not really history’s or gaijins fault that basically everyone was on 1980s IR missiles until the turn of the millennia.
the AIM-9M was still the most common missile when the F22 entered service in 2005. 9X had only been in service for two years so its not as absurd as it initially looks.
If they chose to have an entry year to service raptor it would probably be in 9M and AIM-120C5.
not really different to having an early eurofighter with 9M/Li and 120C5 as ASRAAM was only 4 years old and IRIS-T were incredibly new at the time and really uncommon (it still is for the luftwaffe)
its the US trees only option for a newer than 1995 airframe thats going to be exclusive to the tree. I think splitting one to be in the BVR amraam BR and then have one where IIR spam is going to be prevalent (the one with HMD) would give the plane its only chance to not be perpetually hammered to death by the eurocanards.
i dont understand what you think there being 2 versions fixes here it would still have to fight these aircraft regardless because of the BR, and i think the Eurocannard vs f22 matchup is pretty F22 sides in most cases even with the aim120D and 9M, as the devs wont make next gen ir unflareable cause that would break the game and they already said they dont want them to be.
ill say this on the topic, the AESA EFT we have ingame does not even exist operationally yet, and the Rafale C F3R we have is from at least 2019, Scorpion HMD was tested on the F-22 in 2014, and AIM-9X was tested in 2015 and given to operation unit in 2016
Yeah that just means we got a Rafale (late), a Eurofighter (early) and a Eurofighter (late) essentially. Considering that id say its even more likely that Gaijin is gonna add the F22 in multiple versions just to stretch out the tech tree further.
they only added the Euro late because it needed an AESA radar the f22 would just be added with HMD form the start cause there’s no reason for it not to
Considering French rafale got hmd since it was tested with one iirc then F-22 will probably get one too
Not having HMD will also hurt the plane significantly in the current meta so I doubt gajjin would not give it one
By my guess the F-22 will end up being like an F-16 PooBIT but faster, with better flight performance (Eurofighter level flight perf as a rough guess maybe?) and an easier time notching
Do People really think there will NOT be a NUCLEAR Level event if something like the F22 doesn’t ship with the 9X…the F15E Engine change comes to mind!!!
Of there are reasons. One would be balance depending on how strong Gaijin implements the F22 and the second one as i said is plain and simply to add more to grind. Were close to hitting the top end of what could realistically be added to the air trees and im sure Gaijin wants to stretch that out as much as possible.