Just wondering because you said the change was historical, my assumption is this was based on the edge case/90° target launches with the incorrect 0.5s delay, hence they reduced the AoA too much, though I’m not sure.
I recall reading somewhere that the fin AoA peaked around 26 degrees (maybe 28?) but regardless, further is not beneficial to the design in any practical standpoint. The lifting body design requires AoA is managed carefully to avoid instability. True missile AoA is probably kept under 20 degrees at all times.
The lifting body effects aren’t modelling in game are they?
Most interesting bit about the loft code changes is that they didn’t seem to have touched the loftTargetOmegaMax, which as far as my testing has gone, is the most significant value for performance gains from loft (though all are important). I wonder why they chose to modify them in these ways. Granted the testing i did regarding lofting was for the AIM-54’s so its unclear if the general observations I’ve come to regarding the effects of loft code have the same impact on the medium range fox 3’s. I would expect them too though.
If I was to guesstimate the effects of the loft change (visually atleast), they likely look something like this:
Red being old loft and Green being new loft.
New loft likely climbs faster, but quits the loft sooner (due to unchanged omegaMax + lower targetElevation) and follows a generally more direct trajectory to the target is my guess, which should be an improvement over the previous loft code, but likely leaves quite a bit of gains on the table as the missile actually spends very little time at higher alts where the air is thinner.
I don’t recall, probably not…
The R-27EA in the last two pictures is actually the R-27ER using the R77 LOFT trajectory.Looks a bit too strong.
From the test, they weakened the kinetic advantage of AIM-120A. Although AIM-120A performs better than before at medium and long range, some other missiles have received more buff.C-5 no changes.
Derby gets the biggest buff, followed by R-77. R-77-1 looks pretty good right now.There are no particularly bad ARH missiles at the moment.
PL-12 is mediocre, and the test results are not as good as expected from the datamine. The drag of the MICA is lower than before, but its loft trajectory is the same as before, so it is still poor at long distance.
At closer ranges, all of these missiles are similar.
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Off-boresight launch.
New AIM-120 has a significantly limited available AOA, and the available overload may be reduced by 20%. The maneuverability of the R-77 has been greatly improved.
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How do you feel about these graphs?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Warthunder/comments/1e6z9pc/a_change_in_rocket_dynamics_as_well_as_a/
Good work. If I understand correctly,his test is to launch the missile at a distance of 60km and record the time and speed of the missile at different travelled distances. My test method is to change the launch distance of the missile and record the hit time and the terminal speed.
Due to different test methods, and the loft work differently at different distances, so there will be some differences in the results, but it is not a big problem.
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Got it, thanks for the insight.
Man, these graphs really go to show just how horrible the AIM-54C is.
The current performance of phoenix may be due to the fact that the BR of F14A/B is 12.3/12.7…
Improving the loft trajectory can greatly improve the missile’s performance, but it may be too powerful for novice players.
Im not so worried about the AIM-54A tbh, afaik it might even be overperforming to some degree, my issue is with the F-14B and eventual F-14D. The AIM-54C has a completely new and much more advanced guidance section, specifically stated to allow it to follow more complex and optimized flight trajectories, one reason for which was to increase pK% vs highly maneuverable fighter sized targets iirc, which would imply requiring more speed at pitbull. There’s no good reason why the 54C retains the guidance code from the 54A in-game imo, as it literally makes it outright inferior as a missile in-game.
With a better guidance code, such as some of the ones I’ve made and tested, the 54C would be more comparable to the R-27E in impact velocity at range, which I think would be more than fair. I wouldn’t mind seeing the F-14B bumped up in BR a bit if it got an improved guidance code along with other 54C fixes and 9M’s to help it compete with the higher BR planes if it went up.
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how is that verifiable? no radar changes have occurred for it in the files.
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The maneuvering nerf really cut the balls off the 120A, while it may go farther, it cant hit much besides a head on target at those ranges.
I think they may have overdone it. A week ago, AIM-120A (35G) was more maneuverable than R-77 (50G), which was obviously not normal. Now AAM-4 (32G) is more maneuverable than the AIM-120A (35G), which is also a bit strange.
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Shame its almost impossible to bug report as well. It “hits 35g” even if for only a second at peak speed.
That and the community has wholly committed to “AMRAAM bad/OP” so absolutely no traction to be had there.
The finAOA and G-load is gaijin’s balance trick
When some players in forum cry loudly Gaijin would use it.
For example
After the manpad debate last year
9M39 10G 4.185
HN-6 12G 4.5
stinger 13G 4.185
Mistral 16G 3.6
9M37 20G 11.25
Apparently some premium CAS players cry so loud that gaijin made unreasonable decisions to nerf the mistral.
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Don’t forget that they increased AIM-120A’s guidance delay from 0.3 to 0.5 seconds, so the other missiles start maneuvering much sooner at Mach 0.3, while MICA starts maneuvering at Mach 0.15. Guidance delay is a big part of these missile’s maneuverability at close range.
@dark_claw I got a request to make
Could you do a no-loft analysis of all the medium BVR ARHs like you did for the Fakour/Phoenix?