As it currently stands, air RB isn’t suited for top tier gameplay. We have observed a few issues with it, for which we’ll offer some potential solutions. ARB can’t be fixed with a few tweaks, such as decreasing player numbers. It needs a substantial overhaul.
- Strike aircraft and fighters carrying A2G loadouts
Right now, strike planes are not really useful in the top tier meta. Destroying bases and ground targets doesn’t really affect the outcome of the game. Games are very rarely ended due to ticket bleed, and even if they are teams that won because of strike aircraft would have most likely won earlier if they had fighters instead.
All planes should have a place in ARB.
Of course not to mention, strike planes are kind of free food for fighters since they are forced to fight in the same space with them.
Solution: Make strike aircraft and their objectives the main part of the game, instead of an afterthought. This would mean a few things. First, players are able to respawn now and can respawn as many times as they like. Each spawn (except the first) costs as much as full repair cost. Second, instead of player kills the objective now are bombing targets. This creates an interesting dynamic between fighters and strike aircraft. You need strike aircraft to win the game, but since they are almost defenseless against fighters, they need fighter support. Teams would have to fight for air superiority so that their strike groups can go and do their jobs. This way both players who like playing fighters get their fill, and people who like blowing stuff up get to do so.
To further increase the complexity and challenge of balancing your loadouts, we thought of having multiple types of targets. Some are light and wide area, so a lot of smaller yield bombs or rockets work better against them. Others are harder and smaller, requiring precision strikes to take out.
Managing the balance between A2G and A2A power becomes crucial to winning games.
- Furballs and third partying
Due to linear map layouts (spawn, middle of the map with objectives, other spawn) every single player meets enemies in the middle of the map, which creates a giant furball. In these furballs it feels like all kills and deaths are based on luck, since no one can keep track of 6, 7 or more enemies around themselves. This leads to a lot of frustration upon death, and I would say that kills don’t feel as rewarding as in a proper dogfight.
Another problem with this is that it doesn’t allow for dogfights to exist. If someone tries to engage with someone for more than a turn or two, they are going to get third partied, leading to them dying, or their target dying to someone else while engaging. Again, more frustration.
Solution: There are a few remedies for this. First one is to reduce player density by placing multiple airfields per team, all along their edge of the map (like in sim). The only thing that matters is player density. If a map is large it can have more than 32 players. Another measure on top of this is limiting the number of players that can spawn on an airfield. This would ensure an even distribution of players across the map at the start of the match.
Game objectives are also spread across the map to accommodate this.
- Map sizes and modern weapons
Maps like small Spain, small Afghanistan and City are too small for modern planes to work on them. As soon as you reach Mach 1, you are in range of modern SARH (and ARH soon to come) missiles. This leads to everyone hugging the ground, which in turns makes these weapons almost useless. These maps are just too small and should be removed after 11.0 or so.
Multipathing made it so that everyone is flying tree top level, which we feel like goes against the nature of air combat. Right now these weapons are primarily used for head on attacks on players that made the mistake of ungluing themselves from the ground.
Solution: Maps that are played at top tier should only be of the largest variety War Thunder has to offer to allow these weapons to operate more naturally. In order to “unglue” players from the ground MANPADs are placed at some areas of the map. Their approximate position is marked on the map, but might be outdated, or it might not be there (bad intel). These MANPADs should be deadly enough that players would have to gamble if they want to fly low close to them. Objectives should also have capable AA defenses, some better, some worse.
Adendum 1:
Adendum 2:
We see that a lot of people don’t like our MANPADs idea, or are at least neutral to them.
This might be a decent alternative, and it would give helicopters a decent mode to play (and grind) in.
Helicopter spawns could be closer to enemy ground units, to compensate for their low speed.
Adendum 2B:
Another objective exclusive to “Utility Helicopters” could be resupply of SAM sites and AA artillery. This would this helicopter class some extra things to do, as they are often limited in armaments or speed, or both.
- Repetitiveness of ARB
Every match plays the same in ARB. Take off, go to the middle of the map, dodge some R-27s and AIM-54, shoot some SARH missiles yourself, merge into the giant furball, and continue from there if you survive. If you die at any point, leave the match to do it all again. Alternatively climb up at the start of the match if you have R-27s or AIM-54s.
Solution: Changing the gamemode to a ground and air focused one already increases the amount of options players have, which leads to more different games as they progress. In addition to this objectives are randomly chosen at the beginning of each match. Random events also can occur during a match. Some examples of those would be:
- Cruise missile strikes headed for objectives.
- Supersonic bombers going to objectives.
- Helicopters going for objectives.
- Landing craft going to set up artillery to shell objectives
These events wouldn’t be a total surprise, a warning would be shown a few minutes in advance. This forces players to think in advance.
- Potential removal of enemy markers
Poll is moved to a separate post because of technical issues.
Please vote here Air RB and its possible rework - #146 by themadseventeen
Friendlies are always marked
Adendum 5:
Check out @SPANISH_AVENGER 's post as well, he gave this issue more though than we did. He also has a poll (a working one), so go vote there as well.
Adendum 4:
Another good idea for reworking enemy markers.
Adendum 3:
Some concerns were raised about fighters ignoring enemy fighters and going around to destroy strike aircraft.
Possible remedy for this would be the addition of AEW&C aircraft to provide radar coverage near friendly airfields. Ground based radar stations could also be employed for this purpose.
These would only be used for their search capability and not guiding missiles.
Goal is to create a gamemode that is more fun and more fair for everyone. While we focused here on top tier gameplay some stuff can be applied to lower tiers as well. We think that bomber pilots would enjoy more bomber focused mode.
This would obviously make it better for players who want to play in a strike role. However, as we were writing this, we noticed players who are on a stock grind could enjoy this mode as well. Less players to worry about means you don’t suffer as much because of your limited weapons. Fights are more fair for the same reason. Fighter pilots can join in with strike aircraft and bomb and still be useful to their team.
We see that this might not be everyone’s cup of tea, so we suggest that this is introduced as a separate gamemode, maybe replacing World War, since it’s not available most of the time, but displayed in the main game selector.
All of this is open to discussion, we would love everyone’s feedback on this.