The MICA EM missile is still dealing with two major issues that had been bug reported from the previous dev server in the test event. Namely these being the wobbling instability issues as well as thrust vectoring spin-out. The inconsistency from the missiles impact gameplay to a certain extent.
The missile randomly doing backflips after traveling 20km or spinning into the ground after being launched in a dogfight is disappointing to see given that the thrust vectoring system has been in existence for a few years now.
If you guys have experience to share on this subject, or better yet some videos, don’t hesitate to show.
It’s extremely annoying when you know they market the missile as a medium range one. I played like a dozen rounds now and it’s always anything beyond 10-15km that you don’t even remotely hit. The TVC and PID makes the missile much much worse than it’s supposed to be. And it’s not even like this issue is new to Gaijin, they had many missiles going completely off like SRAAM and other which they managed to fix quite fast
Have they managed to get the bug out of the R73 and SRAAM comletely ?
I have a feeling they are really struggling with TVC for some reason.
The wobbling is the most annoying problem tho, since it eats quite a lot in the range/energy, and that’s especially problematic for the MICA (long range unlike R73 and SRAAM)
I have not been able to play much of the dev server, and even less in a controlled environment. The wobble is omnipresent at every speed, when the motor is burning or not. This clearly is a PID issue that is fixable with tweaking, and should be fixed soon. That is the limiting factor for the range of the missile., and is in my opinion the single most annoying bug that needs to be tackled concerning the MICA.
TVC is a different beast. At lower speed (I’d say less than 600-700kph) launch speeds, with high enough bore sight, the TVC will induce a wobble and overcorrect, leading to a spin out. That issue is pretty dependent on the scenario (go over 600-700kph and it won’t spin out), however when happening this can completely ruin the advantage of the TVC. In a situation where the AIM120 (30G, no TVC) for exemple would completely manage a high off bore, low speed launch, with the missile scoring a hit, the MICA (50G, TVC) becomes highly unreliable and it’s a coin toss that decides if the missile will manage to keep control or completely spins out, making it, paradoxaly, less reliable than an AIM120 in high off bore shots.
So, for me, these 2 issues need to be tackle separately :
The first one is realistically not to hard to fix. It’s mainly a PID issue (I believe), and could be fixed in several ways (PID, drag parameters…)
The second one is more complex. The 73 and especially the SRAMM suffer from high wobble (the R73 less since its TVC was nerfed), as thrust vectoring is still far from being game ready. The devs have several choices choices : the bandaid, aka nerfing TVC (maybe using speed curves, the lower the speed the less the TVC, bud sadly making TVC less powerful than it should be), just like the R73; or reworking in depth the working of TVC. I feel like that second solution is the hardest yet most sensible choice. The bandaid solution kinda works when there are only few missiles with TVC, all very powerful compared to their contemporaries, however more modern missiles will bring more TVC capable missiles (AIM 9X, IRIS-T…), but also similarly powerful non TVC missiles (Pythons, later AIM120…), and so having a healthy balance of highly manoeuvrable TVC missiles at short range against longer range, but less potent at shorter range missiles will require said TVC to work as intended.
From what I got from talking with tech mods, unless its a game issue bug, and not a historical accuracy, it get passed down as a suggestion (but is treated as a bug, just after the real bugs). And so, probably that the devs consider that a missile wobbling is not a game issue bug and could very well be an historical thing, who knows
Absolutely not Pythons 4/5 use lots of control surfaces and 2 plane maneuverability to achieve an outstanding maneuverability of 70G at all times while even the earliest AIM9X use TVC to achieve 60G.
Considering the fact they will add more TVC missiles in the future + the fact they already modelled MICA IR meaning in the years to come it’ll be integrated to the game the sooner they properly work on TVC the less they’ll have to lose time in the future.
SRAAM seems like it doesn’t get enough complaints/attentions. R-73 went through several reworks, and is better than at launch. What I don’t get is how they can ever add vertical launch SAMs with TVC missiles if it’s having these instability issues. IRIS-T VL appears to have been datamined, I’d love to see how that one would work.
Flat spin right off the tube unusable against low flying targets which is usually what this type of threat this system should be efficient against. Which reinforce my statement about the fact they should work on TVC right now as IRIS-T is a missile that’ll be able to pull 80G with it’s TVC. So if MICA already have problems like it has right now IRIS-T will never properly work.
That being said, if they can manage to fix the TVC on MICA, there’s no reason it shouldn’t be applied to R73. Basically if Gaijin works on the bug report, it could help the R73 too, so no need to be mad
Currently MICA EM goes into a spin at far targets after it travels about 10-20km, so I’d imagine IRIS-T in a ground launch at far targets will still spin. Also the low speed launch itself is a problem.
