Matrix Games Forums

Hey guys,

So I started noticing this a while ago and just haven't asked for the reasoning behind why many of the Fighters and Fighter/Attack aircraft have the exact same max speed and the same max altitude...

It seems as if it goes something like this:

1. If the plane is something like a 4g/4g+ fighter, the max speed is very often set at 920 Knots and the max altitude set at 45,000 Ft.
2. If the plane is like a 5g fighter, the max speed is often set at 1000 Knots and the max altitude somewhere between >45,000 Ft. or <=60,000 Ft.
3. If the plane is, for example, a dedicated interceptor, the max speed is often capped at 1350 Knots and the max altitude between >45,000 Ft. or <=60,000 Ft.

So, I'll give you a few examples of where there is a huge disconnect between the true performance of the aircraft, and the values currently set in the DB:

1. F-15C Eagle --- In-game Max Speed/Altitude: 920 Kts. / 45,000 Ft.
--True Max Speed: 1,875 Mph or ~1630 Knots
--True Max Altitude: 65,000 Ft.
++Evidence #1: https://www.globalsecurity.org/military ... -specs.htm
++Evidence #2: https://web.archive.org/web/20090613094 ... p?fsID=101

2. F-16C Fighting Falcon --- In-game Max Speed/Altitude: 920 Kts. / 45,000 Ft.
--True Max Speed: 1,500 Mph or ~1300 Knots
--True Max Altitude: 50,000+ Ft.
++Evidence #1: https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets ... ng-falcon/
++Evidence #2: https://www.globalsecurity.org/military ... -specs.htm

3. F-14B Tomcat --- In-game Max Speed/Altitude: 920 Kts. / 45,000 Ft.
--True Max Speed: 1545 Mph or ~1340 Knots
--True Max Altitude: 53,000+ Ft.
++Evidence #1: https://www.globalsecurity.org/military ... -specs.htm
++Evidence #2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_F ... cat#Design

4. J-20B Mighty Dragon (w/ WS-15 Engine) --- In-game Max Speed/Altitude: 1000 Kts. / 55,000 Ft.
--True Max Speed: 1650 Mph or ~1430 Knots (Supercruise @ 1395 Mph / ~1210 Knots)
--True Max Altitude: 65,000 Ft.
++Evidence #1: https://www.globalsecurity.org/military ... -specs.htm
++Evidence #2: https://www.military-today.com/aircraft/j20.htm

5. Mig-31BM Foxhound --- In-game Max Speed/Altitude: 1350 Kts. / 60,000 Ft.
--True Max Speed: 1865 Mph or ~1620 Knots (Mach 2.83 at >40,000 Ft.)
--True Max Altitude: 65,000 Ft.
++Evidence #1: https://www.globalsecurity.org/military ... -specs.htm
++Evidence #2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan_MiG-31#Design

So, as you can see, there's a big difference. There seem to be hundreds of aircraft just like the examples above...

Now, stay with me... The reason I ask about this is because I was considering starting a project of going through all the US and Russian Fighter and Fighter/Attack aircraft and finding out their correct Max Speed and Max Altitude and then submitting that information in the form of DB Update Requests on the CMO-DB-Requests GitHub site. After that's done, I'd then move on to other aircraft types and countries...

What I need to know is, before I spend hundreds of hours working on that project: Is there some sort of "Game-Breaking" reason why all those aircraft's Max Speeds and Altitudes are set up that way? I feel as if all those aircraft, were they to have their true stats updated in the DB, would provide a much greater variation of outcomes during gameplay, and would also greatly increase the accuracy of the simulation when in comparison to what would/could likely happen in the "Real World"...

So, should I be excited to get to work on that project, or is there some reason why those changes wouldn't work with the game or a reason why those DB Update Requests' changes wouldn't be implemented in the DB? I just don't want to waste hundreds of hours of work if it wouldn't end up being applied to the game...

Thank you for your time,
Noah K.

hey Noah,

as far as I know, this is an abstraction that normalize values to simulate operational usage rather than theoretic maximum speeds, while working from public data, often quoting theoretical maximum speed, as you demonstrated.

The dev blog have some entries about it :
https://command.matrixgames.com/index.p ... +speed#612

kudos for bringing it up and researching it, by the way.

I don't have an exact answer for you. However, this question has come up in the past.

The speeds you are quoting below appear to be theoretical maximums. For example, the F-15 you quote at 1,875 MPH (Mach 2.5) is a "test" speed - a straight-line dash by a test aircraft stripped down with ideal weather, no combat load, and probably less than full fuel load. It is a speed that was achieved once in testing, but it's a situation that would likely never take place in real operations. Same for the altitude limits. There are practical limits to how high or fast a fighter, bomber, or recon aircraft could, or would, perform in the real world.

A little speculation here, but it's likely the devs decided at some point that trying to determine individual "practical" characteristics for each plane was just not worth the time and programming. The performance variance range within each generation or type of plane is narrow enough that one consensus performance number gets the player close enough to realism without all the extra research and programming.

