So the F-18E is by far the slowest plane at 14.3 while also not having the amount of countermeasures like the F-15C Golden Eagle has which justifies it being at 14.3. The stock grind is by far the worst possible for any aircraft currently. The AIM-7P is not competitive at 14.3. At least the AIM-120B is a tier 3 modification but does that justify the F-18E being at 14.3 ?
The turn performance will come into play in about 1 out of 20 games and even if you get into a dogfight with the Hornet you still have to contend with IR missiles for which you likely have little to no flares left.
What is your opinion ? I think it should be 14.0 or 13.7 if generously placed.
wouldnt make sense for super hornet to be below earlier, worse variant.
either way we will likely get next-gen IRs once every nation has plane capable of having them, similiar to how ARHs were added all at once; Super Hornet and GE are likely candidates to recieve them.
Useless, blind missiles, radar losing the target at less than 10 km, blind AIM-9M missiles, AIM-7P slower than any other missile. And when they work, the radar decides to switch the target at the last second to the enemy rocket.
Seriously, I can’t imagine an engineer who produced a super-advanced radar failing to implement an option that TOTALLY IGNORES missiles from being tracked and locked on automatically.
What a horrible grind this is, I honestly don’t even know if I want to grind the new F/A-18E… Which is likely to be another even bigger disappointment.
As I said, decompression issue, I would think that logic dictates that the Superhornet does not go below the regular hornet since the F-18E is a full upgrade over the F-18C but bad explanation on my part there should have made that clear.
The F-18E has no business sitting on the same BR has the Rafale, Eurofighter or F-15C GE. The F-18E is overall just less potent.
In my opinion, the quality of the missiles on the F-18E is compensated for by their quantity. The playstyle of the F-18E is fundamentally different from the Su-30/Su-30SM2. Here, you act more as a support player rather than a ‘lone wolf.’ Nevertheless, on a fully spaded aircraft, you can try to force a dogfight, but that comes down to pilot skill and the amount of fuel in your tanks. The biggest problem, as I see it, is the radar (which is an issue for the entire US tech tree). Let’s even set aside the constant lock drops and targets moving at Mach 3. US doctrine was built around the cooperation of multiple aircraft; because of this, the Navy didn’t install swashplate (gimballed) radars, which is exactly what we see in-game (FOV limits of +/- 70 degrees). While our counterparts can maintain a missile lock even in a notch (and some can even launch behind their back XD), we are left hoping that the missile will figure out where to go on its own. I am also attaching my statistics.
Ok, and then the F-18Cs? I’m guessing you think they should be 13.3 or 13.0? Then what about the large amount of planes worse than them already at 13.0-13.3? Did you think this through fully?
The only way super hornet can shine as a missile bus will be when datalink between planes are added. Till then it’s gonna struggle playing solo in 12 v 12 against typhoons, rafales, and su30s that will stomp on them. Legit the Su30SM2 is better than the f18e in terms of radar, speed, and FM without changing missile count.
Acting as a support player is just a fancy way of saying that the F/A-18E has almost zero match presence and that it’s dependent on teammats not being idiots or the enemy team ignoring you.
Not really, because that still ignores the biggest issue of the Hornet/Super Hornet: It’s horrible BVR flight performance.
Data link between planes won’t do shit when your aircraft can’t really give the missiles enough energy to be a threat beyond 20-25km.
What it really boils down to is that (as always) decompression is needed badly, the F-18C should never ever face planes on 13.0, but it also somewhat struggles against planes at it’s own br. Gaijin needs to extend the top br to at least 15.3, put the Eurofighters, Rafales and the Su-30SM2s there. So the F-18s get a place where they can be somewhat competetive. But this needs more thinking on might part of how to balance all the other jets.
Generally speaking, it would not hurt if most planes that are at a high br, which don’t have fox-3s but can face loads of fox-3s are helped as well. Decompression will fix that.
What I am trying to say: The BVR capable F-18s are in a very weird or awkward spot right now.
It does, you can be more agressive since you can bring more chaff. Many planes have to fly more defensive because their chaff is limited while the F-15C never runs out. I can confirm that since I fly it.
Ever since I got through the horrible stock grind, the F-15C GE is very potent. I would say it could be even more so then the Rafale.
