresponds to the pure F-16 C
Block 52 which had the more powerful PW 229 engine
The chart for the Hornet probably shows a version with a GE 402 engine and a load of 4 missiles.
Just a small note, although performance is very important, you also need to factor in avionics. An example is the Gripen, which doesn’t have great performance but compensates with very good avionics - RWR/radar/datalink and a small RCS.
Definitely has the performance in-game, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.
I meant compared to F-15 and F-16, Gripen is rather weaker, but it depends on the external fuel tanks, which significantly reduce the performance of Gripen. In a clean configuration with AA missile armament it performs well for both BVR and WVR, but doesn’t have much range compared to the F-16.
It seems 10x AMRAAM loadout is quite controversial, so I’d suggest another ‘safe’ option: give it only AIM-7P initially, then add AMRAAM later depends on its performance.
Since F/A-18 could carry various A2G weapons like Maverick E/F, Skipper or SLAM, it will still be worthwhile in other way. At the very least, it won’t cause balance issues.
There are other option to limit the quantity of AMRAAM, but it is mostly not feasible given that the Gaijin didn’t do such thing for the Su-27 and R-27ER.
It won’t be able to self-designate until the (ATFLIR / LITENING TGP, depends on if USMC or USN Hornet is modeled) (-A+ / -C) and later turn up, as the Basic NITEHAWK is a navigation pod, only getting designation capabilities much later, in terms of air to ground ordnance the F/A-18A does not improve sores capability over the A-7E.
There is also the fact that the basic F/A-18A was not yet equipt with AMRAAMs, so at least for a theoretical introductory configuration it really isn’t pushing the meta forward, so i wouldn’t be surprised to see it somewhere in the 11.x BR range.
The forums died last night when I was posting and it must have duplicated.
Can’t even get decent servers for the forum, nevermind the game.
Either way, I’m sure there will be a good compromise between play value and balance.
Little preview of Hornet’s HUD, provided by Tigershark.
Actually the symbologies are bit different, but the overall layout and shape is very similar.
Now we have set of parts to assemble horny
Radar ✓
RWR✓
Engines✓ (not exact same model)
HUD✓
How about this: F/A-18A with AIM-7s and AIM-9s, F/A-18C with AIM-120s at a later date.
The exact thing Gaijin is likely doing with the F-15s
They are probably going to skip the F/A-18A, it would probably sit at 11.3~12.0 and be fairly underwhelming for a new addition (just look at the F-20, people already want it to go down in BR), since it doesn’t have access to any new A2G ordnance over the A-7E, or a Laser designator for GBU, and even when it eventually does(F/A-18A+ / -18C), it doctrinally was not allowed to use the NITEHAWK to self designate.
Also capabilities will vary significantly depending on if they give us the USMC or USN stores, or a franken plane.
