Why do the rapier missiles do close to no damage, even after a ‘buff’
I hate to say ‘Gaijin Hates Britain’ but this really seems like they do. Please, please, please take into consideration that the warhead was also a fragmentation, therefore it should fragment more and do more damage.
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Yeah… good question… 3-4 missiles per target is the average for me too
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It just a sad vehicle than even 9.0 also too high for it
i disagree actually, its a decently fast missile with good maneuverability
damage is meh… but usually the first hit leaves the target crippled
Consider it is just a 9.7 SPAA, with any buff will let it quickly to 10.0 or 10.3( except the damage, the missile performance is better than Roland…)
That’s the point… Speed and maneuverability is not important if it can’t make any damages
From what I remember, it’s just a case of Gaijin continuing to ignore fragmentation as an aspect of shell/missile design. The Rapier’s missile shares around the same explosive mass as the 57mm HEVT shells from the Begliet, and do about the same amount of damage in protection analysis. Apparently the amount of fragmentation created by a 133mm missile is not substantially larger or more damaging than the fragmentation of a 57mm shell with the same explosive mass.
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Note that the Roland is a heavier missile, with a warhead that’s 10x heavier than that of the Rapier.
I actually play the Rapier quite often, and do quite well with it. It has its shortcomings, the low warhead yield certainly being one of it, but it’s doing its job ok’ish.
Certainly worlds better than the Starstreak… = /
I would expect the similar explosive mass of the 57mm vs the Rapier being the important part here. Diameter is of less importance.
Apache with Starstreaks is still the best british AA
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Yeah I don’t know why same ammo sometimes feels so completely different depending on platform.
Look at the 76mm HE-VT MOM of the OTOMATIC, which is a reliable, powerful killer, where with the same ammo on ships you’re lucky to even hit something, forget about damaging and killing an aircraft…
So where does the rest of the material that makes up the 133mm missile warhead go? Does it simply vanish into the ether?
Why would the Britsh MoD decide on a missile that’s 133mm in diameter when a mere 57mm diameter weapon would be just as lethal but substantially cheaper to produce?
Isn’t it more likely that they made the same decision they made during WW2 with the Hispano, and decided to sacrifice bursting charge to focus more on the fragmentation effect that the shell/missile has? Something that’s dramatically underrepresented in Gaijin’s damage modeling?
You gotta ask them, but they tend to have made some strange descisions when it comes to ammo quite often, I find. ;-)
Remember also that the original Rapier was a “hittile”, not a missile, and actually lacked a proximity fuse, and the Rapier hat to really hit the target, so a larger warhead was deemed unnecessary. Or as it’s written in Wikipedia:
As development continued, it became increasingly clear that the Rapier was far more a formidable weapon than initially expected. The optical tracking system was so accurate that the missile almost always hit the target aircraft, so despite its small warhead and lack of a proximity fuze it almost guaranteed a kill. BAC joked that the system was a “hit-ile”, as opposed to a “miss-ile”.
And on the proximity fuse:
In 1988 tests started on an improved warhead using a proximity fuze, in order to give Rapier capability against smaller targets that would be difficult to hit directly, notably high-speed remotely piloted vehicles. Serial production of Mk. 1E began in 1989.
In 1992 the Army signed a contract to upgrade all Rapier systems to an enhanced version. A Mark 2 missile variant commenced development in 1986 culminating in a complete re-design which entered service in the mid-1990s. Along with a further upgrade of the proximity fuze, the new missile incorporated (then) state-of-art technologies including:
Von Karman supersonic aerodynamic profile; composite propellant, with a two-stage shaped burn and laminated body solid rocket motor; ceramic substrate surface mount PCBs; completely new electronic systems and software; both analogue and digital proprietary ASICs; highly ECM resistant front end and command link with redundant encoding; fully Digital Autopilot incorporating Kalman state filtering; inertial navigation comprising ring-laser roll and rate gyroscope; Kapton ribbon cabling.
Or TL;DR: Can’t really blame Gaijin for descisions of the british MoD and BAC…
I agree that the lower warhead size makes sense for a non-proxy missile, but it was also apparently a non-issue when it came to upgrading it to a proxy fuse missile. I find it hard to believe the British MoD was content with a missile that required multiple hits per target to ensure a kill (which is how it is presented in game), rather than upping the warhead amount (Which would have been relatively trivial to do compared to shoving a proxy fuse into the missile).
Gaijin is also notoriosly lax when it comes to modeling fragmentation as a result of HE warheads. I would again point to the fact that the 133mm Rapier produces similar amounts of fragmentation to 57mm HEVT. All that material around the warhead has to go somewhere, except in War Thunder apparently.
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It isnt, at 9.0 is arguably too low, in no way shape or form this is comparable to gun spaag, or worse than the chaparral,
The fact its at 9.7 and barley takes off one of the flaps off of a MIG really suprises me.
Starstreak and Repier are like Heli killers; they are good at killing helis. Rapier could easily kill those low BR helis, even without being shot down immediately. I don’t know how to use those helis which lower than 10.0 against it, it is too quick that I don’t have anytime to avoid that
I disagree there.
yes Starstreaks are awesome vs helis
But Ive had more than a fair share of helis tank 4+ Rapiers. I think my record was 7 missiles to bring down 1 heli. Usually I hit them with 1 or 2 before they duck behind cover>
Hm, so far I seem to encounter mostly fast movers, and do quite ok against them with the Rapier.
Yes, sometimes you need 2 or more missiles for a kill, but one can just as well one-shot a Warthog with the Rapier.
What I especially like about the Rapier is it’s speed and agility, much faster than for example the Roland 3, which then in turn has way better damage output thanks to the 10x heavier warhead.
Then there’s the Rapier advantage of having 8 missiles at the ready, while Roland only has 2 missiles ready between reloads, but then is superior to the Rapier insofar as it has a total of 10 missiles available.