Absolutely agree, but this should be for Air RB as well in my opinion. Air RB has, for a while, been plagued with this issue as well. To the point that it makes it severely unfun. If Warthunder wants to keep this in for people who just want to merge and spam IRCCM missiles then that’s fine. But it should be for air ARCADE. Neither mode that strives for realism at ANY level should be this severely affected by multipathing.
18 Likes
Yap and there’s nasty trick like flying a mig23 close to the ground, wait for the missile to ditch into the soil, before pulling up and fires R24R. This thing works against anything, even against R27ER, anyone trying to kill you will just die because you have a short range yet fastest missile, you just have to raise the nose on 6km mark and no one can’t beat you on that, it’s just brainless play but it works every single time.
7 Likes
agreed. if Multipathing could be outright removed from missiles that dont suffer from it (Aim-7M, R-27ER, Mantra 530D, fox-3s except the Aim-54A and C) would be even better.
15 Likes
Yes, can we please make this happen!
7 Likes
The exaggerated multipathing effect has allowed players who do not wanna put the effort in the game to still have a chance, ruining the experience of pilots that wanna get immersion from the game and get rewarded for employing good tactics, groundhuggers must be stopped, and I’m tired of allowing them to get away just by flying straight
24 Likes
This change needs to happen. It is long overdue, and has plagued top tier air combat for far too long now. There’s is nothing more satisfying than successful BVR engagements, but it just rarely happens in this META. Multipathing is destructive to gameplay. Let’s get it gone.
20 Likes
Multipathing isn’t real, and there are studies confirming this such as this one:
Multipathing does exist on a theoretical level, but it doesn’t affect the accuracy of a missile enough for it to miss the target. People who defend multipathing are compensating for their lack of skill and knowledge, it’s the same people who can’t understand what notching and cranking is because their ‘CPU’ is slow. Multipathing creates a meta which is absolutely ridiculous and makes top tier gameplay similar to a circus full of clowns. Get rid of this garbage mechanic in both RB and SB and make top tier great again!
32 Likes
This same change is needed in RB as well. The current environment should be limited to arcades only.
11 Likes
Reducing multipathing for Fox-3 missiles can lead to much more dynamic gameplay between teams in Air Realistic Battles AND Simulator Battles where not just the team with the most Gripens and F16s will win because they have an invincibility blanket from radar guided missiles.
Reducing the multipathing would give jets like the new Tornado and Phantom a better place in Top Tier Air Battles and act as support aircraft instead of being pushed by superior dogfighters abusing the exaggerated multipathing effect and inevitably winning with no difficulty. This becomes repetitive for players and increases burnout as the outcome of matches are more than predictable, they are inevitable.
The addition of Fox-3 missiles are almost pointless as they do not provide their main purpose. Stand off capabilities. With the current level of multipathing, modern aircraft do not have stand off capability leaving IR guided missiles the most useful tool in the inventory of any jet at the moment, encouraging the exhausting furball gameplay. Reducing multipathing will open up many gameplay styles and put the new heavily anticipated Fox-3 missiles up to their full potential.
There are still 3 very effective methods to avoid Fox-3 missiles: notching, chaffing, and flying away from the missile. With what the players propose, multipathing will still be a possible option but more difficult to pull off and encourage players to learn modern defensive maneuvers.
26 Likes
There are a lot of games out there with their unique mechanics and abilities that make every round different than the last which gives you a fun experience that leaves you learning something new about the game you didn’t know before. War Thunder is NOT one of them.
Every single Air Realistic match is EXACTLY the same and the game has such a low skill ceiling that all you need to know about playing it is the key binds, and basic flight principles. With no multipathing, every team can hug the ground, go straight towards the center, sling their missiles, and die with 1 or 2 kills under their belt which can be used to unlock the next better missile or vehicle with even better missiles.
There’s no “strategy” to playing Air Realistic and simulator mode is soon (if not already) going to be the same. Leave the airfield, survive head-on merge, better flight model wins. By removing (or reducing) multipathing you add an entirely new branch of gameplay dynamics that will force players to reinvent core game mechanics to accommodate with radar missiles actually being a threat.
