Well, until I pointed it out for the developer they thought the maximum overload of the Magic 2 was going to be similar to the AIM-9L and have modeled it as such. It should be peaking at 35G as soon as the missile is traveling at 1.25 mach (or, off the rail if you are launching from 1.25 mach)… and from 300m alt.
Anyhow, hopefully now that they are aware of this we see changes to other missiles with similar designs so they can reach peak overload sooner such as AAM-3.
Further, I hope it enlightens them to the idea that these missiles might be able to pull a higher G loading at lower speeds than they currently think they do.
Yep, hopefully. Too many missile have issues and I fear how many of them have those issues because they are modeled to resemble another, entirely different missile.
I could reasonably accept the idea of the average G being lower than the peak G, its not entirely unreasonable. But it does feel like the missile misses more often than in should because it couldnt get onto target in those first few seconds. If that G was too low, that would explain that problem.
Not entirely the focus of the discussion but isn’t it a little weird how modern the Stingers we get in game are, we have E stingers 1995 model and K stingers which afaik are a 2018 model designed with small drones in mind and data link, something that definitly shouldn’t be present on LAVAD.
All Iglas in game are the 1983 model.
It’s just weird to be given considerably more modern versions than Igla then have it’s performance nerfed based on Igla performance.
I think the reason we have E model is because ATAS were the first Stingers in game and they’re also E model, (though I’m not sure Lynx Stingers technically should be they may predate ATAS proper?).
Or Roland 3s even, it’s pretty comical how easily they are to dodge with prop planes currently. Starstreaks are genuinly bugged and fly straight through airframes about 4/5ths of the time currently and it’s still somehow not much worse than Rolands at the moment.
Since you asked for an explanation I would like to offer my theory why visually similar missiles can perform quite differently.
I will borrow piece of this excellent article:
Dev blog is talking about effectiveness of the control surfaces, but dos not cover overall aerodynamic design of stinger missile which might be dramatically different, just by shifting the CG.
Also control surfaces are not sole provider of the steering force, missile body itself will generate most of the lifting/steering force in case of missile like Stinger.
So what if lighter electronic allowed to shift CG of the missile backwards making the missile aerodynamically unstable (therefore allowing small control surfaces have a great impact on the missile AoA) and advanced proportional autopilot allowed to control initial missile instability at the same time?
Come to think of it, this does make me wonder if the effect on overall torque on the missile via how far the fins are from the COG is properly modeled in game for missiles, I know the value does exist in game, but I don’t think I’ve heard it or the possible aerodynamic impacts in game actually get explained at any point.
We already know that RAM style missiles should be operating under some very different properties compared to something like a AIM-9, but frankly as it stands, it almost seems like gaijin has forgotten that the differences between such missiles incur different missile properties on performances
EG, comparing a RIM-161 to a SM2 is frankly a bad idea as, going by gaijin’s logic, the RIM-161 should have next to no G loading potential compared to a basic SM-2MR, however, the 161 has already shown that it can engage jinking supersonic target drones pulling good amounts of Gs.
Maybe gaijin needs to take the time to expand their missile modeling features to better take into account the varying types of missiles we are now having appear in game, we are still more or less working on the same exact baseline tech that we had when the first AIM-9Bs got added. The AIM-54 is still a stark example that gaijin’s implementation quality needs work, both from the side of it’s G loading and it’s sad aerodynamic performance.
My impression is that missile dynamics in WT is handled as conventional subsonic aircraft where the CG is close to aerodynamic center and dont change that much with speed.
For example argument that Stinger can’t pull as hard as Sidewinder because it has small Control Surfaces (CS)…
While with Sidewinder it is desirable to be mabeuverable at “low speeds” right after a launch, when the launch platform can already pull significant Gs in dogfight , requires large CS with significant deflection or thrust vectoring.
The MANPADs missles can be stabilised by rotation (flying straight) in initial phase of flight while accelerating to supersonics speeds area, where the small CS can be more then enough to maneuver missile in high G maneuvers.
Transsonic or supersonic aerodynamics is quite different beast and large CS are quite undesirable at high speeds.
So when they put up a dev blog which is essentinaly abou that CS of a RAM are effective 63% of the time and leave out all the rest of the aerodynamics, it surely rised a few eyebrows…
Btw I thing that the CG shift due to mass loss in solid rocket motors, aerodynamics shift and so on is not taken into the account and they just calculate effectivnes of controll surfaces on basic aerodynamic subsonic lift formula.
They have necessary documents for AIM-9 series CoG and the effect of torque from the canards on the missile. As such they have turn radius based on speed and max overload for AIM-9D… all other AIM-9’s and missiles are based on this data but adjusted according to their CoG and control fin distance from CoG.
That is why the Magic 2 and AAM-3 are underperforming. That may very well be why the Stinger seems to be underperforming. They have information on Magic 2 overload based on speed now, so perhaps they will be able to fix a few of these missiles with similar layout.
That is when they buffed it last time i checked. Idk what table you are comparing on.
And iirc it was on the basis of using a contrast seeker
Edit:
Also the missile is the 9M37M per the wiki, and wiki says it has contrast seeker. Im not in game so i can’t check but i believe that is the case there aswell
The Igla’s seeker that we have is a dual mode SWIR and MWIR seeker, if gaijin has given it optical guidance, they have done so in error. The 9K333 Verba is touted to have an optical spectrum seeker addition and we do not have that in game.
