Buffed Red Tops (if not true all-aspect, you could certainly massively increase the side aspect angles you could lock on at)
F-86F-2 / F–86F-40
Hunter F1 / Hunter F6 (france) (J-34 should be here as well, but the devs hate Sweden for some reason)
Ariete
G.91 R/4
Sa’ar
Super Mystere B2
Probably more Ive missed. all aircraft Id consider overall stronger airframes than the Sea Vixen at 9.0 in SB. Sure the Sea Vixen is slightly faster than a few of those, but barely, and again, the sea vixen trades that slightly higher top speed, for the fact it has no guns and is 100% reliant on a fairly weak rear-aspect IR missile. and if speed and speed alone was enough to justify a higher BR, then the F-104s would all be 10.0+ but they arent
Plus the sea vixen also gets a decent radar with IFF, and an RWR. That, combined with it’s flight performance and not abysmal missile kit should absolutely put it at 9.0 in air sim. When I played it in air RB it also wasn’t that bad at 9.0 either, because you were able to completely dictate the fight with any plane below 9.3.
The radar IFF is nice, but is also heavily affected by ground cluitter, so its of most use hunting bombers. Most fighters stick low, and so I have to VID most of the time anyway. Which is a pain in the butt given the amount of matching aircraft at that BR and you arent exactly a subtle airframe with the giant, distinctive wing.
The RWR is largely irrelevant as very little has a radar. Usually just warns me when Im getting too close to an SPAA.
Its fast in a straight line, but i’ve never considered its turn performance to be anything special. And even if it was, and you managed to “win” a turn fight, you cant do anything about it without guns. My general experience is that red tops dont work within about 1km and if the target is actively turn fighting you, then they will defeat a redtop anyway. They’d have to be stupid enough to try and go vertical or something for Red tops to be of any use
Every single time i’ve tried to play it in RB, I’ve gotten full uptiers and spent the match basically AFK, as any shot I try to make is innevetiably defeated by something with flares. Im pretty much confined to hunting zombers. The one match i recall recently getting a downtier. I was immediately chased down and killed by an F3H-2 which outperforms the Sea Vixen in every respect at the same BR.
From what i’ve heard from people who’ve tried to play it since the event, you are a free kill for the F-106 horde that you will always face.
Yes, it was then he changed it to 9.0. But that is still rather hilarious when nearly all supersonic aircraft are at 9.7 in SB ( i think the only one that isnt is the Yak-28B)
Notice how much better the Sea Vixen accelerates compared to basically everything else? Only plane that has reasonable chance of catching it is Ariete or F-11 (rare event plane that is only ever on the same side).
In Mig-21’s defense, they have IFF.
F-106 is a WVR only aircraft for simulator while having a huge blindspot in the center which also means no aiming reticle.
Also the Mig-21S platforms are 10.0, not 9.7.
So at least for Simulator, F-106A isn’t meta. It’s fine, it’s just not 9.0 worthy or likely 9.7 worthy, at least for simulator.
Even then, in Sim you don’t use guns that often anymore once you have missiles.
To be really accurate against any target and not waste ammo readjusting or giving your enemy a warning when they see your tracers missing and flying past them, you WANT to get very close to your enemy; missiles let you bypass all that.
Just get in range and hold down the missile fire button.
10.7 for all aspects
They would be that good, because you could just launch them at steep downward angles (increasing range massively) or at unaware targets from the front, where they wouldn’t have to turn much to hit and again, range is increased by A LOT since closure range is way higher.
And unlike, say, the Alpha Jet TH and its all-aspect AIM-9P-4s (10.7 btw, same as F-4E), you get a radar to point at people and IFF, AND the vast majority of your enemies don’t even have flares. Yet, I’ve done just fine using these missiles in this plane, specifically because if you know someone is an enemy, you can launch them at any angle you want.
A plane with a radar that struggles to lock someone level with it if they’re not above like 3km? And a missile that takes a few seconds just to start tracking the enemy? lol
I can’t see it going higher than 9.7 or maybe 10.0 with all aspect red tops. Red tops are just not that good, and it’s airframe starts to become outdated around 10.0 with the introduction of supersonic planes. Still, it should be 9.0 or potentially 9.3 in sim as is because it’s too good for 8.3.
The F-4E is so stupid at 10.7, especially when the arguably worse J-8B is 11.7.
10.7 is the lowest BR where all-aspect IR missiles can be found, regardless of platform. You could maybe do 10.3, but having all-aspect capability is simply that good.
It is, and J-8B needs to come way down. F-4E completely dominates every lobby its in.
Except you have to KNOW such a missile is coming, and R-3R at least requires a radar lock.
9P-4 has the same motor as 9E, with only seeker and G limit being different. Sure you can deduct a lot of points for that, but you can realistically use these missiles very easily even without taking advantage of that.
My point is that regardless of how bad the platform or missile is, there are ZERO all-aspect IR missiles below 10.7.
Not the 9P-4s in an RWR-less attacker that can’t look backwards, not the terrible MAA-1s on the brazillian AMX, not even R-60Ms in any of the myriad of planes that can equip them. None are a single step below 10.7.
MAYBE the Red Tops would be bad enough to be lower. Sure. But that still implies 10.0 or 10.3, where it will STILL see flareless aircraft.
All aspect red tops would be so much better than r3r.
The planes which might carry r3r have really bad radar when it comes to ground clutter. And here in Sim people just tend to fly really low so getting a lock can be rather hard task in many cases. And if you manage get a radar lock you would now most likely warn the target (and all other nearby enemies) about the incoming launch since quite a few of the planes start to have RWR on the BRs where you might meet r3r. Not to mention you can launch the r3r only against 1 target but with the all aspect red tops you could launch against multiple targets at the same time (and potentially without any of them being even aware of the incoming threat).
