Not necessarily true. Some air players prefer to cap rush with a reserve or something to get a fighter quickly and play as CAP instead of playing ARB.
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Skill issue unironically lmao
AB is actually very good up to around 5.3 or 5.7, (past that queue times are an issue, but its still fun), and takes a different set of skills to RB. You have to be very careful with positioning and have very, very good situational awareness- I often have five or six aircraft I am forced to dogfight at once.
Everything being a UFO is somewhat valid, but they are all different, and the game has a nice fast pace to it which is enjoyable. Bombers actually have impact on the game, and they are generally what wins the battles.
Just bring back Air RB EC, that’s all that’s needed
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Looks like a fighter, climbs like a fighter, turns like a fighter, guns like a fighter - as far as I’m concerned its as much a “fighter with bombs” as the A-36 is.
With absolutely zero ordinance, yes. But if you wanted to fly a fighter for the US tree, why would you pick a Skyraider/Mauler? Compared to what they are up against they are comically slow, and their speed does bleed dry after a few turns. Sure, airbrakes are funny, but most people don’t overshoot in front of your guns, rather they just loop up and then obliterate your even slower Skyraider/Mauler.
I always remember doing some decent A2A in the 410A-1, and only that one, since it was always at a semi-friendly BR with no dead weight extra armament. At 3.7 its speed was still relevant, as were its handling characteristics. But maybe my opinion on it is outdated with the sheer number of speed demon US props plummeting in BR over the years.
Which B7A2 are you talking? I only have some degree of experience in the tech tree one, not the BP one with a significantly better engine.
Yet functionally-speaking, naval bombers are the equivalent of ground attack aircraft over land. Their targets are all tactical in nature and on the surface, being fairly small compared to strategic targets that don’t move like supply hubs. Like land-based attackers, they have forward guns to strafe soft targets of opportunity after bombing/torping a ship or two.
I would at minimum just put any bomber with significant forward firepower at the Attacker airspawn. Because other than single-engine naval bombers, the only others which have useful amounts of forward guns are mainly built for CAS anyway (B-25s, Tu-2s, MB.175T, hell even Pe-2s).
Why are you so biased against sharing the importance? It sounds like I am arguing with xBromanx again. Your utter insulting contempt for anything lacking your perceived “skill” is nothing short of remarkable…
Dot spotting needs an overhaul whether markers are removed or not, since not all modes have markers. As things stand, dots stand out way more on lower graphics, which is the exact issue DCS solved years ago by adding Universal Dot Scaling.
UDS would enable the possibility of RB Air losing its enemy markers, but it would not guarantee it.
You’re even more of a broken record than ULQ-Lover, man. All you talk about is “skill” this and “skill” that.
If this game was meant to be just PvP in nature, then fighters would be the only playable vehicles. If Attackers and Bombers were meant only to force engagements, they could do that just as well if they were AI bots exclusively.
Currently, attackers and bombers are in a Catch-22 with little redeeming value. Most maps have one cluster of ground units in the middle, and that’s it, and the fighter hairball usually develops overtop of it.
If they try to play it safe and wait for the fighter hairball to disperse, one team collapses and the game auto-ends, netting them little to nothing and making them literally dead weight to their team. Only exception is if someone climbs to space or runway camps.
If they rush in ahead of the fighters, they might kill a few things, but then almost invariably become fodder to initiate the hairball. Headless chicken mentality.
If they wait until the hairball is in progress, and try to kill ground units while fighters are distracted, an enemy fighter in a losing engagement will spot the attacker’s red marker and then throw away everything (sometimes while ON FIRE) because “monky SEE free kill” just to kill that attacker before lawn-darting or being shot down by his pursuers. Yes, I have had this happen to me personally multiple times - a fighter in a losing engagement with six of my teammates was literally lit on fire and suicide-dove downwards just to get an easy kill on me after I had intentionally waited for the fighter hairball to disperse before moving in.
