The State of New Weapons going forward (an insight on the Tornado GR4)
The latest Dev Server for the new update “Firebirds” has released and with it brings the opportunity to test things, now I am well aware things are subject to change but until change is confirmed I feel it is best to treat things as if they wont rather than assume they will.
Many new vehicles came this update, but the main point of contention has been the Tornado GR4 and more specifically the Brimstone Missile that it brings. I intend to break down this issue into multiple parts, to both get Gaijin’s concerns across and point out the player concerns, as well as my time using this weapon on Dev. Hopefully this leads to a good conclusion but, I am doubtful.
The Brimstone IRL
The Brimstone missile was an Air to Ground armament designed to provide a long range “fire and forget” weapon to use against groups of enemy vehicles in Afghanistan. This missile first came to the world with a Milimeteric Wave Active Radar Homing seeker. This seeker (much like Fox 3s in game although a bit different) allowed the Brimstone to find and lock a target with far greater precision than what was offered by traditional Infra Red or TV seekerheads used by missiles such as the AGM-65 Maverick’s. This seekerhead allowed the missile to Lock On After Launch (LOAL) meaining line of sight was not needed, and it worked through traditional countermeasures such as Smoke deployment. It quickly became apparent that a fully “automated” weapon would cause problems, thus the Laser Guided dual seeker was added in to maintain “man in the loop” for the missile in the event of more precise guidance was needed.
The Brimstone has evolved since then but we’re talking about the Dual Mode Brimstone.
The Brimstone in game
In game the Brimstone is a Semi-Active Laser guided missile only, not retaining its mmW seeker in any form. The missile for the sake of simplicity functions almost identically to the AGM-114K Hellfire II that many high tier players are familiar with. This missile realistically can strike out a target up to 20km away with extreme precision, in practice under the most ideal circumstances possible this missile will not break 16km of range in War Thunder as the 60 second guidance time will destroy the missile long before it breaks that distance. (At Mach 1.4 the missile will take 60 seconds to guide to a target 14km out)
The Brimstones damage once again is functionally identical to the Hellfire II which in this case is not a bad thing, it is a semi-consistent one hit kill on Soviet style MBTs while NATO style MBTs can be a bit more hit or miss.
Unfortunately this missile has several problems, the lofting means the missiles are borderline unusable at closer ranges. The slow speed and long guidance team means you need to remain exposed for frankly egregious amounts of time (by top tier standards) to ensure this missile does hit its target. Not to mention you’re on an 11.3 platform which is incapable of effectively defending against hostile CAP or hostile SPAA at its BR. This weapon unfortunately is too finnicky and too dangerous to warrant utilizing in the state that it exists in game.
Gaijin’s Reasoning for the Nerf
In Gaijin’s defense the reasons for the nerf make sense at surface level. LOAL is a feature they’ve not chosen to model for any weapon, as it allows the vehicle benefiting from it to engage a hostile target with ZERO possibility for retaliation. Furthermore the Brimstone can lock multiple targets simultaneously and fire upon all of them at once meaning it’d easily become the most devastating weapon in the game if modeled. The ability to see through smokes makes it so tanks cant defend from your launch by popping smoke the way they can other FNF munitions. Lastly the system is just as liable to result in friendly fire as it is effective neutralization of the hostile ground forces making this weapon overall problematic. I will not argue with most of these reasons, they’re very reasonable.
However… There currently exists a weapon, on a better platform, that does break a few of the points listed above. I’m talking about none other than the KH-38. Now to pre-emptively strike these down “but it doesn’t have LOAL” you’re correct. “But it has to be individually guided” semi-correct this is only true for the Laser guided version. But much like the Brimstone this is a weapon that for the last few updates has run around leaving no possible room for counterplay for SPAA or Ground Targets (the KH38 is too fast to reliably shoot down), the TV version gives no laser warning so tanks don’t see it coming, and the laser version even if its seen coming can be guided through smoke to the target.
The Solution I propose
Gaijin has stated that when faced with the arguments of “Make it an IR seeker” or “make it a TV seeker” they responded with “this would be an ahistorical and fake weapon” so I propose a new solution. Model the mmW seekerhead. However remove LOAL, the ability to lock multiple enemies (force us to hard lock each enemy), and if you want also remove the ability to track through smokes. This would be ahistorical but would preserve the FNF identity of the missile without making a new weapon. All you’re simply doing is removing features, something you’ve already done for multiple weapons in the game as is.
Future Weapons going Forward
While it is Gaijins responsibility to develop the game and maintain an atmosphere of “balance” as they see fit. I think it’s a bit out of touch for them to decide if something is too good or not for the game state if they were considering adding it. In the case of R73s we were allowed to test them once before deciding if they stayed or went. This should’ve been the case with Brimstones. The Dev server should’ve been an opportunity to test out mmW A2G munitions, then the players should’ve been the ones to decide if they’re fine with this weapon or not. If not they could be removed until they could come back in a more balanced state, if they were deemed fine then they could be introduced. This system is better because it allows you to avoid a situation such as the current Brimstone/Tornado situation, where the main unique trait of a vehicle has been effectively removed, and a weapon has been added in without its sole design purpose being modeled in.
I hope this post doesn’t fall on deaf ears and does gain traction because it’d avoid a lot of problems going forward if Gaijin actually communicated and worked with the community on these things, and overall I’d just like thoughts on this.
Should Gaijin allow us to Test mmW seekerheads and other new features going forward?
- Yes
- No
Should Brimstones get a nerfed version of their FNF mmW seekerhead implemented
- Yes
- No
