I did get TKed by someone with an SARH the other day and had no warning. They definetly need to tweak it. I like the fact that you dont get spammed with a million search or track pings. But for both hard locks and ARH missiles, you really really need to get RWR warnings
I have mixed feelings about it.
I don’t mind some compromises to realism for the sake of gameplay - especially because War Thunder already does that in spades. (Single button start, simplified flight models, etc). Those who are calling for the utmost in realism should probably redirect their attention to flight models, electronic features being modelled or implemented incorrectly, or in the case of ECM, not at all.
War Thunder has always and for me, will always be, a flight sim that’s approachable without turning into a lifestyle a la DCS, and unless Gaijin makes truly massive expansions to the dev team, should probably stay that way. It’s far better, imo, to make War Thunder excellent in its own lane rather than turn it into a low-fidelity version of something else entirely.
With all the mixed-aircraft teams, I personally enjoy the new change not cluttering up my RWR. It lets me maintain good, positive situational awareness. If we had perfect fidelity RWR models, that might be a different story.
That said, we absolutely need warnings for incoming friendly missiles. I think the best of both worlds would be an override when locked or tracked by a friendly, and when a friendly missile is headed to you. They could also include a friendly indicator when this occurs, and we’d all benefit from the addition of a “Buddy Spike” quick-chat option. The easiest way to implement that may be to add the radio bank for targeting friendlies when you buddy-spike, but that still won’t stop people who get into jet matches not even knowing what IFF is.
RWR behavior is FAR from what ruins top-tier for me. The cramped maps, lack of any ECM, and being forced to play in the dirt are all much more significant issues than deriding Gaijin for making a gameplay change that’s more positive than not.
RWR in the real life are actually able to separate friendly and enemy emitters by their type.
For example if an emtter is identified on the scope of your AN/ALR-65-69 as a F-16 radar IRL it means that this is friendly aircraft, because both of you on the NATO side. In the game both teams may have F-16 so “IFF” mechanics is here to deal with the problem, which doesn’t exist IRL. Of coutse it is not a true IFF, it is just a game simplification.
Though would be nice if it didnt filter everything.
Too many times i’ve been locked on and even fired at by a team mate with a SARH or ARH missile and I had no idea I had even been fired at because IFF filtering just removed it entirely.
So perhaps having hard locks, especially when a missile launch is detected, come through, regardless of friend or foe. Would be a good change