correction: they CAN be far better in dogfighting than they should be, but you need to fly it in a pretty specific manner to keep yourself from getting shredded by an F-4E. a manner alot of people aren’t familiar with, and thus get shredded by F-4Es.
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i dont think they should come down, but other aircraft need to go up in that regard. the mirage F1 at least would be a butcher at 11.7 right now.
the mig-21 is far better at WEP than it should be* i dont agree with the comparison, but yes i dont like an 11.0 mig-21 with 6 amazing all-aspects either. p.s. straight up, right now, if anyone is hating on R-60s and especially Ms, they just suck as players and can’t use non-IRCCM missiles. i hate making such absolute statements but this seems to be the truth
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nah i think the MF1 would genuinely be fine at 11.7. only reason i’m not suggesting it be 11.3 is because of Magic 2s.
the Magic 2s, while strong missiles, are mounted on a rather pathetic airframe which turns this very forgiving missile into a bit of a slog.
the airframe, bad. shit. dogwater. ass. you get fucking mauled by hardwing phantoms in dogfights, seriously. even tornados are a headache to deal with.
the radar missiles are also genuine ass. pulse waveform missile with the laziest implementation of ECCM ever. drop 5 chaff and its gone, only gimmick is that it doesn’t set off launch warnings. the range is also pathetic, i’ve hit shots reliably from further away with AIM-7E-2s
the countermeasure load is impressive and i won’t argue that, but you’re going to struggle using them effectively because you’ve got a 4 sector RWR and have to rely entirely on visual to judge threats.
guns, they’re DEFAs, no complaints.
engine is a tad anemic at low speeds, but its rather strong at high speeds making the aircraft’s top speed airframe limited.
its generally 11.7 material, and if not for Magic 2s, it’d easily be 11.3 or hell maybe even 11.0.
in my opinion they should fix the 530F’s ECCM and move the F1Cs down to 11.7, while keeping the F1CT at 12.0 due to its superior avionics (bar the radar)
also after playing around some months since i made this topic, i have come to realize that the F-5E, as i originally suspected, is overrated. it sure is good at a turnfight but that is literally it. the FCU fixes that by giving it 4 good missiles (2 of them being possibly too good? not worthy of 11.7 though, which is MiG-23ML/D/A BR and those should go up already honestly) thus making it usable for anything other than baiting poor bastards in premiums trying to dogfight everything they see. as a platform the F-5E is otherwise extremely limited in utility
i havent played it personally, however from fighting it a lot, and experiencing it in test flight, the airframe does not seem to be as bad as you describe. hardwing phantoms beating you is an extreme stretch, as they literally cannot even beat around the bush (because fights with them end in 2 seconds, they die instantly). i can see losing to tornadoes a few times because of their funny thrust reverser gimmick which can sometimes catch you off guard, but i dont think it’s that bad. i can attest to the 530 being trash though, you’re right, it has nothing going for it unless its for catching people off guard. but at the same time, it has those 2 magic 2s and it is fast, so im not sure about it being 11.7, and i dont think im the best to give my opinion about it
*and to be fair, given the opportunity I might still take the MiG-23MLD or even the ML over the F1C, so that might be a case for your argument of it going down in BR
i’ve flown the F1C-200 extensively and have the F1CT spaded, i’ve flown the F-4J and F-4EJ Kai lots and have both spaded. the F1 is a boat. two pilots of equal skill, the phantom will have innate advantage. F-4J even moreso, since under 450IAS the leading edge slats will drop if set to combat.
I see your point, but the F-4J in my experience could not beat anything fair and square. its slats are more for show than for anything else. I would 100% believe you if you said F-4S though; the AE slats are a HUGE upgrade which I don’t even need to say. however a hardwing phantom? in a dogfight?
ermm the image shouldn’t be white like that
this is simulated with the F-4J at combat flaps, so its line is only accurate to about 450km/h, from thereon you can look at the F-4EJ’s line since its almost the same just a little worse.
the F1C only slightly outturns the phantoms with everyone at 30% fuel, but realistically the F1C will carry more fuel to offset its burn rate making it heavier in any dogfight that might occur so in reality it’d be even worse off.
ratefight it gets stomped no questions asked
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you have the positive and negative sep lines hidden which are quite important as they show how much speed you actually bleed or gain when you arent pulling for the perfect rate
also the solid lines and the top dosent neccessarily mean that a plane cant pull more than that, it means that going beyond that line that you will start to stall and depart
if you start to stall and depart then you’re 100% losing the fight
i generally hide the positive and negative sep lines for myself since i just need to get an idea of what speed i need to hold to maintain perfect rate, in most planes i’m pretty decent at holding rate.
you can go check it for yourself if you’d like though, F-4J’s combat slats deploy at about 15 or 20% if you want to check how it behaves with them down
alternatively we can just dogfight and check the results
something that the instructor really good at at preventing especially in jets
they can be relatively important in some matchups, becasue if you have a good negative sep you will lose less speed when trying to pull lead for the shot
and having a better positve sep means that your plane will have an easier time recovering energy
iam not too invested in the FM disscussion at hand, i just wanted to point those two things out
in such cases i generally just feel out the aircraft. the F-4J definitely handles pulling lead better than the F1C does when it comes to losing or gaining energy.
in general the F1 is just a pretty pathetic aircraft, it genuinely deserves better than this.
its bad in a dogfight, useless in a joust, can hardly defend itself, and the hand-holding missiles are genuinely hard to utilise properly due to the poor airframe.
in my opinion, the Mirage F1 should not have the magic 2 so that it can be at a lower br
but i dont think that that will happen
i mean the magic 2 genuinely does carry this plane no matter at what BR you put it, i think if they just improved the ECCM on the 530F and moved the entire plane down to 11.7 it would be completely fine, maybe a slight flightmodel buff so it doesn’t get kicked in the balls by hardwing phantoms
F-5A has 9L and would be inferior to a F-5E with 9P-4 lol. Why should a F-5E with all aspect be 11.0?
yeah, it has 2 advanced all-aspects, the F-5E would have 2 mediocre all-aspects and would still need to rely on idiots dogfighting it to get any kills. the MiG-21 on the other hand has 6 early all-aspects which are great, and it has speed so it doesn’t need you to run into it to kill you. the F-5E is just underarmed, P-4 would give it a slightly better fighting chance at 11.0 while keeping it completely fair. hell, even 9Ls could work but I’d rather decompress first, and also comes the issue of it not being able to mount them (9P-4 is just a 9J with a different seeker, it can be mounted to anything that takes a 9J, e.g. the F-5E. however I don’t know about the compatibility of the 9L with pylons intended for earlier AIM-9s)