Yup, they cut IR seeker activation distance by 6km and missile’s IQ by 100
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Never was using it but for a different purpose. This way it’s just harder to find you with a scope and thermals. If I see an IR missile coming towards me - I use PARS as a flare, usually it works. But anyway you always have been like a deadly ill toddler when it comes to CC, so maybe dying to a missile isn’t even that bad. This tactic tanked a lot when they added pantsir though, because of 3rd person TWS)))
4km from the target, IR didn’t lock on, and magically the missile spam that guy did deflected my missile ???
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Yeah did some testing with a friend, i just carried some rocket pods and his SLM was useless lol
It’s funny that the Gaijin is literally asking for secret documents to be leaked so they can fix something that’s unplayable. Lmao
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This is by far the biggest reason in the last two years that’s pushing me to take a break from the game. I really enjoy it and I’ve put a lot of hours into it, but this was the last thing Germany had that was actually fun in top tier.
CAS is trash, we have one mid top-tier tank while two other nations already got upgraded versions of said tank, and our top-tier heli is a joke. The SLM was my last reason to log in and play a few rounds… but now?
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Radars in general go stupid when they catch target during missile launch, aviation radars in TWS notoriously lose track due to that. With manual target selection you can mostly counteract that by selecting still remaining “shadow contact” of the aircraft with good odds of radar updating aircraft position and considering missile contact as separate.
In War Thunder, inertial guidance, with or without datalink updates is ignored the moment seeker, be it IR or radar flavored detects anything. Hence SLM could be surprisingly easily preflared at range where its “0.25 degree FoV” is still pretty big area, while ARH missiles bite into chaff.
No FnF capable missile with datalink functionality does reconnect said datalink in case of brief radar interruption in game. Even if you were to provide all the sekrit documents, it likely would be shot down on “technical limitations” grounds.
Only missiles capable of datalink reconnection are aviation SARH missiles - R27R family and AIM-7P - which also results in missile switching targets mid flight, which is equally useful and frustrating.
This change has somehow managed to exacerbate the Datalink issues. The missiles won’t change course no matter what, the reduced lock range just means the missile has more chances to outright just fail, I can see the missiles fly past and just ignore the aircraft it was previously targeting. Kh-38 spam is back strong once again, now that they can just spam them from the airfield without ever being locked. This just depresses me man.
Not only is the datalink issue finally being highlighted, but the radar update is a problem too. What we have now is at least double the update time of what we should be getting. It’s doing a sweep every two seconds, but there are already open reports with primary sources showing it should have look-back functionality and update in under 1 second.
It definitely highlighted how bad the radar actually is, but I’m incredibly pissed at the fact that you have to guide the missile right up to their face, it won’t matter if the radar refreshes faster, the reduced lock range will remain an issue.
Can you update this? XD
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Well, that aged poorly lol
This game too
Done ))
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Okay let’s do a quick review of what happened in the passed 6 months regarding the SLM.
- Maximum speed and range: We went from top speed of 700 m/s to 975 m/s, most sources suggest the speed is relative to M3 which should be 1030 m/s but ofc due to lack of a specific numbers and Diehl unability to provide info due to secrecy we can’t make further bug reports about this matter.
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- Speculations about missile dimensions and weight: proven to be some what accurate to what it is in real life, ppl in here did some pixel measurement, and it was enough to conclude that the in game version dimensions is some what near the real life version of the missile which is a Caliber (from the base) of 180mm and a length of 3.4m, weight wise the missile have a weight of 155kg and after booster burn it have a weight of 92kg which is in a very reasonable limits.
Note: that before this the missile use to have a sustainer but that was removed and now it have a booster that burns for 12 seconds with thrust of 12600N again there is nor sources about these numbers these are all guess from the devs to try and make the ingame version match the real life missile performance.
- Lofting and pathing: lofting of the missile is still to this day incorrectly implemented, the missile do always a turn after the lunch then it start ascending again and start lofting normally, which compared to irl behaviour make no sense since in lot of videos and demonstrations the missile always fly vertically up to gain some altitude then it start turning towards the target, this in game translates to that the missile should start lofting immediately from the start by doing a 90° vertical ascending then turn to the target when it reach the optimal altitude.
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- Data link: some where actually fixed, and some bug report about data link behaviour and missile tracking other missiles or switching targets mid flight where mostly labelled recently as fixed or labelled not a bug when they first submitted, but i can assure you the the seeker activation range change from 10km to 4km fixed non of these problem, and the data link still not working properly to this day and have lots of problems related to it.
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Note: pathing and DL both heavily effected the missile ammo interception further info about this isn’t really clear but for a missile that have almost a 100% interception rate irl, it fall short in game from what it should be.
