Sukhoi Su-27/30/33/35/37 Flanker series & Su-34 Fullback - History, Design, Performance & Dissection

The grom 2s are still plenty godly for the role of sniping bases. This was all pure manufactured outrage from a mix of people misunderstanding the weapon and youtubers shamelessly fanning the 2-minutes of hate “RUSSIA BAD! RUSSIA BIAS!” narrative for easy clicks and algorithm engagement. If you read most of the comments it was largely a mix of F-4S bombers terrified at the prospect of a grom stealing their base kill before they could finish racing to a base and SPAAGs furious that the grom outranged their SAMs. Both fears are outlandish since groms are slow and any super-sonic aircraft racing full burn to a base will beat it to the target, which could be seen in the 7-10 minute videos watching the grom slowly glide to the base while captions lamented how war thunder wasn’t ready for such russian bias, and any long range attack against SPAAGs would have a similarly long time to impact. Given the duration of the average ground RB match, I wouldn’t be surprised if the entire match would end before a long range grom strike reaches a SPAAG. Simply adopting the habit of moving once every 2 minutes would render you immune even if you don’t see the launch. SPAAGs would counter that if you flew closer then the grom would more quickly reach them, but then you’re sacrificing the range advantage and it’s not really any different that CCIP assisted dumb rockets which are capable of getting ground kills in ground RB but are outdated weapons by that tier.

Maybe grom1 would have more impact sniping bases in sim battles, but grom 2 can do that too and I haven’t heard a single youtuber bring up the issue that a single strike eagle will be able to vaporize an entire frontline worth of NPC ground targets in sim in a single pass with a swarm of GBU-39s. Apparently war thunder isn’t ready for russia to get new toys but new american toys get a seal of approval.

It’s just insulting how much gaijin bends the knee to these whiners. First removing a missile with limited applications just because they cried, and now apparently considering upgrading the F-15E’s engines. Yet somehow the “Russian bias” myth persists in the community.

I know I’m unlocking strike eagle first before I get around to the fullback.

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What was the official justification for its removal?

This is unofficial, but I think it was removed because people had already found ways to cheese the grind.
All you had to do was take min fuel, select one of the 2 rightmost bases, then launch the Grom1s, land at the forward airbase, and J out to get to the next battle within a couple minutes.

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I think a good solution for that would be to change the reward based on the armament used to destroy the target, It shouldn’t be hard to code that. This coupled with EC RB which brings a Lot more ai enemies and bases would be perfect.

Regardless, If they don’t make significant changes on the Gamemode we’ll not be able to progress further in tech, we were already seeing with the fox3s and now such a Fun weapon won’t be added because their game is super outdated.

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Btw they already did that, rockets were giving more points than other ordinance before destroying the base but then Gaijin nerfed them, so now it’s about the same as destroying them with regular bombs and shit.

I’d say lowering the reward obtained with the base destruction while adjusting the reward obtained damaging it based on the weapon used would be the way to go.

@Grimtax Do you have a discord?

I have actually brought it up in my coverage of dev server when I live streamed it. F-15E is going to make ticket wins for blue side even faster in sim.

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Man, i really hope that they buff FM at least to the level that it was at when the flanker was in it’s first dev server.(it was equal to the f15A in flight performance if i remember correctly)

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At first the su27 was pretty good and the f15a dogcrap, then they reversed roles.

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I don’t think that the original F-15 FM was every really bad. It originally had a wing rip problem, which they rightfully fixed, but I think the worst people could really say is that F-16Cs and Grippens were more agile than it. I might be misremembering slightly but I think it and the Flanker were evenly matched enough that player skill was the determining factor in a 1v1 dogfight.

Maybe I’ve been playing too much in good faith, but shouldn’t crew lock resolve this issue? Do you not get crew locked if you land at the airbase and J-out. I think you should be crew locked for abandoning your team like that.

I’m glad some content creators can see the writing on the wall. Tickets are going to just vanish with swarms of NPC targets vanishing to GBU-39s. Granted not all NPC targets are stationary. A lot of tanks are moving targets. But there are a lot of situations where there’s just lots of targets lined up in static firing positions waiting to have GPS guided weapons dropped on them.

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Many ppl also pointed out that the grom-1 could never compete with a bomber player which could reach the target much faster, also you could argue that the “braindead grind” already exist with the aim54 and the fakour (takeoff, launch, rtb, j out).

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Not to mention the regular GPS glide bombs. Nothing is stopping someone from doing a quick climb to altitude to drop them down. I don’t follow the logic that this is some kind of terrible thing? I don’t think it would be meta warping and surely there are faster ways to grind.

I’ll have to test this tomorrow, but IIRC you don’t get crew locked if you J-out at an airbase.

Yes and no.
While bombers are faster for the left two bases, it is generally suicide (at least early game) to go for the right two, so the Grom-1s would have a better practical time to target for reaching those more quickly.
Also, the bot spam that would use those would be unreal.

If that’s true, then it sounds to me like this is the problem and not the Grom. Crew lock is supposed to be the punishment for abandoning your team early.

Regarding bots, there are other GPS glide bombs too. They have more than enough range to attack a base with impunity, and climbing to altitude quick to drop before the spamraams find you isn’t hard.

I thought it was also because the Su-34 didn’t use the Grom 1 until the M?

the grom entered service in 1995, it’s super old

edit: i searched for the wrong grom lol it’s not from 1995

I can’t comment on that or whatever the truth is regarding Gaijin’s decision to withold the weapon. I just find the outrage over this weapon disheartening since as best I can tell the weapon looks like it would have only been marginally more useful than the AS-34 Komorran that the Tornado Marineflieger has. At a surface level it really does look to me like it was a case of “we removed X because USA players were upset, and now we’re discussing giving their new Eagle a better engine as an apology”

That’s what it feels like. It almost feels like when the R-73 was held back, but no matter which side of the fence you were on back then there was no question that the R-73 was going to shake up the meta. However, unlike the introduction of the R-73, I have a hard time seeing the Grom do anything except maybe making it easier to complete the “kill X bases” dailies.

The flanker family in general just feels like they’re overall down on their luck right now. Removing the grom just feels like a spiteful unjustified way to kick an under-performing family of planes while they’re down.

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Wasnt the R-73 held back because of FM problems? I remember it being glitchy in the dev sometimes just spinning out of no where. Pretty sure Gaijin made a statement about it too but that was like 2 years ago so I don’t remember the details.

The R-73’s FM problem hasn’t gone anywhere. The FM is still disgusting

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