Well how much easier is it to dodge the r27? As opposed to real life? Being that the R27 is a technologically inferior missile with a very poor success rate?
The R-27 is a relatively capable missile (certainly it is agile enough) that is hampered by the fact that most soviet missiles are very old at this point, and past their shelf life. That, and who knows how well they have been maintained. The actual use-cases of the missile is not important when discussing things like reliability and etc, as WT does not attempt to model “oh they forgot to keep the damp out for a period of 20 years between 1992 and 2012”.
How is the r27 so much better being that it relies on a signal that comes from far inferior radars to that of the AWG9 and does not have the ability to transmit a signal of its own?
The AWG-9 is powerful enough to fry an egg at a hundred metres, sure, and this provides it with many technical advantages, but it is a 1960’s radar. The ability of a missile to hone in on an illuminated target is entirely to do with the missile, given sufficient illumination there will be no issue. The fact that the R-27 cannot provide its own illumination is no fault of the missile: indeed, it makes the missile an order of magnitude (or thereabouts) cheaper.
The aim54 should be the most accurate missile in game as it literally has its own radar which produces its own signals and illumination becomes stronger the more it closes the distance. As you said it has the ability to shoot down cruise missiles. You just forgot to mention low altitude cruise missile part though.
All missiles in WT are essentially equally accurate, as the game doesn’t attempt to model missile stupidity or lock quality (I mean, in some sense it does, but a missile with a lock will not experience a technical failure, it will only ever fail kinematically). I agree that all missiles in WT seem to have a problem with low-altitude targets, but I have no commentary on this as I do not know if it is a consequence of janky lead computing or something else. It’s not unique to the AIM-54.
Weight should not matter unless outside of the weapon employment zone.
Of course weight matters, velocity is the fundamental equation of missile maneuverability, and acceleration is the means by which one obtains that: a = f/m. A heavier missile takes longer to get up to maneuvering speeds from launch (at any speed) because it has proportionally less acceleration. If you try and fire the AIM-54 directly upwards in a stall at a target that is quite far in front of you (or indeed, at a target in any direction while moving slowly), then you will see the missile essentially fall out of the sky (or shoot far up in the air, dependending on launch direction) because it literally cannot generate enough lift. The engine motor just isn’t strong enough to get it to speed.
How does it happen by magical coincidence to be able to shoot down fighters?
By the same mechanism it shoots down the bombers, but applied to a smaller target.
It has a literal mode called ACM ACTIVE MODE for close range engagements. It is by intentional design to be used as a secondary measure for targets performing air combat maneuvering. That is what acm stands for.
Do you have any information to suggest the ACM mode provides the missile with additional maneuvering capacity? Why would the missile have that additional capacity available only in a certain radar mode? All the sources I’ve seen (which is to say, the heatblur manual on the AWG-9 radar say that the ACM mode is the pure-active mode: the missile is launched in automatic-active mode and acquires the first lock it can, without any information from the mothership. This is of course as a rule quite a bad thing to do, but there is no reason why a missile would not have this option, and it may be useful for pilots in some circumstances. It is only the “dogfight” mode in the sense that you want the missile to go active very quickly in a dogfight anyway because usually you are quite close to a target.
