the only reason the F15A got moved down is cause SU30 there is almost nothing you can do against a SU30 at 13.3 in a F15A the sparrow does not have the BS performance of R27ER there fore nothing you can do hence why the SU27 and SU33 have no trouble at there br
data link gives russian ER insane performance in battle as you can lob them into orbit delock than relock last second im pretty certain the seekers overperform by a good bit
the only thing keeping 13.0 western stuff good was there FM being leagues better than russian counter parts SU27 could never compete in a dogfight against a half decent F15A pilot you could dodge by multipathing as america and force a dogfight now its nearly impossible due to unrealistic expectations set by devs
russia gets better missiles + worse FM america gets worse missiles + way better FM it was yin and yang you made trade offs but at 13.3 russia gets both america gets neither they lost the sauce the performance gap between a F16A 6 missiles and SU 30 with 12 is too much
with trees being as high as they are you cant multipath anymore and in a straight BVR the F16A lacks pylons to keep up in a notching battle
the performance gap between brs is too much now it used to be in a 1.0 uptier you can still compete now in a .3 uptier there is nothing you can do in a 13.0 → 13.3 as there way more numerous compared to 13.7
I’ll say it again here cause mods locked the thread I posted cause I didn’t look up dead ones from months ago that ‘were the same’ and pointed me here - but yeah, on the Arcade side, those Su-30’s are even more of a menace between A: way less ways to defend against them (because ground clutter isn’t a thing there), B: you can actually put them in a lineup that gives it a Matchmaking BR of 13.0, and C: the maximum range is +/-1.3 meaning when your luck is really bad - you see these when in an 11.7 lineup. Especially with the MiG-29N in the Japan tree now at 13.0 there should be no planes with only access to SARH missiles at or above 13.0, honestly the high end SARH should maybe cap out at 12.3 at best. Same with early low performance ARH missiles like the AIM-54 with bad electronics and G overload, up until 2 days ago the last time I died to an AIM-54 was over a year ago, and the only reason I died the other day was because the guy closed in to 6km and launched it, and I assumed at that range it was an AIM-7 that would miss when the AIM-7 I fired first hit him in the face. 12.7 can be the stuff that maybe has 2 ARH or the like.
To say nothing of for the US and other countries to have access to 10+ missiles while having half or more be ARH you have to be at 13.7 like the later F-15’s, and even then most/all of them aren’t getting missiles that aren’t nearly as good. Heck - even in the Russian tech tree, there’s the oddball in the Su-34 that gets 8 of the things at 13.3 in arcade (but likely doesn’t get played cause I’m guessing it’s a brick by it’s looks, not that far up the tree yet) but even in the tech tree - the only things even close save that one example are all 13.7 or higher. There is no reason they should be where they are on the Arcade end - as much as that side gets so incredibly neglected on balance changes it’s not even funny.
there is one little known jet foldered in the chinese tech tree with the J-11, known as the J-11A, same a2a loadout but better flight performance due to being lighter