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The length of time and exact positioning doesn't matter. What matters is finding that nice balance of flare vs missile effectiveness.

[quote=""'[R-DEV"]Mats391;2172093']No one touched the way flares deploy for ages While it would be bit tedious task, changing them to deploy to side and forward would easily be possible.
Can you link sources that flares should only be effective for 4 seconds? [/quote]

M206, commonly used flare for blufor
Figure 1. M206 CM Flare Performance Characteristics

Some other flares compatible with the same launchers
http://www.chemringcm.com/~/media/Files ... -type1.pdf
http://www.chemringcm.com/~/media/Files ... type-8.pdf


Common 26mm Russian flare
http://www.tara-aerospace.com/downloads ... e_26mm.pdf


[quote="chrisweb89""]The length of time and exact positioning doesn't matter. What matters is finding that nice balance of flare vs missile effectiveness.[/quote]

I agree balance is key, though to counterbalance a reduction in flare time you could increase flare count - I think most vehicle in game have fewer flares than they realistically would.

I found sources that stated that there are flares that burn 20 sec or more and there are videos where you can see the flares burning longer than 5 sec.

The length of time and exact positioning doesn't matter. What matters is finding that nice balance of flare vs missile effectiveness.

Careful, if you apply that kind of reasoning to everything eventually you will get Battlefield 3 balance.

I really haven't flown much but last night a flew the havok on Saaremaa and it seemed good to me. Manpads were locking me and scring me because they always exploded in my flares and minimum hurt me, rather than flying right through and giving me time to rape them. I didn't have take any really bad hits, but I was acticaly trying to avoid the AA so maybe thats why, and didn't die until being up for 35 minutes to an AA while on the west side of the map and burned out flying back.

Tested the stormer again, it is good against jets and helicopters now, proximity fuse works nicely again. Did you change anything in the last updates regarding the stormer?

Just one thing that's strange: If a jet flies directly towards any AA head on, stormer or otherwise, and the AA fires missiles, even without flaring the missiles will just explode behind the jet without damaging it, unless the missile hits the jet directly.
Try that with stormer or other AA, they will not damage the jet unless it is a direct hit if it comes head on towards the missile, this result is easy to reproduce.

Used the stormer on hades peak today and hit the russian cow with 3+ missiles head on which exploded but didn't seem to do any damage to it. The chopper didn't pop any flares and flew off like nothing happened.

Second cow that came, took 2-3 rockets before started smoking and lost engine power.

It might makes sense to give the Stormer a dual mode system like the Tunguska. The more recent version of the system has automatic guidance.

https://www.thalesgroup.com/sites/defau ... 011_10.pdf

Automatic target tracking and engagement providing fire and forget system capability

Also another thing to consider for flares and such is that in game they're sort of an analog for both flares and chaff.

TBob wrote:It might makes sense to give the Stormer a dual mode system like the Tunguska. The more recent version of the system has automatic guidance.

https://www.thalesgroup.com/sites/defau ... 011_10.pdf

Ye, makes sense to the Stormer. Basically, from what I can tell instead of locking automatic onto a radar signature, the system can automatically lock onto a inferred or visual band signature.

Don't forget to add the thermals as well.

After a lot of jet fights on test airfield i noticed something about air to air missiles. If you lock your opponent and shoot before he uses flares, any air to air missile will hit with an estimated 90% probability, if the aircraft is not flying towards your direction at any angle (or else the missile most likely will explode but not damage the jet).

This dynamic should get rid of those moments where you shoot all your missiles at the jet and it evades them all by flaring after the missiles launch, only to turn around and hit you with its first missile.

Preflaring during air to air combat is way more important now.

Didn't test it thoroughly with surface to air missiles yet, but from what i have seen it is probably the same as with air to air missiles.

viirusiiseli wrote: They would have AAV(s). And there's only 1 HAT a team, HATs are still killing armor all the time. Your point?

A lot less often than you think with tank armor changes.

Many tanks(I only shot Abrams on the side but I'm sure every other MBT has same amount of HP and material modifier amirite?) can RTB from typical guided HAT like Eryx even after a side shot.

Allahu Akbar wrote:A lot less often than you think with tank armor changes.

Many tanks(I only shot Abrams on the side but I'm sure every other MBT has same amount of HP and material modifier amirite?) can RTB from typical guided HAT like Eryx even after a side shot.

