I can agree. It’s better than the M163 but not even close in performance to the shilka, should be 7.7/8.0 for it to round up the lineup there nicely and not suffer higher up.
a track radar is still a radar… btw it “searchs” just 60 degrees, and even if you set the 360º mode it makes it even more useless due to the radar search speed. in practice there is no difference with a track radar, it is not like the one on the veak that has 360º coverage with a relatively high speed, it is more effective to use the static mode if the radar as it locks into targets much faster-
The Br of the Sidam is what it is compared to its peers for a number of reasons.
Firstly, the vehicle has excellent gun handling and turret rotation speeds, and the guns have a high muzzle velocity, which makes it a very capable spaa even against early jets coming in at high speeds. The lack of radar does not really hold it back, and the specific feature of a search radar only really serves to compensate for players who are ont able to keep their attention on the skies and spot incoming targets. The lack of the tracking radar and the lead indicator is made up for by the muzzle velocity and rate of fire. Like all minor nation vehicles, it will suffer a bit from the smaller playerbase skewing the stats a bit, but it is not unbalanced compared to many of its contemporaries. You have compared it to the Yenisei and the Shilka, and there are good reasons both of these vehicles are lower in br than it. The Yenisei has much worse guns than the Sidam, with lower ROF, and fewer guns, which make it harder to secure kills against fast moving targets. it also has worse targeting speeds, and the radar it has is very poor, if you have ever used it, the Shilka or anything with the marksman turret you will know that the tracking is almost useless due to deviation. Overall it is an inferior spaa to the Sidam, and this is reflected in its BR. The Shilka suffers the same issue with the radar, though does make up a bit in the armament department, with improved ROF and turret rotation speed. The Shilka also lacks in the anti-tank capability, and when you know one is about, it is quite easy to just avoid and stay out of the effective range of, as the guns drop off quite quickly. Again, this is lower BR because of its overall worse utility and general unreliableness. The Shilka-M4 is a whole BR above the Sidam, and so comparing the two is fairly pointless, but the Shilka-M4 only really has the Igla missiles as its advantage, and even then these missiles are easy to avoid by pre-flaring, and have an odd tendancy to fly down after launch before tracking upwards to targets, which will often mean they hit trees or other obstacles. It is not a particularly effective spaa, and especially at 9.3 you can see some vehicles that can simply drop their ordinance from outside of its range, making it literally useless. Overall there is a bit of an issue right now where there are many Cas threats that simply are untouchable, the A-4’s for example, with TV guided bombs that can be dropped outside of the range of any of the AA’s they can see. There is simply no counter to this other than getting in your own plane, and IMO it would be beneficial of the balance of the game for a large portion of the AA’s in game to move down in BR, or many of the planes to move up, which we can only hope comes next update when the BR’s are seperated for air and ground. As a side note, though your comparisons to the Yenisei and Shilka are quite poor, if you give the Gepard a look, you will see that it is acutally much better than any of the Spaa’s mentioned, and is at the same BR as the Sidam, having none of the issues of the Soviet spaa’s while having the excellent 35mm guns, a small amount of a good APDS belt, and a good search and tracking radar.
I hope this helps give you a good explanation of why things are where they are.
no, its not pointless to comparing the SIDAM and the 4M since they can face each other in a fight due to the BR system.
Ive played the a decent amount with that Shilka, and i don’t think it’s in any way shape or form worse than that SIDAM (my personal experience)
Thanks for take you time writing bud, much appreciated.
I don’t agree completely with you, and that’s ok, we can’t agree on everything.
I still think Gaijins way of sorting out SPAA in this game is heavily biased towards certain nations while others can act like target dummies when the cas comes rolling in.
Pointless in the sense that directly comparing the two is going to give an unequal comparison, and that is to be expected because one is better, and is expected to be better on all accounts. To be honest, the M4 isnt really that good for the BR, but a lot of the IR missile AA stuggle around that area.
It is in the same way that it is for the whole game, the Major nations get the best AA, and the best CAS, and the minor nations get some good stuff sometimes, but much less constistently, and end up lacking in either one or both departments. Like i said, go have a look at the Gepard, that thing is way better than any other 8.3 AA and better than most of the 8.7’s. Then the US A-4 at 8.7 with its TV guided bombs, that can literally be dropped outside the range of any AA they can see. There definitely need to be some changes to improve the balance.