If rushing in early doesn’t work, waiting til fighters are distracted doesn’t work, and waiting til the hairball disperses doesn’t work, then please tell me - what exactly is an attacker or tactical bomber really supposed to do if its not a Wyvern (which can rush in and run quite well).
No they really are not. Shared spotting means that if your fragile PvE-centric plane comes within 5km of even a bot plane, their whole team sees you, and someone among that team will make it their business to throw away everything for “monky SEE easy kill” even if it means throwing away early game climbing advantage, whether the plane you’re using is actually much of a threat to their side losing or not. Most maps are so clustered together that it is literally impossible to do your intended job as an attacker and NOT be lit up for the world to see by shared spotting.
Red markers favor high climb rate, turning radius, and instakill guns.
When opponents see a competent fighter above them, at least a couple will panic and turn or dive away, only increasing the disadvantage at altitude for their team, encouraging more to dive away. Ends with whole team being pushed down unless the climber gets cocky and over-commits to his death.
When everyone can see everyone with total careless ease, turning radius matters arguably way too much, as the TnB plane can see a faster one attempting to set up a kill pass and dodge endlessly at exactly the perfect distance. All while shared spotting then encourages one or the other to be 3rd-partied.
With so little ability to surprise, there are far more split-second snapshots than there are setting up longer passes on the 6 of something, which means planes with greater burst mass are also favored in the marker hell we have.
All those together is how you have both the G.56 and Re.2005 S0 at 6.3, because they have all those traits.
That does not sound like a “good game” to me, because of just how few planes truly have all those favored traits.
Of course you would, because you don’t want “bot farmer scum” and “spacebar warrior trash” infesting your “skill” mode, right?
Already explained exactly how they create unfair advantages above.
The PvP-only win condition, the CAS-only win condition, and the Bombing-only win condition are ALL smothering. Each being able to win the round on its own discourages teamwork that you claim is essential.
If a fighter has no need for an attacker doing his job to win the round, why other than roleplay would a fighter escort that attacker? Currently a fighter has no need to do so.
Removing the ability for ALL plane classes to win the round on their own so easily would force more teamwork, and just give nonfighters room to simply catch their breath.
Nonfighters have no mode to truly call “home.” In Combined Ground/Combined Naval, fighters with bombs do the same job far better while being faster, more maneuverable, and in some cases both having better payloads and lower BRs. In Simulator, heavy bombers only “work” due to mechanical mismatches with arcade-style gunner view while fighters lack such precision.
Yes, you can with a bit of difficulty. As you mention later, simply sitting back and observing both tracer color and kill feed, as well as getting close enough to see wing shape, can pretty quickly tell you what is what.
Supernova sun will be gone next patch, and thus good riddance to that. The haze is doing exactly what it is meant to do, I guess.
All this shows is how badly WT needs DCS-style Universal Dot Scaling. Those dots show up way better on ULQ than higher settings.
Exactly, there isn’t that pressing of a need to know exactly what is what at 6km out in prop tiers. Jets have radars and IFF technology.
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You don’t need to know what is what at 6km away in prop tiers to know how to act. At that distance, you can easily tell if something is a bomber or a fighter by dot size alone.
Problem is, with PvP alone being able to win games all on its own, fighters have no incentive to escort attackers and bombers except for “haha funny history channel roleplay” memes.
That is why I have continued to be a broken record on this point in particular. PvP alone winning games is so common that it is normalized amongst most folk. PvE winning games is seen as “disruptive” and “unnatural” and “skill-less,” and if it happens more than once in a blue moon, folk like CommunistBalls who look down on nonfighters as practically subhuman go ballistic about “how DARE that TRASH disrupt ME showing off MY SKILL!” until the “offending” attacker or bomber is nerfed into the ground like all the others.
Any attempt to make nonfighters more useful only will provoke reactions like his that would then eat away at the gains nonfighters make.
Meanwhile we all know that sub-5min bomber airfield rushes and sub-5min CAS zergrushes, while funny due to their rarity these days, are not healthy for the game either.
