I promise you that your PD missiles are more than effective even in their current state, and that you probably have around a 2 K/D in all of your PD capable planes. Complaining that
as if it’s a valid problem is comical. What’s the next complaint? Players that angle their tanks are abusing angling? Are people just not supposed to notch and die for free? Fly at high altitude to be an easy kill? Hugging the ground to trash missiles and reduce radar detection is a method used in real life.
The fact that PD missiles are so effective causing players to have to hug the ground proves the exact point that radar missiles are currently massively oppressive. You don’t even have to fire the missile to influence the opposing player, they are already forced out of medium and higher altitudes.
This I agree with 100%, the player density and missile density is absolutely insane at the moment. There needs to be a way to guide players out of congregating at the exact midway point between the two airfields, because the only difference larger maps make right now, is how long it takes for players to crash into a furball in the center.
Doesn’t even need to be an IR missile. The average player dumpsters their munitions regardless of type, as seen by F-14 players who carry and launch 6 AIM-54s, or MiG-23 pilots who spam R-60s at you from the rear despite your obvious awareness of their presence, or F-4J/S pilots who fire rear-aspect AIM-7s at you despite low altitude.
That’s exactly how that works in real-life. You described what a pilot should do in real life if they were at altitude and received a missile launch warning. What’s the problem with that? It’s under-powered if you launch a missile and force someone to take evasive action?
Nah, I highly doubt that will stop people flying on the deck. If you really want to make radar missiles as realistic as possible, then the red diamond needs to be removed from missiles, random engine failures need to be added to all planes, guns should jam for no reason at all and so on. But this game isnt realistic, its supposed to be a balance, and making radar missiles even worse than they already are is a terrible idea balance wise. Look at the planes that rely on missiles like the Tornado, that plane is already pain to fly, if the radar missiles were useless like you are suggesting they should be, that plane flat out just wouldnt get any kills, unless you expect everyone to get kills with the single 27mm mauser mounted on a plane that handles like an airbus?
" You described what a pilot should do in real life if they were at altitude and received a missile launch warning. What’s the problem with that?"
I never said that was a problem, I used it as an example of how radar missiles are already easy to avoid without nerfing them, you are the one who claims there is a problem…
“as if it’s a valid problem is comical”
Not saying this is a problem, you are the one claiming the easy to avoid missiles are overperforming, quite how you keep dying to these is beyond me. and Phoenixes? I dont think I’ve ever even been killed by a phoenix.
“you probably have around a 2 K/D in all of your PD capable planes”
3.5 in most 10.0+ planes regardless of pd, strangely 4.0 in my F5 variants. Most of my radar missile kills come from people who are AFK or visibly stupid and bad at the game. R27ER’s are better though, still easy to avoid if you arent braindead, so im not sure why you are complaining about them.
I’ve managed to find a paper from the DoD’s Defence Science and technology Organisation about the effect of multipath propagation on SARH missiles, and they certainly do not draw the same conclusions as you:
The paper was specifically looking at targets flying at Altitudes of 5 m, 15 m, and 30 m. So you cannot get much lower than that.
I like that you can’t even address anything discussed other than attempting to insinuate that I “keep dying” to SARH missiles. I’m not one of those “genius” F-4S pilots that have a 0.5 K/D. Maybe try to form a productive discussion rather than attempt to take a slight at me.
The issue with SARH at the moment stems from the fact that it’s easy to dodge one or even two SARH, but you get completely rippled fired from multiple angles due to the 16v16 change.
You manage to maintain over a 3.5 K/D which is very good. However, it used to be 30% of the enemy team a game, but now is only about 22%, due to the stupid change to 16v16. Meanwhile the average player has a K/D below one. This means you’re subject to about a dozen players that your very average teammates are supposed to deal with. If you keep in mind the fact that the average player is infact
which, as a long term player, I’m sure you would agree (2-3 people dying to a Phoenix somehow in the first 2-3 minutes of the game, someone crashing on take off, someone trying to chaff a PD locking in a straight line, people who don’t cut burners and flare in a straight line, etc).
This effectively means that even good players like you are arbitrarily vulnerable to SARH spam. Combined with the fact that the notch angle on the radars of 12.0/12.3 jets is significantly less than those below it, getting locked up from multiple angles is super common since even the “braindead” players you talk about can figure out how to launch a sparrow. You talk about how
but it’s hard to be balanced and fun when even terrible players can get rewarded for mindlessly holding a lock on you. This isn’t even adding in the additional spam of missiles you’re likely to take from IRCCM missiles at top tier. And keep in mind, most good players know you can mitigate the existing multipath implementation by forcing a more top down approach rather than an altitude equal shot anyways. If they reduce the player count (which they won’t due to “queue times”), then it would be balanced to have such low altitude SARH missiles since you could actively work to defend against that rather than getting shot at by some third party.
