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I'd give the MiG-29M the R-73s and 4 RBK-500 SPBE, it would make Moljnir look like drizzle, plus it wouldn't over proliferate PGMs on the Soviet side. The RBK-500 would reliably annihilate most heavies and super heavies without fundamentally changing the nature of the MiG-29Ms loadout, it's a simple stat change.

Sensor fused munitions ftw

http://armamentresearch.com/wp-content/ ... manual.jpg

Small request
Situation: In conquest mode you can play with smaller income -20% or -40% or flat 0
Request: Allow more reduction down. -50%, -66% -75% -90% (1/2 ,1/3, 1/4, 1/10 of income)
Or just keep it simple and go with -20%/-40%/-60%/-80%/-90%/ flat 0. The values are close enought. Only 1/10 for tactical mode is off chart.
Reasoning: Players sometimes play 4v4 on 1v1 map. Like it or not. However if you have 1v1 map with normal income 7 per side, and suddenly put 20 income on that What would happen? Side with more MLRS wins, since you cant place just more troops on frontline. And the more clustered enemy is the faster rockets pay off.

Other than that is that some people may like low income games.

Of course players may refuse to adjust income to the game mode they start (so lazy) but at least give them tools.

Other aproach: In conquest mode each map has a value conquest income, which could be calculated as sum of destruction zones/2, or just adjusted by balance team. Some 2v2 maps are bigger, other are smaller.
And the income by default does not change with extra players. Game setter need to increase it all by himself.
This is good since people are lazy, and will not need to remember to reduce income if they play overcrowded map.
They still could max income if they want to play all high end units game.

above is pretty good idea for income in both directions like a slider.
Maybe a gamemode with all win conditions would be nice to. Kinda like how civ there is science ,domination, culture and diplomacy. You can turn some off maybe

Can all Su-22s get the NR-30 cannon, as they historically had? Also, It would add flavor to have the Su-22s have 1 or 2AP capability from the NR-30s, making them a cheap cannon Anti-vehicle unit, basically a budget MiG-27.

Also, increase the Su-7/Su-22 speed to 900kph. They were designed to go supersonic on low altitude IRL and one of the main reasons the Soviets liked the Su-25 better than the Su-22 was that it was SLOWER. Also, increasing their speed will only minimally increase their survivability.

hansbroger wrote:I'd give the MiG-29M the R-73s and 4 RBK-500 SPBE, it would make Moljnir look like drizzle, plus it wouldn't over proliferate PGMs on the Soviet side. The RBK-500 would reliably annihilate most heavies and super heavies without fundamentally changing the nature of the MiG-29Ms loadout, it's a simple stat change.

Sensor fused munitions ftw

http://armamentresearch.com/wp-content/ ... manual.jpg

The USSR and redfor in general is almost devoid of PGMs. What proliferation is there to stop? Also no matter how good you make cluster bombs, just using a smerch or ATACM is a much better investment since its invulnerable to SAMs and ASF.

I agree with your suggestion however if cluster planes become viable in the meta(they never were, people always chose ATGM planes or LGBs). I it could make the MiG-29M unique. However, It should keep the R-77s since its a direct buff over the MiG-29S.

I don't think LGBs should be countered by more LGBs.
Pact has more interesting stuff like:
-fzab, which functions ingame like the Czechoslovak odab
-ofzab, less fire, more HE
-odab, does not start fires, it should have more of an area effect
(HE damage doesn't decline with distance, but less effective against heavy armour)

ppd401 wrote:The USSR and redfor in general is almost devoid of PGMs. What proliferation is there to stop? Also no matter how good you make cluster bombs, just using a smerch or ATACM is a much better investment since its invulnerable to SAMs and ASF.

I agree with your suggestion however if cluster planes become viable in the meta(they never were, people always chose ATGM planes or LGBs). I it could make the MiG-29M unique. However, It should keep the R-77s since its a direct buff over the MiG-29S.

Yeah it's more their sudden proliferation among BlueFor, especially minors that I was referring to. This was mostly more of an issue pre LGB accuracy Nerf but the proliferation of PGMs to nations that did not have large war stocks of them in 1991 still really bugs me.

LGBs used to be US flavour but they were subsequently handed out essentially as substitutions for nations that lacked a better high tier ATGM plane. IMHO the only nation that should be using LGBs aside from the US in RD is the UK, I'd rather have the rest re-rolled but I guess I'm a bit of a purist in that sense.

It is for this reason that I do not push for PGMs like KAB-500 on Soviet aircraft, which although contemporaneous, war stocks of them did not exist in significant quantities unlike precision guided artillery shells like Krasnopol, Santimeter and Smel'chak that all saw combat use (after operational testing) in Afghanistan and Chechnya among regular forces. The emphasis on guided artillery shells is of course understandable because, like you stated, they don't require an interceptable launch platform.

