Future of top-tier air in general

Game Discussion Realistic Battle
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this is just a discussion about the future of top-tier AIR

right now as most people know its looking really bleak right now. Despite players asking for literal YEARS to add bigger maps, missions, objectives, or literally anything to spice up the game mode. It seems gaijin has plugged their ears and shut their eyes. the SEAD event a few months back seemed promising. but i highly doubt we’ll actually see the overhaul we desperately need anytime soon.

right now top-tier air mainly consists of 2 teams clashing in a furball, usually the team with the French wins because Rafale is THAT good, the MICA is insane and the only notch resistant missile despite other missiles having a notch resistance thats not implemented in game, AAM-4, 120-C5 etc.

And when top tier isn’t a furball its usually just everyone flying 2 feet from the ground multi-pathing, smacking into trees with messed up hitboxes and “missile jousting” with each other. The main factors that results in a team winning (without mentioning rafales) usually comes down to positioning. you know which team flanked basically and rained hell with IRCCM missiles lol.

But how long will this go on?
The only time you ever really see any “dynamic” gameplay if thats what you want to call it. Is in SIM mode (which 90% of players dont both with) and maps that have terrain features that allow you to defeat missiles rather than flying 2 feet off the ground.

Not to mention many nations are in a bad spot when it comes to tech. Russia, France, and even Japan now with the introduction of the F-2 all are in a decent spot. Meanwhile US, Germany, UK, Israel, Italy, and Sweden are in a pretty rough spot. None of the aircraft (with the exception being maybe the Gripen) are very good. All of their Radars in comparison are pretty terrible, Especially the EF-2000 ironically which is supposed to have the best Mechanical radar ever produced, other aircraft as-well just have really unreliable radar in comparison to other 13.7+ jets.

So i go back to my original question…what the hell is the future of top-tier gonna look like?

Even if say jets like the F-15E get AESA radars like the APG/82…or EF-2000 radar gets “fixed” its not like the rest of the game mode is suddenly saved, those changes might balance things more. but it still will be a 16 v 16 furball every match, no new objectives or things to do like SEAD will be coming any time i soon is my bet.

my personal belief to fix this. Is simply add more terrain to defeat missiles rather than the constant flat maps, remove multipathing as it shouldn’t be a thing in the first place as modern ARH missiles with mono-pulse seekers do not have multipathing issues, hell multipathing was only ever really a problem with older SARH missiles. Make the maps bigger or at least spread spawns out more. better dynamic events that provide advantages to each team I.E “kill the AWACS”, “Destroy enemy surface to air sites”.
and obviously fix the problems with aircraft to bring them up to what is the current “meta” so we stop seeing one nation/aircraft have superiority.

overall i think changes like this would enhance the characteristics of individual aircraft so people would play them to their strengths (like the F-15’s speed, the Euro-canards versatility , etc) rather than the constant braindead jousting and furballing that essentially boils ever aircraft down to “who has more/better missiles and the most chaff/flares”

those are just my ideas…but honestly if things don’t change Air is just going to die. until obviously they release 5th gen jets and everyone comes running back 😂

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War Thunder is best enjoyed at the mid-tiers; dogfighting is actually a thing, positioning matters to a greater extent and the map sizes suit it.

Top Tier has been a crapshoot for the past few years.

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i think his point is why not push for change so all modes and BR’s are fun. i think the problem is that they don’t adapt the game modes for combat suited to modern aircraft, they need to make the fox 3’s more unique like adding differing notch resistance for different missile and making the multipath Hight a missile stat instead of a flat value and for god’s sake half the team size and adjust the SL/RP rewards to compensate with the team size lowering at like 10.0 BR where missiles start to become the primary armament. i wish the community would unite to affect change like we did with the economy in 2023.

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This is needed in order for air RB to become a somewhat decent gamemode. At the moment, every single top tier air battle ends in 8 minutes or less, and any more than that is incredibly long. Part of my wants air to start to die just so Gaijin will be forced to change it, but I doubt that will happen.

Unfortunately I’ve seen many people defend larger team sizes, and advocate for changes that make radar missiles overall worse and less reliable.

