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.
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Center of Gravity.
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?
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Thank you, at least someone else sees what i’m seeing.
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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.
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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.
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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.
igla previously lock on target at 3.4km, stinger at 3.8km. Now igla 4.3km, stinger 3.7km. Gaijin explain how igla got a buff to almost 1km?
Well it got it because of contrast seeker implementation.
Previously against helicopters it was very very bad. You lock them at like 2km in the Strela before this. Now however its the best early missile spaa.
Edit:
Stinger/Mistral got roughly 4KM against helicopters (yes they got identical numbers)
igla doesn’t have a photo contrast mode.
The Strela and Type 81 have contrast seekers, not the Igla.
Just a reminder that gaijins favorite russian missile, the vikhr atgm, has 15g overload which is higher than stinger and about on par with mistral
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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.
Edit:
The 9M37M is not a Igla, that is the Strela-10M.
oh, yeah thats a royal fuckup by me. Yeah ignore what i said, idk why i thought strela fired Iglas
does the ozelot’s fliegerfaust have contrast modes? also it seems that the ozelot could also fire variety of missiles. this true?
I read that the Ozelot can fire Stinger,Igla and Mistral but only the Stinger are in use with the BW
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The Stinger E and K both use a vastly improved rosette scanner, working in both the IR and UV channels, it would still work like a normal IR missile but it should have a vastly superior lockon range even against extremely cold targets like helicopters but thats just not the case.
Also in the case of the FIM-92K, the missile should be able to guide without any lock at all, being able to be guided to it’s target by the tank’s datalink, aka, if you lock something up with the IRST you should be able to guide the missile to the target you have locked up by the IRST, and as long as your IRST is tracking the target, flares and such are going to do nothing.
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The main issue is the CG of a missile is dynamic during flight.
When the propellant are still inside the missile, the CG is closer to the back of the missile.
After the propellant are depleted, the CG is closer to the front of the missile.
Very good point.
Even a modest 15% increase in fin area (which would not be noticeable in pictures), would directly translate to 15% increase in the available G-load.
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