Deficiencies in the USSR air arm do and should justifiably exist. These deficiencies should also justifiably be made up for in the artillery tab by systems like the 9K52 Luna-M and OTR-21 Tochka among others, higher fire rates for SPA (and AU F1 while we're at it....), more numerous and more recent SPA unit options like the 2S3M1 and 2S5 as well as a possible reflection of precision artillery shells capabilities in accuracy for relevant systems... Etc. But that's for another topic.

hansbroger wrote:IMHO the only nation that should be using LGBs aside from the US in RD is the UK, I'd rather have the rest re-rolled but I guess I'm a bit of a purist in that sense.

You do need to add Israel to the mix, as the Griffin kit was ready by 1990 IRL (tested way earlier iirc). So PGMs loadouts are very warranted here.

There's also Japan with the GCS-1 kit and France with the BGL-400.

Markenzwieback wrote:

hansbroger wrote:IMHO the only nation that should be using LGBs aside from the US in RD is the UK, I'd rather have the rest re-rolled but I guess I'm a bit of a purist in that sense.

You do need to add Israel to the mix, as the Griffin kit was ready by 1990 IRL (tested way earlier iirc). So PGMs loadouts are very warranted here.

Definitely, though it could be argued that they'd also credibly be able to rely upon US war stocks under US statutory guarantees in a regionally constrained conflict (assuming the US isn't using them in an all out war against the Soviets), making Griffin more flavor than anything else.

My opposition to PGMs comes from my lack of conviction that anyone other than the US had enough on hand in war stocks to use on anything other than operational and strategic HVTs in timeframe. Secondly I believe their current proliferation stems from a wider problem of the casual over-estimation of advanced technology integration by (mostly) Western Minors and thus over assignment of high tech weaponry such as PGMs like LGBs to them.

The Soviet Union has a credible, combat tested PGM capability in the form of the KAB-500 and KAB-1500 in timeframe yet I do not advocate their usage on Soviet loadouts. Why? It is difficult to believe there were enough in existing ITF war stocks to make any appreciable appearance on the tactical level. As Operation Cast Lead, Opération Harmattan and others have shown, even most non-US Western majors, among them France and Israel, exhausted most of their war stocks of precision munitions in short, low-medium intensity air campaigns against non-state actors, carried out in the last ten years, which is why the thought of widespread non US/UK use of PGMs in a 1991 timeframe, at least for me beggars all belief.

Sure many nations had this capability in an abstract/limited sense ITF but as late as 2008-2015, when push came to shove 20+ years OOTF in the middle of the glut of cheap, mature precision systems brought on by the War on Terror, you still saw major non-US powers like France, the UK and Israel reducing their war stocks of PGMs in air campaigns lasting respectively little more than a week into an air campaign that had a munitions an target servicing demand that was nothing like what could be expected in great power war.

In any case, in the RD timeframe, it is hard to believe that authority for the use of any of these munitions in non-US/UK air forces would be given for anything other than strikes against high value targets of operational or strategic significance, the thought of these scant munitions being used for tank plinking ITF by a non-US/UK actor seems a stretch of the imagination.

PGM proliferation is a symptom of the general trend of over proliferating highly niche and limited technological capabilities mostly only fielded in appreciable quantities in superpower forces to the wider nation pool in an attempt to make them standalones. Another example of this is are the GPS positioning capability assumptions baked into the rapid aimtimes handed out to most BlueFor high tier Arty pieces and withheld from RedFor. Again this capability and its integration into the aimtime justification for Arty FCS of BlueFor minors outside of the US has demonstrably been shown to be optimistic given that the US was using commercial GPS rectify shortcomings in its own high readiness forces deployed ITF in 1991 to the Gulf.

In general it is often assumed that a technology sometimes even one only attaining interim IOC with US Forces in timeframe, is suddenly widely available to every Western force and seamlessly integrated into their equipment and operating procedures, yet you take similar combat proven systems on the Red side of things and too often they're dismissed under far more discriminating criteria. This is bad for general balance and terrible for Superpower balance as their niche and distinguishing capabilities are democratized and made mundane by the assumption that nearly anyone can afford to plink T-55s with Paveways instead of their being hoarded for HVTs.

I've come to accept them in the current game balance but when it comes to talk about loadout changes, air re-work and WG4 I'm utterly set on getting them replaced by more widely proliferated munitions like AGMs if at all possible, and corraling them within the US and USSR (with their tactical use by the RAF during the Bosnia campaign earning the UK a likely exception).

But that's just my opinion, it's based on a broader philosophy of how unit flavour should be differentiated and less about balance as often these PGMs will be replaced by AGMs of similar performance, many of them even F&F. In many cases as has been mentioned in the Red Dragons thread, the community identified ITF alternatives available to some current PGM users with dubious war stocks such as the PLAAF are actually most likely superior in some roles such as tank busting. It's possible for them to be restored to unique Superpower flavour without hurting general balance.