It's time for Gaijin to finally reverse the ahistorical nerf to BOL countermeasures [Poll]

Dev Server "Leviathans" General Discussion - Dev Server
175

This is silly. With the way the harriers are unable to dictate any matchup, having the CM count just means you are delaying the inevitable of being caught. Ofc it can dogfight well but if youre energy trapped then you are a sitting duck for a third party or missile already even with extra countermeasures. Same deal with the tornados. you are not fast enough to be a threat for any competent player with a gun, and with how fast they loose energy when turning.

IMO, the British BOL attackers dont need to move. GR.7, T.10, GR.4. The F.3 Late needs them because its already a top tier ““fighter”” and the JAS39A also sits at 13.0. FA.2 for obvious reasons wont need to move (and until the GEN1 harriers FM is fixed, i could still see it dropping to 12.7 due to having to sacrifice everything to take 4 aim120, where as the AV8B+ can still have gau12 and 2 aim9M)

British stuff is always over tiered, broken or just outright wrong.

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176

You allowed yourself to be bogged down in a dogfight.

I say again: the Harrier as a fighter platform was a concept in 60s - where things were still relatively slow enough for a subsonic, but that was soon about to change.

Thats why I would never bring them into ARB - but they have a perfectly tailor made niche role in GRB, that is actually historical… deployments from a forward base with less developed infrastructure.

But lets say you bring a harrier into ARB - you are using a subsonic jet in BVR - bad idea cause your missiles wont have the kinematic performance due to your lower speed - so you are left to fend for yourself in a dogfight or in a engagement zone that is outranged by an opposing supersonic jet.

Now the only thing your opponent has in his sleeve is “carefully choosing the engagement”, which could entire be negated by BOL.

And this problem, khm, would be made worse by a stronger BOL, as it would be pushed higher and higher in the BR because of BOL performance.

Similar logic applies to the F3 at 12.0. You dont want to be pushed to higher BRs.

And as I said, you do NOT want to dogfight with a Nado, as it loses its energy quite quick. Mind you so does the Mig-29 or the Mig-21, not sure about the Mig-23 at the moment of speaking.

Do you know how I fight in a BVR? I fly sideways, and the Tornado can do that - not a hard notch, but lets say a 45-60 degree off set angle. Losing speed after launch by the way is advantageous in a BVR engagement as it also reduces closure speed, hence you have more time. Employ chaff while turning. Once I see the missile, very easy in this situation, I will then still have time to decide whether I want to fully notch, or continue.

Also: dragging the missile down into thicker air, to slow it down more.

There are tactics involved, both in how to defend against IR or Radar-guided missiles - and I can assuredly tell you, that the fact that on lower BRs the IR missiles are so easily fooled by flares, make those lower BRs ridiculously frustrating at times. It doesnt need to get worse because of a select few aircraft, lucky enough to carry BOL pods.
J-35XS for example has historically had very low amounts of flares - they would have the reason to complain, yet do you know what they do?

They use every possible piece of knowledge they have to wipe the floor with others.

So choose wisely:
Get a BOL pod buff, and see struggling aircraft pushed into BRs their flight model or avionics might not be able to handle, or stay where it is.

177

Ignoring the sea harrier FRS and later upgraded FA.2, both designed as fighter aircraft with the first having a 26/0 air to air victory. Their subsonic flight performance was unmatched, nothing could win in a close range engagement against a harrier, especially using VIFF. Its held back alot ingame due to the VIFF just not working. but thats for another topic.

Again, im not using any harrier with BOL in BVR combat as its a subsonic, the FA.2 can only do suprise attacks and force dogfights at 13.0… its borderline useless.

This doesnt even make sense. even with BOL and a 1 v 1 engagement the enemy isnt going to get a missile off on me. It isnt happening. BOL or not. its just that the game has got BOL underperforming due to the JAS39A initial release, before AHR and when ir spam was at its greatest. In the multi enemy defensive posture of playing (T.10) for example, its countermeasures require me to essentially keep pressing the flare button until im absolutely certain even an R60 has been decoyed, wasting potentially 50/60 BOL. super inaccurate, super annoying and its not even guarantied. its almost impossible to get an R73 off your tail once its launched (unspotted su39 will be the bane of my existence in a harrier).

