It is what it is. Atleast the ceiling has been practically reached for Russian 4th gen aviation outside of missiles, and that the Su-35S can’t have more missiles or a better radar than the already existing Su-30SM. Flight model allegedly should be very close as well. The Su-35S platform should although add MAWS.
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As much as I believe AIM-120s should be fixed, I already made my peace on the apparent fact that Gaijin simply believes they’re glorified sticks with plastic fins.
Following that conclusion, they have condemned the AIM-120 series to mediocrity, and involuntarily dragging a lot of missiles to underperformance to try to even things out. And yes, this includes the MICA among other blufor ordnance like the Derby and the placeholder AAM-4s.
And it’s obviously nothing personal with french players like at all (You can check my profile out, i’ve tested and played my Rafales among Leclercs which I already made a thread complaining about its unfair and overkill model) but I believe there’s no reason for the MICAs to receive a substantial buff on its range while its still a very good missile for short-medium ranges, with even a plausible BVR potential when launched from a platform above M1.6+.
The Rafale airframe is excellent to react and notch, its acceleration is godly and, with a few clicks, you can chain up a good amount of close quarter kills unreasonably easily compared to other vehicles on the same situation with even missiles like the AIM-120A or the R-77-1.
Time to slide an uncomfortable truth: Gaijin doesn’t want a proper peer to the R-77-1. I hope everyone learns to eventually make its own peace with that.
You're telling me that was actually a thing—
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They should learn to make their peace with slamming gaijin until they reverse their stance on updating other missiles to R-77-1 level.
Top BR is still horrible and 95% of the stuff there is basically unplayable from bad modeling, selective realism or stupid unnecessary buffs (Su-30SM2 lmao) and if gaijin wants to keep pushing top tier as the ultimate level they can’t just artificially elevate one side over all others
They will always find a way to place Russia on top, at least for conventional circumstances. BVVD cried on the BUK being the worst SPAA (it clearly isn’t) and so a vehicle literally fielded LAST YEAR was added to “compensate”.
They model the LMUR flight path correctly while most of other AGMs don’t have a modelled flight path, they elaborate extra variants of an already sketchy missile such as the Kh-38. They added the R-27ER when they realized the AIM-7M booster was giving the missile a game-dictating status, and turned a problem into one of the most egregious imbalances between SARH peers in WTs air record.
Do I need to continue? R-77-1s are the benchmark missile, they balance everything around it. And before it, it was the R-77 (Yes, even when the MICA and the Rafale dominated for three uncontested months before the Su-30SM arrived, and even after it, the MICAs still dominated, albeit with some competition from Russia and some of the EFs, and the F-15E before them).
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It took then over 2 years to add a Russian top tier aircraft that was meta defining. And arguably the Rafale is still the best in a lot of situations that aren’t LARPing as the Iron Dome.
While the Su-30SM was not meta defining (Rafale obvs being the meta), it was certainly a solid contender with a strong kit, AESA (while most of nations still had mechs) and a decent (not excellent, nor amazing) flight model to make use of its kit.
The Su-30SM2 was just the logical next step on an update where the AESAphoons had to arrive.
Yet that doesn’t rule out there’s an increasing amount of evidence that Gaijin is pivoting to balance the game around Russia to some relevant degree.
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mica is still best missile.
having a slightly smaller fov means you have to waste more chaff when defeating it.
For mica I usually need to use like 5-7 chaff while for r-77-1 I have to use around 2-3 chaff
plus mica can be fired more off bore than r77-1, but that only matters for dogfights and only like sub 3-4 km is when difference is noticable or at super low speed
Yep, back in the day the Lorraine 40T cost 24K SL to repair (a non premium player kill would net about 2K SL to the player).
(Not) fun times
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Good news, you guys have been saying that the worser missiles should get buffed first and it now has come in the form of AIM-120C and AIM-120D being buffed in terms of turning performance. Will you support MICA buffs or will you change the goalpost and make a new requirement before MICA can get buffed?
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I have already agreed with buffing Mica in another post in the same topic
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What’s it gonna do? be the only 15.0 aircraft ingame?
Okay now show HOBS comparison against anything else.
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To be fair, C-5 and D still pull worse than A and B, as you can see in the graphic you attached.
A MICA could still fly in circles around them xD
I still think MICAs should get their range fixed, just as much as 120s should have their agility improved.
Not necessarily, notice how the C-5/D pull more initially until A/B takes it over towards the later turn. This means the C-5 now is effectively overall better than the A since it has similar HOBS capability as A while still retaining the bvr advantage.
Are you realistically expecting the AIM-120 to perform better than any other top tier ARHs in terms of HOBS? Mica has tvc, r-77-1 has grid fins and likely missing some benefits from r-77’s underperformance, PL-12 pulls more. So what is remaining?
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Nice catch, thank you! This is great news.
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Aim-120 went from being the worst HOBS missile to being the worst HOBS missile by smaller margins.
So we need to make the MICA have the best HOBS performance in the game and also the longest range and also the fastest time to target? Why?
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Oh, holy Jesus. This pic is more… enlightening xD.
Disappointment remains, then. Still a Boeing 747 next to all other missiles, specially MICA.
The buff is quite marginal even within non-TVC standards, but sure, buff the MICA marginally.
It won’t change anything, though.
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It wouldn’t. It would reduce the margin in range between it and its competitors like the recent buff to AIM-120s did for hobs, but it wouldn’t make it longer ranged than any of these missiles: R-77-1, PL-12, PL-12A, AIM-120A/C/D.
Currently missiles like Derby and R-77 outrange MICA but neither of them compete in the top battle-rating like MICA is.
Fixing the MICA would have it outranging the Derby and R-77 but still would come up lower than the actual top br competitors that it faces (R-77-1, PL-12, PL-12A, and AIM-120 series).
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