Air RB and its possible rework

Game Discussion Realistic Battle
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123

I disagree - as long as basic physics like flying the aircraft is already implemented in arcade via mouse aim and instructor, the goal of something calling itself “realistic” in a flight mode should be the actual controlling of the aircraft.

  • The fight with others is just supported by markers (like sound, dots or contrails) - and your logic has the “flaw” of having aircraft without radar and the tactical advantage not to compromise your position by not using your radar.

  • It boils down that outside SB nobody is enforced to learn anything about flying as mouse aim and instructor do this for them.

  • So from a holistic pov gaijin assesses tankers as smarter than pilots as the main goal of a tank is to shoot first (=target identification without markers in Ground RB) whilst the main goal of Air RB should be the maneuvering of your aircraft that way allowing you to get a position to shoot at your enemy (all aspect AAMs aside) whilst applying “real” physics.

  • But instead of flying to get a shot - Air RB focuses on the shot itself - this is way less demanding than the step from AB to RB for the fellow Ground players.

124

This idea also opens up posibilty for more Iterdictor (F-111, Su-24, Tornado) and Penetrator (B-1, Tu-160M) type aircraft to be added to the game for the players to enjoy. They would thrive in this mode as a supertior strategic bombers thta would go for the furthest and tougest objectives. Almost defeceless themselves they would require careful route planning or fighter escort for the successful objective destruction, and I could imagine that would reward a team with large ticket bleed for the enemy. However the need to reward all involved players arise (I am mainly concerned about escorting fighters, since there is a chance that they would just waste time, so it should be a worthy endeavour for them as well), the system should be though out for this purpose.

1 Like
125

I like ARB controls how they are right now. I like simplified avionics controls and displays. If I wanted “as real as possible without enlisting” I would play DCS or Falcon BMS. I think majority of War Thunder players feel this way. War Thunder struck gold with their balancing of realism and accessibility.

2 Likes
126

Escorting aircraft could simply get some points per unit of time while they are close to their strike aircraft/bombers.

Another idea would be that escorting aircraft also carry some A2G weapons so that they can hit the target upon their arrival as well. Maybe some radar installations along the way that can be hit with ARMs to make a next pass easier.

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127

i feel like having Air RB being alike SB (which mean that only Joystick players cwould be able to play the game efficiently), is a “NO-GO”

As you said: Arcade lies in constant fight and maneuvering around a swarm of ennemies.

SB is alike True Simulation games (alike DCS or IL-2 Sturmovik).

but RB was a middle ground for those who were good enough to play as in SB but with Mouse-keyboard, in order to give EVERYONE the possibility to play the game at a difficulty level they would like to go to.

that’s why forcing players to go RB with joystick is a problem, in my PoV at least.
however, RB can be forced upon realism.

“No markers whatsoever” :
you say that logic has flaws, but there is none to my PoV of Realistic battle

not having Radar on, doesn’t mean you can’t get spotted by ennemy radar,
but it does hides yourself to the ennemy’s RWR.
Meanwhile not having radar on mean you can’t use Fox1/Fox3 missiles so you’re rendered useless on long-range shot.

you spoke about:
contrails - apart F-14’s and Su-27’s spamming down AIM-54’s/R-27ER, nobody flies high enough already.

dots : of course dots would be there, i mean → you already have dots in SB,… i don’t see any trouble with that.

sounds : when everyone flies at mach 1.2+ on the deck, you can have as many sound you want, but you’ll hear nothing accurately enough.

which is the difference between simple players (90% of community) and SB players (10% of community), one needs a game were tactics can be used on Macro Gameplay, and the others needs a simulator with 18 screens and a fully clickable cockpit (oh shit that’s DCS).

i did played with joystick, but not enough to have the guts to say that “i know SB”.
However, i do know enough about flying and physics to know how to use my aircraft even with mouse aim+keyboards

we currenty have much more bullshit having mouse aim players going for “CoBrA R-73 kill” already in RB modes,… this goes through using FRControls → was Cobra used in Combat situation even once in real life? answer is no, shall we see it that often ? certainly not.

so RB being a Mouse aim gamemodes doesn’t makes you unable to use FRControls in it.

