As some of you may have already seen, the sparrows have gotten some tweaks just like the AIM-54s and after using them a bit, this is quite disappointing.
At any altitude below 20k feet these missiles bleed speed like its going out of style, enough speed bleed that the sustainers on the 7F and onwards cant even maintain their velocity.
The AIM-54 changes bricked the usability of the 54 outside of very high altitude targets and I sadly have to say that this seems to be a similar case with the sparrows.
Of course, I will state they they can get more range when used at extremely high altitude but such is a moot point since nobody in their right mind is jousting in orbit with anything but high end ARHes today.
They also bleed speed like crazy when doing so at lower altitudes due to that increased AOA, its the same exact situation as the AIM-54, on paper they have way better pulling potential now which seems like a bit +, but in doing so the missiles aggressively bleed speed trying to use that pulling potential now.
Aka, where originally two or so hard turns would kill a sparrow on the deck, now one hard turn is enough because the missile will pull harder as it now can.
I’ve had the opposite effect, the dogfight sparrows are better now at being dogfight sparrows, while the 7F derived missiles are about the same at close range, but on the deck they bleed speed hard at mid to “long” (low alt wise) due to their sustainer not sustaining as well.
In a sense, very close up they are better due to the tweaks, general mid range at non-high altitudes they are worse, and at high altitude like the AIM-54 they cruise far better.
Once again, I agree with your statement, my issue is that those mid to long range low alt shots is what the AIM-7 was being used for in normal matches for a majority of the time.
Yeah its nice that they knife fight better and can now actually do things at high altitude, but the former is not the intended use case and the latter is very VERY uncommon in most matches due to everyone being on the floor.
I usually find winders work better at those ranges unless its the dogfight sparrows which cant reach out due to motor constraints to begin with.
7F and onwards have always been 10 to 14 NMI missiles for me for mid co-alt.
Once again, I agree that the two extremes improved, short range performance is up and very long range high alt performance is up, the issue is, like the AIM-54’s own situation, the missile is usable in the former, but the latter is not normally usable due to players not playing up high.
Maybe you get a dude once or twice in a few matches that chooses to fight high, but they are quite rare in my experience.
Understandable, I am aware that even without the changes the 7F onwards works fine at close range, I just don’t commonly find use for them there as other options seem to work better for me.
Oh totally, thats why I never liked using them beyond that 14NMI range even at high alt. Guess I could add on that to the dubious nature of their high alt use cases even with this buff. The AIM-7P might be able to get some worth out of the change due to having more guidance backups, but the 7M / F due to their seeker quality, ehhhhhhhhh.
from what i can tell the Sustainer Trust got cut in HALF so the sustainer is pretty much cosmetic at this point, going from 6300 for 11 seconds to 3700 for 11 seconds, this drop doesn’t even make sense with the altitude thrust changes since its loosing way more thrust than it would gain from being at altitude.
