The IGLA should be removed from the game
The Igla should be removed from the game until the flare interaction bug is properly fixed. At this point, it’s the only realistic way to make air gameplay bearable again.
The developers have already acknowledged that there is a bug involving how AA missiles interact with flares. In the recent Discord Q&A, it was confirmed that missiles can sometimes ignore flares entirely. This isn’t speculation anymore. The issue is known.
The problem is that the Igla is by far the worst offender.
This isn’t an occasional annoyance that happens once every few days. Anyone who spends a significant amount of time flying will run into it repeatedly. If you’re flying and you’re actually surviving long enough to engage in air combat instead of crashing or dying to simple mistakes, there’s a very good chance you’ll die multiple times to missiles that completely ignore your flares.
That is not a minor bug. It’s a game-breaking issue for air vehicles.
The frustrating part is that this has existed in some form since release. Lock-on missiles and AA missiles have always had inconsistent interactions with flares. Sometimes they work correctly. Sometimes they don’t. The Igla, however, takes the problem to another level. It seems to ignore flares far more often than any other launcher in the game.
When your primary defensive countermeasure randomly fails, there is no meaningful counterplay. Flying becomes less about skill, positioning, or decision-making and more about hoping the game doesn’t decide that your flares simply don’t count this time.
I understand that fixing this bug may not be simple and could take time. That’s exactly why I think temporary action should be taken instead of waiting indefinitely while the issue continues to affect every pilot in the game.
Remove the Igla from the game until the bug is fixed.
While the launcher is disabled, investigate exactly why it behaves differently from other AA launchers and why it appears to ignore flares so frequently. More importantly, continue working on a proper fix for flare interactions across all lock-on and AA missiles so that the problem is finally resolved at its source.
The current situation makes air gameplay unnecessarily frustrating, and the Igla is the biggest contributor to that frustration. Until the bug is fixed, it has no place in the game.
