In a vacuum, there is nothing wrong with it. However, as Gaijin still refuses to be consistent on Gripen and split hairs between iterations of the platform, we have a representation of weight for a version we do not have.
It is mildly irritating that they will not bring gripen up to the efficacy we should expect (or even correct maws to be representative of a modern system’s slaving capabilities), whilst finding any way to degrade the performance. The weight change also degrades performance below where we ought to expect, but that’s a byproduct of earlier decisions than this change itself.
Thing’s just utterly mishandled. Just more negative tweaks to it, but hey, at least they deigned to inform us this time unlike the dozen or so tweaks that weren’t documented.
maybe when the stats finally show it’s near equal or even subpar to something like a PoBIT (not even mentioning the GE), we can get some kinds of positive changes
though tbf, i’m just grasping at straws. it feels kinda hopeless to play gripen-e in favour of a mildly worse avionics and weapons load, but greatly better flight characteristics, gripen-c. (not even mentioning that gripen-e doesn’t even get parity with gripen-c’s belly air-to-ground capabilities [yes i am still mad abt that])
It’s not getting fixed. @Macron-Spokesman pinged someone who could have given us information on why it is treated so poorly and was ignored. Sweden is not popular enough. Frankly, it makes me quite irritated, in the most understated terms. The fact the maws is modeled so poorly that it matches the 10.7 F111 is an indictment of how they treat it.
From what I read of their post, it seems they’re referring to the functionality of the EA18 to cover disparate platforms across the sortie that lack effective ECM. Not entirely sure when this would be applicable for Sweden, but may have a place for other forces. Too tired and/or grumpy to look into it further.
I do not remember if this is still a thing, but it was a use case at one point for EA18. A pod for arexis could provide Gripen more capability to cover platforms with less effective ECM utilities, in a similar way to EA18’s utilisation.
the only reason i’d ever pick the JAS 39E over the C is because the radar of the C is more finnicky, and just less capable for BVR (bc E gets the C5 AAMRAAM). If it was a close-in dogfight, i’d maybe take E if i knew the player was not so experienced in DF-ing, and that they weren’t flying something like the Eurocanards, or a missile spammer like the Su-30SM’s (though there it’d still be winnable just annoying to deal with).
All of the missing stuff makes the platform feel subpar to what it can be. Althewhile, the mismodeled things can be a downright detriment to Awareness, raw ability to compete in fights, etc.
Well yeah, that’s kind of what arexis integration was for. I doubt pods will see much use outside of export, or truly saturated threat environments. Pods could help improve the impact of a limited number of Gripens, in the case of export.
I’m guessing that the pods are for times where it’s extra needed and firepower is less important. I don’t think Sweden has ordered the pods but i’m not sure.
I would very much doubt Sweden has acquired them, or will acquire them until the built in suite proves lacking. But the option for expansion of Gripen’s capacity is now there with the pods existing, in the event it needs to be a rapidly deployed solution.
As I said, nearest I can figure is it being a good option for export to nations with fleets of much less ECM equipped platforms that may not necessarily be able to acquire a significant number of Gripen.
