BVR combat in 4.33.1
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It seems as though in 4.33 the BVR missiles are considerably less effective than they were in 4.32. This seems kind of weird to me, because in the manual it states that the new missiles should perform so that the min abort range actually matters. However, the missiles in 4.33 seem to lose E much much faster than they did in 4.32. I was doing some testing with a friend of mine, and we found that vs a human player who knows what he is doing you really have to get within about 6-7nm to force a kill. Not saying the 4.32 missiles were perfect or anything either, just noting that the new missiles seem quite a bit easier to trash.
Case in point: in the 20,000ft engagement, I fired a lofted slammer B from a mere 13.5nm from a speed of mach 1.3. According to the DLZ, my opponent was well withing RTR range when I fired. Yet watching the taciew, he trashed the missile with ease by running and performing a final defense. It would be one thing if this were a once off, but we can both do this as a matter routine.
I know that missiles can be defeated with the correct tactics, but I am finding this patch to be uncomfortably close to reminding me of DCS’s absolutely horried "BV"R missles. Just my 2 cents.
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FYI, no matter what your speed is, if you are BVR’ing at only 20 000 ft, you’re doing it wrong. Try 30 000 or 35 000 ft with loft, the missile will have much more energy and really “fall” on the target.
RTR assums the target do not change altitude. If your friend turns and runs to the deck, there is a good chance he can escape RTR. But he’s pretty much out out the BVR fight anyway.
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I am aware that higher is better.
We were testing at different altitudes etc. And being better at one height does not mean it should be completely horrid the next.
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I’ve noted this behaviour and i have to give a big shout out to the dev team for upgrading the ai! You see unlike bms 4.32 or older versions, now when the ai engages in BVR, but more importantly, when they go defensive, they floor it. I’ve noticed su27’s pumping with 650 knots. This never happened before!
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How can old Mig 17 and 19 without RWR know a missile is launched at them BVR as they turn away?
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How can old Mig 17 and 19 without RWR know a missile is launched at them BVR as they turn away?
19 has a radar, doesnt it?
If you are flying a MiG-19, and you get to 23 miles against a contact that is hot from the south, and you know that the south and their yankee imperialist pigdog masters have F-15s and F-16s with fox threes, are you going to commit to a visual merge?
For that matter, if you’re in an F-16 and your RWR is faulty or switched off, are you going to commit to a visual merge on contacts from the north, after getting PRINT FULCRUM or FLANKER? Or are you going to assume that their BVR capability should be respected, launch on timeline, and crank or notch as appropriate?
I was doing some testing with a friend of mine, and we found that vs a human player who knows what he is doing you really have to get within about 6-7nm to force a kill.
I guess you have worked out by now, that the word ‘miss’ is a part of the word ‘missile’. You can be within 1 mile and still not be able to force a kill, you know. You can force a kill when you have solved range, angles and closure, and spat some lead at the bandit who has no energy or altitude remaining to maneuver with. Other than that… The way missiles pursue in BMS, if you have sufficient altitude and airspeed, you can defeat a shot from the rear quarter at a mile and a half, just by forcing the missile to bleed energy to get lead pursuit on a hard maneuvering target in a loaded roll downhill.
In my testing, going against a human player who knows what they are doing, there is no range at which you can force a kill.
As for BVR ranges… Last that I heard on the topic, BMS ranges are most accurate around 15 to 20 thousand feet. Down in the weeds, missiles have better range than they should, as their thrust is higher than it should be (thrust is a function of specific impulse, which in chemical rockets decreases with increasing atmospheric pressure, rising to a maximum in vacuum). At altitude, missiles have worse range than they should, as their thrust is lower than it should be (for the same reason). The thrust of a missile in BMS is a single value AFAIK, instead of changing over time as it should.
I have heard advice that certain air forces IRL do not practice BVR below 35 thousand feet for this reason, but I have no way of verifying this advice. Certainly it makes sense - the higher you are, the less drag you have, AND the more thrust… and thus, the much greater delta V of the missile. Then when you are faster, the launch platform has less drag and is going faster too, so the starting point of the missile is higher and faster… again, leading to much greater range.
As to making guesses for what range is realistic for an AIM-120 to successfully engage a maneuvering target at medium altitude… I could probably get an idea for its range to hit a non maneuvering target, but hitting something trying to evade is more complicated maths than I would like to work on.
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19 has a radar, doesnt it?
If you are flying a MiG-19, and you get to 23 miles against a contact that is hot from the south, and you know that the south and their yankee imperialist pigdog masters have F-15s and F-16s with fox threes, are you going to commit to a visual merge?
For that matter, if you’re in an F-16 and your RWR is faulty or switched off, are you going to commit to a visual merge on contacts from the north, after getting PRINT FULCRUM or FLANKER? Or are you going to assume that their BVR capability should be respected, launch on timeline, and crank or notch as appropriate?
My AI wingman never seems to mind flying straight into incoming AA12’s or AMRAAMs. he doesn’t turn around until the incoming missile goes active. Wonder why the Mig19 without all the sensors does have the smarts not to take the risk to fly within 23 miles of high threat bandits, but my wingman with all these fancy sensors does not have these smarts…
I would love to have a “go defensive” command that tells your wingman to turn around and go warp speed. The way it is now is that AI wingmen are completely defenseless in BVR combat.