Players will no longer be trapped under the 100-meter blanket that gives them invincibility from the most advanced radar missiles in the world. Altitude will be a real dangerous factor before entering a dogfight, and players will actually have an incentive to bring chaff along with flares.
Simulator mode would be a perfect place to test multipathing changes because a lot of the community are very experienced players who no longer need the Air Realistic furballs to grind their planes, and just want to use their piloting BVR to WVR skills to defeat other players.
17 Likes
I could not have said it better. This post sums up exactly how I feel about multipathing. It should remain in the game since it’s a phenomenon that happens IRL, but the current implementation of it is far too exaggerated.
At the very LEAST it should be lowered to 50-40m above the ground, but even then it should be something that depends on the radar set, missile, positioning, range, etc. Some missiles and radars are more resistant to multipathing while others are more susceptible to it.
I hope Gaijin sees this thread or a poll in the future and finally decides to do something about it!
14 Likes
+10, can’t agree more
7 Likes
With current multipathing instead of 90% of the players hugging the ground it will be 98%.
It makes gameplay cringe and unfun
7 Likes
Not saying i completely disagree with this post, but i hope people realize that current multipathing is in fact VERY turned down compared to real life, where most SARH missiles without inverse monopulse seekers would be multipathed at even higher altitudes. 100 meters is nothing, most SARHs without IM seekers ingame shouldnt even work below 200-300 meters, and as far as 1000 meters high for the very early SARHs like AIM-7C or R.511.
2 Likes
So I have a lot of thoughts on this. First of all, multipathing is indeed too strong, but I want to look closer at WHY everyone sticks to the ground. To sum it up in a sentence: you get absolutely reamed for going to altitude above 10.0 or so. Remember, nearly every player who is a ground sniffer was once a climber. Allow me to do a non-comprehensive list of reasons why going to altitude sucks:
-
Spotting. By going to altitude, you are giving yourself away to both the human eye and the in-game spotting system. Targets against the ground have advantage against being spotted by the computer, and players at altitude are much easier to spot by eye by virtue of being a black dot against the sky and/or having a contrail. On top of all that being low allows you to utilize terrain to avoid radar.
-
Ease of avoidance. To put it simply, your two options for avoiding an ARH or SARH (+ PD radar) missile at high altitude is running away, which is both counterintuitive and not fun to most players, or notching, which at 12.0 and higher requires a degree of precision which is unrealistic for most players to achieve. I’m talking what seems to be decimal points level of precision in a notch against a fast moving missile. Especially for players new to top tier, even those who to some degree understand notching, that is such precise movement that it can feel like notching is literally impossible, so they abandon it. The only solution that the average joe has found that works consistently? Flying close to the ground.
To TLDR that for people: Going to altitude has a litany of disadvantages, none of which are related to multipath, you are far easier to detect and engage at altitude, and defending yourself at altitude requires counterintuitive gameplay or a degree of precision which is unrealistic for most players, especially new ones, to achieve. This leads to players both new and old at top tier determining that simply sticking to the ground is both the easiest and most effective way of defeating a modern missile.
Now to continue. I do not think simply nerfing multipath will solve Air RB’s issues, if anything, it will worsen these issues. All it will devolve into is shoot-run-shoot-run-shoot-run-rearm over and over until inevitably someone sniffing the ground sneaks up on you with 6 AMRAAMs and kills half your team in one pass. At the end of the day this loop will be less fun for most people than it is right now.
So what do I propose as a solution? I’ll lay it out in some points.
-
widen the notch gate on modern radars and radar missiles so the gate goes from (not exact numbers) within 0.3 degrees of 90 + chaff, to 1-3 degrees of 90 + chaff. To give numbers in terms of missile stats, widen the notch gate from 20 m/s (current for all ARHs) to, say, 50-80 m/s. This will make it much more consistent to defeat a missile at altitude and show to players who have yet to be able to successfully notch that it can work. To further this, add a tutorial that explains the process to people.