Would you happen to have one for a test performed over land? The smooth sea calculation they have uses the sea dielectric constant. I would imagine the values would be different over land. I’m curious how large of a difference there would be since they found that difference in target height and apparent height could deviate up to 30% right before impact.
I imagine the values over land would be different in some way.
An interesting to note is that according to their modelling when the sea state increased from sea state 0 (calm glassy water with no waves) to sea state 3 (0.5 to 1.25 m waves) the effects of specular multipath propagation seem to almost completely disappear:
The paper mentions that having a non-smooth surface results in both specular and diffuse multipath, and that the paper evaluates the specular only. It says specifically that "A higher sea state reduces the coherent (specular) multipath returns and this is reflected in Figures 11 and 12. " This graph seems exclusive to specular, which is why it might be reduced. I would imagine if they added the diffuse return, then it would be greater than that of Sea State 0.
Reference 3 and 8 are supposed to cover diffuse, but unfortunately they’re marked as Restricted / Confidential.
modern missiles can intercept low flying antiship missiles, an aster 30 can take down a coyote target practice flying as low as 5 meter (over sea clutter, to make it worse)
the sensor in this missile is derived from the mica em, so 1990’s tech
It is not 3000m for all missiles, just an average. The actual ‘optimal tracking above this height’ is missile-specific. Older SAHRs like the AIM-7E will probably not work well below 4000m, early-ish SAHRs that are a bit more advanced like the AIM-7E-2 will work well above 3000m while struggling a bit around 2000m and barely functioning below 1000m, and later SAHRs like the AIM-7F will work well above 2500m and struggle above 1500m, and the AIM-7M will only struggle below 500m because of its inverse monopulse seeker.
Itd be a pretty bad self defense missile for it to still be widely in use to this day on NATO ships if it could only intercept targets above 500m lmao
Skyflash has also been quoted multiple times as having a min alt of like 35m(?) as well, and has been shown to be unable to hit targets in-game that it could hit irl: Community Bug Reporting System
Here’s another acknowledged bug report regarding excessive multipath, this time for the 7M and AIM-54: Community Bug Reporting System
Multipath is drastically overperforming against at the very least western missiles, as proven by multiple acknowledged bug reports. There’s no reason for it to be as excessive as it is in-game besides the fact its a crutch for bad players, which have flooded top tier because of gaijins addition of top tier premiums.
Older SAHRs like the AIM-7E will probably not work well below 4000m, early-ish SAHRs that are a bit more advanced like the AIM-7E-2 will work well above 3000m while struggling a bit around 2000m and barely functioning below 1000m
The AIM-7E-2 is stated to be “fully effective” so long as the target is above 1,500 m ( 5,000 ft). As the AIM-7E-2 is just an AIM-7E with optional dogfight mode I would expect AIM-7E seeker performance to be pretty much the same.
It should however be noted that AIM-7E performance only “begins to be affected” below that altitude. In real world British testing the AIM-7E-2 still had a 53% (9/17) success rate when fired below the recommended 5,000 ft, with successful hits being achieved as low as 100 ft.
In addition not all of those failures were due to ground clutter:
One missile had a faulty fuse
One failed due to “reasons unknown”
One failed due to “power supply failure”
Telemetry from one missile did not show any radar return from the target or main beam clutter
If you exclude those four missiles the success rate below 5,000 ft becomes 69% (9/13).
Spoiler
So at the moment the altitudes you’re giving seem unrealistically pessimistic. Do you have a reliable source to back them up?
Interesting your source actually even states the 100ft hit is against a stern target, which isnt even optimal firing conditions, and theres no way any of the AIM-7’s ingame could hit that. I dont think any SARH could ingame actually. Maybe the R-27ER since it seems to have the least issues with low alt.
Again, I was giving examples to simulate the idea. I don’t know the actual altitude where those missiles would begin to be affected by ground clutter and ground noise. I just want radar missiles on all ends nerfed.
If missiles like the AIM-7F and AIM-7M were significantly weaker than they are now, Gaijin would need to pull out the unreasonably overpowered R-27ER. I hate it when Gaijin models stuff half-baked, and instead of fully modeling this stuff for the sake of balance, they bring in even more modern half-baked stuff and we are stuck in a situation where we have F-16C-50s fighting the F-104S.ASA and Phantom FGR.2, aircraft a whole generation behind.
