It looks like the starting phase is a hardcoded flight profile (for whatever reason) bringing the missile from vertical to horizontal at a defined height and from there the actual loft phase begins as the missile climbs. Total waste of energy here especially as the following (way too early) dive afterwards bleeds tons of energy being a 10-15g turn for multiple seconds (it only accelerates here as the booster is still burning).
After rewatching now multiple times: The missile doesn’t ever seem to be on an interception course but always on a chase course. No wonder it wasn’t able to intercept that F-15E.
From previous loft testing, the max target omega going up is very good, the loft angle going up and the target angle going down probs not so much. Max target omega was the one factor that always had the most positive impact on long range performance, though it needed to be paired with semi-decent other values (loft/target elevation). (granted my previous experience with loft profiles was all air launched).
The missile pulling a 90 deg to horizontal before it begins lofting is pretty bad, massive waste of energy They likely need to fixing to that “orienteering phase”.
The increase in min range and decrease in wing area multiplier is bad, not sure why they thought that was necessary, pretty sure both are just straight up nerfs.
The missile likely could do with some energy management code like seen on fox 3’s and some fox 2’s, where the control surfaces have reduced max use depending on time to target, which helps smooth out the flight path and mitigate energy loss from minute target flight changes.
Finally, the fact it seems to stick to pure pursuit throughout the flight envelope probs needs to be checked more. That would have a significant negative impact on its ability to hit moving targets, along with its long range energy conservation.
Seeing how some prop planes sometimes reach Mach 10 while spinning out of control, this might be a way to prevent weird desync or glitches to make the missile perform horrible wrong.
Wasn’t it already overperforming the range department? I mean, yes it’s faster and smaller but due to it being light the drag and speed bleed would be much higher. Higher than it currently is, especially at high speeds.
Range is better now but still not correct. Loft Profile and Radar need some work. The Radar hud is nice but cant see whats friendly in the target list. Firing in the Radar hud doesnt seem to work for me.
You can press the place where it shows all the options below the center radar square. So the “fire main caliber weapon” is actually a button and not only a tool tip.
