The F-15’s Current Performance in War Thunder Feels Incorrect and Unfair

Game Discussion Realistic Battle
,
135

Yea, and neither was F-15A but solution simply isnt recompression ffs.

I ultimately do not care, I expanded my inventory of aircrafts and once dust settles i will move to next thing that is playable. In the meantime I will continue spamming MKK.

But now the cat is out of the bag, community stance has not only fractured, it shattered, everyone is using F-15A as justification to move their aircraft down in BR and I do hope that all of you advocating for whats basically “F-15A is fine at 12.7” will calmly accept in similiar way next stupid BR change once it comes around.

5 Likes
136

Nope. All you get is PD, PD HDN, and PD velocity search. The later is kinda useful, as it broadly allows you to track the bearings of the enemy from the start of the game, but it doesn’t give you any useful distance information.

Compression isn’t even really the issue this time, it’s deeper than that.

It’s the meta that results from a gamemode where early game impact is the only thing that matters, and a tier where some planes start to get really good at killing planes early, while others do not.

This produces games that can be decided in just a handful of minutes after the first merge, if not before then.

This in turn makes it so that aircraft that cannot participate in this initial engagement become almost irrelevant. Which in turn means that Gaijin feels a need to push them down.

As a reminder, Air RB was original designed around prop planes. No jets that can third party someone on the other side of the map in 2 minutes. No missiles that can beam someone from across the map. Fighting for altitude or energy don’t matter. Fighting for position barely matters. The only thing that does matter is knocking out your opponents numbers as quickly as possible before they do it to you, and the team who does that better, wins.

Good luck trying to carry the game in an F-15 when the enemy is up 6 kills and you’re lit up on everyone’s RADARs. You may have advantages in top speed, energy generation, IR missiles and countermeasures, but none of that matters when you can only effectively engage one enemy at a time in a headon, and you’ve got 3-4 planes looking at you.

What we need to actually solve this problem is Air RB EC. Large maps and spread out objectives dilute numbers down, so snowballs are less likely. Respawns mean the initial engagement is not the only thing that matters in terms of who wins the game. More objectives on the ground mean giving an actual role to attackers and multiroles, rather than forcing them to be balanced by fighter capability alone.

BVR capability will still matter, but smaller fights mean it’s entirely possible to outplay an opponent that has adavantages in BVR and close in. It’s what’s needed to balance the game around things other than “How quickly and effectively can you engage the enemy?”.

1 Like
137

Sure, I agree.

But in the meantime, the band aid solution simply cant be recompression.

Even if you think F-15A at 12.7 is fine, you surely see the issue with people using F-15A at 12.7 as justification to move their plane down in BR and what consequences it will eventually have on all BRs.

138

I’d be far more worried if Gaijin has ever shown an interest in listening to player feedback.

Also, having now played a decent number of games in the 12.0 Viggen D, I have to say F-15s are far lower on my list of concerns than, say, the ARHs I meet in uptiers, the F-16s that club me in a dogfight if they survive the merge, the ERs which swat me every time I deign to go above multipath height, and the hordes of brainless F-4S and MiG 23 ML players who are like a lead weight on the team balancing.

1 Like
139

Now imagine just slightly decompressed BR range where Su-27/Su-33 wouldnsit at 13.3, F-15A at 13.0, legacy ARH slingers similiarly at 13.3 etc.

No more ARHs, 27ERs limited to two on MiG-29s etc.

140

We’ll say, for the sake of argument, that 12.0 is now safe. It’s not, there’s still F-16 and F-18s running around, clubbing all these unmanuverable 3rd gens to death, especially now that a lot of the things they had to worry about got moved up, but we’ll ignore that for now.

In this new MM, the F-15 will still be terrible. As will the Mirage 4000, the Gripen, and other ARHless 13.0s. The Su-27 will be on suicide watch, ERs are potent missiles but combined with the base Su-27’s mid RADAR and questionable RWR, it’s just going to be food, especially if it’s only slightly below competant ARH slingers.

There’s always going to be a final BR where the last of the SARH slingers sits, and as long as that’s within 1.0 BR of the competant ARH slingers, they’re always going to suffer from it. And since Gaijin is never going to add a gap like that to the game, the only fix is to change the gamemode so that getting an early BVR kill isn’t the sole thing that matters.

141

With the exception of IRCCM ones, the F-16A has distinct disdvantages - no presence in opener, low presence in furball, no radar missiles etc. It isnt such one sided matchup.

So move them up as well, we now have space to do so.

So move those up as well.

Su-27/33 is much better platform than legacy ARH slingers. That matchup is fine.

As for much better ARH slingers, these can and should be moved up as well.

The decompression im talking about needs to be widespread and large scal, not just limited to few aircraft.

But RB EC does not automatically exclude decompression. You can want both.

142

I can and do. But decompression without EC doesn’t solve the underlying issue, at least not realistically. Gaijin has never done a BR gap, let alone the 1.0 one that would be required to seperate the SARH slingers from the ARH slingers.

