Air RB and its possible rework

I agree that the 0.1 and 10 multipliers are extreme, but they do serve an illustrative purpose, different values, say (0.5 and 2) (0.33 and 3) (0.25 and 4) (0.2 and 5), could be nice middle grounds, bc as we all know, “The Snail giveth, and the Snail taketh away”, so while the original suggestion calls it a “penalty” it would be more accurate to say that “this is the trade-off. UPFRONT. avoiding a shadow economy nerf/change later” for rewarding players for playing to their aircraft’s strengths/intended use. In short:

IT SHOULD BE IMPACTFUL ENOUGH TO SWAY PLAYERS INDIVIDUAL OBJECTIVES, BUT NEITHER OPPRESSIVELY PUNISHING FOR ‘UN-OPTIMAL/UNINTENDED’ PLAY NOR SHOULD IT BE SO ENTICING THAT PLAYERS STOP ENGAGING WITH OTHER ELEMENTS IN THE BATTLE SPACE.

As for those complaining about markers, the presence or removal of, they should remain in some form for accessibility, however currently they are far too powerful, a possible change: planes within a few km’s have a flashing dot above or next to them, to point out the existence of an enemy, that was not shared to allies unless they are in wingtip-to-wingtip formation, (fighter pilots Irl use hand signals to communicate under radio silence, that can be your roleplay for this limitation), would be an incredibly good change to gameplay.

This would massively limit 3rd parties ability to negate the progression of a dogfight.

Especially infuriating if the 3rd party arrives as their ally is about to lose from an advantageous position/circumstance. That is, for the one killed by the third party, right before they have got the kill from a disadvantage, not much takes more skill right?

While still allowing for IFF withing visual combat range. Top tier combat ranges can exceed this perfectly fine, as by the time the engagement range exceeds the range that markers would/should presented, most if not all aircraft have IFF equipped radars/rwr for longer range missile engagements.

This prevents (or at least reduces) the common occurrence of having someone in a losing position but not yet out of the fight from running at another aircraft several km’s away, that is either currently engaging enemies themselves, engaging other objectives, or in the process of rearming/repairing, if they are spotted by someone from outside “marker distance” fair game, but someone in the heat of a dogfight shouldn’t be rewarded, from a losing position, for simply pointing their plane at that red dot, waaay over there, and hoping that they last long enough to get a consolation kill, that doesn’t really promote learning, skillful or engagement gameplay does it?

A bit more fidelity could be used for fine tuning by the devs, for instance the most important information currently shown is “Distance, Aircraft, and how quickly Distance is changing”, knowing that a plane IS there, is more than enough to start reacting, not knowing what they are flying, not knowing how quickly they are closing to or separating from you, puts more emphasis on the players ability to both react to unexpected threats quickly, and the patience of methodically stalking a target and executing an attack pass.

Regardless of any change to markers UDS (Universal Dot Scaling) ABSOLUTELY NEEDS TO BE IN GAME RIGHT NOW. As currently much like ULQ in ground battles, it provides such a massively unfair advantage to players with lowered graphics settings, that is not in any way accounted for, yes even in ARB currently players sometimes don’t show markers under certain circumstances, more noticeable later into games, as there are less sources of remote spotting, and when flying in the sun or in ground clutter.

Thanks for coming to my Ted™ talk.

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Each match is hosted on a server and the amount of players you can put into that match isn’t a direct correlation to how much capacity that server is using. This is much simplified, but think of it as moving 2 people in 1 car or moving 4 people in 1 car. You aren’t using twice the gas in the later scenario, it’s more “efficient.”

Server capacity is the same. Hence, why we are being shoved into 16v16s and smaller team sizes was reluctantly added as only an option and “smaller” only means 12v12.

Gaijin really want to shove as many people as possible into matches as long as that experience those players get is passable. It has been, but that is slowly changing…causing the need for Gaijin to introduce new gimmicks such as S-300 and Grad targets to make things more exciting without making them better, because making them better eats away at the bottom dollar.

