I would say it could probably wait until the IIRs are actually added to aircraft.
Would give them a bit more time to get all the data for proximity fuse/minimum altitude settings on a per missile basis and then just go for that.
Top tier didn’t die but the experience became miserable than before. Top tier RB being a chaotic mess is a common sentiment among the player base now. Even some content creators whom I follow on you tube seem to dislike top tier now and reduced their content on it. The game rewards players better for longer match time but the matches last hardly 6-7 mins on average. I’d have quit this game long ago if I didn’t get used to SB.
60m multi pathing seems to be balanced right now where it is a situational missile evasion technique. Not all maps offer the luxury of exploiting multi pathing reliably, radar missiles still pose a credible threat if fired from an high angle. I’ve been playing RB again this battle pass season for daily tasks and I fly high the whole time, I find no trouble in killing the multi pathers as long as I have enough missiles. They might evade first missile or two but they eventually die.
Many players still rely on multi pathing (sometimes they have no choice, depending on the aircraft), stock grind is still miserable where it can take several hours to get to necessary performance and weapon mods. There is a limit to how much a player base can be put up with miserable game play experience.
All my comments don’t mean that I am against multi pathing, I am in favor of removing multi pathing altogether. But they should only come at a heavy rework of game design and match maker. Gaijin is already actively ruining the game by injecting increasingly more capable aircraft into an outdated game design, last thing we need is a nerf to defensive tactics that we have right now.
It’s not a defensive tactic. It’s a crutch that allows for completely forgoing positioning or intelligent play.
Current top tier doesn’t offer that luxury in most cases. There are too many capable aircraft cramped into a small area. You can make some good decisions but odds turn against you real fast when your team gets steamrolled or multiple enemies target you and want you dead. RB’s broken spotting system further amplifies this issue.
Planes like JAS39A, M4K, SARH carriers in ARH match maker only depend on multi pathing to close the distance and maybe force a dogfight / guide their SARH missile (Chances are high that they’ll die before that given how situational multi pathing is right now).
The reality is, top tier game mode is outdated, multi pathing is one of the crutches that players have to defend themselves (irrespective of how realistic/unrealistic this mechanic may be). WT is an milsim with arcade-ish elements, some artificial mechanics should exist to support the game modes. One cannot expect pure realism here. Modern air forces do not group up in a small area and start a furball when someone says Go!, there is no realism in this.
Yes I can see where people who say that multi-pathing should stay at 60 or get moved up to 100m are coming from.
If these values are kept tho there will be little improvement for the more modern missiles we will get. Yes they will have terrain following, longer range, improved target tracking and two way data Link but at the end they will be defeated by the same tactic and I really don’t see Gaijin going down that path.
As you said it should be on a missile to missile basis bc let’s face it, the MBDA Meteor is leagues more advanced than an Aim54 but keeping it at 60m even once we hit jets with stealth, ECM, etc would make them kind of useless and we will likely return to IR (this time IIR) spam.
I personally would see a gradual decline in multi pathing in the future as a positive change.
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In other words, there should be no problem with removing multipath, right?
If radar missiles could penetrate multipath and hit their targets, no one would be interested in multipath in name only.
You have previously argued that radar missiles are too powerful against inferior opponents and that the multipath invincibility barrier should remain at low altitudes.
You yourself said that multipath would protect you from missiles at low altitudes.
However, as you just said, if it’s okay for missiles to function at low altitudes, there should be no need for a multipath barrier.
This is a contradiction.
How am I contradicting myself there? Radar guided missiles work just fine at low altitudes, as in you don’t need to climb to use them. They just aren’t guaranteed to hit targets beneath the MP threshold, which is how it always should be.
MP is not a invincibility layer. It never was.
The altitude of the launcher?
I didn’t talk about that…
I was always talking about the low altitude of the side using multipath.
Because the altitude of the launcher doesn’t affect the occurrence of multipath.
The aren’t guaranteed to hit problem due to multipath was eliminated with the advent of monopulse, but as it stands, it is invincible to all radar missiles at distances of less than 60m.
As long as you maintain 60m (or only at the moment of impact), you can attack the enemy with a radar missile without any other evasion/withdrawal required and without risking being defeated by the enemy with a radar missile. The only solution to this is to remain in the multipath.It ruins everything before that, and only allows equal merges that cannot secure air combat energy. If you try to merge while securing energy superiority, the higher altitude side will lose due to the imbalance of the multipath barrier.
There was no game where you lost if you secured altitude anywhere except under the top tier multipath.
Remove multipath and the top tier should be in the same state.
No reason to abandon all other options and sacrifice those who are not affected by multipath.
All radar missiles in WT behave as if they had inverse monopulse seekers, the multipath threshold exists for gameplay reasons.
