F/A-18C Late and AIM-120C-5: A Slap in the Face to the Player Base

Game Discussion Realistic Battle
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I think I have a right here to talk, I’ve been playing war thunder since it was launched and it was one of the best or if not once of the most unique games I’ve ever laid hands on, love for it began when I read a book by Roald dhal about his life in the RAF and then I saw frankieonpc1080p play the mustang mark 1a British prem with the 20mm Hispanos, from then on it was pure love at first sight.
Years later and it sad to see what has happened .Let’s talk honestly about the current state of the F/A-18C Late in War Thunder, because what we have right now is far from acceptable and frankly, it’s insulting to anyone who’s put time and money into this game expecting a degree of realism, balance, or even basic developer responsiveness.

  1. F/A-18C Late: Underperforming By Design?

The F/A-18C Late, on paper, is supposed to be a multirole fighter capable of standing toe-to-toe with its contemporaries like the MiG-29SMT, Su-27SM, and the J-11. In reality? It feels like a Gen 4 jet stuck in Gen 3 performance. Energy retention is poor, acceleration is subpar, and its flight model feels artificially nerfed. We’re talking about a jet that in real life is trusted with fleet defense and high-risk strike missions yet in War Thunder it can barely hold its own in a 1v1 unless you catch someone sleeping.

If this was based on real-world flight data and you had transparency? Fine. But when entire nations get aircraft that clearly outperform (and are often overperforming), you can’t expect your community to sit by quietly and accept that their premium or grind-earned aircraft are DOA.

  1. AIM-120C-5: Broken or Intentionally Neutered?

Then there’s the AIM-120C-5 one of the most advanced beyond-visual-range (BVR) missiles in the game which currently behaves more like an AIM-7 with a fancy skin. Poor tracking logic, weak kinematics, and a bafflingly short effective range. Meanwhile, R-77s and PL-12s are handing out kill notices with impunity. What’s the point of even having the 120C-5 in the game if you’re going to gut its defining features? If this is about “balance,” it’s a thin excuse. No one believes Gaijin is applying that same logic consistently across all nations.

  1. Gaijin’s Silence: They Don’t Care, and It Shows

What’s worse than the broken mechanics? The radio silence. Feedback has poured in from testers, content creators, and everyday players alike. And what do we get? Nothing. No dev blogs addressing concerns, no patch notes explaining changes or fixes. Just more premium vehicles and updates that benefit already-overpowered factions.

The message is clear: They don’t care about balance. They don’t care about authenticity. They don’t care about the community — only the cash flow.

  1. What Do You Actually Want From Us?

We support this game and me specially because I love the game, the f15C is my favorite het and if I had the f15E I would love that too but what’s the the F18/c Late. We buy packs. We participate in events. We fill out bug reports and provide feedback in good faith. But time and again, that good faith is met with neglect. So what do you want from us? Silence? Compliance? Or are we just here to bankroll a game that pretends to be simulated warfare while ignoring real-world data and fair play?

Fix the F/A-18C Late. Fix the AIM-120C-5. And most of all, fix your approach to community feedback. Because right now, it feels like we’re shouting into a void and the only answer we get back is another $70 premium vehicle with the same broken mechanics we complained about months ago.

We deserve better. And you know it.

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are we playing the same F/A-18C?

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Can’t hold a candle to the EF or Rafale. Its only chance is a gun kill in the first turn. After that it doesn’t have enough thrust to hang.

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I’ll be honest the difference between the A/B & C-5 feels like nothing compared to the R-77 & the -1…

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  1. The F/A-18 seems very poor in performance because if you play on keyboard it pulls max AOA most of the time, hence why it loses energy so quickly.
  2. Yes. The AIM-120C-5 and C-7 are nerfed into the ground.
  3. Seems so. Some info on the matter from Smin or someone would be good
  4. Very poor game model based around buying premiums instead of buying premiums AND having a fun time. Refusing to implement more gamemodes and fix bugs doesn’t help it
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And no BOL pods, no atflir, etc. and a heavier missile in the C5 to boot

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Pretty much, but I’ve seen the IRIS-T SLM to perform quite similar to the S1 while having FnF missiles.

