I recently started playing top tier, when F15I was added. and I started facing the wierd missile behavior. Devs said , that below 60m missile have issues\cant track targets. And as i understood they added “safe” switch for them. So they blew up. Saw missiles flying towards me getting selfdestruck million times. But also i saw them hitting me. At super low alt like 4, 5 m. I need someone to explain me. is it just buggy gaijin code.
The 60m “Multipathing” height is not a hard barrier that missiles cannot enter but rather an altitude in which missiles get confused by a target flying at low alt.
Think of the ground like a giant mirror. When an aircraft is below 60 metres, the missile confuses the reflection in the mirror (ground) with the actual target and goes for that target instead.
If you are flying very very low. Then you and the “reflection” are in basically the same place and the missile will hit you.
If the missile is fired down from a higher altitude. The missile will approach down from a high angle and will hit you enroute to the multipathing “reflection”
The time in which multipathing provides the most protection is a missile fired from a similar altitude and is flying mostly straight towards the target. This is where multipathing will have a good chance at dilefeating the missile causing it to hit the ground at the last minute.
For most effective method of defeating SARH and ARH missiles. You need to learn to notch and chaff the incoming missile
Then another question, why some of them selfdestruct. and some ingnore ?
Only at top tier or more generally?
yes, 13.0+ i saw them pop infront of me. So fox 3 flys towards me and pop , when i fly low , but some directly hit me
Hmm… Ideally, would need to see a replay to confirm.
But usually a missile only self-destructs when it has completely lost track of the target. Most (if not all) ARH missiles have a range of guidance modes and generally will keep going until they physically hit something (even if that is the ground) or have simply run out of time (this is the guidance time on the stat card)
So best guess either:
A) The missile was fired from pretty much maximum range and simply timed out
B) The missile expended all of its energy, had 0 chance of ever hitting and gave up (I think they do this, but dont quote me on that)
C) the missile completely lost track of the target (maybe due to lag/desync issue, but probably just the missile being defeated in someway) and self destructed.
My money would be on “A” without seeing a server replay.
You can go to:
https://warthunder.com/en/tournament/replay
find the match where you saw a missile exploded without reason and select “copy the replay link” in the bottom right of the match window.
So , map kamchtka , F15 is apx 30 km away from me, (i had lock on him, so i knew how far he was) he laucnhed 3 aim120bs at me, all pop’d infront of me. I was bombing bases, so i was very low, 10m max. Another case. Mountain map with air spawn, i was following the river at 5-8m and R77-1 hit me. In both cases the angle of missile was 50-60 apx
Sadly all this matches were done weeks ago , i dropped the air battle when naval marathon began
There are so many variables that can affect missiles that it is extremely difficult to say for certain what has happened or why.
So next time you see it happen again, find the replay link and share it and either me or someone else can probably give you are more concrete answer.
But to summarise.
Multipathing (flying below 60m) provides a layer of protection that might protect you, but I would advice against relying upon it for any meaningful defence. It provide next to no protection against something shooting down at you.
The most effective way to defeat these missiles is to notch (turn 90° to the incoming missile) and deploy chaff. Additionally, this forces the missile to also turn and expend energy to do so which is extremely finite. Which can result in the missile simply falling out the sky. But this only really works against missile fired from further away
This is a basic video explanation, but there are better and more detailed guides available on places like YouTube
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multipath is not 100% reliable, considering that missiles coming from high angles will still often hit you
