Its more about being able to catch someone. either you can or can’t
It was assumed earlier that both of them start at an altitude in head on
Sure the tomcat can go low, so can the mirage.
This is wrong. You would be out of energy and wether you win or lost would be based on your skill to hit that one shot. It wont always beat everything. However you have one opportunity to kill someone.
Instantenous turn doesn’t mean that you keep the speed when you’re turning, its the opposite. It’s what makes the mirage a 1 circle fighter and what makes it lose in a 2 circle fight.
And that is exactly where you can get your guaranteed kills from because youre faster. just get behind someone, they can’t run away. That is a very powerful feature compared to f-14a being trash even from behind.
F-14A uses aim-9H
Gotta get slow to use the agility of tomcat which presents a risk. You are more dependant on killing people in dogfights because you cant just get guaranteed kills with aim-9h’s
The thing is that while everyone in combat is not flying the exact top speed, mirage can accelerate into it if it needs to, additionally mirage probably on average flies way faster than other aircraft even while maneuvering. Especially compared to f-14 at low altitudes.
Does it matter if you can engage enemies from far if you have a 17g missile that is easy to dodge? The kills that you receive are not coming from raw power. They simply come because idiots are too unaware to dodge an aim-54.
That is why f-14a fits 11.7. it can’t force kills with any of its missiles, even the aim-54 is a noob check and evadable
10.7 planes can evade those missiles.
10.7 planes can’t evade mirages missiles, that is not anyhow balanced. even in uptier you should be able to do something.
Since the f-14’s missiles are like aim-9b’s, they require your target to fly in a straight line and not maneuver, they are not that dangerous in an offensive way.
Mirage’s missiles are rather dangerous and even with extreme maneuvering you may get hit.
Mirage can contest 12.0’s and mirage is better than f-14. mirage is a 12.0, there are no other force kill missile platforms of 11.7.
Your missile is not good because you killed a straight flying enemy. Your enemy is just stupid. F-14 wouldn’t be competetive at 12.0 because most people around there aren’t stupid.
In the same sense, one could claim a possibility of killing with amount of gun rouds. You rarely hit your gun rouds but we could argue that if you hit all 250 gun rounds to get a kill then thats quite strong…
F-14A is not effective due to strength. It’s effective because your enemies are stupid. If your enemies are smart, they can counter the f-14A
Simple as that. f-14 isn’t the threat that a mirage 2000 is. F-14 isn’t dangerous, its a noob check.
I bet aardvark is good in air to air because it can carry a large amount of missiles that can hit targets that are ignorant…
F-14 is not competetive in an uptier because it is weaker.
mirage is very competetive because it is stronger
significantly stronger = should have higher battle rating.