I dont even know what your issue is with these aircraft. MiG23 at 11.7 is way more problematic against the 11.0 roster then the ability of the harrier and tornadoes to defend themselves (which 90% of the people playing in airRB wont even use anyway because they have the IQ of a sticky note)

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178

The Harrier is good at subsonic speeds, yes. However even in real life, its design was outdated at the date of introduction, as things could outrun it. I.e. not be engaged in a dogfight with the Harrier.

Which, surprisingly I do as well: just run through them. If I kill it in the 1st pass, good, if no, I can have a 2nd turn as long as I extend and preflare / flare the Harrier wont technically be able to respond to me, especially if caught off guard, or off-angle. Do you understand? The Harrier is an aircraft like the A-10 and the Su-25 - a one trick pony, and its easy to deny the ideal conditions of a Harrier. Arguably less so for the lowest BR harriers.

As for the Flare: you dont need 50-60 flares. You have to flare at the right time, at the right angle. Also avoid leaving a trail of flares back to you. As for the Harrier - I have been told about the horrendous implementation of the Harrier heat signature - and Im certain that it should be fixed, but it should be fixed before a BOL pod nerf reverse.

I dont have a problem with these aircraft, you misunderstand me. But I do have a problem with a broken state of balance in which certain aircraft are basically immune, because they have access to something many other planes dont, in this case BOL pods. Anything above 150 / 150 CM I see is fucking excessive.

Coupled with the fact that at those lower BRs the “ever so deadly” missiles are not reallt reliable in tje face of CMs.

Arguably, I could see it being made stronger for the F3 late, considering its BR. But that might come at the cost of a BR increase, and the FM of the F3 at 13.0 is already bad enough. In my opinion its not the BOL pods lack of effectiveness, rather the FM of the F3 that lets it down at that BR.

179

You make two mistakes:

Yes, before, the F3 was at a better BR placement at 11.3 - iirc the highest it could go against were ADF and Yak-141 (both were 12.3 iirc, not sure though)

At 12.0 the F3 is at a bad position - but as stated before: its too good to be put at a lower BR. The supertemps are alright missile at 12.0, perhaps even at 11.7.
300 something countermeasures that act like large CMs however, in the current state of things not really. The aircraft at 11.7-12.0 arent even the problem in this regard - the aircraft that are below you are, as those would face problems.

Uptiers its bad - mind you I consider almost anything that is at 12.0 to be in a horrible spot right now.

Those few 13.0 BR aircraft are also in a horrible spot (too good to be put at lower BR, but too bad for a higher BR).

It doesnt render the F3 bad outright. Sideclimbing, then running through the furball with an amazing missile set and sufficient amount of missiles, its quite capable as a flanker. Thats what I do in the Mig-21, and I am, relatively speaking, succesful with it. Things get worse when Im chasing someone, as a it takes is already just one flare, at shorter ranges. The IRCCM missiles are not that widely available for the opponents of the F3, except for a select few aircraft, but you can definetly dictate the engagement against those that do have it for tje most part.

The large majority of the aircraft would struggle against the tons of CMs those BOL pods provide.

If you dogfight only to end up losing a tornado thats on you. It also doesnt face the fancy new SAMs AFAIK unless you bring them into an uptier.

180

MiG-23M has six countermeasures, a way worse radar, significantly worse missiles and lower numbers of missiles. At worst without BOL the plane would be one step lower, not three. Even then that is a stretch, the Tornado is still better than the UK F-4 despite having a terrible FM.

Shouldn’t forget that the MiG-23M also has an even worse FM.

181

This is the only part here I disagree with, I can’t name a flight model worse than the tornados at 12.0/13.0

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182

Flare laddering is a myth. I should really report that.
image-14

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183

You could only out run it if you hit and run and supersonic speeds. The Raw power of the Pegasus allowed it to easily out accelerate much faster planes up until 400-500 knots.

