As always I’m going to be discussing all the changes in Air Realistic.
I agree with almost all of them, so kudos! However, I think that once again, it is a little light on. There are far more vehicles than just these who would be able to be balanced with BR changes, many of which have been unbalanced for years.
The decompression is fantastic, but once again i’ll be greedy and suggest that the maximum BR in Air RB be moved even higher. I’m also hoping that this move to 14.3 isn’t being used as an excuse to add next-gen IR missiles without proper consideration. Onto the vehicles
The Rafale and the Eurofighters all obviously need to be moved up in BR. Excellent. The Su-30SM, while not being as strong in theory is incredibly pervasive due to the potency and number of its missiles and how low the skill floor is, so this is also a good change. I appreciate that the F/A-18s are not as effective and I’m happy that they are staying. The F-15E/I is incredibly strong in theory, but I concede that it is off-meta and I’m perfectly happy that it is staying down.
The Mirage 2000-5s going up in BR is also welcome. The flight model isn’t fantastic but these vehicles align themselves with the meta very well, and the MICAs are incredibly strong right now. I understand why this was the only 13.7 to be moved up while not being the best of the of the bunch.
The Su-34 is in the same boat as the Su-30SM. The flight model is very poor, and the plane isn’t necessarily the best at its tier, but the radar and weaponry make it very pervasive and the while the plane as a whole has effectiveness around the 13.3 level, the armament specifically isnt appropriate for that tier. This change is fine
The three F-16A Block 15s receiving AMRAAMs going to 13.3 is interesting. We already have a plane with this flight model and missiles that performs well at 13.7. However, I appreciate that the three vehicles moving up lack some of the systems of the F-16AM, and also don’t have as many countermeasures. Whether it deserves to be the same BR as the F-16D Barak II, with Derbys and a far inferior FM is a tough question, because the F-16D still has better avionics. Overall, I think that these vehicles will not be a massive issue at 13.3 since the AIM-120A/B is not the most difficult ARH missile to defeat, and the low CM count will make the skill floor quite high, but they might overperform at 13.3 especially since 13.3 is likely to become much more comfortable to play with the decompression to 14.3.
The Ayit is long overdue to be at 9.7. The weaponry it has is completely innaproprate when downtiered to 8.3/8.7. The A-4N flightmodel is not stellar, but it is nimble enough, and it has countermeasures to defend itself. Its yet another example of a vehicle whose missiles are inappopriate for its tier, but has resisted uptiers since the vehicle itself is limited. This change was absolutely necessary, but what is even more important is that the pressure that supersonics and high-G IR missiles put on subsonic, korean-war-era vehicles be alleviated by massively decompressing
the 8.7-9.7 region.
The Yak-28 is perhaps the worst change on this list. I fully appreciate the limitations this vehicle has. I understand that it lost its flares recently, and I know that it is not especially nimble and has very-very limited armament. However, the Yak-28 has exceptional energy generation, energy retention and top speed at altitude. If it wants to be, it is completely untouchable in downtiers. Once again, korean-war-era subsonics should not have to deal with this level of power. The Yak-28 will most likely struggle to kill the subsonics, and I suspect that it won’t be effective as a fighter even at 9.0, but this doesn’t mean that it is appropriate at this tier. This is once again a victim of the immense BR compression at this region. The Yak-28 should be able to face fewer missiles, but lowering its BR is absolutely not the right way of solving this issue. Either move the high-G missile platforms up in BR, or implement BR decompression for this region. I can’t begin tell you how popular the second of those two options would be…
The Sea Hawks with the AIM-9Bs going to 8.3 is a bit of a nothingburger. It was a fairly middle-of-the-road 8.0 vehicle, but it was nimble, with strong guns and the lowest BR missiles in the game to boot, so it had a low skill floor and undoubtedly people did well in it. I suspect it will be a bit sad at 8.3, but its not a travesty, and being able to shoot IR missiles at Me 262 A-1as was slightly laughable.
I’ll go on to suggest BR changes for vehicles in the proper manner, but ill just say that there are probably 50 vehicles i could think of off the top of my head that deserve a BR change.
