MiG-29s in the big '26

Machinery of War Discussion Aircraft
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Salutations, gamers.

If you’re totally awesome and have great taste in planes, much like I, you maybe a fan of the MiG-29 series of aircraft.

And to those of you who do enjoy the MiG-29, such as I, you may have considered to yourself…

“What’s the point in playing these anymore?”

at 12.7 they’re awfully mid, with their only saving grace being the 27ER.

At 13.0, they’re overshadowed by the Su-27S/J-11.

At 13.3… well. you know.
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(Yes, these should go up, but this is about the game in it’s current state.)

And at 13.7, The MiG-29M seems severely outclassed.
Yes, Zhuk-M, RD-33K and 2 extra missiles on a lighter airframe than the 29SMT is nice…
But it gets molly whopped by basically everything else at the BR, aside from maybe the F-16C.

So, what are the main issues facing the MiG-29s?

Mainly, the FM. As you all know.
All the MiG-29s bleed speed at an ABSURDLY high rate, making it incredibly difficult to stay defensive for long.

Secondly, the Countermeasures, x60 normal caliber is subpar for most engagements. The 29SMT (And hopefully the 29M soon) have this solved by including more countermeasures, but at the moment all but the fattest Fulcrum are stuck with 60 normal cal.
Unfortunately, for most of the Fulcrums, this won’t be fixed.

The third issue, as most people should expect at this point, is compression.
The Fulcrums are outshined at their BR, but in even a slight down tier they tend to do extremely well.
This has been repeated a thousand times, but we NEED more BRs.

So uh, yeah.

Gaijin pls fix.

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but have you considered the mig29 looks cooler than the su27?

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True

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It ain’t easy being a fulcrum enjoyer in the big 26
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May I introduce:
MiG-29N in air arcade

Spoiler

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giphy-downsized

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Top Tier Air Arcade…

You terrify me.

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The fanmail bro, I gotta collect it.
And it’s just chill gamemode

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“Fanmail” (slurs)

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it’s funny

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what is gaijin cooking bro

Also this
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Oil fire.

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Absolute cinema. Gaijin managed to make severely overtiered and severely undertiered Flankers at the exact same battle rating

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MiG-29M going strong. Can’t wait to see the rest of the playerbase catching up. It will have 40% winrate at that point

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After trying to grind the Su-27s with the SMT with R-77s I would rather drop my nuts in a toaster than play either a Mig-29 or use R-77s ever again… its the entire reason I started grinding China… And I get half way through the J-10C and they nerf PL-12s down to AIM-9E levels…

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I’ve just recently started spading the SMT (haven’t unlocked R77 yet) and its quite decent imho. The R-77 and R-27R/ER works great with its radar that can look almost 90º to the side.

You don’t have as many missiles as a j-11a and the FM is generally worse, but the better avionics and more countermeasures make up for it.

Not saying it is better than the J-11A or the premium su-30s at 13.3 but it is still a good jet.

Can’t wait to unlock the MiG-29M. Only wish it got more countermeasures like the SMT

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It should, it was planned to have 120 and a bug report got accepted.

None of them will be large caliber, sadly.

I’d agree. I love the SMT, but it’s definitely sub par compared to other things at it’s br, the main drawback is definitely the lack of missiles and how thicc it is.

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That’s fair, but let me explain:
This was right at the start of Fox-3s with the high and fast BVR meta (I actually did fairly well in the SMT pre Fox-3s), so I was learning an entirely new mechanic, both offensive and defensive, in a plane that really didn’t suit the meta at the time and still adapting to the multipath height reduction.
It was not a good time. Flying a bus of an airframe that couldn’t climb due to BVR spam and with a missile limited to around a third of the range of the AIM-120, I don’t recall ever hitting at over ~6kms with an R-77 at the time, it was pretty suck, I’m sure I could do far better now, but it’s kinnda soiled the experience for me, if you know what I mean?

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Nice

I think it is only really surpassed by the J-11A and Su-30MK2, it isn’t an exclusive issue for the SMT but for all the other 13.3 too. It’s a byproduct of BR compression

It’s more of a visual thing to be honest, and you get to have more internal fuel if you need.

The Mig-29SMT is 550kg heavier than the MiG-29N, which is like, more 5% empty mass. Kinda like the diference between the F-16A block10 and the block15.

And the SMT has better avionics and more countermeasures so its still overall better than the Mig-29N at the same BR

By the way, the MiG-29M is actually slightly heavier than the SMT, but gets better engines.