It doesn’t change much
The energy you gain by not turning hard, you lose by converting KE to PE while ascending
Everyone likes to make this claim when it comes to missile ranges. A lot of the time it seems that people just like to use or assume that the launch range and the distance it will travel is the same. Or assume the reference target is stationary.
This is how you end up with American mains thinking the Phoenix should be able to easily slam targets from 100km away when they launch them as soon as their wheels leave the runway.
You can look at R-77 brochure or Sea Harrier AMRAAM chart and see that missile ranges are heavily influenced by the launch conditions and reference target altitude and closure rate.
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Don’t want to sound rude, but everyone in this thread is already past this kind of statements.
The brochure is for MICA VL, they’re not going to advertise MICA VL using some data coming from a plane launch. 30G at 12km is what you would expect from a SAM of this size, and it is no where near claiming a Phoenix will hit from 100km from the ground with a low speed launch
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You would think that is obvious, huh.
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not to some people
That’s why I am treating and modeling the Mach 3 and Mach 1.2 claims as if they are legitimate.
What happens to MICA if you model both data points? It becomes the strongest MRAAM in the game in terms of range and time to impact.
If you ignore the Mach 3 claim and assume MICA needs the same retained speed as the Magic II then you have to lower the drag values. If you assume it’s required retained speed is even greater based on different missile like R-530 then the drag value probably has to be reduced even further.
Reducing drag values has an even larger impact on long range performance.
If we also assume that the total energy from the motor can’t be adjusted beyond 750-1000 m/s value then we provide have to further decrease the drag?
I am not seeing any reasonable way to model this performance that doesn’t unreasonably buff the performance of the missile to the point that it goes from being the best in most situations to just being the best in all situations.
To me it seems entirely unnecessary when it’s primary carrier, the Rafale, is probably the most dominant plane that the game has seen. It’s average win rate and kills per death is already in line with how the MiG-23 MLD was performing at its peak of being overpowered. And it’s period of dominance will have been longer by the time next patch roles around.
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But both aren’t proven?
Mach 1.2 stems directly from magic 2, however its fully possible and even reasonably likely that Mica can pull more at lower speeds due to it’s design.
Equally, mach 3 is neither feasible or well sourced value, this is why you are having to contort your model making it so much better, because the things you are trying to adjust to most likely aren’t correct.
If you reduce the burn time, increase the loft and leave the drag or slightly increase, mica can be made to fulfil all sourced datapoints. And more importantly not be outrageously OP.
I didn’t say it was necessary for now. There’s a difference between trying to guess the missile’s IRL capabilities and wanting them implemented in game while there is a clear imbalance as it stands.
Which is why the reality is probably somewhere between “it can zoom at mach 3” and “it can’t even reach mach 2.2” (VL configuraiton of course), at least with what can be done using Gaijin’s physics engine.
That being said, MICA isn’t supposed to be a bad BVR missile, MBDA developed something that could somewhat match the AMRAAM A and R-77 while having great manoeuvrability, which came at the cost of reducing the warhead size and making sure the thing was as aerodynamic as possible. I agree the variants you made seem to be overperforming, but currently it’s quite reverted, while MICA and AMRAAM A should be more or less in the same ballpark (MICA accelerating faster at first but losing energy quicker at longer ranges, therefore hitting after).
Most missiles top speeds in the game are heavily underestimated. Phoenix should have a peak speed of mach 6.1 for example.
Then its deltaV is wrong, can’t hit mach 6 unless it’s exceeding 1500m/s
It would only need 1200 m/s to hit that theoretical top speed from a 2.5 mach launch in peak conditions from an F-14, but the more likely 2 mach launch conditions were probably used. I’d need to go back to the archives and take a look at some stuff to recall the motor specs.
Just using rough memory it should be like 100,000 lbf-s and if it has a 30s burn time that would be about 14,826 newtons or something like that. That is a slight buff to what we have in the game at 14,300 or something.
The difference is that the AIM-54 nozzle was optimized for high altitude and that would be the sea level thrust. Thrust would increase as altitude increased, and the performance would also be higher. The deltaV could easily increase to accommodate a top speed of mach 6 in the right conditions.
Anyway, to link that to the MICA thread… the 1000 m/s from the motor would easily increase with altitude and it is possible the deltaV at sea level is 750 and the deltaV at altitude is 1000… who knows. Without more information I’d say that whatever Gaijin comes up with is as good as it is gonna get until more information surfaces.
Practically F-14A isnt hitting mach 2.5 especially not with phoenixes fitted.
M2 is much more likely, in which case you need about 1500-1600m/s dV as i said.
Assuming the mass is correct, then i guess the ISP is too low.
I understand your position but I don’t think it’s representative of the French playerbase. Here are the results of 2 polls that DirectSupport lobbied for as soon as newer missiles were announced.
The most recent poll received 77 percent approval and the first poll received 72 percent approval. Between the two it’s an average of 75 percent approval.
In both of these polls he lobbied for his interpretation of MICA performance and for better or worse the majority of the French community has bought and repeated this narrative that the in totality that the MICA is drastically underperforming because of these two poorly sourced setpoints. The totality of this narrative is not that the MICA is on par with the AMRAAM but rather that it’s superior in every possible way by significant margins.
For instance if you just give the MICA the loft profile of the AMRAAM then it’s time to impact at long ranges will be identical. It will also not hit these setpoints that he has convinced the French community are crucial for the MICAs performance.
In the R-77-1 thread he stated directly the following
Privately he has stated to me that
So while I’m not saying that your suggestion is unreasonable because it seems like you have been arguing for a minor change, I do think the set points need to be addressed because they do form the crux of this notion that the MICA is underperforming in drastic ways.
If we go by the polling data, the majority of the French community believes the MICA needs a substantial buff and not just a minor change. And it needed it two patches ago.
Simply changing the loft profile equalizes time to impact at very long ranges between MICA and AMRAAM.
At practical short/medium ranges of around 30km the current MICA is just as good as the AMRAAM in terms of speed and time to impact while being more maneuverable and having half the notch gate.
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Yes, that would basically be the idea
Add loft, remove the artificial 50km limit, change the engine to correspond better to sources and we’re good to go
and fix the calibre, thats plain wrong too.
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It has loft, its just not very good loft code. Gaijin seems to be weirdly allergic to good loft code for air to air missiles in general.
at 5° you might as well not have any
I usually “manually” loft my missiles anyway
I tend to do this when I can for basically any missile. Even AMRAAM. Why make it turn when it doesnt need to