Following the release of the last major update, the MCM spam has been outrageous. The F-15EX has been taken as a hard counter to the worst parts of gameplay, and nobody seems to have any interest in playing the game competitively. Whilst I don’t doubt this will fade out, it reflects a wider issue with the game itself.
I have a number of ways to resolve the MCM issue, all of which have some basis in realism. I have no interest in arguing on the merits of MCM, whether it’s “realistic” or whether specific airframes are capable of using IRIS-T missiles to do it.
1. Closure Rates
Simple fix, make MCM immensely unreliable once you have a closure rate on the munition that exceeds Mach 1.5. This would prevent SPAA from being incapable of intercepting munitions, whilst making the air to air factor still enjoyable. It would similarly end up punishing MCM usage as the only times you would be capable of intercepting said munitions would be when they are no longer a threat.
2. Fragmentation Patterns
This honestly may be in the game already, I’ve got no idea
At least when it comes to NATO missiles, their air to air missiles have a “wagon wheel” fragmentation pattern, rather than just a ball of fragmentation (which is what I believe is currently ingame). Introducing this pattern would hopefully mean that by the time the missiles activate, very little fragmentation is going backwards to strike the missiles, and they would instead end up just firing fragmentation past one another.
3. RNG
Just roll a dice lol
There’s probably more ways that MCM could be reduced or made more competitive, but these are the ones I thought of whilst writing this post, and I don’t really want to overcomplicate it more than it needs to be.
How should MCM be removed?
Closure Rates
Fragmentation Patterns
RNG
I don’t think we should remove air-to-air MCM
0voters
Thanks for engaging. I would ask that you share this post with friends in order to bring attention to the issue, as I hate to see the game descend into whoever has the best meta, and I’m sure many of you do too.
Or just globally make all ordinance unable to trigger on other ordinance. Helicopters versus SAMs have effectively the exact same problem on different platforms when you stop to think about it.
Thus I would add that as a fifth poll option, after which I’d vote for that.
I am referencing dozens of threads of people in years past complaining (usually about the Ka-50 but also sometimes others) where “Ka-50 has 10+ Vkhirs ready to fire while my SAM has 2-4! How do I not get pasted?!”
I will admit radar missiles are a somewhat different story, though only due to the idiocy of LDIRCM’s implementation and the helicopters not having a Doppler Return when hovering when their rotors should always have one.
I voted to not remove it purely for comedic purposes if/when 5th gen is added and they become useless because they can’t kill anything with more missiles than it
Precisely. I see what is fundamentally the exact same problem with different wrapping. People complain about the SU-30s and now F-15EX because it simply has more missiles than everyone else and can out-slugfest everyone else. I don’t need to play either to know how stupid MCM is.
Well I’ve been able to ignore most of the bad about MCM and helinimbalance by simply ignoring top tier. It’s not worth playing it if you literally have 0 fun.
Whichever launches sooner on the other, and/or has the faster-flying missile, wins.
A SAM with only 2 ready-to-fire missiles that are very fast can now easily swat down one helicopter per shot with zero ability for the helicopter to intercept it. That’s the benefit of such a change.
But the reverse is also true - if the SAM isn’t paying attention, then yes a helicopter could wreak untold havoc. That’s the point - enabling gameplay based around who surprises who with the superior weapon instead of who brute-forces via sheer numbers.
The issue is that many helis have fire and forget which lets them fire and hide Behind a hill. Spaa have the issue that ARH ones cannot really hit the heli in the first place, the iris-t still gets ldircmed for whatever reason and SACLOS ones become useless as soon as the heli fires upon you and hides. This cannot be fixed as simply as just removing munition on munition fusing.