Ka-50 needs rebalancing and a new flight model

[DeltaV64]

My other comment got ignored, so here is a copy that has only my input on the matter… I invite the readers of this thread to ignore a certain individual that always speaks in for russia bias.

Here are my heli stats today, I mostly play top tier:

I can point out 5 main reasons why the russian helis are causing overwhelming imbalance in the game:

• They can shoot down enemy helis in their base from their base. No other nation can do this.
• They have extreme survivability in comparison to Western helis.
• They have unrealistic flight characteristics that allow extreme maneuvers, stuff that would not be possible IRL
• They have significantly better optics and tracking software than IRL, you can easily google this and watch some IRL footage.
• They can shoot down incoming missiles in game, a feature that has never been demonstrated IRL.

When you combine all of these issues it becomes painfully clear that a rebalancing is needed. Not only are these characteristics unrealistic, they are unbalanced.

In contrast, the Pars and Hellfire missiles are underperforming in game. For example Hellfire has upgraded versions with fire and forget and Pars has bad acquisition and tracking in the game. Especially the Pars missile should not be locking onto dead and burning tanks that are next to the acquisition window, a junior machine learning/software engineer could easily write tracking software using 2010s Western technology with thermal + electro optic sensors to demonstrate this.

I’m more than ok with no buffs to make the Western helis realistic, but the russian helis clearly need significant nerfs due to unrealism and imbalance in the game.

[AlvisWisla]

1- There is 20km from their base to yours, at worst 14km. That’s physically impossible.
Pick the map and I’ll spawn a helicopter and you can note the distance yourself.
2- All helicopters lack damage models for rotor blades, which is the biggest issue with helicopters in general.
3- This applies to all helicopters in WT, including my favorites: Apaches.
4- Ka-50 has identical optics to IRL. And Ka-52 has improved optics by far, which is accurately represented.
Both are vastly inferior to modern optics on other helicopters in WT bar Ka-52 due to its modernity & catching up to vastly older designs.
5- Missiles cannot be targeted by Ka-50 or Ka-52 in WT. I can help you test that fact if you really want.
Missiles proximity off of other missiles that cross each other has been shown IRL though, just not intentionally shooting down other missiles.

As I said prior, as decompression likely comes we will see increase & separation of Ka-50 and superior helicopters, with SPAA remaining largely where they are relative to air.

By the by, ARH ATGMs from helicopters are not coming as they would be OP, like genuinely OP.
As for Pars, if true I implore you to make a bug report on the website with evidence.
Soviets are already nerfed & made realistic, especially with the addition of beam-riding simulation & accurate missile physics to missiles other than Pantsir & 2S6 missiles.

[ExcaliburSniper]

Great post, I’ve also noticed several maps where the helipads are well within Vikhr range but out of PARS/Hellfire range. Their double fuze and insane optics are also obviously unrealistic.

[DeltaV64]

1. Wrong, both in realistic and SQB. With Vikhrs, a russian heli spawning in the close heli spawn can kill an enemy heli spawning in their close heli spawn. The range in between is less than 8 kilometers. The Vikhr missile does not proxy after 6 kilometers but it can get a kinetic kill.
2. Does not matter, an Apache dies with a single vikhr, a Ka-50 can survive 3-4 stinger hits. The Hellfire travel time is enough to get in at least two Vikhr missiles into the enemy heli. Simillar for PARS, you have to be within 6 km distance to shoot or your have a significantly lower chance of getting a hit. By my experience 1/8 chance. Kamovs can easily back off to get out of range.
3. Look at 2
4. Again, you need to provide proof for this. Ka-52 cockpit footage from the Ukraine conflict demonstrates otherwise. Eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPIWPF3eUL0
5. Anyone who has ever dueled helis in ADATS, ITO, FLARAKRAD can provide tons of footage on how their missiles are intercepted by Vikhrs. Targeting and manually guiding to intercept are two different things. I never edited my post to change anything about the wording here.

[AlvisWisla]

1- Yes, their close spawn, which is a threat you always have to take into consideration. On top of that, you should also have the knowledge on defensive maneuvers with helicopters if you choose that risk.

