This is my main concern, TVC I think will be a double-edged sword for most players. You have unrivalled nose authority, but equally you lose all of your energy, and are you really going to be spraying your gun from ~1.2kms and expecting a good amount of hits before you start to lose control authority?
I think it’s something that will be only useful in stall-fights, which aren’t that common and doesn’t account for your opponent likely having much more energy than you do. When the Gripen and Eurofighter/Rafale programmes were being drawn up, their analysis of the Mig-29 and the Flanker showed that the most effective counter would be BVR engagements, and at WVR, high energy retention.
IRL F-22 pilots in their few losses in exercises often lost when they became overconfident with the TVC and lost all their energy. Keep in mind this is a jet with a T/W ~1.7 at peak, the Flanker is ~1.3 at peak and with any sort of fuel or armament its probably closer to 1.1-1.2 you just aren’t going to be making that energy back fast enough.
The Russian/Soviet TV/IIR weapons don’t have bad optics though, it’s not like the mediocre/bad sights of NATO TV/IIR weapons with either fixed zoom, no color, or way too low zoom. In fact the Kh-38MTs have optics with similar zoom levels as some targeting pods, it’s better zoom than MiG-27K/Su-25T sights and of course has gen 1 thermals (but actually that can depend on how Gaijin configures the aircraft, as thermal resolution is tied technically to the aircraft and not the weapon in WT…). The only thing bad is the gimbal limits, it’s like any other TV weapon, but it’s not a dealbreaker since it’s a fire and forget weapon (and you don’t need to worry about SPAA touching you at all, 0% chance, when maintaining 12km+ distance, right at the tracking range of IIR weapons anyway).
