Honestly the SMT is fine where it is.
I haven’t played it since the Su-30MK got released though, might give it a try tomorrow.
you have 6 ARH with the option to bring IRs if wanted
You have a great radar
you are fast with good acceleration
Your countermeasures are great- no complaints from me with 56 large and 60 standard
the RWR is adequate
Literally the only thing stopping the SMT from being a direct competitor to the F-16C is the flight model, hence 13.3.
(Oh and the fact the Su-27SM would be a pretty much straight upgrade at 13.7 anyway)
The SMT does sit at the same BR as the J-11A and Su-30MK2 however as I’m sure has already been mentioned, those things do not belong at 13.3
Considering it has one the worse mig flight models yes plus it can see aircraft that out perform it in all fields plus we haven’t had anything happen to migs in a long time beside the addition of a Hungarian mig
such is the nature of being a heavier 29. Still hoping that missing STR bugreport actually gets acted upon.
It’s called an uptier…
At 13.3 though, you’d be hard pressed to find an aicraft better in all fields
Sure the F-16D Barak II is an arguement but at least in my experience (you may have different) the SMT was a lot more enjoyable
Having spaded it, the problem with the MiG-29SMT is that it’s a brick.
The base MiG-29 already starts feeling bad when turning, now imagine a heavier version of it but without the more powerful engine variant it should have. That’s the SMT for you.
And let’s be real, the meta loadout for planes that can carry 6 ARH/IR missiles interchangeably would either be 6 ARH or 5 but with one IR (assuming that it’s IRCCM). This means that the lack of IRCCM is only a slight downgrade in a case like this.
As for the Barak (which I’ve also spaded) the Derby missile is roughly on par with the R-77 unless it’s an ultra-high-off-boresight shot. This means that you have to get close to the enemy plane to guarantee a kill. This is something the Barak can do as it’s an F-16 (even though it definitely has the worst FM of any variant) and can notch quickly. The MiG-29SMT is also capable of doing a quick notch but it acts like an airbrake whilst doing any turn (much less a notch) so you won’t have any energy left. This has gotten me killed many times.
The SMT is fast but can’t keep its speed even if its life depended on it.
The Barak also has like 160 flares, which is a very nice upgrade over the other F-16s.
The F-16A ADF has a very good FM for 13.3 and can therefore somewhat counteract the lack of flares. It’s absolutely a weakness but it can play around them unlike the SMT.
And as for the Su-30MK2 I can absolutely agree that it’s very much on the strong end of 13.3. It’s a bit too strong at 13.3 but too weak for 13.7. The Su-27SM (13.7) has the same airframe as the base one (not 1000kg heavier like the Su-30MK2) but with upgraded engines and extra R-77s.
If you think that the Su-30MK2 has the same FM as the Su-30SM you’d also be wrong. The Su-30SM has stronger engines while the -MK2 gets the same ones found on the base Flanker. It could IMO go to either 13.0 or 13.7 if you remove the R-77 and replace it either with the R-27ER or R-77-1.
been while since i played german 29s. how worse were talking?
still a downgrade, combined with lack of HMS and smalle CM count with ADF and JF-17, argument could be made that these two more than enough compensate for bad FM. tradeoffs and what not.
Im aware that it has weaker engines when compared to TT Su-30. My main issue with Su-30MK2 is the missile count, which is simply unheard of for 13.3.
Normally, high missile count is there to compensate for either weaker FM, smaller CM amount, or lack of HMS or some combination of them. Say, KWS and other 13.0 ARH slingers.
But Su-30MK2 does have HMS, same amount of CMs as Su-27SM, IIRC same RWR, IIRC same radar, and similiar FM to Su-27SM bar being 1000kg heavier. Its closer in performance to Su-27SM than it is to MiG-29SMT and other 13.3 planes. So id rather see it move to 13.7. Argument that it would be worse to Su-27SM and thus they cant share BR cannot stand - the differences arent big enough to warrant a different BR, and its perfectly reasonable for premium to be slightly worse than TT variant.
but I digress from my initial comment which was dealing with question of 29SMT recieving R-77-1s, to which I think the answer is no with slight leaning to “maybe, if the statistics show it performs significantly worse than its contemporaries”.
It’s ingame counter part upgraded like it’s a su27sm3 though in terms of radar. It gets 2 dl channel from the radar upgrade, when irl it had only one. So based on that imo it can get r771, its already modeled so that it can have it (even though its wrong)
I kind of doubt they’d give it 77-1s without updating the model to a SM3’s but since Su-27/30s can get twin racks that only Su-35s have used before, who knows at this point…
nope, depend on your speed, when you go more than 700, yeah its a brick, but in slow speed you still can pull up some tactics. that said, it all depend on how you play it