2- This is likely due to Real Shatter & all helicopters, not just Ka-50, not being updated, and/or missile explosion characteristics not being updated. A slight oversight that’s likely already being worked on. Could always start a bug report just in case.
However, there is video of emergency landed Ka-50s that survived long enough after a few Stinger hits IRL to land.

3- Heli maneuverability [NOT SPEED] is rather bad on Ka-50 compared to other attack helicopters, including Mi-28. I test using the J turn stopping/landing, on top of S maneuvers, strafing, terrain following, and one other thing.
Essentially every major maneuver that will stress the limits of helicopters. Ka-50 J-turns the worst, cannot strafe at all [wasn’t designed to, to be fair], is okay at S maneuvers, and is good at terrain following.
Meanwhile Apache’s strafing is so good it’s why I was able to dodge Vikhr missiles entirely in heli PVP while killing Ka-50s with Hellfires from 3.5 - 5.5km away. Of course in RB the strafing performance is slightly worse, but it’s still the best. Terrain following is good, S maneuver’s it’s good, and J-turns it’s the easiest to do.

4- That is flight recording footage namely used to determine if a pilot crew committed a war crime or not, or other forbidden activities. It’s on magnetic tape and is not a representation of the optics’ image quality.
Source: HUD video from F-16s. USA has superior flight recording equipment, and that stuff is low quality as well cause it’s on magnetic tape.
WT’s Ka-52 does not have the best optics in WT, and definitely doesn’t have better optics than AH-64E which isn’t in WT.

5- Yes, before beam riding simulation. Now, unless someone exploits a bug [bannable offense], people can’t override SPAA.
And thank you for the edit to clarify BTW.

Note, I AM NOT saying, and have NEVER said that Ka-50 is not powerful.
All I have stated is that equipment more powerful than it is indeed more powerful than it.
Either in weapons AND visual aid [thermals], or in thermals + still good weapons.

[DeltaV64]

1. You having to consider spawning in the back immediately puts you in an adverse situation, now not only do you have less chances to close the gap and take offensive action, you also decrease your chances of helping your team as well as detecting and killing the enemy SPAA and before it kills you. IRL AH64D can use it’s radar to hide itself behind terrain and start firing from around 10 km away with fire and forget for example. This is not modelled in the game correctly.

2. There are no videos for multiple hits on that specific Ka-52, just a video of a Ka-52 flying with a tail that is damaged. This may have been because of small arms fire for all we know. On the other side there are multiple videos of Ka-52 crashing immediately after a direct hit from stingers, and not automatically deploying countermeasures. Another topic that deserves attention here (if we really want to compare to IRL) is also the emergency landing video of a Ka-52, you can see the gun stabilization it has IRL, which is close to non existent.

3. When you are evasive J turns are meaningless. The maneuver that will save you is drop and hide, or scoot and hide. Ka-50 and Ka-52 can make some insane maneuvers in game with their inaccurately modelled twin-rotor flight dynamics. These are also the best helis to evade an incoming maverick since they can speed towards any given direction faster than any other type of heli. Especially Ka-50. One close contender here is the Z19 because of it’s ability to flip.

4. If this is true, then they never intended to see anything from that footage in the first place. But again, all helis in top tier have pretty much the same optics given the rendering of the game is independent of the sensor and the thermal. Ofc Ka-50 does not have thermals but any given player can switch to ULQ to get the same competitive edge. I will have to see proof of better sensors on Ka-52 to believe you. So optics are a neutral ground for top tier helis. Btw, F16 hud footage from 1991 should not even be compared to 201X-202X heli sensor footage here.

5. This was way worse before that patch but it is still happening to the same extent. A good Ka-52 player can duel against an ADATS because of the narrow guiding window not being narrow enough. This literally happened to me today in multiple games. Next time around I will record my gameplay and upload it for everyone to see. The only way to win the fight in here is to curve your missile to multiple directions as AA and try to land it directly over the cockpit. If the enemy heli player has ULQ you can forget about surviving an encounter and just go back to hangar.

