Yak- 130: as usual, Russia is ahead of it's time ... just in WarThunder

Game Discussion Realistic Battle
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141

Yes how the game “views” the Yak-130 is an “obsolete” design compared to the A-4.

Moving past semantics to win brownie points, the balance issue is still an actual debate.

I think it’s main issue is the number of FnF munitions it can bring into matches. From the player available sources like Statshark, the Yak-130 is doing better than the A-4 and Swiss Hunter in kills vs play time and deaths. Given its a mix of ARB and GRB and not actual statistics grain of salt and all.

Yak for the month of June has 200,658 games, winrate of 48%, air kills of 72,590, ground kills of 378,924, 165,282 deaths with 8,513 SL per game.

A-4E, for the same month was used in 240,458 games, winrate of 50%, air kills of 71,104, ground kills of 201,512, 201,512 deaths, and 4,467 sl per game.

Swiss Hunter is 263,333 games, 55% winrate, 148,316 air kills, 209,103 ground kills, 198,366 deaths, and 5,100 sl per game.

Comparing it to the A-4E, which is more similar its doing 195% the ground kills, at 83% of the games and a lower winrate. Its on par with air kills which means the Aim-9B is being an Aim-9B and about half useful. Per their stat cards have the same reward multiplier so not advantages for either.

The biggest reason is it has more FnF bombs to drop that doesn’t matter how “obsolete” the Yak is compared to the A-4E. All the counter measures and RWRs in the world can’t change how must faster it is for the Yak to drop 4 FnF to the A-4 or Hunter’s 2.

While they have almost the same air kills I’m going to focus on their main role as a ground pounder. So going to “ignore” the air kills and say all deaths are in relation to ground missions and not ARB. The A-4E has a ground KD of .96 and the Yak-130 is 2.3. Which suggests the Yak-130 has a higher success rate of taking out 2 targets for each pass.

The Yak has more chances to get a kill before being killed as well as just having to return to base. I’m sure many have launched some FnF munition just for the target to be killed before impact. Having 4 chances vs 2 chances rapidly increases the staying power of an aircraft.

You can argue all you want on Bullpups dumb bombs, or rockets but that has higher risk and higher skill ceiling. I’m more likely to play against an average player that can make great use of a FnF munition than the skill players snipping with a bullpup. Which still aren’t probably as common as people believe.

If the Yak’s payload was balanced or moved higher when its more likely to be engaged by more capable SPAA. Not like the A-4’s RWR is that amazing with half the SPAAs at its BR or higher are on bands that it doesn’t detect. The “introduction” date really gets NATO RWRs more than Russian.

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1 more bomb then the Israeli A-4Es (1 TT and 1 premium) at the cost of CMs, RWR and AAMs as those A-4s can carry 2x Walleye ERs, 1x GBU-3 and 2x AIM-9Bs 60x counter measures and have RWR, Yak-130 has 4 KAB-500krs and a slightly better FM and ZERO CM and no RWR…
Now If we move the Ayit to 10.7 with the Hawks, the Hunter F.58 to 10.3 the Yak-130 and the A-4E (Israel) to10.0 and the A-4E (USA) to 9.7 we can talk… but the “Yak is uniquely OP” is complete BS and everybody knows it, even if they will not admit it.

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143

Both the A-4s and the Yak-130s probably do need to go up to 9.7 at least. Kinda annoying to only have unguided bombs at the same BR, and not even necessarily with CCIP. Though will have to say, did encounter a Yak-130 as CAS yesterday for the first time and it was a bit of a pain to deal with because of how fast it was and how low and aggresively it was flown. Definetly handles extremely well.

ARB I think its probably a bit too strong in some regards to be 9.0. But not quite strong enough to deal with compression at 9.3.

ASB, I think it should probably move up to 9.3.

Naval it should move up to 9.3 or they need to move other aircraft down so they are usable.

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144

I do not disagree, I’m just annoyed that the TV bombs at 9.3 are suddenly an issue now Russia has them.
I am not trying to defend the Yak-130s BR, more point out the double standard that is being applied by those that have defended the A-4s for 6 years or so complaining about the Yak.

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I think the core difference though is quantity.

I cant even recall the last time I saw an Isareli tank in a match. and whilst they arent the only, like the SQV A-4 in the US tree does get 2x AGM-62. I dont see them used much either.

Meanwhile entire teams are consistantly made up of soviet players, and their lineups at and around that BR are annoying to deal with as it is. So you’ll see at least one pretty much every match, and thats why its more notable.

A rarely used, a bit too strong vehicle is ignorable. A constantly used, a bit too strong vehicle, is annoying

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While I get what your saying, more people playing the Yak-130 doesn’t make the A-4s less OP though, it just highlights the problem, the A-4Es F.58 should not be lower BR just because they are a little harder to get.
I get your point on how they may have “flown under the radar” up until this point, but that doesn’t mean the Yak should go up and those stay where they are, hopefully Gaijin revisits ALL of those planes BRs.

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Because they functionally do the same thing, both have guided bombs and the Yak-130 is limited with no countermeasures.

Development years don’t matter, Sweden has a Cold War spaa (although it is an apc) at 2.3

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There’s the issue that the A-4E is a squadron vehicle, which many get for free, and get atrocious stats in. Yak-130 is new so there’ll be mostly the more dedicated players using it.

From having used KAB-500Krs a little, and the Hunter 58 more, the Yak-130 may have greater potential at 4 kills per sortie, but the Hunter is much harder to kill with SAMs.

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Ground kills includes air RB.
Statshark will not tell you anything.

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No, but its why people are complaining way more about the Yak-130.

But the issue is, Gaijin wont adjust the BR of vehicles that dont get played much. For example, the GRB BR of something like the Hunter F6 makes no sense to me, but its stuck at 9.7 becuase probably no one uses it in that gamemode

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While air combat isn’t nearly as important in GRB, it is still clearly considered when deciding on BRs. Too much weight put on it really, and that’s how we end up with many planes that are just kind of useless in GRB.
Ground vehicles don’t really care about jets going 1400kmh, a plane going half as fast with more bombs or CCIP is infinitely more threatening.

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Which is why I said grain of salt. To quote someone earlier, words have meaning, use them correctly.

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How many times do these ignorant threads need to be made. BR HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH TIME OF SERVICE.