Take a look at this. The missile is one of the heavier ones on the list, however at the end of the burn it’s among the lightest. So clearly there should either be A) more impulse power in a given moment, B) a longer burn, or C) both.
I’m guessing they just copy pasted stats but they picked from the worst possible missile to do it from being as the missile is DOUBLE the weight of the MICA it’s stats are pulled from.
Yeah lol the first stage is like its ejecting sand out the nozzle. At least its just a (large diameter) MICA for the second stage. A bit worried that the stats will still end up underwhelming when it gets updated, but I guess we will see.
Given the missile is double the weight of the MICA and without any thrust vectoring… The burn time should at the very least be increased because with the thrust it outputs for the time, it just doesn’t have the speed to do much. I don’t know why they didn’t grab the 120A stats and paste it instead but, fuck.
Edit: Looking through the stats more… It’s a lot more than just the engine stats that have been copy and pasted between the MICA and the AAM-4. I don’t know why they picked that missile out of all of them but, so much for having a missile to look forward to testing on the server. On the plus side, with the HMD of the Kai, the AAM-3 is able to really shine when it comes to off the rails seeker gimble… Being able to just about spin 140 or more degrees to chase a target for exceedingly off-bore shots with at least a little bit of a gap (1.5-2km depending on closer speed)
well, I’m a little worry they will not fix it, AAM-4 should fly much faster and have bigger war head by it’s diameter
It is 3.1 length right now instead of 3.66
So i am sure it will be changed before update
The war head isn’t as big of a deal- honestly the warhead it has is both A) copy paste for now for the dev and B) even at the same size, it won’t make much of a difference as most of the diameter was likely used for the rocket fuel given the pre burn weight and post burn weight currently in the game.
Again, the issue is the lack of total thrust because of the burn time being so low and the force being so weak. Given how much lighter the missile gets, it should be burning for significantly longer than it is now, or instead with significantly more force… And probably both realistically but, hopefully it’s patched even before the dev server is done so it can be tested before hitting live properly.
EDIT: Still not updated on the server unfortunately, figured it would be a quick numbers change but, nothing so far. On the test flight map, if you fire the missile around 400-500SPD right after you lift off the ground, the MiG-15 circling behind Mt. Suribachi is only barely hit at a firing range of 5km side aspect, and you can see before the missile hits it’s already getting slow
EDIT 2: On the same test flight, I flew to roughly 5.5km or so forward and away from the airfield, and fired an AAM-4 at a rough range of 28km when the higher altitude MiG-15 turned around. The missile did successfully hit said MiG though if it would have maneuvered it likely wouldn’t have. So maybe some figured were changed overnight after all, which is easily plausible.
EDIT 3: Doing a custom match, I found that the missile will still rapidly accelerate up to a speed around Mach 2.51 if doing Mach .89 (1070km/h SPD) on a cold map around 1.6km altitude. The issue is, without a long burn sustainer, it dumps all of it’s speed within 4-5km after reaching it’s loft. The upshot is that it does loft where I don’t think it did last night, but regardless the missile will drop from that Mach 2.51 down to only Mach 1 in around 4.6km of travel. Mind you this is with a proper loft to get the thinner air up higher. Missiles were fired against AI targets near ground doing anywhere from 650km/h to 450km/h at a range of 25km or so.
As a comparison, I took the F-14A for the AIM-54A missiles and fired two off on Alternative Spain, which I believe is considered ‘normal temp’, at a range closer to 28-30km at a pair of bombers moving with around a 20 degree offset from left to right, but probably more. The pheonix missiles reached a similar speed, however, even with as wide of a missile as they are and being off burn, they did not bleed nearly as much speed as quickly as the AAM-4 does currently, which leads me to think the drag coefficents were also copy pasted from something else onto the missile but, I’m unsure of that.
Turns out we actually have AAM-4B in game
In game AAM-4
AAM-4 Seeker
AAM-4B
It’s probably just a 3D model error, but it is funny
nerf japan, they got AAM-4B
Maybe it’s worth a try to report the missing AESA seeker
You can do that, though practically I don’t know if it would change too much other than, likely removing an RWR warning unless it hard locks a target and even then- with the modulation those can do, it isn’t always the easiest to tell it’s doing what it is from my understanding.
I do think the missile shouldn’t be performing at full sprint only because, to be frank, it would be pretty damn OP of it did. The MICA and PL-12 would likely be similarly paced, the MICA because of the stupidly good short engagement ranges with fairly good range yet, and the PL-12 because from my understanding, it’s similarly a better 120A/B but, I don’t know the full extent.
Already did!
https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/hzKqBh7lyuoM
Though they’ll probably just change the 3D model, and this report is just a funnier way of making them notice.
Was the aam4 seeker pesa, or was that the arh type 81 missile
That was the ARH Type 81 (C) missile, AAM-4 just uses a PD radar.
I should hope they won’t make the AAM-4 coming to the game the full capacity of the real one only because it would likely get nerfed down and not necessarily removed later when necessary- and a Ka band AESA radar would likely render it immune to RWR detections at least on most aircraft and rotary aircraft- notching would also be much harder
I feel like this is something we have to accept they’ll never do for game balance. It is never fun to get swatted out of the sky with no warning or ability to react to make some counterplay. This is why multipathing is exaggerated as is. BVR will just never be meta because for most players that’s not fun.
Fun Fact; not only is the skin from the AAM-4B, but also the weight
https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/DrXP5HPtwz0f?comment=LbhloTdoqqz8KRIkwyxWvMAC
I’m fine accepting it, I have no problems with it. Multipathing should be turned down a but but not entirely limited- perhaps just flying low to the ground shouldn’t be enough, but combined with a slight bit of angling and a pop of chaff it would ward off a missile with just a slight bit of timing?
It might be an interesting idea to perhaps have the exaggerated effects of multipathing to be only present when used with chaff yea.
I know someone was doing testing and for them, missiles don’t really like tracking (at least for them) well at 100m of sea level or lower. I know I’ve seen radar missiles track below that threshold but, being as that was done at sea level, so the altimeter read 100 meters proper, if that’s how they’ve gone and done it.
Bad news bears; the AAM-4 is still effectively non-practical even with the last potential update of the dev server. It can get up to speed, kind of, but once the burner and sustainer are off it just dumps all of it as if it’s a really, really draggy missile even though it should be one of the least draggy ones.
Burner is still too weak, sustainer as well, and drag still too high to do anything with for testing purposes.
