If you’re struggling to leave spawn the match is likely either in its closing stages, or the team has failed to keep it secure, further SPAA tend to be backline units so should struggle for the most part, against anything but the lightest of armored threats.
Further if put in this situation, I wouldn’t be entirely sure that spawning an SPAA was the right call in place of another class of vehicle.
This specifically may get addressed in future as it was indirectly addressed in the 2024 roadmap
The same way they did for the Ho 229 which was solved by not adding pure AP belts, or otherwise reducing their occurrence within said belt to some lower ratio. and subsequently reducing it’s effective rate of fire to some reduced fraction of it’s RoF.
Or otherwise treat it like the ADATS, and reclassify it as a Missile TD breaking the lineup and the meta for US toptier completely without replacement, simply because a dual use missile was too good.
That gives you time to set up properly, reach a good out of the way position and prepare to counter any potential rocket rush by helicopters, which can change the course of a match easily if not accounted for. Further most Light tank’s armor is deficient at stopping said armament, so there’s a more relevant role.
Who said it was a plane, you easily have been counter-peaked or otherwise bean an early death. as will happen on the occasion. and the Low SP cost allows for a cheap buy in of a potential chance to obtain enough SP for a 3rd spawn / nuke (I did this once with the M163).
To give people easy & access to a chance to defeat aircraft, I personally thing a comparatively more important issue would be a rework of the SP cost of A2G ordnance , since that is the major component that decides what they face off against and the underlying offensive capabilities.
For example in Arcade the loadouts and airframes are curated to ensure that SPAA can deal with them.
The fact that Ground battles use an SP system, and that spawning SPAA should not be a reason to not be able to later spawn a heavy or medium and so are a cheap SP investment for said capabilities by design. The additional fact that they don’t raise the respawn cost multiplier, also points to the fact that they are designed to be a reactive choice to potential aircraft spawns, while not being without risk.
The point is mostly to threaten Aircraft to remain at a distance or disrupt strike or defensive maneuvers that would otherwise be successful, and as a backup role a counter to IFV’s / LT’s that push too far, or a cheap Hail Mary to stealthily go after a distant cap point to keep the team in the game. in this role they serve as a way to keep the player invested and give them further opportunities to still have an impact potentially even after a second or third spawn even falls though.
depends on the role in question, but they should have come capability to have an impact on the round, though should either be specific to some threat or or obvious comparative weaknesses where the exploitation of the player’s skill and knowledge of the map of game mechanics is needed for success to a greater degree.
Depends entirely on the intended outcome, and since we don’t have access to the data needed to make said observations.
I’d be interesting to see if there is a link between lineups lacking SPAA, and / or Spawned SPAA and deaths to aircraft or not. Since I’m not entirely sure that the matchmaker doesn’t take that into account.