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We got bigger maps… We asked and they delivered.
Top rank maps went from 40x40km to 128x128km.

Furballs are a player decision, which is one of survivability.
The team with the better wolf packs wins.
This will go on permanently because players will always choose the best tactics possible.

USA, Germany, Italy, UK, Israel all have meta aircraft at top BR.

I don’t want your arcade team sizes.
I prefer the current realistic team sizes that make the game less pressure on me individually.
If I wanted to play CS2, I’d just play CS2.

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none of those nations you listed have ‘Meta’ aircraft. like sure the EF-2000 is decent but the radars are dogshit and that goes for the other nations you listed. the F-15’s by NO means are a “Meta” aircraft. their whole role of being able to “fly high and really fast” is completely nullified by the fact their radars are ass and BVR is practically non-existent as a result of artificial BS like multipathing and Notching being too easy despite all of these modern missiles having some level of notch resistance.

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yes im sure this will work just fine in the 16v16 chaotic enviroment that is air rb. This totally won’t make it impossible to defend.

Nothing to do with arcade.

Why is this a positive

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@Ruska_o7

Multipathing requires you to do S maneuvers to not be hit by BVR launched missiles.
If you don’t get a frag against a multipathing target while you launched at high altitude, it’s because they had to use skill to not be hit.

You just want Ace Combat.

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3 months ago I would say that the Eurofighter was comparable to the Rafale, nowadays I say no, it is not comparable at all, the Rafale is simply broken, and the Mica is even more broken. It is the only missile that makes you work twice as hard to get rid of, especially below 20km. If you get closer than that it is practically suicide, the Rafale will kill you. The maps, I don’t even mention them, are complete horrors both in realistic aerial battles and are simply disgusting in ground mode. At least in aerial mode they are increasing the maps a little more, but they need to be bigger and more usable. ex:

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This new map based on the Pradesh map is simply beautiful, I really liked it, but do you see those mountainous areas? They should be usable and accessible for us to use to get rid of Fox 3 missiles. I agree that multipath in War Thunder is ridiculous and only newbies who don’t know how to do BVR, since this thing simply destroys the BVR and makes the game boring. Seeing several missiles missing a player just because he is flying 30 centimeters from the ground, something that doesn’t happen with more modern missiles, maybe at the end of this year we will have planes like Su-35, F18 SuperHonet, F15EX, etc., etc., etc., and we will still be stuck in the same style of play with few changes. We will have modern missiles and still maps that no longer have the appropriate size or maps made in appropriate shapes that cover both mountains and plains. I don’t even want to imagine when the 5th generation arrives.

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Alot of players dont really care about how awful high tier jet battles are.

They care about simply having high tier.

If high/top tier is a kind of holding pen for the kind of players I dont want to play with (which it kinda is) then I dont really care, let them play their crappy matches together.
Worthy trade-off for me i guess.

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This doesn’t make much sense, why not just fix it and do things the right way and please everyone at once? Instead of simply leaving one part asking for improvements and another that doesn’t even care, it was exactly by doing these things that World Of Tanks fell into disgrace, Battlefield, Call of Duty, etc.

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Recent datamines show new mission objectives are coming. As for the bigger maps… the game (or rather, the engine the game is developed on) is limited to around ~130 km x 130 km for air maps. The way the game is set up… it’s meant to be able to be played across all platforms… so PC, consoles (new and old-gen) etc. Scaling up the playable area isn’t a bad idea (and one I’m sure Gaijin has thought about) however there are many considerations to make when it comes to doing so.

TL;DR: Gaijin knows, but several constraints/considerations stops them from doing so.

It’s fine to say that the new or current missiles like the AIM-120C-5 and the AAM-4 should have notable improvements over their predecessors (which they do, btw) however the MICA itself isn’t “notch resistant” as claimed. It’s still susceptible to it, the window is just smaller. This was proven due to information about its seeker FoV being publicly available. Do the same/similar for other missiles such as the C5, AAM-4, etc., bug report it and they too shall get the same treatment. They shouldn’t receive ‘blanket buff’ just because, find proof that it actually does have this ‘notch resistance’ and bug report it like it was done for the MICA.