If clearly none of the three objectives winning games by themselves is healthy for the game at large, why do we even still have a setup like this? Events like Guardian Angel show the game doesn’t blue-screen the moment the enemy team dies and the autowin bleed doesn’t trigger.
The same reason as usual - “not wanting to divide the playerbase” and such.
Hence why I always have argued so strongly to upend the existing mode into something inspired by EC, so that a split becomes unnecessary. The EC Lobby system is sadly quite prone to abuse.
An attacker in a markerless scenario would not force you to throw away your advantages. Simply sit back, observe the dot, watch its tracer color for a second as it shoots things, pay attention to the kill feed, and it becomes obvious what and who it is.
That “good counterplay” comes at a very hefty price of making more than half of all fighters utterly worthless, nevermind all night fighters, most attackers, and most bombers.
But oh well, continue to show off your selfishness and lack of empathy even further. You have your piece of the pie and could not care less if the world burns down around you, because you have your pie.
Top tier is always “ruined” by definition because things are implemented in a haphazard way to milk whales as efficiently as possible. Hence why I avoided it even when I had premium time - too grindy and for not much benefit.
The greater risk of being jumped makes you fly more cautiously, and enables a much wider variety of fighters to actually work well. It also allows for far more uninterrupted 1v1 dogfights, which I thought someone like you would want, as they’re the ultimate way to show off your “skill,” after all.
I will reiterate - I have nothing against PvP. You should be allowed to have your fun like every player. But why should you having your fun and doing your job prevent all other plane classes from doing their jobs to have their fun?
And yet with maps as claustrophobic as Air RB mostly has right now, they probably could experiment with no enemy markers to great success.
Snail always used queue times as the excuse. Hence why people like you and I instead propose converting the current borderline nonfunctional mode into something that can properly fit all plane types.
Welcome to realism. If you don’t take the time to get above that dot before trying to engage it, isn’t that your fault, not the game’s?
Yet we have entire plane classes designed to be passive - if this game was to be PvP only, wouldn’t we have just fighters as playable vehicles?
It actually takes more skill IMHO to do A2A in Combined modes because of the lack of all the hand-holds. Sure, competent fighter pilots are rare there, but when they do appear the results are glorious. Lots of very engaging 1v1s with very little 3rd partying chaos.
Speaking just for Combined RB, you simply opt to get above the dot, whatever it is, and either let it attack something to reveal its ID in the kill feed, or you sneak up on it from above to see its silhouette and/or even markings. Then after IDing it, you engage.
It is slower-paced and a different kind of skill, stalking your prey for a while while they may not know you’re there before pouncing.
There was in fact a singular weekend RB EC test like that. RB controls, no markers on friendlies or enemies, except for friendlies out to 900m distance. 5.0-6.3, all nations game had at the time in 2018. And it was glorious. Even traditional “underdog” fighters could actually stand a chance against otherwise superior machines due to the lack of handholding markers.
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I am aware of this, that’s why i wrote “good” Air RB players.
They might get cheap kills with this c+f strategy, but the main downside of Ground RB (=abysmally bad economy) together with the basically clueless pilots there prevents this:
I have to disagree with you on markers, for a couple reasons.
Air RB needs to be semi-accessible for people, and lets be real- having to spot people is going to make it not accessible at all for most people.
With this statement you put all heavy fighters (like Bf 110, F7F and even both T-18Bs) in the same category - we can discuss the “look” of some, but nothing more. The SM 92 has a climbrate of 12m/s - “real” fighters around 4.0 have around 20m/s.
The 1.000 meter airspawn advantage is nullified on medium sized maps at the point of the first merge by every decent fighter, on small maps you have to reverse climb in order to use it as a fighter, on very large maps you get outclimbed. So if you see the air spawn as not justified - be my guest, but this is imho not the right thread for this.
Because correct flown you are able to intercept Ju 288s before they drop.
A good flown AD-2/4 is a threat for the average enemy. Experienced players can beat them with vertical fights, but with a clean loadout they turn pretty good, same as some of the Il-2/Il-10 models.