Even if a volunteer such as yourself offered to do the research, you work would still have to be reviewed and justified, plane by plane, before it went into the database, after which the database itself becomes more difficult to maintain. Any other database changes contemplated would have to consider the effects upon those individualized performance characteristics. There's just no return on the effort in game terms.

In addition, there's the complication of loadouts.

Although an aircraft might sometimes be completely clean to do ferrying or reconnaissance, it could also be carrying a modest load of AAMs, or hauling several tons of draggy cluster bombs. Each of these would have different drag characteristics, and therefore different speeds and altitudes. Additionally, extremely high speeds generate high aerodynamic thermal loads, and the more fragile components, both of the aircraft and its ordnance, can only tolerate this for a limited amount of time. Maximum speed and altitude under ideal circumstances has little relationship to sustained speed and altitude with operational loadouts.

Command abstracts all of this by placing aircraft into general operational speed classes at which they commonly operate. "Typical jet fighter" is considered to operate at 350/480/920 knots. Some jets which are optimized for supercruising or supersonic dashes have higher top speed limits. It gives a useful working model of what the planes usually do.

When an aircraft is chased by a couple of missiles the usual reaction is TO RUN AWAY FROM THEM FAST. True, historically, some aircraft tried to save the loadouts or "to coolly maintain a verosimile operational speed". Which was a good thing because they become an important lessons for the others.

At the risk of repeating, I'd not that max speed spec as in wikipedia is practically irrelevant in operation.
It's kind of like top speed and 0-60 for a road car. While one may see a 0.1 second difference it's more about how it feels when driving.
Modern military aircraft have stopped getting faster, because while designers may want to get top numbers, pilots don't max out speed much at all, and rarely operate near top speeds. So payload, agility, weight, and range are more important.
I've wondered the same thing myself.

As in the link to the Mega-FAQ the devs built the numbers based on input from actual pilots.

But here from the horse's mouth.

https://hushkit.net/2017/09/13/cold-war ... veals-all/

Question: Public specifications put the F-15’s top speed at Mach 2.5- can it really get there?

Answer: “I was the squadron functional check flight pilot at two of my bases, Soesterberg and Elmendorf. FCFs are flown clean, without external stores, and part of every FCF is acceleration to max speed at high (plus or minus FL400) altitude. I once got a fairly new F-15C up to Mach 2.21 on an FCF over the North Sea. This was a completely clean jet … they’d even taken the pylons off … but 2.21 was all she wrote, and I’ve never had one faster than that. Dirty, which is to say in normal training or combat configuration, I doubt anyone has gotten an Eagle much over Mach 1.8 in level flight.”

I'd actually argue that some loadouts are too fast, especially the more recent NATO aircraft that were equipped to loiter for long periods of time in support of COIN operations. Speed was not of the essence. Loiter time at low speeds with lots of ordnance was.

Air resistance of all that ordnance adds up fast. Air resistance is approximately proportional to the square of the velocity, or twice the velocity requires 4 times as much thrust. Your thrust is fixed, the engine only outputs so much. But you can strap a whole lot of stuff on, triple rack Mavericks, SDB cartridges, wingtip OECM, fuel tanks etc. If you add twice as much stuff, it requires 4 times as much thrust for the same speed, but if you don't have enough thrust, then you sacrifice speed. All that equals you pouring in a ridiculous quantity of fuel.

There's a lot more to this, density of air, altitude, aerodynamics etc, but going fast is hard and expensive. Doing it with full racks of gear is even more expensive and if your thrust is limited (it is) then adding more fuel only goes so far.

Ain't the Loiter speed representative TitaniumTrout ?

Ain't the Loiter speed representative TitaniumTrout ?

It doesn't show up in the ingame DB Viewer, but each loadout have a PayloadWeightDragModifier value.

Loiter speed is very representative, my response was more in line to nkocevar's original premise. Fast is great, but the trade offs are real and I think people fixate on the speed.

First of all, the real "top" speed of an A/C is a lot more complicated than any one number that you are going to read on Wikipedia and claim to be "correct". The limit is not always overcoming drag. Sometimes the engine could get you faster, but something else bad would happen in the meantime. There might be Mach number limits, dynamic pressure (structural) limits, heating limits, etc.

Also, I have not really seen this mentioned, but wind is not a thing in CMO. Actual winds aloft might get to 100 knots; that has a much greater effect on ground speed and range, etc.

But, I kind of get what OP is saying from this perspective: the player sometimes gets a little too much information from the speed/altitude alone. If you see something cruising at something other than 480 knots and 36,000 ft, you can almost type ID it yourself, or at least know that it is special somehow. I would welcome a little bit of randomization to the cruising speeds/altitudes, but I do not think that having "correct" speeds is possible.

Another thing, the "truth-by-Wikipedia" aircraft performance clan will always focus on top speed, but if I have any issues with the performance model, it is with the fuel consumption. I think that has a much greater impact.