Between not being able to launch and being able to launch with some probability of success I would always take the latter.
While F-2 often can get the nose around other aircraft can launch without having to get the nose around or without having to get the nose around as far. Resulting in less energy being lost while giving you a chance to end the fight early and without using other ammunition abd without losing speed and possibly position in regard to others entirely.
Perhaps my wording is off but you are seeing what I am trying to say aren’t you?
No because vertical ACM mode does the same thing in a dogfight and any energy lost needing to roll is minor. In fact you won’t even have to worry about it as you’ll naturally lock them up try to turn fight. In contrast, trying to get a radar lock with HMD is annoying. Even in the F-15J(M), I use vertical ACM over HMD. IR lock doesn’t even matter as you’re missile will never pull in these slow speed turn fights (unless you’re using R-73s)
It might be a learning curve but it’s less to worry about. Now maybe a Rafale can benefit from HMD as they can use MICAs, but we’re talking F-2 and AAM-3 (though AAM-4 might pull lead if it tracks but the current proxy bug is annoying)
Isn’t the bug fixxed for the most part?
I was only struggling with cannons recently.
Rafale is so good that if the dogfight is secluded you should use guns instead of MICA depending on attitude and speed because the enemy might accidentally notch while maneuvering.
this isnt really viable, the only planes that can sortof do this are r73 carriers as its the only missile that is actually effective for these types of shots and even then its fairly easy to counter. even the mica is not really capable of this and the aam3/4 are really not amazing up close. your best bet is to just play like normal and hope the other guy makes a mistake.
sincerely doubt that unless its range. the r73 irl was 60gs, not sure about aam-3 but I’m pretty sure it would still pull less than r73 at almost every speed even if it had dual plane.
It works on the first turn but afterwards yea, too slow for the missile to do anything. This also brings the risk of trading ARH missiles if not on the deck.
Also question since you were in a few aircraft in the video I posted earlier, does the F-2 really lose on the deck rate fights to EFT? Rafale I can maybe see, but when testing on the latest dev, it felt like the EFT always lost the rate fight at low speeds. I haven’t gotten to test on live yet. Most of the merges end up as the situation I just described where either we trade or they try to defend and eat the missile
Maybe, the comparison is more between AAM-3 with dual plane implemented the same way Magic 2 got dual plane compared to current R-73.
It’s not really a full IRL comparison any more than it is just trying to get an IRL feature added to the current missile in game the same way it’s represented on another, even if that isn’t necessarily even how it would work in reality.
I mean, we have secondary sources claiming it to have a maximum off-boresight 3x the 9Ls, which would put it around 60 degrees, which would put it above the R-73’s 45. Now sure the R-73 in game can do more then that, but people would be well overriding the missile’s proper engagement zone to do so.
I did test out the AAM-3 with BTT modeled, and it did compete with/beat the R-73 in game past a few hundred meters. (Which I should say as before, is far too close for either missile’s minimum engagement range IRL). Although yeah in really up close shots nothing competes with TVC.
Spoiler
Also, besides BTT, i’m currently looking into a CoM issue which would make the AAM-3 turn even harder then this. As currently in game the AAM-3 has similar stability characteristics to other IRs, when it’s CoM should be behind it’s CoL, which would cause it to turn much, much sharper. (Although given how WT models guidance, this wouldn’t be possible outside of a custom mission due to instability issues with guidance updates).
While you are forced to launch at ±45 degrees, the missile can properly engage onto enemies that are ±75 degrees which is higher than the 60 of the aam-3
Also just adding an example here to what I have been discussing at the bottom (ignore my flying skills, I suck lol):
The F-15 part is irrelevant, but I wanted to point out how the vertical HMD is useful and how you don’t really feel the loss of a HMD.
I also wanted to showcase what I meant about the 1 circle scenario (even though in this clip I was late and only because it was an F-16 was I able to match his turn and it being against an AIM-120 pull hard to kinematically evade). However, it shows how you could potentially trade depending on how much energy both aircraft burn to get the first shot.
Also you can see that I opted to use the AAM-4 once the F-16 was out of multipath height instead of AAM-3 but I did queue up the AAM-3 just in case the AAM-4 did not track or did no damage (missile bug that hopefully should be fixed by now)
