F-104 isn’t a fighter. F-104S a bomber-interceptor if you want to get specific.
And if you want to try using it outside its role, you’re more than welcome to.
Cause otherwise you can argue B-29 should be BR 2.0 because it doesn’t do fighting other planes well…
Literally every jet is balanced on its air to air capabilities, using a ww2 bomber as an example to disprove that is dumb. You are literally one step away from wanting historical br’s. The f-104s in their current state are just not fun to play, so they need changes.
It’s fighter-bomber or fighter-interceptor depending on configuration (Cacciabombardiere Ognitempo CBO or Cacciaintercettore Ognitempo CIO), in WT they are merged in one.
Kfir, F-104S, Mirage 5, etc aren’t balanced on their anti-air capabilities.
4 all aspect 40g missiles at 11.3 lol, and the mirage gets amraams on a decent airframe, the F-104 is the only plane balanced like that what are you talking about?
The Kfir has 2 missiles at 11.0, and 2 missiles on the C2 which is 11.7.
The Mirage has 2 missiles at 10.0/10.3. Magic 1s and AIM-9Js.
F-104S is also balanced on its fighter bomber performance.
Magic 1s at 10.0 are busted 35g against mostly flareless jets, the kfir is actually a good airframe for dogfighting so its missiles being lacking is a complete non issue, also the 11.7 has python 3s what are you talking about, the f-104 has bad missiles and a bad airframe if you want radar missiles you cant take a gun, on all the variants that have them, the radar on the F-104S is also borderline useless, good luck locking on to anything further than 4 kilometres below 2000m, you are actually coping if you think the kfir’s are overbr’d also also neither of those are tech tree vehicles so you don’t have to grind through them even if they were bad.
Magic 1s on Saggitario 2 would be busted.
Magic 1s on a strike aircraft that barely beats F-104s in a dogfight is not busted.
F-100D easily beats Mirage 5s.
ok?
It is because it is at 10.0? Which is a whole br below the 11.0 F104 with the same number of worse missiles.
Sorry but that’s a skill issue, mirage has better instantaneous with 35g missiles and the f100d has no flares.
Literally any supersonic airframe beats the f104 in a 1v1 by miles.
A year has passed since this post and the problem persists. The Italian F-104 has an excessive BR and needs to be lowered. If they don’t want to lower it, then the American one needs to be increased to at least 10.3 to create some kind of balance in the game… But as always, this forum is useless and serves no purpose since the developers don’t listen…
It’s like going back a couple of years when Italy had the same American and German vehicles in its tech tree, but just because they were Italian, they had a higher BR than the American and German ones… For example, like the Italian Pz.IV G had a BR of 4.0 while the German Pz.IV G had a BR of 3.3… Or the M18 76/52, which for some reason the Italian one had a higher BR than the American M18.
but this is not going to be balanced
America doesn’t have an F-104S to begin with.
The Italian and American M18s were both 5.7 in 2020.
13.0 needs to be decompressed then all 11.3s get a breather.
Can’t you get that metaphor, or are you acting like you can’t get it by purpose?
What he means by that is probably
‘If Gaijin is planning to keep F-104S as overrated as heck, then Americans need to get their F-104A/C overrated as hell.’
The decompressed airframe certainly helps, but for an American F-108C with 4 missiles you have to admit that it must not have BR of 9.3 but it has to reach at least 10.3 BR…Furthermore, it would be advisable to set F104 A to at least BR 9.7. Given its current BR, practically no aircraft can take it on, as its speed allows it to escape unchallenged.
This is definitely balanced.
Yes, when they came out, but then seeing that Italian players were better at playing than the American ones and they had a period in which they had 2 different BRs, where the Italian one was +0.3 higher than the American one, then Gaijin noticed the error and finally decided to set the BR the same for the same vehicles even if they were part of 2 different nations… Furthermore, the Italian version still has the same BR as the American one, even though it lacks the M93 round
EDIT: corrected typo
Right now Mig-19S is 3 BRs below the under-BR’d F-16s caused by 13.0’s compression.
F-104A is 2.3 BRs below F-104S ASA.
No, that is not a defense of anything, just pointing out how bad the argument is.
Bringing up F-104A/C doesn’t mean anything because they don’t have countermeasures, they don’t have AIM-9J/Ls, and they don’t have the engine from F-104S.
F-104A at 9.3 is food for Ayit, F-100, any Harrier, F-106, Hunter F58A, Lightning F6, Mig-21 SPS-K, Mig-21S, T-2… And that’s not even counting the even more superior 10.0s.
That’s the thing, F-104S doesn’t have notably superior aircraft to it at 11.3. It has a sidegrade: F-4E.
It has F-5Es that it’s at a stalemate against.
And in the bomber role, F-104S is top of the class.
The primary issue with F-104S’s are 13.0’s compression causing a number of 12.3s to be under-BR’d.
the phantom will win every time
The F-4EJ is 0.3 lower with twice as many Fox-1s and more maneuverable.
F-104S should be 11.0.
F-104S TAF - Is anyone currently playing with this plane? I don’t see it very often in matches, and I’m tempted to grab it in the May sale for half price—if only it had AIM-7E-2 DFs instead of the standard AIM-7Es. the standard “E” doesn’t start tracking the target until 1.8 seconds after launch, which, combined with an ACM with a range of only 4 km, is a bad combination; the E-2 version, “dogfight sparrow” starts tracking just 0.7 seconds after launch. An ACM with a short range of 4 km would make more sense when flying head-on against an opponent.
In general, looking at this aircraft’s specs, I see it as more of a BR 10.7 than a 11.3, ok, maybe 11.0 if it had the AIM-7E-2.
F-4E Phantom II is at BR 11.3 and seems superior in almost every aspect (it only has weaker engines).
AJS37 at 11.0 too.
Is there anywhere we, as players, can suggest to Gaijin that they reconsider the battle ranking for the F-104S? This aircraft is really struggling at BR 11.3; even at BR 11.0, it won’t be anything special, but at least it’ll have a better chance in ARB battles.