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Slap to the face to anyone but Russia ?
First off, it is USSR
2nd off, what did USSR get in this update… let me count

  1. battleship (idc about the 0.5% playing naval) that seems to be not historical, is it op tho, is it the most op for its BR in naval
  2. a trainer jet
  3. T-72B2A… a worse T-72B3H with Arena APS, yee not that useful and who would swap t-90m for it ?

They nerfed the heck out of new spaa ?
I have only seen 1 nerf then continuous buffs, while other nations get stuck with old spaa
new nations get fnf medium range AA missiles
mostly the new IRIS-T SLM, which works like a longer range pantsir missile, while being FnF
Yes, I have died to it multiple times, mostly because of it being IR, meaning I get no pings from the missile, I might have defeated 3–5 missiles coming at me, and thinking I’m safe, goes to land in AF, and dies immediately to 1 last missile

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on this topic we can agree in part

This is true, the f18 C actually arrived late and should be a 13.7

The problem is that the critical sense ends here and you start saying absurd things, the only real problem with the f18 is its speed, it is not an aircraft that has a high top speed, it has good acceleration, excellent maneuverability, insane payloads, and a very honest energy retention.
It’s not a Rafale or a Eurofighter, but it’s a great plane. This artificially nerfed talk is ridiculous. In real life, an F18 with 12 missiles doesn’t even go supersonic. It’s just a “slow” plane, but it’s very dangerous in a dogfight.

Aim 120C is problematic but not for the reasons you address in this topic

actually no, pl12, mica, aam4 and r77-1 are very contemporary missiles, and no the aim120c does not behave like an aim7, the problem with the C is that it is a big balancing problem, in dev sever it was the same as the aim120b without sustainer, with a longer burn time, less drag and a better seeker.
He came to the game without the best seeker, less drag, engine without sustainer and longer burn time and turning less than aim120A and B, he turns less and has less instantaneous curve than them, that really is the problem with aim120C, apart from BVR it is inferior to A and B.
Another problem is that with aim120C properly implemented in the game, pl12 and aam4 also need to be properly implemented because they are currently artificially nerfed for balance reasons, they have a similar performance.

You US mains give terrible feedback, you think the game needs to be balanced completely around the US when it isn’t, you say it’s Russia bias and forget that there are 10 nations in the game.
The game has several problems that need to be fixed, but many of the supposed problems you pointed out don’t even exist.
You should play with more than one nation and see the real scenario of the game, analyzing the game only from the American perspective is terrible, you have no idea about the real problems of the game.

Your profile in the plane section only has American planes up to the top tier, some British planes from the Second World War and very few event and squadron planes, but you basically only play the USA.

Go toch the grass
Or actually play with other nations to get a broader perspective of the real problems of the game.

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So, from what I’m getting here is you’re expecting Super Hornet (ie F/A-18E/F) flight performance from the F/A-18Cs we have in-game? It’s a relatively small fighter jet with a high missile count and superior AoA capability compared to everything else the US tech tree currently has AND it has the added benefit of not immediately falling out of the sky like jets such as the MiG-29SMT or the many Su-27 variants in-game.

And by “entire nations get aircraft that clearly outperform (and are often over performing)”, you must mean France with their Rafale, right? Even with the most recent changes to it it’s still much better than the current C Hornets as it should be… (Though if you meant other nations specifically, do let me know)

Have you tried launching an AIM-120 above Mach 1.2? The effective range of any missile isn’t going to be much if you’re launching it while low and slow. I’ve bonked so many people in the cockpit so many times launching either AIM-120 variants going Mach 1.5+ in the F-15E I’ve never found any issue with it. The only downside to the AIM-120 in general is it can’t really hit anything under 7 km because like the Sparrow it needs energy to turn. With the C-5, this is even moreso with its clipped fins so don’t expect a lot of (or even the same) fin AoA as with the AIM-120A/B. Unlike the A/B, you get a teeny bit more range due to it having less drag and it doesn’t explode after about a minute of flight, so that’s good.

