The speed of the Starfighters means that they have the ability to dictate nearly all engagements. Unfortunately if someone is paying attention they’re very easy to counter.
I agree they should be lowered 0.3br
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Yep, many 10.7-11.0 aircraft are a much more dangerous opponent than the F-104S/TAF pencil. I’ve made a suggestion for the dev’s to reconsider his BR. If anyone agrees, they can add a reaction to the post; it will have a greater chance of being noticed among the ~2,800 other posts.
The F-104’s unusually high battle rating stems from its exceptional speed and bomb-carrying capability—two attributes that enable it to efficiently and reliably farm research points through bombing with minimal interference. Gaijin, however, has no intention of letting players unlock other vehicles too easily; consequently, they have inflated the battle ratings of numerous aircraft capable of carrying incendiary ordnance, such as the Q-5, Su-24, Tornado, and others.
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The F-104A’s battle rating is strikingly low, while the F-104G/S variants sit conspicuously high—a disparity so glaring it strongly suggests these ratings were assigned with little more thought than if someone had just kicked them in with their feet. Originally positioned at BR 10.0, the F-104A was later downgraded to 9.3, a change that placed it in a tier where most aircraft lack high overload missiles, allowing the F-104A to operate with near impunity and rarely face meaningful threats. In an attempt to rebalance the F-104A, Gaijin significantly nerfed the high-speed maneuverability across the entire F-104 series—yet opted not to raise the F-104A’s battle rating accordingly. As a result, already over-battled and comparatively underperforming variants like the F-104G and F-104S have become even more weak. This chain of decisions makes it abundantly clear that the balancing adjustments, too, appear to have been carried out with the same level of care as if done with feet.
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I’d be fine with this if there wasn’t an an entire system Gaijin could use to balance said grinding however they want.
The Rewards multiplier. If they wanted to stop people grinding fast with them, just give them bad multipliers.
The fact this system exists I think means it’s just unfair / nonsensical to ruin the viability of an aircraft purely because it can bomb bases fast in ARB
Really good at bombing so its rating is unfortunately increased because of that. All 104 need a lower rating besides 9.3 ones which are fine where they’re at
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Post regarding changes to the F-104S in the latest thread.
yeah in 2021 or whatever year they were added, they aren’t fast aircraft for their BRs now except for the 9.3 ones
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The F-104S should lose its ahistorical AIM-9J and drop back down to 10.0 where the AIM-7E will actually be useful
The ASA could get the Aspide Mk.2 which despite being an ARH missile has very limited range, similar to the AIM-7E-2
Explain to me how the F-104S, the fastest F-104 in the game, will be balanced facing 9.0.
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The same way the F-104A can face subsonic 8.3 aircraft
The F-104S is faster to 9.0 aircraft than the F-104A is to 8.3 aircraft.
Please elaborate
The difference between a 8.3 and a 9.0 aircraft, not considering the clearly outlier SU-7 types at 9.0, is less than the difference between the F-104A and the F-104S.
I don’t really see how something that can’t catch the F-104S will somehow be able to catch the F-104A with the exception of the F-106
Do you know what margins are
That’s fair, I was mainly thinking about the ones I see in my Lightning (9.3), makes them even more of a case to lower
Yeah ive just researched the german F-104g and its genuinely trash. You generally cant outrun anything anymore. Lots of jets easily catch up to you. You cant dogfight anything. The missiles are mostly all bad except for the J and even then its just ok. The only good thing about it is the gun but its on a trash plane so big whoop.
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Yea exactly! Everyone here goes “but muh speed” but Gaijin added so many underBRd supersonics that the F-104G just can’t outrun shit anymore. I have turning monsters like the F-5 and MiG-21 catch up to me easily unless I was already at top speed. The F-104G also maxes out at around Mach 1; it cannot push beyond it easily like more recent jets like the MiG-25 can.
Also, most jets around 11.0 get all-aspect missiles while legacy jets like the F-4 and F-104 are still stuck with rear-aspect AIM-9Js.
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