MCM is a mechanic that has been gaining traction in air battles for a long time. It started in Sim, where there were plenty of complaints about how little skill it takes to use. For a while, though, it was mostly confined to that mode, and you rarely saw it in Air Realistic.
But in recent times, it has become increasingly popular in Air Realistic. However, its use was limited by the fact that sacrificing a missile for defense often wasn’t worth it when you could simply notch and save that missile for later, especially since most planes didn’t have many missiles to spare. This started to change with the Su-30SM/SM2, whose 14-missile loadout (12 ARH missiles) made it viable to use one or two for self-defense while still having enough left for the rest of the match.
That was already a problem, but it was nothing compared to the current state of top tier with the F-15EX.
Now, you’re forced to defend right at the start of practically every match because of the sheer volume of missile spam. This happened before, but not on the scale we’re seeing now. The main problem is that trying to counter these initial waves by firing a missile of your own at the enemy aircraft almost always ends with them using MCM, giving them a substantial positional advantage for the rest of the match.
This isn’t limited to the opening stages, either. In a 1v1, it’s also very common for the enemy to simply shoot down your missile and put you at a disadvantage. With 16 missiles at their disposal, they can do this over and over again.
And this brings the question of MCM completely killing the 5th gen.
Right now, you can already counter jets with low missile counts fairly easily this way. Stealth fighters, whose missile capacity is heavily restricted by their internal weapons bays, would stand little chance in the current state of air battles. Even if the F-22 were added and you couldn’t detect it until it was within 30 km, it wouldn’t matter if you could simply shoot down all its missiles and leave it unable to fight back.
TLDR: MCM should have be gone a long time ago or at least heavily nerfed)
