As of the latest dev server update, the Z-10ME gained access to the Fire Snake 70A laser guided rockets, these are a direct counterpart to the APKWS family of weapons. However in their current in game form APKWS lack to option to use the M247 HEAT warhead that is already in game on the standard 70mm hydra rockets, this is in direct contrast to the fact that the Fire Snake 70A rockets in game have a HEAT warhead.
It is well past the time where an APKWS variant should have been added that is armed with the M247 warhead as neither of the current warheads (M151 and M282) are effective in their in game implementations, and the current changes prove that Gaijin does not see arming helicopters with small caliber HEAT warheads on laser guided platforms is a balancing problem to the game. Furthermore the warhead of the Fire Snake 70A actually has slightly more pen and explosive mass than the M247 warhead on hydra rockets, so there is absolutely no excuse for why this option is missing
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I don’t even see the point of the APKWS warheads we have in game now. The AP warhead can not consistently penetrate even the lightest of vehicles, and the HE warhead can kill unarmored vehicles, which isn’t a great selling point.
They also pick up the laser far too late and have such a narrow view the rocket tends to find it and turn itself out of the laser
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Yeah 3km max acquisition range is not doing it any favors. Especially with it coming to aircraft now too.
With how the laser mechanics work in game, from testing, this means the acquisition range is just 1.5km when designating from 6km away (3km acquisition range is only achieved at the same designation range). Barely enough to make any corrections. Not sure if they are changing this in the upcoming update, I just noticed that with all SALH weapons they added a maximum hard limit range too now.
Previously however you could technically get way more range out of their nominal acquisiton range by designating from closer range. I was for instance able to get a track at ~7.9km from a Paveway back when it was still set to ~3.6km track range (statwise), by outrunning the bomb and designating from ~1.7km away. This will not be possible anymore it looks like, which has some major implications for buddy lasing, if that ever gets introduced.
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i support this whole heartedly. plus, while we are at it, why dont we add LFK-GILA and FZ275 LGR since theyre similar laser guided rockets
If they either made the range a bit longer or made the FOV wider it would help quite alot
I could ignore the low range if the rockets didnt immediately lose the laser again because the guidance decided to pull away from it for whatever reason
We already need to loft the rockets accurately for any range out of them but if the guidance does that i might as well just ripple dumb rockets at that point
This is what i mean with the guidance pulling the rocket away from the target despite its original path being almost perfect and i took this footage just now in the dev server so unfortunately nothing has changed
Oh, forgot to mention that the lock range is probably wrong anyway. Should probably be double what it is now according to BAE: https://www.baesystems.com/en/product/apkws.
The guidance section is designed to lock onto targets from over 6 kilometers away, supporting survivability and mission success by keeping your launch platform at a safe standoff distance from threats.
The weapon pulling away from the designation point may be a bug though. I’ve seen it happen with Paveways too recently, with no real logical reason why. Something is probably going wrong where it reads a bigger error upon laser acquisition than there is, causing a huge overcorrection, resulting it into losing track due to being out of FoV.
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Yeah ive seen it on paveways too it just seems to be much more of an issue for APKWS than bombs atleast in my experience
However if you have evidence for the lock range could you bug report it?
im not so great at that kinda thing