Your impression of the 3.7 410 was not wrong, but imho those days are long gone.
My statement is valid for both variants - i have more than 2k battles in both. Don’t get fooled by the stat card values - they perform quite similar, even admitting that the BP version has a better climb rate and is slightly faster. The turn rate is imho identical, but due to the way better SL/RP modifiers there is no need to fly the TT version.
You actually think about a “reclassification” of tactical bombers (you forgot the B-26, the 217 with the 20mm cannon, B-34s and the PV-2D) as strike aircraft? Same as above - open a new thread.
Imho you mix here some things up. Forward firing guns on torpedo bombers had the sole reason to suppress enemy aaa fire during an attack run. And my initial statement that a tactical bomber needs a bomb sight remains untouched.
Imho you describe the basic elements of a fighter - but you forgot the most important aspect: Speed. It simply doesn’t matter if you climb or turn better if you never have the chance to bring guns on target. The basic decision (“Fight or Flee”) in ACM is determined by speed and initial positioning and nothing else.
Frankly spoken your exchange with @CommunistBalls makes no sense if you talk about prop related issues with regards to markers as the OP @themadseventeen made it clear that this thread was aimed for top tier only - and for an alternative game mode.
I don’t see this as a good idea. Flying aircraft with mouse control as is done now in RB is a really enjoyable way to play the game.
The issue is that without markers, most players will likely treat whoever they see as that first situation, and will play extremely passively until they can get a significant advantage. It’s gonna be like in certain matches where players absolutely REFUSE to play the game until they’re 2km above and behind you.
I agree. “Realistic” changes aren’t good for actually having fun most of the time. Just look at the “realistic” changes to missile behavior, such a great improvement.
@Uncle_J_Wick not everyone cares how hard it is to bring guns on target with a joystick. Not everyone wants to spend 100s of hours learning how to properly fly an aircraft. Perhaps people just want to have fun without needing to learn how ro be a pilot.
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Are you referring to them lowering multipathing to 50 meters?
No, the performance and guidance changes that made missiles wildy overcompensate in flight if they turned and were returning to sight center.
Which missiles?
It was all missiles in terms of manuverability, but the ATGM carriers got hit hardest by the “swing” that missiles do now in SACLOS platforms.
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This is all such a good idea…
cant wait for gaijin to do absolutely nothing :,)
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This makes zero sense at all.
If youre playing fighter, why bother with bombs/rockets? And we pick these planes because we can.
Doesnt matter, both play exactly the same way. Yeah sure, they have a difference in engine, but it doesnt matter too much.
Still not a good reason to change them to attackers. We used to have sea maps but i have no clue where those are now…
My reason lies with destroying all the enemy aircraft is the best route to win a game. I also should not have to go groundpound after shooting all my enemies down. It is a massive waste of time, boring and means essentially nothing when you have already won.
Again, no. There are no “unfair advantages,” and someone using their C key will get the most out of it.
Again, for just being able to shoot bots uninterrupted…
Disagree. Explain this in jets terms too please! we have devolved into props at this point. Maybe you should to try all these kinds of aircraft, as i had no issue even with ones that fly like buses.
No, its the same reason there are other aircraft higher than similar in other nations. Italy has less players, and naturally this means the average skill is higher. Players perform better, moving the aircraft up. Some examples: CL-13 Mk.4, G.91YS, (formerly) Mustang Mk.1, Spitfire F.24 and J6K1 still being above P-51H, F-15A still being 12.3 because US mains got clapped.
No, because your logic is stupid. A torpedo-bomber is still a bomber. You cannot take that away just because we are over land.
“Situational awareness is not fair!” - inexperienced pilot, probably
I never claimed it essential as far as i can remember. All i said was that the bombers/groundpounders are deadweight and only are usable as bait. Go look at high tier jets, or 10.0+ as i should say. Lots of people, i mean LOTS playing perfectly good fighters, like Kfir, F-104S, F-4 all trucking bases, dying and being completely useless as teammates. If you want “escorting” then there is always the option of just ignoring the fighters and killing attacker/bomber.