It’s also one they’re highly likely to not want to do. Gaijin has consistently monetized top tier by making the penultimate tier exceptionally painful to grind through. Forcing players to slog through the 13.0 bracket means that they’re much more likely to shell out for one of those premiums that’s currently ruining their experience. None of this current suffering is a bug to them.

And, frankly, continuing to decompress around how well vehicles perform in Air RB (Or, in the case of the F-15, despite that) seems rather pointless. You’re using flawed metric of how well vehicles will perform to balance them, instead of putting them in an enviroment where you can actually get some useful data.

143

They are judged in context of current ARB, since we dont have RB EC yet.

You cant properly judge hypothetical performance in hypothetical mode. Thats pure guesswork.

If we dont get RB EC, decompression is needed, plain and simple.

If we do get RB EC, great, decompression is still needed but the metrics will change according to new game mode as we gather more data.

1 Like
144

We won’t have it.

We won’t have decompression at top tier either, at least until Gaijin has milked enough its Su-30s at 13.3, which would only happen on June at the very least with a sale each.

The decompression narrative has failed the community the moment Gaijin explicitly chose to compress 12.7 to 13.3 with both TT planes easily more versatile than most of SARH slingers at the BR range and handheld premiums, simple as. And therefore, planes at 13.0 that were already struggling such as the F-15A or the Mirage 4000 simply don’t deserve to be flying piñatas for the whole spam of premiums and compressed flankers.

And if that means being probably both the best 12.7s for many of you, so be it. It’s not like compression hasn’t already made other vehicles good or straightup meta to begin with (BMP-Ts, Su-11, SA JAS39C, XM800T, etc.)

145

This. Because of the 13.3 premium milking things like the f15a, which has, and mig29 will probably see br decreases due to the compression. Su27/su33 should stay 13.0.

146

Depends what F-15 variant.

The A actually over-performs while the later models with the better engines are about correct.

2 Likes
147

i havent tried f15a ever since it went to 12.7, i might try it now

148

it should have it, and did IRL

just gaijin has refused to add it in game

149

Realistically? Yeah we wont. Still, doesnt change a thing about what I said - vehicle performance needs to be judged on how they perform or would perform in current air battles enviroment.

Two wrongs dont make a right.

Yes realistically that will be the case, doesnt mean we should stop asking for it as community.

Does gaijins decision (ie. not players decision) invalidate the efforts that were made so far in regard to compression?

See, I agree with you here, I just think that out of the two possible solutions to this issue, moving F-15A down is the worse one.

Because when you think about it, this argument isnt F-15A or M4K specific. X doesnt deserve to be flying pinata for Y can apply to lot of planes.

Issue is, when you decide to solve this by moving X plane down away from Y, you inevitably create more of this problem - now it is Z plane that doesnt deserve to be flying pinata for X. So you move Z plane down and whole cycle repeats.

Eventually, you run out of BRs to move planes down to since BR cant go below 1.0.

Thats why any solution must be made by moving stuff up where you can expand max BR and thus number of BR steps ad infinitum.

1 Like
150

is WT actually enjoyable, lol?
i have been grinding for the AMX M4 and i only enjoyed the french gameplay before reaching rank 2/3 (yeah, i enjoyed french lowtier…) AND after unlocking AMX M4.
i just got Rafale a few weeks ago, and the stock grind sucks. even worse, the Rafale doesn’t look like a good aircraft anymore: u lose all ur speed in a single turn, MICA-EMs suck over 20km (which is impossible to do since there’s always at least 4 different players targetting u from +20km cuz u’re “a threat”), and i usually end matches dying or surviving all the entire f*cking match with 0 kills 0 assists.
the thing is, my Rafale’s fate depends if i rush to the furball/side climb with afterburner or without afterburner lmao.

151

It doesn’t, which is fairly worse than the players not expressing anything at all, as we’ve been explicitly ignored for far too long.

There’s zero chance we haven’t been read by someone who’s able to do something about the compression issue, yet the problem stayed after both the last BR changes and the imminent update.

And I agree following the decompression > recompression logic, it makes sense.

The problem starts when I consider to be deeply unfair for premium vehicles to get a free pass on sealclubbing with a minimal sense of skill, whereas planes like the ones we’re mentioning require a decent amount of focus and strategy to make them work not even consistently, but to begin with.

The moment compression begins to benefit premium vehicles as much as TT ones, the fabric of the convention where “decompression is the only answer” is entirely shattered, as an skilled player may pick a premium jet and vastly outperform the most mediocre jet at the same BR without even flinching, to which I ask: What’s the point of grinding a mediocre vehicle if someone may pick something objectively better at the same BR while earning 2x RP and SL?

And again, it only gets to a point where compression is fair or unfair enough, I still believe technological gaps should be the main consideration when applying recompression, especially at higher ranks where the difference between for instance, a non PD and a PD radar is that on the former, you just have to pop a single chaff, and the latter you must have to pull a whole maneuver + chaff.

Gaijin moving the F-15A/J/Baz down won’t fix things long-term, but its a clear sign they prefer recompression even after whole threads of complains.

1 Like
152

You won’t regret it mate.
Like back when it was 12.3 again and everything else was 12.7 etc

153

Not having boosters in stock is pain

154

Any stock jet is pain mate.

1 Like