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184

What missile will go farther…
A .9 Mach launch from 30,000 feet plus.

Or a Mach 1.2 launch from below 5,000 feet.

To add to that what missile will get to the target first one accelerated by gravity or one fighting against gravity.

Don’t forget that the Harrier 11-61 still holds the time to climb record up to 9,000 meters and even beat the Streak Eagle to 12,000 meters or 40,000 feet…

IMG_5185
IMG_51851170×2532 1.94 MB

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185

You said 11-62 instead of 11-61 :) but I’m happy to hear that a Harrier holds a world record that is difficult to get

186

Typo and yes pulling 4G into a vertical climb and still accelerating shows off just how stupid the power was.

People look at the turn rate charts on the AV-8B and see 12-13 degrees a second and go that’s crap…

Until they realize that’s a combat loaded Harrier only using 80% of its potential thrust output.

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187

Thats the point I am making - hit and run on a harrier, from an off-angle/guard position. At that point the harrier will be danced around.

Typical WT players will dogfight anything, unfortunately.

188

You won’t out run amraam dude,

Even aim 9L/m will be hard.

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189

Its not just air speed and altitude.

Its closure speed and altitude.

The higher alt shot will have better range than a lower alt shot.

If you fire at a lower altitude target the missile will have to go into a denser air, which means higher drag.

The initial speed of the missile at launch is the other factor, now with extra 300ish kph, the missile will have a higher initial speed. Mach .9 is like… 1100 kph. M 1.2 is like 1450ish kph (sorry I dont run around with a calculator).

It makes a huge difference.

Point Im making is that because the Harrier is sub-sonic/transsonic its missiles will typically have a shorter range compared to a supersonic launch. Thats both true for IR and radar missiles.

In this regard the Harrier is a one trick pony at lower BRs relying on peoples lack of knowledge with the Harrier, and being off-guard. At higher BRs it can be full of surprises but the original point holds.

Yeah you remember the closure speeds… due to Harriers lower speed, it is arguably easier to defend against BVR missiles. Something I tend to abuse with the Hornet.

In short: due to the difference in closure speed, the missile has to cover a larger range gap, which will slow it down more. Whereas say a typical supersonic vs supersonic engagement would be okay at 25kms (just purely speaking hypothetical ranges here), due to transonic vs supersonic difference in closure speed, your missile might not be effective up until 20kms in range. Thats why I never really die in BVR in the opening 5ish minutes in a game. There are times - as there are perhaps too many missiles in the air at times. There are times.

190

Well, in BVR, you are supposed to energy fight the missile. Its not about outrunning it. Its about slowing it down enough that it wont be able to steer, or that it will fall out of sky harmless.

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Well I’ve gone FA.2 vs various supersonic jets like the F-14/15 and do quite well.

If u wanna test it we can.

192

Test what exactly? The mentioned thing which sub/trans-sonic jets can abuse? Or the actual numbers for range difference? Or which missile will hit first with the difference in speed and altitude? Im really interested in the results of the last one personally, just out of curiosity.

193

Just test everything, the FA.2 isn’t nearly as handy capped by being transonic as you make it out to be.

194

Its not handicapped, it just has a playstyle that might be easily countered by just keeping the distance. Whats the practical range of the missiles on it? (Lets say at close to ground leve) but unmasked by terrain / curvature. Now compare that to say an Eagle. If its around 5 kms or more shorter than a supersonic aircraft’s identical missile, it is… handicapped. The Eagle could dictate the engagement, especially if it at least knows what he is supposed to do. With that said, the lower closure speed will make a difference that might put it in favourable position, with the somewhat lower range of earlier ARH missiles. But that closure speed difference also makes a difference for the supersonic facing it, as the missile will have a lower top-speed, considering the lower speed of a harrier.

The difference is much more like I dunno. Mach .9 and Mach 1.4? I can easily accelerate to that speed with my Eagle, still turn back to and defeat incoming missiles purely kinematically.