I think I speak for everyone when I say the current way countermeasures are launched are not gonna be effective if we start seeing more and more missiles like the AIM-9M or R-73 in game.
Flares and Chaff are launched at the same time when picked on a mixed loadout so even if you are completely aware that the missile threat is IR, when pressing the CM key you will be wasting Chaff and vice versa when the threat is Radar.
Some aircraft also have a very limited amount of countermeasures so wasting Chaff or Flares is a huge issue if we start seeing missiles that have a chance of ignoring some of the Flares you drop, meaning that Gaijin has to finally find a way to make us choose which countermeasures we want dropped during the match, which leads into the second problem that I think a lot of players have which is the overpopulated Air RB matches.
The current Air RB environment is just completely awful, you have 32 players facing each other on a medium sized map, the middle is commonly referred as the “furball” in which 70% of the players start merging and launching IR missiles all over the place and every single time it will end in the complete obliteration of one of the teams in less than a minute and if you are like me who likes to keep some distance with the furball, you will either have an easy victory or you will have 10 enemy aircraft tailing you. This is the complete opposite of “fun”, and now with the updated RWR and newer IR missiles the scene is going to become even worse, so in my opinion Gaijin has to either cut in half the amount of players in a single match or completely revamp the gamemode itself in top tier.
I think reducing the number of participants in Air RB is a really necessary change. However, I remember that before increasing the number of participants, there was a problem with long waiting times for matching.
Given that, reducing the number of participants in matching itself may not be an easy problem for GAIJIN as a whole, so I will try to think of another way.
One of the factors that makes matching chaotic is the problem that radar missiles are easily neutralized at low altitudes. This allows players to fly in a straight line toward the enemy and “furball” them.
However, if the radar missiles hit at an altitude of even 50 meters, most players who form a “furball” will have to leave the field early in the game.
As a result, players will have to choose between being cautious and paying for repairs forever.
Of course, since there are currently very powerful radar missiles such as the R27ER, it would be necessary to balance the situation in other ways, such as a completely mixed team formation or entering the era of ARHs such as the AIM120 and R77.
Honestly I am not sure you can find a better way to tone things down as a matter of fact I’d argue the ARH spam would make the experience arguably worse with the amount of Fox 3s that would be flying in the first couple of minutes.
In the meantime the absolute priority though is to create a CM selection key because the amount of flares everyone will be using next update will heavily increase and even then that wouldn’t compensate for the amount of players in a single match.
None of these aircraft were ever designed to be used in the disorganized manner we have, generally 90-120 CM is considered enough for a single mission, but nobody ever thought a single mission would involve flying 16 friendly aircraft that don’t even communicate and face 16 enemy aircraft each armed with 6-8 missiles fought without a single ECM specialized unit.