From my experience as the player almost always flying low I can assure you that there indeed is a risk of being defeated by enemy radar missiles involved while staying below 60m. Multipath doesn’t protect you from splash damage and missiles fired from certain angles are much more likely to hit targets even when they are below the multipath threshold.
If you approach low flying planes from above at an angle from which your target can guide and fire missiles at you without having to climb, that’s your own fault. As the one that’s attacking from above you also have a much easier time evading incoming missiles, no matter if they are radar guided or IR homing.
Don’t lie, WT still doesn’t support Inverse monopulse seekers.
If a monopulse is present, multipath from any angle, including those not originating at high altitude, is ignored.
When a missile is launched from a high altitude, it appears as if it ignores the multipath, but only because the mirror image of the multipath is adjacent to or hidden under the real image.
It does not actually ignore the multipath.
Furthermore, at the distance at which such a trajectory occurs, even an upward attack from the enemy is within effective range, so the attack will only be successful if the opponent fails to counterattack.
My argument is that the reason they were shot down despite the multipath barrier was because they were unable to even notice enemy aircraft firing Contrails at close range.
I’m not lying, if WT modelled the absense of a inverse monopulse seeker, pre-7M Sparrows, R-3Rs, AIM-9Cs, Matra R511s and Matra R530s wouldn’t work properly at low altitudes, yet they do. All of those missiles would also be way less accurate than they currently are.
Again, the multipathing in WT is a gameplay thing, not a realism thing.
That’s because it doesn’t reproduce seeker characteristics and the multipath altitude is fixed at 60m.
Currently, regardless of the seeker originally installed, you will be fooled by multipath at 60m. It is true that normal pulse seekers would be worse, but their improved performance does not come from being monopulse.
If it was monopulse, it would have almost complete immunity to surface targets.
In other words, the current missile seeker is a mysterious entity that is neither a pulse seeker nor a monopulse seeker…
If you are looking for gameplay corrections, there are other options. There is no reason to abandon the material presented and continue to use unrealistic choices, and no reason to continue to use them and be allowed to do so.
Inverse monopulse seekers have improved accuracy over regular pulse. The devs themselves have said at some point that they modelled all SARH missiles to behave as if they have monopulse seekers.
That is because ALL radar missiles behave as if they had the SAME type of seeker, an INVERSE MONOPULSE seeker. The multipath threshold present in the game has nothing to do with this.
Just because the effects of multipath propagation, ground clutter and ground absorption are overexaggerated in-game for gameplay reasons doesn’t mean that the missiles aren’t modelled to act like they had an inverse monopulse seeker.
If that is the case, we simply urge that the unrealistic hyperbole be dropped and that a more realistic response be made.
Whatever the reason, there is no reason to welcome the status quo, in which advanced missiles behave in an unadvanced manner.
Them forwarding it as a suggestion means its never getting added lol.
Now that I think about it, the monopulse seeker’s construction principle allows it to ignore reflections from the ground.
In other words, reflections from positions other than the target cannot form the appropriate polarization during reconstruction, so they are excluded from the tracking algorithm.
This should be effective even if reflections from the ground are strengthened.
Or we just keep it the way it is because Gaijin still hasn’t modelled proper ECM or better countermeasures in general and they haven’t done anything to adapt the general gameplay to better suit modern aircraft either.
You can play BVR with the other LARPers and the remaining majority of players will just keep scooting low to get to the furball and enjoy their WVR combat. If people don’t want to climb to fight you, you have 3 options, 1) keep lobbing ARHs at them until one hits, 2) drop down and engage in WVR with them or 3) RTB and leave.
I think that ECM’s effectiveness is limited due to burnthrough, because the engagement distance is close in WT. (Although I would welcome it if it comes…)
I don’t know much about CM, but from reading the published doctrine of the US military, I’m sure there is a limit to how much it can evolve.
I don’t think these are prerequisites for removing multipath.
Or it should be possible to remove multipath first as a stepping stone to that.
While I don’t know how effective radar jammers would end up being, there are things like BriteCloud and towed decoys, which definitely would be very effective.
Proper (E)CMs, tree size adjustment and general gameplay reworks definitely are pre-requisites for further multipathing reduction and at no point should multipathing be entirely removed.
While their existence is certainly more desirable, they came much later than the advent of monopulse.
The ones that came before were not installed on the F15C or Su27.
So I just can’t see them as essential.
They didn’t consider during development that a decoy would be absolutely necessary against monopulse missiles, and that the non-existent 15C would be woefully fragile and unsurvivable.
In fact, there are many cases where WT has been able to avoid missiles without relying on multipath. I don’t accept the claim that multipath is the last resort.