And those that dont? Without markers they go down in BR. Lets see some examples. A-10 Late? 4x AIM-9L, trash FM, no radar equipment. want that a 9.3 again? Didnt think so. F-104S ASA? an RWR that tells you nothing, an inconsistent, weak, unreliable radar, 4x AIM-9L. Watch it go to 10.3.
I already showed escorts arent useful, as the enemy would probably rather get a free kill on the attacker and die, by ignoring the fighter.
Fighters winning by killing all enemy aircraft is fine. Its why most people even bother getting good.
I need not explain again in this post. You are completely wrong.
Passively*
Again. You are wrong. Why are you so stuck to this?
welcome to the high threat environment of an air battle. I expect players to die at some point.
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combined with this :
…is fully comprehensible, but it shows basically the “dilemma” of Air RB:
- A mode being nothing more than Air AB+ is boring for more demanding players, as gaijin offers just very little aspects of “realism”.
- Every suggestion for improvements circles around immersion, more realism regarding game play / tactics and strategy in order to have fun.
- But every long-term player is fully aware that the mode looks like it is because the overwhelming masses of fresh players are looking for the current setup of Air RB.
- Things like “fun” are highly individual topics.
I am fully aware of that most players are happy with mouse aim in the current setup.
My point is that you can’t ask for more realism just in certain aspects - so if your fun is connected to totally unrealistic accuracy & flight behavior / stabilization whilst using the instructor there is nothing wrong with that.
But then asking for more “realism” or “immersion” in a mode which deals with flying an aircraft is simply not consistent if pure basics of flying or challenges whilst flying an aircraft are not considered - at least from my pov.
Have a good one!
We don’t need to add every last aspect of realism if it’s an unjustifiable detriment on gameplay, otherwise we’d just end up with Sim EC. Air RB has many issues, but controls are far from being one of them - IMO the excellent mouse aim mode is what sets this game apart from its competitors.
At most I’d say you could get rid of the extra G-load and nerf everyone to only pulling 9Gs, with more either blacking you out very fast or being prevented entirely by the Instructor, but that’s about it.
Nothing is stopping us from picking just the best aspects of real life while leaving out all the annoying, boring, but very real stuff like random mechanical breakdowns.
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In some aspects realism is nice, like with vehicle models, and other aspects are better for gameplay. This isn’t a simulator, but the balance of realism and enjoyable gameplay is what makes this game so good.
More realism/immersion makes sense to a point regardless of controls. Mouse joystick is under full control, but is by no means realistic because Gaijin doesn’t expect people to need a full flight sim set to fly in their game. Not a single mode other than sim mentions that you need to know anything about planes or the challenges of them. This game is meant for enjoyment of vehicle combat, not simulation of vehicle combat. This game doesn’t need full realism or a complete lack of realism, just a good enough mix to be enjoyable.
Except the markers make it only appear more accessible at first glance. As soon as you do more than a cursory jump in, you discover that all those supposedly famous bombers and attackers the game brags about having may as well be never used if winning games is your priority. The combination of zero-sum objective setup, unnecessarily long distance at which red enemy markers render, shared spotting, all the targets in the dead-center of the map, it all means that the only relevant objective is team deathmatch.
This would be fine if we only had about half of the current fighter aircraft in the game currently. With maybe a few more if those were given airspawns.
Yet we have way more than just fighters - thus leaving the mode as-is resigns such planes to being either 1) useless 2) bait to initiate hairballs or 3) once in a blue moon a nonfighter is useful when someone is climbing to orbit or aggressively humping base AAA.
All those nonfighters are not just useless, but they also are near-guaranteed dead meat the moment even a random AI-flown bot comes within about 5km of them.
There’s little way to rectify that beyond either severely restraining when red enemy markers appear or just axing them altogether.
If red enemy markers were deemed that “essential,” then have them show at 1.5km range with no shared spotting whatsoever, and only when you are looking in the person’s direction.