SEAD still useless

[shak59]

SEAD - send in to take out AA, gets shot down by AA. Everytime.

What are we doing here devs?

[yaBATMAN]

First, SEAD works only against air defenses with radar. If the air defense has no radar, the SEAD will not be able to attack it. Maybe your planes were shot down by air defense without radar.

Second, in order for a SEAD missile to attack air defense with a radar, the radar must be turned on. Therefore, experienced players simply disable the radar, and when the SEAD aircraft turns around, the AD weapons are activated and they attack the SEAD aircraft.
This mechanic worked back in Red Dragon.

[shak59]

So it's basically like smoke then, only the top 1% of players have the APM to use it. They need to make SEAD casual friendly.

[A Lamp]

Originally posted by 🇺🇦BATMAN:

First, SEAD works only against air defenses with radar. If the air defense has no radar, the SEAD will not be able to attack it. Maybe your planes were shot down by air defense without radar.

Second, in order for a SEAD missile to attack air defense with a radar, the radar must be turned on. Therefore, experienced players simply disable the radar, and when the SEAD aircraft turns around, the AD weapons are activated and they attack the SEAD aircraft.
This mechanic worked back in Red Dragon.

what you said is true, however sead is still useless. By the time sead acquires and "aligns" the missile (whatever that means) by the time it fires 9/10 my aircraft is already in firing range of the sam site then its just a gamble if my missile hits before their missile hits. I noticed a near miss stuns the target which helps. but any defense in depth strategy with over laying fields of fire and infrared AA will still get a chance to shoot at my jet most likely bringing it down. IMO sead aircraft shouldnt have to enter range (of at least the radar AA) before it can fire its missile.

[DasaKamov]

Originally posted by shak59:

They need to make SEAD casual friendly.

SEAD (and artillery smoke) IS casual friendly - in fact, it's pretty much the most casual-friendly mechanic in-game, since the aircraft can automatically lock-on to and fire at radar-AA vehicles with zero input from the player, without even needing LOS to the target.

That said, they *could* use some balance tweaking, but I expect that won't happen until Eugen adds the upcoming radar-jammer aircraft to the game since EW and SEAD aircraft would need to compliment each other.

[yaBATMAN]

Originally posted by A Lamp:

Originally posted by 🇺🇦BATMAN:

First, SEAD works only against air defenses with radar. If the air defense has no radar, the SEAD will not be able to attack it. Maybe your planes were shot down by air defense without radar.

Second, in order for a SEAD missile to attack air defense with a radar, the radar must be turned on. Therefore, experienced players simply disable the radar, and when the SEAD aircraft turns around, the AD weapons are activated and they attack the SEAD aircraft.
This mechanic worked back in Red Dragon.

what you said is true, however sead is still useless. By the time sead acquires and "aligns" the missile (whatever that means) by the time it fires 9/10 my aircraft is already in firing range of the sam site then its just a gamble if my missile hits before their missile hits. I noticed a near miss stuns the target which helps. but any defense in depth strategy with over laying fields of fire and infrared AA will still get a chance to shoot at my jet most likely bringing it down. IMO sead aircraft shouldnt have to enter range (of at least the radar AA) before it can fire its missile.

I explained the game mechanics of SEAD.
Balance-wise, planes are generally pretty useless right now. Planes used to be OP, an easy way to win and it had to be balanced, but I think the devs chose the wrong way to fix it. They just reduced the damage from the planes, although it would have been better to just increase the price of the planes and buff the air defense so that the planes are lethal but expensive to keep the "high risk but high reward" principle.

As for the SEAD, there is still a balance, because the SEAD plane destroys air defense with 1 hit, while it takes 2 hits to destroy the SEAD plane. Another thing is, if the enemy has 6 air defenses and you fly 1 SEAD aircraft, the result is obvious. Therefore, when the enemy has a large number of air defenses, you need to use several SEADs.

[shak59]

Maybe if when you select the SEAD aircraft it shows the detected radar locations on the map as circles? Then you could at least plan an attack run.