I want to talk about the MiG-19.
The 3 variants, the Soviet MiG-19PT, the German MiG-19S, and the Chinese J-6A are placed at the BR rating of 9.3. The Soviet and the Chinese offer a 10G heat seeker missile, and the German offers an extra gun, with improved maneuverability.
When you are top in the lobby, you are a formidable aircraft. These MiGs offer great speed with maneuverability, like any other MiGs. Though the 30mms lacks quantity and are slow at times, the maneuverability makes up for it. However, as any MiG-19 players know, this isn’t the case for most games.
The MiG-19 usually gets placed in 9.7-10.3 lobbies, where 20G, all aspect, radar, even 30G all aspect missiles(Yes I’m looking at you R-60MK and AIM-9Ls) are common. With the MiG-19s lacking any form of countermeasures, your fate is basically sealed when any missile is launched towards you. Granted you can dodge some of the missiles, but most of them will hit you regardless.
The reason is quite simple: BR Compression.
It’s pretty much impossible to compress 70/80 years worth of aviation into 13 levels of battle ratings.
Doing very simple math(80 years/13 battle ratings), every battle rating represents 6 years of advancements. Though this may not seem like much, it is a difference of an entire missile generation or two(AIM-9B: 1958, AIM-9C: 1963, AIM-9D: 1965). I’m aware this example is kind of excessive, but I think everyone can agree that BR compression is a thing.
I’m aware that this probably won’t get fixed, but I just wanted to know how others feel; Going back to the MiG-19s, I’m aware that they can’t lower the BR any more than that. On the other side, they can’t raise it, or it will be unplayable.
How much better is the Mig 19S over the Mig 19PT? The stat card for the 19S says it has a turn time of 24 seconds, but the stat card for the 19PT says it has a turn time of 32 seconds. Does the 19S turn that much better than the PT or is the stat card wrong?
I would say it’s not the BR compression but rather the change of the “meta” and the general way ARB’s gameplay has changed the past couple of years.
The teams being 16v16 and the maps getting smaller and smaller, especially now that they removed EC from the lower BRs, most games just boil down to getting into one or two huge furballs, lobbing missiles if you have any and eventually either get killed by one of the 10 enemies in the furball or survive and win the match in 2 minutes. The MiG-19, a plane that excels in a 1v1 duel will naturally have a hard time finding a place in such an environment. What was once considered the best dogfighter in the game now has to be played like an F-104 - BnZing and trying to stay above Mach 0.8 at all times.
All-aspect missiles aren’t that much of an issue for the MiG-19 in a vacuum. You can outrun them, shoot them with an R-3 in a head on or use a rocket pod as flares. The problem arises when there are at least 6 people with 2 missiles each that will all zero in on you as soon as they see you, because they know you don’t have flares. The tiny maps only amplify this issue.
The maps are not tiny. Actually they’ve gotten larger since the introduction of all aspect missiles.
We all know where the problem started - the missile slinging premiums. The playerbase needs to unify on this issue. You know what Gaijin cares about most - the bottom line.
Any action that is not based on this reality is doomed to fail.