I dont’t know if it was brought up somewhere already, but I can’t really wrap my head around the Su-33 being at BR 13.3 in Air Arcade Battles while the Su-30MK2 AMV is at the same 13.3 BR.
In Air Realistic the Su-33 is at 13.0 while the Su-30MK2 AMV is at 13.3.
The differences between these two planes are like night and day regarding their capabilities:
Su-33:
- Only SARH and IR missiles with IRCCM (6x SARH + 6x IR or 8x SARH + 4x IR)
- Only dumb A2G bombs and rockets while none of these can be carried without sacrificing A2A missiles
- 48 countermeasures
- radar without NCTR and only one DL
- One pilot, if he dies it’s over
Su-30MK2 AMV:
- ARH + SARH and IR missiles with IRCCM (6x SARH/ARH + 4x IR missiles)
- Guided A2G bombs and missiles + cruise missiles (KH-59ME) while two of these guided munitions can be carried without sacrificing A2A missiles
- 96 countermeasures
- radar with NCTR + two DL
- Two pilots, if one dies the other takes over
Both have IR targeting systems and roughly the same maneuverability (which isn’t even that important in AB as every plane at the higher BRs flies more or less like an UFO there).
The Su-30MK2 AMV has such a massive advantage at this BR as it doesn’t have to guide its missiles to their targets and can fire multiple missiles at once at different targets. At downtiers it’s an absolute menace and at same-tier still better than every other plane while it can hold its ground in uptiers quite well. Factually there is no scenario in which you would be at a serious disadvantage with this plane.
The Su-33 on the other hand is just decent in same rank tiers (if spaded, it’s rather lost if stock), really good in downtiers and absolutely wortheless in uptier as you can’t engage at distances further than 10 km out as you make yourself an excellent target by flying straight without being able to notch because you have to guide your missiles.
Both of these planes have this stupid “detailed systems model” so if you fight against planes which don’t have these systems already modeled you’re at a massive disadvantage as a stray bullet can disable your weapons, counter-measures, RWR, etc. while this just isn’t possible for you to inflict on your opponent. This should have been only implemented if all planes would get this at the same time, but that’s another topic.
So what’s the reason for them being at the exact same BR in AIR AB? Aside from the obvious problem that the BR compression is atrocious at the BR range of 13.0 - 13.7 and is in dire need of a rework/decompression, the Su-30MK2 AMV appears to be (maliciously) undertiered.