“Objection, Hearsay” :D

well, it doesn’t bother me, does you?

many aircrafts players are only dropping bombs on some bases.
many tankers does only camp from one side of the map, shooting the ennemies at the other end.

i do understand that your say is about the community, when i consider myself that 90% are completely ignorant to what they’re doing in the game.

yet, this isn’t only relevant to RB mode, but to the whole game.

i mean “maybe”
some smart players are also good enough to make you shoot first but making you miss instead, so they have time to deal with you.

everything without markers one is identifed as ennemy → nothing new you just know where was you’re ally that just died around you, so you can triangulate the ennemy position from that [1 of the few difference with SB mode, for tanks]

IRL (from WWI up to day), many air combat started by a face to face encounter.
certainly not as much as BnZooming on an aircraft that got surprised in the blue, but still enough to have thousands of stories about how it goes in history.

the main is to shoot down your ennemy, and you mostly have 3 ways to do it:
1- Chasing/BommNZoomings - safer ones–
2- Cutting accross the ennemy trajectory - opportunity shots/can end up in Chasing fight
3- Head-on and go tactics - not the safiest as you put yourself at risk as much as the ennemy is at risk

nothing in “main goal” says you have to be behind to kill someone,… as it limits yourself to 1 of those 3 situations.

Which mean all Fox-1/Fox-3’s and All aspect Fox-2’s

Which then doesn’t apply to HIGH TIER ERA that is was talking about:

i don’t see your point there, RB is not allowing the Crazy Arcade maneuvers you can have by pressing 1 key then another,…
RB Flight Physics feels 500% closer to reality than what is Arcade, while keeping some features of it.

yeah, but no as demonstrated earlier on how you’re wrong about Air RB main goal.

I mean the game only demands
To a Tankist:

  • Positionning/Displacement skill (tactical)
  • Accuracy skill (gunnery)
  • good eyes to spot ennemies. (as everything that is not blue marked is ennemy, but could be hiding in forest or be in plain sight)

To a Pilot:

  • Positionning skill (early game time, when you choose between speed and altitude)
  • Accuracy skill (gunnery)
  • good eyes to spot ennemies that aren’t marked already (dots, contrails,…)

The main difference is then that AIR RB isn’t requiring you to know how to spot ennemies since the ennemies are automacilly marked depending on how far away you’re from them.
[basically why i ask for markers removal at HIGH TIER, in which radars can partially compensate for that loss of sight]

In the meantime, i see people going high enough to be spotable by contrails, as good as the tankist being in plain sight of your gun.

And those flying at tree level as good as tankists hiding behind 2 houses and firing through windows oranything in order to not be spotted.

if AIR RB needs anything → it’s more airfields and larger maps(with spreaded objective) + forcing players to start from differents airfields, evenly numbered.
In order to limit the Furball fight we have today and that is not going to make anyone improving themselves.

as a conclusion, we both may have different PoV on the matter, but we at least agrees that RB mode should be revised, and not going further into being an Arcade mode “bis”.

128

Honestly love most of the ideas except the marker ones. If we go with more strike aircraft related games though, I believe we’d need to greatly increase the amounts of targets in the game, and also greatly increase the game time. 45 mins for a game like years ago would be ideal, and the death of a player vehicle should still drain large ticket amounts (which they don’t at the moment, allowing bots to win a game for the players at times, even when they were the inferior team). Air rb rewards should also be increased, it’s one of the worst game modes for SL or RP at the moment unless you come in first or kill half the enemy team, it’s the only mode that suffered after the SL “Improvements” in my opinion, on average you get a quarter of the SL you would get in the past, if even that.

129

it was an idea i prosposed in the past, and which never was implemented.

my idea was to propose same rewards as bomber if bomber reached target, and x1.5 (when in squad, to avoid abuses) / x2(with randoms) rewards if you were doing kills in within a certain area around the bomber player

this would have been applied for medium and heavy bombers (nothing on the like of SBD-3 dauntless or TBF-1c avenger)

1 Like
130

I’d also add a more prominent multipathing.
The distance of the guiding aircraft could work again with multipathing. If the launchibg aircraft is far away multipathing could be more prominent, IE the current level of multipathing could begin at 150 m AGL at a distance >30 km. This would work reversly at closer ranges, at 3 km multipathing would begin at 5 M AGL.

This would make evaiding SARH missiles easier. If deviation for the guidance of FOX-3 missiles would work similarly people could get closer to each other while being able to evade radar missiles more easily.

More dogfights = More fun

131

I have a different opinion on markers.

Instead of removing them or not, I think they should just be reworked;

Remove ALL information from them: no distance, no vehicle model, no name… just a red dot.

That way, you avoid dragging matches for too long or making the game too inconvenient, while also not having everything handed so much by markers.