Well thank goodness manpads aren't nerfed, right? They now have unlimited lock range unlike before, and it is easier to use them than ever (excluding 0.98 hipfire fiasco).

Right now, if the aircraft doesn't preflare and the missile locks it and launches, in 90% of cases the missile will hit and destroy the aircraft. Which isn't really a bad thing balance wise.

AA will be rewarded more for using the missiles wisely. Wether a missile is effective or not is more predictable now which saves frustration for the AA, that before the update might have used the missiles flawlessly but still would have been denied success all to often by the highly randomized outcome.

This also encourages smarter utilization of the flares by the pilot, instead of just dumping them whenever he hears a lock tone, which was a decent strategy before that wasn't penalized as much as it ought to have been.
Now the pilot must actively lauch flares as a precaution when he notices a ground AA or jet or when he enters a high threat environment. Before, this strategy was more of an option that had its clear benefits but was not as necessary as it is now.

So in turn wouldn't it be nice generally for aircraft, but especially transport and attack helicopters, to have more flares available like so many of their real counterparts do?
Since preflaring is a must now, it would be nice for them to not run out of flares too quickly.

The new system all the more reduced the time flares last and therefore the time an aircraft can be reasonably safe while being exposed to hostile AA, since flaring after missile launch isn't really a viable option anymore to deter it.
Increasing flare counts to greater levels would give aircraft more room to breath again.

Thank you.

This was my recent experience using the Stormer



Supposedly it did go down afterwards at least.

Looking at the numbers, the missiles have a 35 meter splash with a 30 meter detonation radius, at which range with the material modifier would be 290 damage vs 1700 HP of a Mi-8 and you need to do 510 damage before the Mi-8 starts bleeding.

Also the lack of markers for friendly aircraft makes it a huge pain to make sure you're not going to be shooting at a friendly jet.

Well, does the system have friend/foe recognition? Not sure if the ingame markers are tied to the locking mechanism if it does.

Looks like it should be using the SIFF

New Friend Or Foe System For High Velocity Missile

I should be possible to implement marking enemy and friendly aircraft, just like jets attack helicopters do, even though they don't have AAs.

This might be completely impossible, but would it make sense/be possible to make saclos type AA missiles only explode on proximity when the distance between them and the target starts getting larger. IE as the missile is flying towards the target it won't explode at 30 meters until it gets to within lets says 5 meters and starts flying away from the aircraft.

Plz give more flares to all aircraft.

+1
CAS helicopters definately need more flares especially on larger maps.
Fixed wing aircraft is a different story but airplanes like A-10/SU-25 would benefit from a few more flares.
(maybe from 60 to 90). IRL is something like 480 (flare&chaff).

We did some testing last night on Test Airfield with flares. Surface-to-air-missile kill percentage was somewhere in the 80% range. Thus, shooting two AA missiles towards flying get is a guaranteed kill. Even with one AA missile (ie. MANPAD) kill percentage is incredible obviously. With AAV that has 4 or more missiles, it doesn't even leave a chance to enemy jet.

Even preflaring doesn't help at all, AA missile launched towards flares or infront of moving jet will score almost guaranteed kill with first shot. Only way to miss shot is to shoot the missile behind the flying aircraft. Also constant flaring every 1-2 seconds doesn't help as the missile will always abadon the last heat source that it's locked on, and find the next one, thus eventually hitting the escaping aircraft in the rear. Yet flares stay in the air for only such short period of time, that ONLY preflaring when doing a bombing run is not gonna work. Flares disappear in ~5 seconds which is not enough time for the jet to get out of range of AA, making the jet the only heatsource in the sky, thus making it sure kill for the AA.

The AA missile re-directing ability combined with pretty high AAV range (1200-1400 m) makes it also possible for AAV to blindly shoot bunch of missiles towards escaping enemy jet after losing visual sight, and the missiles will keep re-directing flare after flare, eventually hitting the jet and killing it. I've been killed in jet quite a few times by indiscriminatly fired re-direct AA missiles at altitudes up to 1700 m. This used to be impossible before.

Before, missiles usually locked on to the first flare, blew up on it, and if the aircraft was far away enough from the explosion, it survived. This way there was some kind of logic how to avoid getting killed by AA, thus giving room for tactics. Right now for jets it's nothing but russian roulette but with 5 rounds in the chambers.