-
Increase altitude at which contrails appear to allow for more space without overexposing yourself.
-
In combination with 2, reduce the range at which your aircraft becomes one of those little black dots, further reducing your spotting disadvantage for being at altitude.
-
Nerf multipath. Now that you’ve made notching an applicable skill rather than a miracle for most people, and reduced the burden on high altitude play, you can nerf multipath. Thus you incentivize high altitude play more.
All that being said, simply nerfing multipath is a good route for Air Sim. Harsh realities of notching are fine in that game mode, but Air RB is not Sim for a reason, and simply nerfing multipath in RB will not change the fact that Air RB isn’t fun for most of the playerbase, if anything, it will make it worse.
8 Likes
Absolutely 100% agree.
Multipathing is a huge crutch and allows players to effectively ignore any and all radar missiles. Not only is this hugely unrealistic as 90%+ of all modern combat revolves around engagements with radar missiles, but also effectively hamstrings all bvr centric aircraft (like fox3 capable phantoms & tornado’s) and allows all enemies to have no respect at all for any standoff threat they would generally impose. It needs to be adjusted such that trying to defend yourself by inducing multipath effect is undertaken as a last resort and at a real and substantial risk to yourself. Imo, if gaijin still wants to have a static figure 30m would be reasonable - then that is still very much usable if terrain permits, but will be low enough that changes in terrain and obstacles would create considerable difficulty in maintaining flight under this threshold.
Though, for the benefit of any devs reading this i will also address some solutions to the problems that may arise, such that of reduced multipathing can be introduced in a balanced manner without detriment to gameplay or current match dynamics.
Problem:
Spoiler
The biggest potential problem of multipathing changes is in the scenario where a player - outnumbered by the enemy may be ran down, constantly forced into evading missiles, has no opportunity for a counterattack due to this, and eventually hits the map border to die. This is obviously not good gameplay, as it does not allow for any realistic opportunities for counterplay and effectively ensures a full snowball effect in matches. And in EC there is the potential with any multipathing changes for heavily lobsided teams to place some potentially insurmountable pressure on the enemy - and teams would need some way to avoid being effectively run down and spawn locked without any recourse.
Easy Solution:
Spoiler
Therefore two easy solutions to combat this problem are available;
- introducing some early medium/long range SAM systems placed deep in each teams backline - particularly around airfields.
This would provide some limited airspace for people to defend into if they started getting completely pushed back, and would actively discourage easy airfield camping. Additionally if expended this could also add to team dynamics and some more active cas gameplay objectives, where in order for your team to intrude deep into enemy territory you might need to break down some of the air defenses first(would be nice segway into ARM’s coming to the game in a purposeful manner).
- (in EC only) Offloading the repair cost from initial spawns and placing it back on deaths only
This way if your team is under heavy pressure and you realise your airfield is getting camped, you will be able to choose not to takeoff - and instead select another airfield to spawn from without having to pay another repair bill. This would substantially limit the possibility of spawn camping people endlessly as the enemy could vary their spawn location without having to die first and not have to face going SL broke just to try and challenge the enemy.
These solutions would also be able to keep gameplay the same as now, with teams not allowed to loiter around their homefield defenses endlessly or else they would forfeit control over the center of the map - and in doing so concede all ground striking opportunities which dictate overall ticket advantage.
13 Likes
Having a poll makes it much easier to show the Devs that a lot of people want something. For example my post about reworking the CR2 armour got about 100 replies (mostly from the same few people discussing stuff) and 52 likes, but over 200 votes from people saying they wanted it fixed.
And it is easier to get stuff changed on the dev server than after the dev server. Stuff here gets forwarded as feedback where if you make a suggestion it needs to be approved, then you need to be lucky enough to have it forwarded.
I’d suggest having a poll along the lines of:
- Remove multipathing from RB & SB
- Remove multipathing from SB only
- Leave it as it is
9 Likes
Terrible idea, please change as a person
2 Likes
Reduce multipath for Air RB aswell please
9 Likes
13 Likes