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You car analogy is wrong. This isn’t how this works.

You are actually using twice the gas in the later scenario, probably even more. Multiprocessing has been figured out decades ago.

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Your whole post is nothing more than a wild guess - you can’t ignore the fact that basically all changes in “non-simulator” modes were made to eliminate the skill factor in the game play.

So whilst the Ground RB players are forced to play mostly on CQC maps, Air RB players are confronted with random results just due the sheer number of players / enemies within matches.

Both led to steamroll effects which kills (together with BRs & the MM) the effect of individual skill - as you can be skilled like hell but if you either play 8 vs 2 or 2 vs 8 after a few minutes, game results became a random event.

Skill doesn’t matter that much in the 16 vs 16 setup.

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i mean youve got a serious issue with folks just running for a base or ground units and then just crashing or being cannon fodder and not trying to engage, at all.

teams now focus on running away rather than any meaningful engagements, and touching on top tier the 16v16 missile sliming madness is just that. the skill as been ripped out ARB and GRB update, by update

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Who would have predicted that adding ARH missiles to all nations with current team deathmach will result in disaster. OH WAIT! Like half of community that asks for RB EC, duh…

But snail knows better.

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Even with RB EC, the mode would simply be people using ARH missiles to dunk on planes stock-grinding to get said ARH missiles, and not much else.

Even RB EC never really attempted to dislodge the tendency of one “singularity hairball” to develop via endless respawns from both teams and slowly migrate around the map towards the ground unit engagements.

To me, this looks like a case of PvP having too much value to winning the game mode, and actual objectives having far too little. Hence even in EC people just dogfight endlessly til one side hits 150k score and game ends, or one team ragequits and autowin bleed kicks in.

EC trends in a better direction, but even that is a mere framework for a better mode, and a rather emaciated framework at that. At least the last time RB EC was around, that is. In Sim the mode still feels rather barebones for totally new reasons - convoy SPAAG is nuts and means that without guided weapons attackers have really no purpose. And in WW2 tiers without guided weapons your only option is seriously to go CAS in a heavy bomber and overpressure all the SPAAG first. It’s how I spaded my Shackleton, in fact.

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Groundpounding is stale. You are mowing down harmless bots instead of actually using your brain to fight sentient humans.

BnZ fighters are still perfectly valid and viable in the current meta of props. Again, realism =/= gameplay balance. On top of that, if you want to hunt hardly visible dots, simulator is around the corner.

And you are still forgetting the nature of many players when they dont have a monumental advantage is to run away, climb away, or dive.

Strafing bots still isnt the point of PvP air combat.

There werent a lot of ai targets, so i see no connection. It was probably due to forcing at least one of the teams to land on carriers, which bombers and heavier attackers cannot do.

I really feel the easiest fix for most of the problems in top tier is as simple as adding a 2v2 and 6v6 tab. it would solve so much. 16v16 would still be a thing but a competitive game you could play with your friends is always going to be a hit. I feel games like For Honor only exist because of their 1v1 2v2 modes. if war Thunder added it, it would bring so much to game and really I could even see a lot of dcs players returning to war Thunder just for a chill competitive jet game. no game really has that and it would make new players want to play and old players come back for something new while really not changing a thing.

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A fine line between these two in War Thunder.

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boom n zoom outwith the prop era and eary jets is all but gone due to compression, look at the swifts for example, fantastic jets for BnZ yet an f104, mig19 or mig21 will run them down with impunity.

strafing bots is not the point of PvP combat but WT is PvPvE its a mixture hence why there are objectives and bots in the first place.

Also I must add, people now adays no matter the BR seem to be fleeing any and all forms of engagement, I play the wyvern at now 4.3 and I can run folks down, but the amount of people who instantly turn away and try to flee from me is beyond belief, rather than use the skills of their plane be it a Bf109 or a mustang. they just turn and try flee because they dont want to engage.

or at higher BRs in the gripen, hell even the F8E people just run rather than try to engage and force me into a losing position, same with allies, they just flee. the furball only seems to happen at now 13.0

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It’s a bit weird that furballs happen more at the BVR BRs than they do at lower BRs, considering that actual BVR is literally just launch, guide, defend, repeat

Could it be, that people actually prefer WVR/CQC over BVR?

