Can’t wait to see F-16AJ removed from this game.
28m/s at low alt, actually. The Ki-84 reaches 27m/s which IS lower, but this is all at low altitude long before the Ki-44-II runs out of breath AND assuming you can actually sustain that, since it’ll overheat very fast unless you use reduced prop pitch and lose a bit of power.
The J2M2 climbs slightly better at low altitude and can reach 30m/s, just barely.
It only beats the Ki-84 in pretty narrow ranges, and almost never beats the J2M2.
That chart doesn’t account for prop efficiency, but we can just go into a test flight and find out what’s what:
Ki-84 Ko, ~315kph 75% PEFC 15.5s turn time (manually adjusted radiators for sustained WEP use)
Ki-44-II Hei, ~290kph 80% PEFC ~16s turn time (manually adjusted prop pitch to 90%)
J2M2, ~305kph 82% PEFC ~14.8s turn time (same MEC as Ki-84)
So not only is the Ki-84 much faster both high and low, but it also retains energy better in turns and rates better, even at very low altitude where the Ki-44-II has a p/w advantage.
The Ho-103 is strong but it’s never THAT strong, and it is short ranged. The Ho-5 deals significantly more damage per hit and has much greater chance of onetapping enemies.
Of course the flight tests are slower, they’re using a weaker engine. Many engines were downtuned for reliability, namely the DB605A in many german and italian props down to ~1300hp, but you won’t find that configuration in-game because reliability is not a factor here.
We also far exceed WEP time limits in pretty much every plane, but I don’t see anyone wanting that to be changed.
I’d rather have the Ki-116 instead of a straight copypaste Ki-84 with the only change being less power.
The Ki-84 Ko is 5.3 right now. How would a worse version somehow be the same BR?
Are you the same person who manually moved up all the R2Y2s to 8.0? Because this sure sounds like something they’d do.
It is just fine at 3.7, where it is very competitive but by no means undefeatable.
Besides, if gaijin’s trend of picking random japanese planes to increase BR continues, they’ll get to making sure the poor F6F, P-38G, and F4U-1 pilots will NEVER see their historical opponents eventually.
It should sit at 3.7. Eminem’s Yak3 can counter it easily and sits at 4.0. The XP-50 can counter it easily, and sits at 4.0. The P-51C can laugh at it all match long while it is nigh invulnerable.
It’s already widely known that most japanese props are overtiered, why add another to the pile?
You should become a comedian. The problem with japanese planes is that their enemies underperform in the “thinking ahead” department, and will regularly start turnfighting or are completely unaware and get caught out.
Funny you say that, because at 4.3 it’ll see a 1944 fighter (Yak-3), a 1942 model (109 G-2), and even a 1945 one (F4U-4)!
Introduction years aren’t really relevant, and IMO neither are modification ones.
The actual end result is that you’d see almost nobody play the Ki-44-II because it’ll simply be bad, and it’ll never move down just like the Ki-43-III, R2Y2s, N1K2s, J7W, Ki-108… all of which are rarely seen and/or played by above average pilots who will make it seem like they’re balanced to gaijin’s statistiks.
But hey, maybe that’s actually your plan.
I agree actually, the XF-2A will be a great replacement right at 12.7 and should have been added a long time ago.
5 Likes
The Ki-27 climbs even better, and I killed P51Hs with it. Put it at 6.0 please.
OP, try fighting a player in a fast plane that keeps his speed. You will see how useless your plane is when you chase someone in a shallow climb.
Don’t confuse ‘easy to use’ with ‘overpowered’
Offtopic:
Oh my god thank you for showing this website, I can learn so much with this
4 Likes
I’ve decided to fly my F4U-4 (no cannons) at 4.3. I’ve encountered a Ki-44-II (3.7) at altitude (~3.5 km) flown by a level 97 player.
The level 97 player probably knew how to fly it, too. Although, they did only have 24 games in it (but given 2.0 KD, I presume I encountered a spaded variant)
The F4U-4 could easily stall flight the Ki-44-II (meaning: drag it in vertical with WEP on and make it fall out of the sky).
Maybe it’s powerful against 3.7 planes but it has absolutely no business being at 4.7 or 5.0. At such BRs, it will be completely useless given the 4.3 F4U-4 could fly circles around it with WEP.