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It is great that the community is continuously improving the sim and such discussions help a lot. I have also noticed that many missiles especially ARH have updated thrust, weight, drag and more since BMS 4.32. Yes, it seems harder to hit but also easier to drag the missile into losing its energy. Above 30,000 you can even score a hit BVR with aim9x from 15nm head on, split s and escape an AMRAAM fired at the same time, which of course is very effective against human opponents In the sim it seems that the aim9x having less drag keeps its energy much better than the bigger aim120. So even though it has less burn time up high it has a matching BVR reach. I have also noticed that the aim7m perhaps not updated does not lose energy as fast as ARH missiles thus giving it a very large no escape zone, also surprising to a human opponent who may laugh at the fool bringing old generation missiles to a fire and forget range
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It is great that the community is continuously improving the sim and such discussions help a lot. I have also noticed that many missiles especially ARH have updated thrust, weight, drag and more since BMS 4.32. Yes, it seems harder to hit but also easier to drag the missile into losing its energy. Above 30,000 you can even score a hit BVR with aim9x from 15nm head on, split s and escape an AMRAAM fired at the same time, which of course is very effective against human opponents In the sim it seems that the aim9x having less drag keeps its energy much better than the bigger aim120. So even though it has less burn time up high it has a matching BVR reach. I have also noticed that the aim7m perhaps not updated does not lose energy as fast as ARH missiles thus giving it a very large no escape zone, also surprising to a human opponent who may laugh at the fool bringing old generation missiles to a fire and forget range
AIM-7F/M now have the dual thrust rocket engine which provides far more larger and real eng. zone comparing to old one model where they have almost the same thurst char and tot. imp. what Vietnam Era AIM-7E/E-2 had.
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My AI wingman never seems to mind flying straight into incoming AA12’s or AMRAAMs. he doesn’t turn around until the incoming missile goes active. Wonder why the Mig19 without all the sensors does have the smarts not to take the risk to fly within 23 miles of high threat bandits, but my wingman with all these fancy sensors does not have these smarts…
I would love to have a “go defensive” command that tells your wingman to turn around and go warp speed. The way it is now is that AI wingmen are completely defenseless in BVR combat.
Does your AI flight lead do the same?
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“I would love to have a “go defensive” command”
Second that, i am always trying to protect my ai wingmen but they simply will not pump when i want them to, they go deep inside the MAR to many times for comfort.
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Does your AI flight lead do the same?
I should test that out some more, I have flown as 2 a few times in the past, but it’s been too long to remember the details what the AI flight lead does. But I think they do the same. I frequently create TE’s and fly CAP’s with several flights in the package. Me leading one two ship and an AI two ship flying a second CAP station. And I’m pretty sure that the AI flight engages the threat aircraft and only go defensive when the missile shot against them goes active. Most of the time when the AI flight faces an AA12 or AMRAAM equipped threat, they get shot down in my experience.
I’ve done several searches on the forum to find out what best practice is commanding your wingmen. I read that using the proper radio commands is important, otherwise your wingmen get confused etc. I’m not saying that I’ve completely mastered coaching my wingmen, but I’ve been practicing a lot and trying quite a few things. And so far the best tactic for me is to give a flex command when I face AA12 equipped bandits and keep my wingman out of the fight. I generally only allow my wingman to engage against lower threat bandits that only have SARH missiles or heaters. A few things would already help a lot for their survival, like keeping their airspeed up. I notice too often when I do allow them to engage, that they drop their airspeed well below 400 kts when missiles have already been fired. So when they have to go defensive then, they have no chance anymore to outrun the missile because they’re too slow. Like I said, it would be nice if I could tell my wingman to go defensive and that he would then turn away from the threat and accelerate to warp speed. Then you can tell him on time to turn and keep him alive. I’ve tried other things like rejoin or glue wing, but these only had limited succes.
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FYI, no matter what your speed is, if you are BVR’ing at only 20 000 ft, you’re doing it wrong.
To be fair though, maybe you just finished a surface attack or something else and are at 20K. F-16s do more than just A-A so they can’t hang out up there all the time like F-15s :D.
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from reviewing a lot of ACMIs I have seen that an AMRAAM that “falls” on the target has the probability of a miss. Be that ground clutter or limited maneuvering or just the in-game missile behavior
And IRL lofting an AMRAAM at FL350 can make the missile go so high that systems inside freeze(i read that somewhere or heard it,dont remember.could be BS)
And RTR is a sure kill, no matter what. -
And RTR is a sure kill, no matter what.
I took rtr to imply that if the target turned “once” and ran you’re “guaranteed” a kill. But like all things A2A, nothing is so straight forward.
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And IRL lofting an AMRAAM at FL350 can make the missile go so high that systems inside freeze(i read that somewhere or heard it,dont remember.could be BS)
I call BS indeed.
And RTR is a sure kill, no matter what.
Again, RTR is based on assumptions… namely target turns away and burns while staying at the same altitude. If the target dives to the ground, those assumptions are off…
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…… namely target turns away and burns while sayting at the same altitude. If the target dives to the ground, those assumptions are off…
That explains why it’s called RTR instead of RTDWR (Range Turn, Dive, Weave and Run).
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How can old Mig 17 and 19 without RWR know a missile is launched at them BVR as they turn away?
AI knowns all
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Both the MiG-19 and MiG-17 had a Sirena type RWR/RHAW system from the start……whether or not they could actually detect an AMRAAM radar is probably a question for a different forum.
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Both the MiG-19 and MiG-17 had a Sirena type RWR/RHAW system from the start……whether or not they could actually detect an AMRAAM radar is probably a question for a different forum.
Do you have sources for this ? Mine seem to indicate that the Sirenas were fitted on MiG-17s at factory only beginning with the PF variant.
Anyway, the RWR on a MiG-17 should only detect emissions coming from the rearward hemisphere, so even if we supposed the Sirenas could detect AMRAAMs, it would not enable the pilots to know when to turn away.