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Warhead, engine smoke, AOA and overload: same as before due to lack of specific numbers most warhead bug reports were labelled as not a bug in game the warhead is a SAPHE with a TNT equivalent of 5.76kg and a proxy of 6m, data from irl say that the war head weight is 11kg to 12kg but nothing is specific about the explosive mass.
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engine use to have heavy smoke but now with the new implantation of smoke trail the engine is noticeably less smokey.
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AOA is game is at 27° but irl is should be up to 38° and same thing for the overload it’s now at 40G when it should be up to 50G.
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TRML-4D radar: there is lots of problems related to ingame SLM radar but the most important ones is the slow update rate and scan missing features like back scanning, ofc there is some bug reports that where fixed but the radar is still far from being optimal.
- And lastly and arguably the most important one of all the IIR seeker detection range and DLIRCM resistance: here is where the disaster struck, the missile IRCCM use to work perfectly and thanks to its old seeker activation range of 10km the missile performance was great and put it on par with systems like BUK and ASTER even though they are better in terms of range and speed but the SLM IIR seeker was the strongest feature of it that made it arguably the best SPAA at toptier in both ranges that surpassed 20km and less than 2km, ofc compared ot irl the seeker should have lock range of 25km according to SAAB and other primary sources that say that the missile seeker lock range matches the kinetic range of the missile, ofc this was related to the A2A version of the missile, but as stated in a lots of time before the SLM use the same seeker only difference that is the seeker is updated and improved on the SLM and have DL, ofc the seeker should possess high resistance to DLIRCM which in game is absent now.
Now the IIR seeker ingame is just an IR seeker that have 9km lock range in all aspects and 12km lock range in rear aspects, and IRCCM type of FOV + Seeker shut off so we don’t have a truly modeled IIR seeker in game, ofc on the SLM version there is a seeker activation range it use to be 10km and in the last update it was heavily nerfed to 4km allegedly to increase IRCM resistance, it did do that but now the seeker won’t work until the missile is 4km away from the target now, and bc if this once radar lock or ping is lost the missile will just switch to IOG and lose the target completely, this change ofc didn’t effect the LDIRCM resistance the missile is still effected by this.
This nerf rendered the system unusable and reduced the effective range from beyond 20km to barely 6km and make it miss most of the time ofc this is do to the radar not working properly too.
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- Ofc there is other problems some got fixed other got adjusted, and most can be seen up there in the original post in here i wanted to highlight the most important problems that directly infected the missile performance.
Thanks for reading.
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The lock of 4km btw is pretty much bullshit. Just like when it was 9km before, now with 4km its under the “best possible case” where itll give you an IR lock at 4km when the weather isnt bad, the afterburner is well visible and in the rear.
In most cases from frontal or side aspect the IR signature range will be decreased.
On a recent Fulda match while playing the SLM, i fired upon a norwegian F16AM and the missile has gone into IR phase less than a kilometer away from the plane.
The IR nerf was just that, a nerf. The switching of targets occured during DL phase, not IR phase so it makes less of a sense to lower the IR phase activation range.
When asked about it, Smin has said that it was a report result and not a balancing decision but that feels extremely doubtful. As a result altho the missile might be slightly more resistant to switching targets (ive still had it happen to me in regular games after this change went live) the performance decrease from having its IR phase range decreased by over a half is absolutely massive.
Previously a smart CAS player was more than capable of just abusing SLM without much of an issue. This has been exacerbated even more now with the IR reduction, because remember, its not 4km unless the perfect conditions apply.
Does anyone know which report hes talking about? That just sounds like a fat lie tbh
he said series of reports but not specified which ones, Its generally assumed that it was @DevilO6 bugreport about the DL that was a part of it.
Its a really backwater way of fixing the issue given that the IR activation range should have been left unchanged and instead the DL phase should have been strengthened. A plane thats flying in an unchanging straight line firing a missile breaking the DL guidance somehow shouldnt lead to the IR phase that was the one redeemable part of the missile to be reduced.
Additionally;
this matters little in the context of both the game and also the bug that has been plaguing this vehicle since release. The plane thats completely visible, flying in a straight line is not going to disappear from the radar when it fires a missile. Neither will the datalink between the guidance vehicle and the missile get spoofed. The guidance vehicle is actively telling the missile which target its going for, that is the point of the datalink. This is just a mistake in the game that needed to be fixed, and while currently slightly “more resistant” against planes flying in straight line, it is not protected against firing off ordinance at an angle (not even in a notch or anything, just in an angle). Plus as a cherry on top locking targets in IOG is essentially neutered to nothingness.
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Ah so Smin is not talking about an actual real life data report about vehicle capabilities and its rather a bandaid fix for sloppy work?
And what about the dircm issue? Just had another match where a single Z10 dismantled most of the team. Iris missiles still getting spoofed, even if you spam them.
Any change planned? Cause its currently abused. Dircm helis everywhere, untouchable.