In this case, markers would merely be an indication that the enemy is over certain direction, instead of telling you which threat is it and where exactly.

Basically; turn markers into a merely orientativo thing instead of such precise and visible information.

3 Likes
132

would be a nice middle ground in between me and @Uncle_J_Wick (on this matter of markers)

1 Like
133

I like this idea a lot. I mostly want markers for orientation, and seeing the enemy. I don’t care about range and aircraft type.
I am not sure if it’s my eyes, my brain, my monitor or settings or something else completely, but I just don’t see planes. It becomes even worse when pilot gets g-loced.

I don’t think it’s fair to edit the poll now, so I’ll just add it below as an addendum, similar how I done to other sections of the post.

1 Like
134

Nice, I am glad you liked it!

Since your post is about a wider range of matters, I will make a post exclusively about this concept as well ^^

Speaking of the other ideas of yours, I love them all!

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135

You missed the point - we have a mode as real as possible: It’s called SB.

I enjoy wt Air RB with joystick, simplified flight controls and instructor off - despite i am fully aware of that i can’t push headons thanks to the severe disadvantage of accuracy vs mouse aim users. And i enjoy the mode because SB is boring like hell (and prone to attract cheaters)- and i flew Il-2 more than 20 years ago - ofc with FR settings.

But that is my understanding of flying. I condemn nobody who is playing Air RB with mouse aim and instructor - i just claimed that there is no noticeable increase of difficulty between Air AB and Air RB - and flying with a mouse is simply a joke in a mode with “realistic” in it’s name.

What you describe with “struck gold” is the pure fact that a hell of totally un-passionate wannabe pilots flood lobbies on their “point and click adventures” - the majority enjoys the mode thx to the mouse, and not because they are interested in aerial warfare or ACM - they are plain shooter players and no pilots.

136

I’ll link to it in my post, we can make it like a collab.

Thank you.

1 Like
137

Great! I will link your post, too; unifying our goal to make Air RB better, we may gather more attention to these matters like this!

I will prepare a rework demonstration picture for a Reddit post and share the links there as well, that will help too.

1 Like
138

I feel that difficulty increase from AB to RB should come from increased tactical complexity, not necessarily more complicated controls.

I would attribute this to limitations of the medium. This is a free to play video game, that a lot of people want to play on their 10 year old machines. I know there are “video games” that deliver much more fidelity in their modeling but I would say that their audiences are almost completely separate. Gaijin obviously targets the average Joe more than sim enthusiasts. They waited for Top Gun: Maverick to drop so that they could add the F-14.

I haven’t played enough SB to even comment on it, let alone offer some suggestions. I wish they would improve it so that you can find it more enjoyable.

I don’t think we can find a solutions that absolutely everyone will like, unfortunately.

139

I just noticed, polls reset their votes every time I edit the post to add something. Thanks Discourse.

Wasn’t my intention to reset everything to zero.

Actually it just appears broken, can’t recast your vote or anything. Not sure what happened here.

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140

I appreciate you rather long reply - but from my pov you read something what was nowhere written: Excluding of non-joystick players from Air RB.

I acknowledge the benefits of the ability for players to participate in Air RB matches without the necessity to buy a HOTAS.

The main issue is that mouse aim has an artificially increased accuracy vs flying with SFC (simplified flight controls) and a HOTAS - and the instructor artificially stabilizes their flight model - especially when damaged. This has nothing to do with “realistic” and is the same stuff like in Arcade.

So without aligning the mouse aim usage with basic joystick settings (so decreasing accuracy of mouse aim and requiring that the pilot is forced to actually control the aircraft, and not the instructor) would be enough to call it “somehow realistic” and not Air AB plus.

Seeing the rest of your reply -

  • i haven’t asked for FR controls in Air RB
  • we have a common understanding about 90% of the player base
  • your points regarding other topics is your pov

Have a good one!

I mentioned the first part before:

and the second part as outlined in my reply to @Cpt_Bel_V:

The controlling of an aircraft with a mouse and keyboard is not bad by definition. The artificial accuracy and stability advantage allows “point and click nonsense” in the first place. With aligning these factors, on the level of SFC you would create a way more realistic behaviour without forcing players to use realistic controls, trimming, MEC, etc. so they can still use MnK - nobody has to buy a HOTAS.

So it’s about the flight experience and not about complicated controls.

1 Like
141

I just did the post!

https://forum.warthunder.com/t/top-tier-air-rb-marker-rework-poll/110592

1 Like
142

Nice, I’ll link to it.