I want to discuss the F-15 in War Thunder, specifically the thrust, flight performance, and overall balance. When you look at public data, the F-15’s engines are listed at around 23,770 lbf, which converts to around 10,781 kgf. In War Thunder, the F-15 is only getting around 8,000, which means it is missing a little over 2,000 kgf of thrust. I understand there are factors like airspeed and altitude, but that doesn’t explain why the numbers inside the hangar do not match or why the difference is this large.
The F-15 in real life could climb almost vertically with enough fuel and weight balance. In War Thunder, trying to replicate that climb feels almost impossible. I know the game cannot allow a lore-accurate F-15 because it would probably be a monster, but the current version feels like it’s performing below what it should, not slightly below, but noticeably below.
I know there will be comments like “US players just want the best plane,” but that is not what I am asking for. I don’t want the best. I want the performance to be fair and closer to documented real-life capability. At the moment, whether I fly the C variant or the E variant, Eurofighters can keep up with me in a climb, out dogfight me, and out missile me. So it feels like there is no upside to flying the F-15 at its BR. Yes, eventually the F-15 will build up speed and start outrunning something in a straight line, but that isn’t much of an advantage when maps are small, and most engagements are already happening inside missile range and inside maneuver ranges.
This brings up another issue, which is that the maps feel too small for modern aircraft. With things like the MiG-25 coming, the current RB maps don’t feel right for it. The Sim maps, in my opinion, are big enough and create good gameplay because it doesn’t instantly turn into a furball. When we get a Sim-size map in RB, which happens sometimes, it feels much more rewarding. You actually get BVR combat, and sometimes it’s just you and one other person trying to outshoot each other before a dogfight even begins, and that feels more like how these jets should play.
Another thing is the BR spread. The F-15C Golden Eagle only really gets better radar and more countermeasures compared to the normal 13.7 F-15C, and if the standard F-15C didn’t get constant uptiers, it would actually be a lot more enjoyable to play because you wouldn’t be thrown against Eurofighters and Rafales every match. Fighting MiG-29s, Su-27s, or even Su-30s still feels like a fair fight and possible to win, but once you start constantly facing Eurofighters and Rafales, in my opinion it becomes one-sided. That is why it’s difficult to understand why both the F-15C f15c golden eagle and F-15E feel left behind, especially with the F-18E coming which looks like it will have more missiles and more thrust according to what the hangar shows on the dev server. It makes it hard to see the reason the F-15 variants stay where they are when they keep running into aircraft that simply outperform them in almost every area.
And while this isn’t the main topic, I want to mention that I hope the Super Hornet doesn’t get given to nations like the UK or Germany, because they already have the Eurofighter. In my opinion, they don’t need another top tier aircraft when they already have one of the strongest. I also don’t think China needs an Abrams when they already have their own MBTs. Gaijin added Taiwan to China’s tree, yet Russia cannot get Ukraine in theirs, even though a lot of players already use Ukrainian flags on Russian vehicles in-game. Since flags can now be changed, players could simply choose the Ukrainian flag if they wanted to, so the decision still feels inconsistent. and now that we can change flags, players could switch them anyway. That’s a small part of this topic, but it still feels inconsistent.
To sum it up, I don’t want the F-15 to be unbeatable. I just want it to perform closer to what it is supposed to in real life, and right now it does not feel fair. The climb, the thrust, the energy retention, the BR position, and the map size all make the F-15 feel weaker than it should be when compared to the aircraft it is forced to fight.