If anything, from what I see spoken about by ARB vets - japanese planes are overtiered, american planes are ridiculously undertiered. Why make that problem even worse?
As a random fun fact, in sim Ki-44-II is 3.0, F4U-4 is 5.3.
2 Likes
It’s fantastic, just keep in mind that certain metrics aren’t accounted for (namely radiator drag and prop efficiency) and that can skew the numbers quite a bit sometimes. But generally it’s a great guideline.
You seem just trying to fight and make somebody else lose in whatever an argument is.
The plane you compared to it is 5.0 plane (J2M2) and Ki-84 ko (5.3) and the performance is barely different except for the armament and speed, though the ground-level speed has a smaller gap. Just because it has like 10% performance difference doesn’t make it “right at 3.7 because Ki-84 and J2M2 is better at 5.0~.” It doesn’t make a goddamn sense bruh. Yak-3 early, F4U and XP-50, P-51C altogether with Me-109F & Me-109G-6 are the most undertiered planes, maybe not Me-109G-6, but it’s significantly lighter than later G models of Me 109. You talked about lowering the prop pitch, but how much. The prop pitch efficiency is affected by the altitude and the plane’s speed. I never faced the issue with Ki-44-ii overheating with 10%~20% radiators, because you can just keep the texts orange the whole match and it won’t even damage the engines to the point you get a problem with. I said about “adding” stuff, not “changing” the currently available stuff.
I literally talked about “What if, applied modifications dynamically changed the BR of the same plane”. You must know that you can check and uncheck the modifications, using M2 or 20mm M2 like a shotgun without the gun accuracy upgrade is a valid tactic. Having “Ho-103 early” and “Ho-103 late” exactly like on M2, and swapping armament like Ki-43-i. And if it changed the BR by 1 or 2 steps we would be able to have “strong armament ki-44 at 4.3” and “weak armament Ki-44 at 3.7”.
It’s so crazy you only talk about meta planes as if these are the standard, that’s just because you only play those popular ones. Despite there is like waaay worse planes than ki-44-ii at 3.7.
Ki-44-ii is just not right at 3.7, and it’s an obvious fact. And when did a lot of players started saying that? After the cannons are buffed. Ki-44-ii used to be at lower BR for years, but the good performance of the vehicle is countered by the shitty armament where the game required you to hit like hundreds of ammo to shoot down a single engine fighter. If you are new, you can just search it online, like on reddit. This place is no better than reddit, so you can just check some footages on how weak Ho-103 without explosive rounds used to be. And now we have air target belt with 3/4 HE rounds. It’s making a difference worth 1 or 2 step BR change.
Ki-44-ii outclimbed Ki-84 in the actual game test flight.
The ingame weight of ki-44-ii is 2100 including the weapons and ammo. The wiki, the most reliable sources state 2100~2150kg own weight. Assuming the weight in this game doesn’t include the weapon mass, Hei must get extra 160kg, Otsu has to get its 180kg armament weight. Every other vehicles list the mass with weapons so Ki-44-ii can’t be this light at 2100kg.
I support this claim. According to my tests the Ki-44 climbs slightly better than the Ki-84 at low speed, at the deck. The Ki-84 climbs better (at the deck) at around 435 KMH IAS or higher.
using the website already linked in this thread, can u explain to me where are the common altitudes in most games where u can drag a ki44ii and make it fall out of the sky? there are many possibilities for that encounter, ki44 could have cooked his engine from not using mec or sustained engine damage. It does not deserve to be 3.7 with its very reliable HEF 12.7s now, just like the usual xp50, wyvern, yak3 and yak3(e) and others. and who are the arb “vets” that u talk about? only the zeroes are heinously overtiered
2 Likes
F4U4 at 4.3 is a joke. It was doing just fine at 5.0
4.7 at least.
Generally, this BR range is broken.
4.0 Yak-3 belong at same BR as normal Yak-3 - 4.7 (right now regular Yak-3 sits at 4.3).
XP-50 is busted at 4.0, belongs to 4.7 - I’m a proud owner, the plane is not really that enjoyable, but it’s v. annoying to face right now. Bf 109 G6 has to really pull tricks out of its ass to manage. A fighter that sits 0.7 BR higher. Let that sink in.