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I really like the idea of changing stuff, sadly gaijin changing a whole gamemode isn’t gonna come soon (it might tho)

I like the idea of heli in ARB battles, finally another mode where we can grind

I think the most essential part is more target for non fighters, currently there’s only 4 bases and they take a while to spawn, when you have 6 planes that want to grind them, and all planes can kill one or two base, it’s really annoying, if they made bases had a much bigger HP pool and a bit more of them it would be a little better to farm

Gaijin changed a lot since the review bombing so the chances of them looking at this post isn’t 0, i do hope they make something new one day, the current modes are all quite boring

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I see we like the same brand of hopium.

I feel like a point a lot of people skip over or miss is that not only do we need more things for non fighters to do, we need those things to matter. This will probably lead to more people being accepting of players bombing, since they are contributing to the match.

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It is strange, all these jets with radar and missiles designed for over 40km engagements and everyones just wanting to get in close with IR missiles (now amraams) and run away again.

I try keep about 10km from me and every oponent if possible now to give me time to menuever.

Even adding two more bases, spreading the players out and dropping it to 12, or 10 man teams would solve that issue.

imagine two air fields, on a map a bit larger, with 2 or 3 folks wanting to bomb, and 6 bases. they could and people could intercept them etc etc.

They should just re-enable the destruction of airfields in higher tiers and maybe buff the HP further as the BRs go up

Don’t have the destruction of the main airfield instantly end the game though. That way there would be a meaningful goal for the strikers and bombers to pursue, but also a way for the enemy to still win if they play smart if their airfield is at risk

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they could try, but then youd just have people rushing them to win the matchs.

As it stands right now, i personally dont think any amraam hurling jet should be facing those without, or at least some good method of combating it, I barely managed to around the map to flank in the F16AJ and once i was behind the enemy there was no team left, and still amraams being launched at me.

its total madness right now at top tier.

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the whole game needs decompressed to all hell.

harrier FRs1 facing aim7Fs slinging phantoms is insane for example, it cannot, and never will be able to effeciently notch more than one incoming missile, while it only has 2 missiles for defence.

As others have rightly said, we need objectives to matter, and for decompression so its more fair fielded.
I mean , phantoms are do all jets, can beat almost every strike/attacker craft to a base, then still have 8 missiles to play with.

and thats before we even touch Bombers, jet bombers, attackers, interceptors etc.

In ARB now the best bet, and most effective grinding method is to just go full air to air.

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Fair point, having everyone just rush bases wouldn’t be great, but one way to combat this would be to also limit the amount of strike aircraft allowed per team.

True fighter aircraft already are very limited in their bombing capabilities and if regular bases had more health and/or there were more bases bomb rushing would be a coordinated team effort. Airfields already have way more health than bases (not sure how much more, 4 to 8 times as much if I had to make a guess, forward airfields could be coded to have half of that) so in most cases a single bomber couldn’t destroy the airfield on its own. So ideally you couldn’t destroy the main airfield in a single attack run, even if the entire team cooperates.

If they can find a good balance for base health and amount of bombers/attackers per team I believe this could lead to some interesting gameplay for the attackers without taking away from the importance of fighters.

Fighters would want to either defend their own bases or their attackers, purpose built interceptors would be able to actually do the job they were designed for and attackers would have a chance to have some real impact in the match.

Spoiler

Man, now I’m in the mood for some Canberra and IL-28 gameplay again. Love using those like extra heavy fighters

About the ARH vs non-ARH planes I really don’t get why people would oppose splitting the matchmaking up at that point. There really is nothing you can do in a non-ARH plane except for flying defensively and hoping the ARH slingers will actually let you fight them

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