I would be in full support of dropping matches down to 8v8 in addition to getting the old roster of Air RB maps back. Stuff like Berlin, Hurtgen, Korea, Krymsk, Kursk, Lagoda, Moscow, Ruhr, Sicily, Smolensk, Stalingrad, and Zhengzhou used to be fun to play on and would give us more variety than just Golan Heights, Spain, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Rocky Canyon.
I also want the Carrier spawn to come back for maps where it can be applicable, spawning in on carriers in FAA aircraft was really fun back in the day.
Me personally dont mind larg numbers, but i dont like the fur balls in the middle where all the grinders meet up for head-on 's for a 50/50 chance to get there next mod
The fur ball is inevitable. The only thing that can be done is to reduce their size. This could be done by reducing team sizes and/or adding several airfields and AI troop locations to each map to spread players out.
Respawning could also create a dynamic fur ball that could change through the match.
Realism does not have authenticity if game or mode limitations produce conditions that would be otherwise impossible in real life. If you simulate BVR planes correctly but players do not choose to use BVR, then there is a problem with the simulation that is making even good players avoid BVR.
In War Thunder, pilots use terrain as the most reliable way to defeat Fox 1s and 3s, which works in real life, but pilots in real life mostly do not use this.
Why?
That is because real life conditions are not conducive to this defense:
A. Pilot reactions, tolerance, and awareness make low flying too dangerous. The number of air accidents even in War Thunder is unacceptable.
B. SAM and other ground emplacements would attack the aircraft easily
C. Sortie objectives may make this impossible; for example, intercepting a high altitude bomber or maintaining a tight formation with a squad.
Thus, War Thunder needs tweaks to encourage BVR.
Beyond that, 16v16 air superiority fighters does not happen historically because it is not realistic. For minor powers, this may involve putting your entire air fleet up for 100% air superiority by means of destroying all enemy fighters. The lethality is too high, and is even apparent in War Thunder.
An air force losing 16 generation 4 fighters within 5 minutes would be a catastrophic Dunkirk-level failure. Any fighter in real life that received 16 RWR pings from hostile fighters at once, would probably just turn around and leave.
Until War Thunder has more complex game modes that can support 32 fighters up in the air at once, it should stick to smaller sorties that are more common in real life.
A mode that simulates an Iraq war or Iran/Iraq war scenario would need killzones, objectives, and aircraft diversity that discourages air superiority fighters from deathmatching at point blank range.
Pilots IRL do use terrain features to defeat radar missiles, that’s why the most modern missiles have features to avoid aircraft reflections.
Real pilots don’t just do one thing, they manage tiered responses to threats from dogfighting to extreme BVR.
US doctrine starts from extreme BVR & slowly goes to dogfighting until retreat is decided by command or the pilots.
Many players themselves start from extreme BVR then slowly go to dogfighting in War Thunder, mimicking American doctrine.
Some players start from the WVR mentality like myself, cause in my case it offers more challenge.
By the way if you want BVR you want 16v16, cause less means more WVR fighting.
And missile count per player doesn’t change regardless of amount of people total.
War Thunder top tier meta is to not climb. At all. They are not starting from extreme BVR and working their way down. They are defending from the start and rushing for WVR, while picking off anyone dumb enough to climb. Deck riding is stronger than it should be because of my aforementioned points, and the solution is less players.
Less players absolutely does NOT mean more WVR fighting.
Player count directly correlates to lethality in matches.
Deck riding is a DEFENSIVE position from too much lethality. It has slower speed, higher maneuverability, and less effective use of weapon/search technology.
High altitude BVR fighting is an OFFENSIVE position because the radar and weapon systems are more effective, speed is greater, but cover and maneuverability are diminished.
People choose the deck instead of notching not because notching is bad, but because it is too difficult to notch multiple people at once.
So what happens when you decrease player count? Lethality decreases and people are able to defend at BVR ranges and altitudes. People have more space to climb and actually pressure their opponents with their technology systems. They work down the tiers and if there is no splash or disengage they will eventually merge to a more balanced and skill expressive dogfight.
Furballs require more skill to carry because they are not skill expressive. The current meta requires either crackhead awareness or dumb luck to be in the right spot to 3rd party or sideswipe the most people. A defending plane is a dead plane. And, for the record, intentionally sitting back to 3rd party is the War Thunder equivalent of corner-camping in CoD.
The median missile count per side per aircraft is 6.
You add an F-16/Mig-29 to each side, that’s still 6 per person.
Also, the biggest irony is @Fedorann didn’t state anything that refutes my statements.
I’m glad the 6 people that liked his post agrees with him & myself.
The current top tier play style involves nearly everybody hugging the ground. Everyone starts in a hyper defensive position because they are inevitably picking up one or several RWR locks from the enemy.
This is a direct result of the large teams. It eliminates much of a possibility of launching any BVR missile because nobody is brave (or stupid) enough to go high.
My biggest issue with the large teams crammed into a small area is the way the battle progresses. If you were the Dev and looking to design a balanced match, ideally each team would die off in a balanced manner. So if you start with 16 vs 16, within 5 minutes you’re at 10 vs 10, then 6 vs 6 then 4 vs 4, and so on, until a complete elimination. Obviously with some variation here but thats not how it goes at all currently. The end-state of a match is very rarely a close fight. It devolves into 1 vs 6 or 1 vs 8 or worse.
The presence of extremely powerful missiles like the aim9m and r73 makes this problem even worse.
When we had 12 vs 12, it was fairly common to end the match in a 1 vs 2 or 1 vs 1. At the time, this indicated the match was relatively balanced.
16 vs 16 with modern jets is, by its nature, unbalanced, unless you were to design the mode to create a lot of distance between players…which we don’t have.
@AlvisWisla notice how you’re the only one defending the current mode…
BVR was common in 2022 because most people didn’t know how to combat it, that’s it.
12v12 would see more WVR tactics because there are LESS targets for BVR players to target.
They knew how to chaff, which PDs are resistant against. They didn’t know the power of being low until January 2023.
They as in the vast majority of players.
I know, because I’ve been playing top aircraft since 2019.
@Borkel
Less players = less targets = easier to start furballs as less people are trying to kill you with BVR.
There is no troll in this thread, please stop provoking people just cause you think all of us are wrong.
@House_of_Schmidt
You meant to reply to OL as he’s the only one trying to provoke us & is clearly new among us.
It’s okay that he’s wrong, but we’re not wrong.
I don’t understand why people like him try to provoke us just cause he’s new.