I mean, objectively speaking most major games companies are rarely that forthcoming with its community like Gaijin sometimes is. They do sometimes listen, or at least publicly make it known that they do. Most of the time? It’s mostly internal discussion. it’s the internet, and most if not all complaints/feedback comes through here: someone will have seen it (or it is being monitored by mods, at the very least).

There’s nothing wrong with the F/A-18C Late (I’m assuming tech tree?). The “only” issue I can see with the AIM-120C-5 is it missing its reduced smoke motor which everyone knows it has. Not really a big issue, given it’s a radar missile and you’ll know it’s coming anyway, but still. Community feedback has always been received, and rarely publicly acknowledged. It matters in what way you say it (think less random forum rant, more constructive post when given the opportunity).

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Are you joking?

The F18 annihilates the Su-30SM past the merge in a dogfight. Su-30SM has the advantage in BVR because it’s much faster.

Of course it’s much more difficult against Eurofighter and Rafale. The Su-30SM ALSO can’t do much past the merge against those two. It is doable though, if you now what you’re doing and don’t just smash the funny AOA button and become a kite instantly.

I think you’re just bad and this is a major skill issue. The F18 is probably the third best top tier jet aircraft, behind the Eurofighter and Rafale. At least past the merge.

I’d rather have a Su-30SM for BVR though. The F18’s anemic speed is what handicaps it.

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I mean it bleeds a lot of speed, but yeah up until mach 1 it accelerates pretty decently (after mach 1 it’s acceleration kind of falls of a cliff though).

I could be wrong, but iirc the Super Hornet is going to be worse than the current 18(C) late we have in game in terms of flight performance wise.

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It’s funny that you have nothing to say about the C-5/7 performance despite your so eloquent ‘its dev server performance, they’ll probably fix it’ back on the dev server category.

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Not what i said.

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Allow me to prove yourself wrong.

Spoiler: The missile got worse since that comment.

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Point me where i said that gaijin “will probably fix it.”

I even said to save judgment for the live release. Same applies to SLM which was at time of writting that comment terrible and only got fixed later.

I have no clue what got you so angry at me, but you are chasing a ghost.

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So I’m fed up, every time it’s the same thing, it’s always a guy who just complains that US is weak. You open the guy’s profile and he just plays with US.
It’s always the same complaints and crying, no matter the pacth or the meta, and always “US is too weak” and “Russian bias”

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Avoiding responsibility of your own message when the subtext of it clearly was ‘it’s going to get changed’ (assuming for the better) it’s a huge blow, you’re deflecting, and being disingenuous.

Is the missile better or worse than it was in the dev server? Is that performance enough to be an improvement to 120A/Bs?
I’m eager to hear your judgement.

SPAA and ARH balancing go on different rails and hold no meaningful, common ground to do comparisons with. It was common sense that they would touch SPAAs in a SPAA-related update even in their 2nd dev server. The 120C-5 was something Gaijin decided to add on airframes out of nothing.

I have a good time on chasing disingenuous and over-entitled people in the forums. Until you don’t admit you were exceedingly wrong around the situation, i’ll keep my thing going.

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Sorry but thats borderline schizophrenic assumption.

Havent had the chance to try it out myself as i havent touched air RB due to bug. Morvran said its sidegeade at best and worse than A/B in some areas and i trust his judgment.

Of course you dismiss it when it doesnt fit with your previous statement.

Be my guest.

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Welp, that’s nothing that i can’t argue against. I even fought some US mains myself in the past about the F/A-18A ¯_(ツ)_/¯.
I mean, you can complain about how mediocre the F/A-18C and be somewhat right, but the F/A-18A is quite good for where it is.

That is something that could really be said for any other nation main tbf.