https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/TbPZYqM9gXRB
3 months have passed and nothing on this matter.
The USSR does not have any competing CAS and never has (apart from the MiG-27K for a very short time).
You literally can’t see anything without this pod, it’s hard to spot your opponents, and other nations at lower BR have a thermal imaging pod.
have you ever played any sort of top tier USSR CAS? You can literally decimate their entire team with 2 mig27’s/mig29smt’s. Or even 1 KA50/52. The fact is, russia is the only nation with as competitive anti air as the pantsir, you can deny EVERYONE CAS with 0 issues. Not something you should be complaining about
Having a FLIR capabilities is definitely quite a big upside, but what the SMT has isn’t that bad either. At least with Kh-29TDs equipped, you get a color camera, and both the Kh-29 and Kab-500 on the SMT get good zoom levels. If it only had black and white, single fixed zoom cameras, I’d definitely agree it’s hard to spot things, but that’s not the case.
I’m not against the SMT getting FLIR pod however. But it’s probably not that bad without it either, because of the aforementioned reason. In foggy maps, yea, sucks, and in cloudy maps sucks even more. But FLIR doesn’t help much in those situations either anymore since they changed the effects of fog/clouds on FLIR.
sounds like you dont play russia
Sounds like you dont play the game off of easy mode (ussr top tier)
I’ve got over 300 ground games in the mig27k and over 100 ground games in the SMT. Not counting the different helis (Mi28, Ka’s). Maybe it’s just a literal skill issue on your part for not being able to use one of the best ground attackers and not also not being able to deny the enemy CAS with the best AA in game. Boohoo “i dont get thermals wah wah” cry me a river, russia has for the past 2 years or so been the best top tier ground nation
i play other nations too, its just you
Then you’d know that your entire point is wack, unless youre honestly that bad at the game that you can’t find targets without thermals and you need your TGP to do everything for you
its also missing kh25ml/29l/kab-500l.
but for that you require this pod.
It’s not a problem to find targets with the SMT, but only if the weather is clear. 7/10 games however are either in a dense fog or super low clouds and that is a huge disadvantage to every plane that has thermals, which i think at this point is everyone except russians.
Yeah, give it the thermals, I’m all for it.