XP-55 should go to 4.7 too (for whatever reason it’s super good at 4.3) - I’m a proud owner.
Once all of that is fixed, Ki-44-II can go to 4.3.
Remember, G.55 S0 is 4.3
It’s marginally faster, climbs a lot worse, it’s a bit better armed, but bigger and turns worse, has worse flaps too. But I find it quite ok.
2 Likes
You fly towards the Ki-44-II at ~400 km/h IAS in a head-on at ~3.3 km. You dodge the head on, dive down to 2900, until you got some decent distance as the Ki is turning around. You climb with WEP on and begin spiralling climbing with some time horizontal and that’s more or less how I remember it, while abusing the F4U’s low stall speed with its flaps.
The F4U-4 on WEP accelerates very stupid fast. I did not record the Ki fight, but I did record a fight in sim where climbing from 400 TAS@947m to 193 TAS@1739 took 20 seconds, then I was back at 280 TAS@1713 after 10 seconds of flying with stick forward just a little. You could probably assume similar numbers with the Ki just at 3-4km altitudes.
Using TAS as it’s not altitude dependent.
Also agreed on the F4U-4 at 4.3 being a joke.
It’s 5.3 in sim and it does perfectly well against stuff like N1k2j, Ta-152 H1, Ki-94-II and probably more, but these are fights I remember distinctly.
2 Likes
Yeah, F4U4 can deal with Ki-44-II if it’s higher than it and uses a hit and run tactic that Ki-44-II can’t effectively counter by climbing. Yes, it’s doable. But I wouldn’t base my gameplan on it happening, I died to F4U recently - but I was literally getting attacked by 2 in turns (amd they started above me) and it took them so much time once I was dead, they were getting swarmed.
I mostly die in Ki-44-II due to my own stupidity and my team melting. It’s super hard to blame the plane even in full uptiers, where I generally feel 0 threat from Bf 109 G6 and Yak-9U.
1 Like
Yak-3 might not be as good as you think since testing shows it has only the most marginal advantage in ITR over Bf-109F-4, and a slight advantage in STR, less than P-63.
But the energy advantage is significant.
It has enough of an advantage. It’s also a lot faster down low, doesn’t overheat and is way better armed for fighter killing, unless gunpods are involved.
1 Like
not sure what you plan on doing with that when i already showed the large difference in performance, from testing the ki44ii otsu (wtrti says its 80kg lighter than hei) outaccelerated the f4u until 450kmh ias. the ki44ii also has good flaps and the stall warning appears on both around 118kmh ias so the f4u4 doesnt really have an advantage there, but the top speed is a lot higher around 610kmh while the ki44 otsu is 510 with rads fully open to prevent red temps.
not a sim player, why is the f4u4 at 5.3 in sim? from what i know its main strengths are low speed dogfighting with its strong flaps, roll rate, high top speed 610kmh ias at sea lvl. it doesnt turn that well, rudder compresses and its climbrate doesnt appear to be that good unless im missing smth
It’s STR advantage is less than P-63, it’s almost solely strong on the vertical axis and a 109 could rate it dead with flaps
But yes the tiering could use some work
I wish Bf 109s tried “rating” my Ki-44 more often, because from my experience, it absolutely clowns on everything non-Japanese around 3.7-4.7 with exception of Typhoons and Spitfires and each time Bf 109 decides to turn with me, I happily accept unless it’s E-series, because I honestly have no idea how good these are, because most Bf 109 E users die in embarassing fashion rather quickly.
Maybe if you wait 2 weeks, then somehow Bf 109 starts turning better, but Ki-44-II will end the dogfight way before this happens.
Also Ki has damn good flaps that don’t take entire week to deploy.
Maybe things work different in sim. II Will have to simply do some turning in test flight in Air RB and see what happens, because I don’t think I ever got to the point where F series starts turning better. I think by that time F4 would cook itself to death anyway, and constant prop pitch management while dogfighting sounds like a punishment from hell :D
Talking about Yak-3
To sum this topic: People writing things but don’t know how to fight Japanese planes so they end up being over tiered for the sake of it.
1 Like