To be honest with you, the biggest problem I have with the AIM-54 is not that the reports are unimplemented which would help, but that maps are still too small. If maps could be 2-3x larger than they currently are, I’d be able to sufficiently climb to altitude and gain enough range to reliably do proper BVR with the missiles. So while fixing the reports would help, actually making it so that the missiles can achieve insane range/acceleration would be vastly better.
But the community which has an addiction to short quick games would push back too hard against such an idea.
Theyd need to more than double the map sizes for that, and even then, I doubt it would actually work because the actual acceleration and top speed of thr AIM-54 ingame is so abysmall.
If a 12000m altitude, Mach 2.0 launch cant get the missile above M4.5, you never will regardless of the map sizes.
The issue is that even IF we could get the perfect launch conditions in WT, theres so many artificial nerfs holding the AIM-54 back that it will literally never be a competitive weapon, particularly when the R-27ER outperforms it in literally every way except max range and warhead size at all altitudes and under all launch conditions…
As it stands, its a skill check for bad players, and thats it
They added manual lofting, however that didn’t help at all, it is still limited to 34 km range in mach 1 head on when fired at 5000m if you want any chance of hit, also Aim-54 sometimes lock on random target when fired longer than 40km away. I think they are missing the drag reduction from base bleed, where drag coeficient of missile is lowered by roughly 33% when its motor is firing.
Apparently that is absent on all missiles in game, they just adjusted the thrust and motor burn time to simulate it/get performance close enough (for AIM-7F at least).
Friendly reminder that while gaijin keeps the AIM-54C in an unbelievably hard nerfed state, the R-27ER even outperforms it in MAWS avoidance due to being able to relock with inertial guidance as shown in this vid.
Would make sense as an assumption if it wasnt for the fact that the R-27ER is literally completely uncontested in-game, being better in literally every way in-game compared to the AIM-54C, and yet gaijin categorically refuses to fix it
Its not a balancing issue, its blatant bias and intentional poor modeling on gaijins part.
Not exactly a “great mystery”, the devs clearly hate the F-14 and AIM-54, likely for the same reasons most people who dont like the F-14 have, which are;
I dont like how its popular because of Top Gun (ie; the “hipster” argument)
National pride/bias against enemy nations vehicles/tech
Doesnt help that the dev in charge of radars in this game propagates myths like “the AIM-54 is bad against maneuvrable fighter sized targets” and believes Russia was as/more advanced in radar development when compared to the US.
That last point seems to be just a gaijin policy at this point following the flaming trash that was that dev post about MANPADS and their whole “If Russian’s cant do it, nobody can” and “it came to me in a dream” reasoning.
Therefore, its almoat garanteed the AIM-54 and F-14 are in their final state at this point and will never be fixed again
The funniest thing about the rolling airframe IR SAM post is that The USSR did eventually manage to put PID control into the SA-16 late variants, vastly improving performance to be on-par with FIM-92.
So it’s not like small diameter rolling airframe missiles never actually got better performance in the east. It just took them longer.
Recently, I have some success with Phoenix, it can reach roughly mach 3 at end of burn when fired at 40 degrees on 10,000m at Mach 1, still slower than mach 4+ it was supposed to achieve, but at least it can get to target with a reasonable speed. However, due to 17G at mach 3, it turns even worse than approaching at Mach 2 （since turn radius or rate of turn is lower the faster the missile flies given constant load factor). Increasing 25G will definitely help a lot.
Also, if they add base drag reduction, Phoenix will probably have the range and speed it supposed to have.
