Do you know those times where even though you’ve got the target in a strong lock but the missile goes for a nearby friendly? That’s the missile’s seeker seeing something brighter than the target you’ve designated.
I think that the 16v16 matches are to blame. Sometimes conditions exist where a SARH missile will pursue a different aircraft than the one that you are locking with your fighter, and this can even lead to friendly fire at times. With how unrealistically dense the airspace is with targets, I think we’re just more likely to encounter situations where extra targets get caught in the beam and look more attractive to our missile seekers than our original targets. But those extra targets within the furball aren’t always going to stay within the beam for the full duration needed for the missile to strike them, so we’re stuck with situations where occasionally our missiles just go dumb and appear to veer off in odd directions for no discernible reason. The R-27’s have a datalink, which I think play a large role in keeping them wrangled onto the desired target instead being distracted by some stronger radar return in the furball.
tl;dr, we need smaller teams in air RB.
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ARB needs a rework as it’s more or less in the same state it was back in 2013, even if the rework only applies to fast movers.
Larger maps where using drops tanks and being mindful about AB usage, protecting or attacking objectives with actual rewards for doing so, multiple airfields to split up the teams so it doesn’t form a cluster as fast.
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That mostly sounds like Air RB EC, which I wholeheartedly support for bringing back. Scatter a bunch of airfields around, give multiple respawns so people start trickling around into fights after the initial engagements conclude, give big rewards for completing objectives and in turn give a reason to carry ground attack weapons, and finally top it off with a nice reward for winning so people care about the objectives more. Maybe throw in an anti-snowball mechanic like granting the losing team access to air spawns.
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ARB EC needed some work and the game wasn’t ready for it.
The work the Devs would need to do is minimal, considering the EC maps we play in ABR every now and then are pretty much perfect.
I love the big EC maps (when flying supersonic jets). They just need to scatter more airfields around them, give us respawns, and make the objectives things people care about instead of just being noise in the background that everyone ignores.
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I don’t think we need respawns, unless Gaijin was keen on banking more juicy money on people crewing more vehicles for it.
Problem with the flying protection objectives is that a singular Tomcat can ripple fire off 6 Phoenixes from 80ks away and there’s nothing the enemy team can do to counter it until they add in EW planes (I’d take out a mortgage to play a growler)
Give attackers something to do other than be fodder for the fighters who bank most of the SL and RP rewards anyway. For that to be good though the matchmaker would need to give teams the right compositions as to avoid attacker stacked teams facing fighters like how it is with the JU-88.
This would bloat out wait times which Gaijin seems to hate more than cancer.
Well, that was a cook of all time.
Hoenstly though I don’t think there’s anything war thunder can do for attackers in the current meta simply because the maps are just too small. In addition, the reason most people play war thunder is for Air Quake style team deathmatch, and 16v16s do at least shorten the time between each match.
Also, honestly, I don’t think R-27ERs are that bad. The sensor suites that go along with them generally aren’t the best, so they’re easy enough to jam if you’re not close.
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also, in my experience, phoenixes usually do “a funny” where they just go for whatever has the highest closure… most often they just hit the same target :/
I’ll go test it in RBEC Custom Battles today.
Usually when those soviet planes launch a missile there will be something with a 1000m/s closure rate that i could engage with phoenix, but if i have the hostile fighter selected at 700m/s, the phoenix has been reliably working against them. Yet once i tried to help a friendly by killing the chasing jet with a phoenix and the phoenix killed the friendly instead…
he was probably heading towards you faster or a more obvious target for the seeker because he was closer, I have had no such issues
Reason why the 27ER are so oppressive is because they give a certain advantage over everything else: loft and data-link. You break lock? No problem. Find another target.
The AIM7M on the F-16 is really unable to compete. You break lock, and it’s gone. The sole advantage is that the F-16’s radar seems to hold lock better than the F-15’s, which is really in a difficult state right now.
There’s a reason why unless you’re in a MiG-29/Su-27/J-11, you don’t even try to compete with long range missile-slinging.
The tables are reversed once the Su-27 is out of missiles, and it loses energy like a bus versus the F-16… but since you’re on the US+friends team vs a solid Chinese/Russian one, the likelihood that the opposing party will run out of missiles for the tables to turn is slim.
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Don’t understate the enormous advantage in missile speed and energy R-27ER has, it makes the difference between a missile that can be notched or run out of energy or a missile that is impossible to defeat at a certain range.
R-27ER and ET hit their maneuvering speed instantly, and their motor burns for only a second or two. Sparrows, Super 530D and all the others require at least 1/2 the motor to burn before they can pull their full G load.
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me when people think the plane that can carry 6 good IR missiles is better than the plane that can carry 6 good IR missiles and 4 best radar missiles
my favourite plane is the f14 so I kinda got fucked hard by the radar missile imbalance
Cute of you to ignore the countermeasure count, the flight model, IRCCM mechanism, and the nature of the close range low altitude furball fox-2 meta that indeed make the former the better plane.
The flanker is great and honestly 12.7 material IMO, but the Grippen blatantly has the advantage given the nature of the air RB meta.
oh no the poor USSR players don’t have the best plane in the game for every scenario?
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downvoted
in real life the r27er only managed to kill a plane that was landing. Of all the thousands of launches, only eight struck a hit and only one killed the target.
wrong, the r27er has a ten seconds first stage engine and a three seconds second stage; it not only burns longer, but also has insane thrust. R530D and aim7f’s are anemic; you launch them 20km away and they will end up hitting within the same range an aim7e2 would close in from 10km away launch point.
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