USA: F-15E is basically a do-it-all jet… You can equip 8 AMRAAM, get up to speed just as fast if not faster than Eurofighters and seal club anything from 20 - 30 km away with high success rate, even more so after the slight improvements to its turning capability at high speed. F-16C is still a competent fighter even in the missile bus meta and the F/A-18C Late has both the advantage of being a very good dogfighting plane and a secondary capability of being a missile bus.

Germany/UK/Italy has their Eurofighter. While the radar isn’t the best (pro tip: use the narrow setting), it is still one of the best airframes in war thunder right now and really the only jet that can keep up (or rather, survive longer) against the Rafale. It also has decent CAS ability, with the expectation that it’ll soon be adjusted to realistic levels (ie Brimstone getting mmW guidance, other missing armament added) in the future.

Israel is basically USA lite so the same applies. Sweden isn’t in the worst spot ever, but there is still room for improvement (Gripen NG/E, F-35 later on).

Multipathing isn’t really an issue for modern missiles, however staying low to the ground is still a valid strategy to evade missiles. Unlike IR missiles, radar missiles lead you… simply pointing your nose towards the ground as it gets close to hit will make it eat dirt. You can already do this even now if you don’t want to gamble with the proximity fuse on those missiles.

Just to be clear: I’m not disagreeing with the removal of multipathing entirely, just letting you know there are other ways to avoid missiles in the same sort of situation.

I am however disagreeing that “air is just going to die”. There is no other game offering the playability of modern/historical jets like War Thunder does. DCS exists, sure. But if people don’t even want to or are able to play War Thunder’s air simulator mode (which really, holds your hand most of the time/is very simple to just spawn, turn the engine on and go fly), what makes you think people will install DCS, spend countless hours learning just to turn on the aircraft and probably fry their brain before facing people or scenarios which require much more experience?.

It’s not ideal that Air RB is a TDM match with small side quests that aren’t relevant for one team to win (blame no respawns for that) or that there aren’t more game modes other than Alternative History/Operation (EC maps) for Air RB. I am hopeful for more of them to appear, but this will all take time, on top of everything that must be developed first for the anticipated debut of stealth fighters sometime in late 2026 (at the earliest… delays could still happen and tbh I’d prefer it).

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Halving the team sizes and making the maps better would allow for multipathing to be reduced to fully historical levels. It should be reduced to allow for planes that rely on their radar missiles to be better, as well as make BVR more doable.

It isn’t, it’s a direct negative and the worst thing about air RB.

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If you meant in Air SB I’d believe you but in Air RB? LOL. it’s not the most difficult thing in the world to fly straight pointing your mouse in one direction when 90% of maps are either surrounded by a sizeable body of water or extremely flat terrain.

Also, a multipathing target will not always get hit by a missile coming from above (especially within 10 km or less). It’s more a dice roll for a direct hit if anything and if not, highly favours missiles with a high warhead explosive mass.

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Top tier was a dumpster fire from the very beginning in 2013.

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Flying straight will get your plane destroyed by my and many other players’ missiles that launch from 8000 meters up.
Multipathing cannot save you from high aspect trajectories.

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Correction
It’s THE best airframe in war thunder right now

Besides, the Eurofighter does everything the F15E does but better

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Not all the time. You will get lucky, but it’s not guaranteed

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Terrain is such a game changer. Not just in the sense of using it as cover and to defeat missiles, but it adds a more interesting element that allows for closer engagements, more captivating dog fights and a wider use of tactics. Something like Afghanistan, Pradesh, even Kamchatka and Rocky Pillars if you don’t stick to the middle, are worlds apart from flat maps.

Furthermore, high and top tier ARB needs to only have those “sim” game modes (I can’t remember what they’re called Operation maybe), where the objectives are spread across the entire map width, not just 30km^2 in the middle of the map. It makes so much difference to the game actually being manageable and more thought out rather than a 5-7 minute fly to centre and fur ball