One of the things that Warthunder inaccurately models is the lack of infantry being able to navigate around the battlefield and suppress enemy air capabilities with manpads. IFVs for example can carry multiple soldiers equipped with stingers and iglas. I’m not claiming that there is no cases where a Ka-52 can engage enemy vehicles, no. Clearly this is a scenario in the Ukraine conflict. But we have seen more Ka-52s downed in the conflict by manpads vs Ka-52s pinning down Western tanks. By January we’ll know if this is ever an issue with F-16s carrying Fox-3s. You know, another IRL scenario that is not modelled properly in the game with radar missiles.

[glock991]

The only heli that matches the range of the vikrs is the British premium rookiat heli but even then I think the flight time of its atgms is still longer despite what the stat card says

[AlvisWisla]

1- You have to risk that when SPAA is up as well. TOR-M1, ITO, Pantsir, ADATS, etc.
I am not denying this fact of yorus.
2- No complaints.
3- Evasive is terrain following, strafing, and S maneuvers.
I respect your other statements and accept them at face value.
4- This is true*.
The asterisk being that WT in general gives us more control as real-life systems require far more training.
So it gives us these systems so we can get close to what expert crews are like within this war-games simulator of ours.
And I watched footage from 2006, 2009, and 2010 for F-16s.
5- I am aware, which is why it’s unnecessary to bring those up anymore. Those patches are behind us, and we can’t balance based on stuff that will never return to WT.

As for infantry, there’s an AI overhaul in development that started a couple years ago.
It will likely have infantry related things in it, along with modern stuff, in order to replace the 2010 AI WT has been using since 2012.

[DeltaV64]

My point was that hud footage from F16 is not the same as footage from a targeting pod like this one from 9 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi9d8bstWsE We have to compare targeting system to targeting system. Hud footage is supplementary. At the top right corner is the altitude of the aircraft in ft btw, and the pod is not just looking down. The ranges and the fidelity of this equipment is way better than any of the kamov targeting sensor footage I’ve seen. Best one directly from the monitor being Imgur: The magic of the Internet good luck identifying your targets.

The last point is important, the changes went in and it is still possible to exploit the missile count advantage with russian helis during AA duels. Also from the other thread, you can use 2s38 as a russia player to kill enemy CAS, no other nation has AA capability as premium. So the imbalance is multiplied.

[AlvisWisla]

“An error that caused lack of fragment damage to parts of helicopters/aircraft when fragmentation munitions with a calibre of 20 mm or higher exploded inside the fuselage and wings has been fixed. This error caused damage to be lower after we implemented the realistic fragment spread mechanic since the fragments could pass from inside a target to outside via fuselage and wings without dealing damage. Now the fragments spread correctly and deal the same damage as before the implementation of the realistic spread.”

[DeltaV64]

This is good for the patch today but it does not address the mid-to-late game use of Vikhrs like we discussed.

[Stormwolf7]

Just gonna put this right here:
This was me, in an Abrams with a HE Round… “damaging the tail” of a Ka-50.

Dunno why this is the hill they want to die on… but damn do the devs look foolish. (The economy fixes will only carry you for so long before people start really feel the OTHER reason they quit this game.)

[USA_PilotsAreBad]

Massive lying

[AlvisWisla]

Facts aren’t lying.

[USA_PilotsAreBad]

You didn’t state any facts.

[richthofen122]

Just a quick FYI, the Double Rotor allows it to function without its tail. So it is quite realistic that it keeps flying.

[Morvran]

I think the main issue though, is any hit big enough to take off the tail, is probably also going to do major damage to the rest of the aircraft, especially the rotors. The lack of damage on that they can sustain means in game, it keeps flying even after a “kill” but for other nations, this is deadly.

One suggestion I’ve seen that should 100% be added short term, is to just remove it being a “kill” if the tail is knocked off the Ka-50/52 and it just be considered crit damage.

[pyroraptor841]

Yeah, nobody ever considers the effect that losing 1/3 of your heli would have on the heli’s center of mass. That’s a pretty significant factor that doesn’t appear to be modeled well/at all.

[Morvran]

Yeah, that is a true too. It might be enough to limp back to base, but is probably not stable enough to guide a missile onto target on take any kind of evasive action

[AlvisWisla]

1/3rd? I think you’re over-estimating how much weight is on the tail and/or on the front.