+1 nikolas93TS
I played a scenario last night, I had 2 cobras, they managed to fire off a few TOWs before one was shot down and the other was chased off the map...
One thing I would hate to see is AA/Sams become so powerful that helos and fixed winged become useless...
For me like nikolas93TS I think the balance is just about right and is for the most part realistic...
Cheers
thats interesting... because ive lost more strela-10`s to cobras than cobras to AA units...
A case in point is Afghanistan where from 1982 to 1987 there were 1285 MANPADS launches for 63 kills, mostly transport helicopters (although CIA at certain point claimed 70% success rate). When we consider that, for example, 181st Independent Helicopter Regiment alone (operating Mi-6/Mi-8/Mi-24) conducted an astonishing 120 440 sorties (and they were not the only unit) from December 1979 to August 1988, both number of launches and kills sounds even less impressive. In particular Stinger role is fairly overhyped in public imagination, as first generation MANPADS (FIM-43 Redeye and mostly Egyptian SA-7b) showed up in Mujaheddin hands long before the Stinger, which arrived around 1985-1986 when Soviets had already begun the large-scale withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan. Initially Stinger had some effect (several Su-25 losses in November were probably of greatest importance) and there was a surge in lost airframes, but Soviets quickly adapted and introduced different attack patterns, so the things went back to relative normal. Only a handful of Soviet losses came from Strela and at least one from Redeye. Blowpipe was also delivered in 1986 but with its MCLOS guidance requiring highly skilled operator, it was even less effective, most likely scoring no kills. That same missile was also used in Falklands, on which the official report stated that of the 95 missiles fired, only 9 managed to destroy their targets and these were slow flying planes and helicopters. A later report indicated that only 1 kill could be attributed to Blowpipe.
Another example is Yom Kippur war, where in best case only 3% missiles killed their targets, while the lower end projection would suggest only 1,3% chance of kill. Arguably, statistics can be misleading as we don't know how many of those missiles were fired properly (e.g within the engagement envelope, and percentage of helicopters was lower) but still it illustrates that manufacturer claims tend to be significantly higher than actual combat performance.
In Armored Brigade some things are abstracted at the moment (such as evasive manuevers, EW, chaff, flares etc.) but kill chance of missiles tend to be quite realistic in my opinion (and it is often luck dependand like in real war).
an interesting statistic... 1285 MANPADS launches and 63 helicopter hits... what about aircraft though? and what of extraneous factors such as mishandling? what about firing range?
also for the yom kippur war wasnt AA missile technology at the time considered inaccurate? i remember reading that at the time of the vietnam war... which ended around 2 years before the yom kippur war that F4s would expend their entire missile load on the Mig21 fishbed... miss and be slaughtered by the cannon armed MiG21s since the F4 at the time lacked the vulcan...
also it seems that 3% statistic seems more like a vs aircraft argument over a vs helicopter argument... helicopters after all cant maneuver as well as aircraft... it also doesnt state the firing range and other extraneous factors... regardless i do agree with the statistic... aircraft are hard to kill...they can after all perform rapid maneuvers and have ECM/flares/chaff but helicopters? the statistic provided isnt evidence enough to conclude performance vs helos atm
