Air RB Base rework with the F-111 Aardvark Imminent?

With the F-111A Aardvark coming I think its time for bases to be Overhauled in ARB because whole teams in F-111A that will inevitably bring bombs on the outer 4 pylons and be able to destroy 7 bases a piece would lead to many what I’d usually call ‘base steal team kill’ additonaly sometimes even with all current vehicles all the bases are destroyed early and at high BRs you don’t have the luxury of diverting to the airfield to bomb, so I have 3 proposals as to fix the base bombing mechanic for when the F-111A comes

  1. Increase the HP of the bases drastically; (like one base having the collective HP of 4 current bases) as to dilute the amount of bases destroyed due to the higher bomb requirement to destroy

  2. Increase the number of bases; this is probabaly the worst of these proposals as it would still result in base stealing and with a meaningful increase of bases as to accommodate for the inevitable F-111A spam being extremely clutterful

  3. the best proposal in my opinion, however this would need a rework of more than just the bombing system, this would be having the bases be Invincible, this would make the most sense as it would allow for anyone to bomb any base with as many bombs as they want with as many Varks being able to drop all 50 750lb bombs on a base with impunity, it would also remove the possibility for ‘base steal teamkills’ as a base cannot be stolen, however this would need a rework in the rewards area as you can no longer get the ‘base destroyed’ bonus, this would also help vehicles that are heavily reliant on bombing for their rewards within the 9.3-11.3 bracket from bases being stolen, examples being the MiG-23BN, Buccaneer S.2, and Yak-28B, which are all heavily reliant on bombing due to a lack in air to air armament, with the buccaneer only having 2 9Bs on an airframe without guns which at 9.3 is a joke for air to air capability.

Even if people seeing this post do not agree with the methods I have proposed, I at least hope they agree for the need to rework bases, and if this were to be continued to lower BRs (who actually really manages to destroy the airfield anyway) it would be 1 of many needed reworks to bombers and bombing (higher altitude spawns being another option, dependent BR, with no thought of balance from me the B-29 and Tu-4 should have around 8000-9000m spawn due to their BRs then 5.0-6.0 having 7000m spawns which would help with bombing before interception and then progressively going down 1000m per BR bracket as it would roughly align with climb rates)

9 Likes

Interesting topic. I quote myself from another thread:

This aircraft is known for being a highly successful tank killer, so it might be worth to take it out in Ground RB. But there is an essential need for changes within the general game play of Air RB (map layout, target locations, ticket impact of playing PvE in PvP environment, etc.) to ensure that those aircraft can fulfill a purpose for their teams.

Without a real purpose those aircraft are reduced to play victims for fighters and to be just a grinding tool…

I mean you are on the right track regarding hordes of F-111s will be used in Air RB, but bringing in proposals to increase the grinding nature of this plane without being able to contribute to your team efforts to win a match (so being more less dead weight/useless for the match result) is imho not the right way as the overwhelming majority of Air RB matches are decided by playing PvP and not PVE.

But the bases come back.

2 Likes

if there would be a PvE bombing mode noone would play it, very few people play the assaults and it would be a bot fest like heli PvE, plus you seem to forget destroying bases removes tickets from the enemy team, admittedly this would need to be ajusted for number 1 and 3 due to the changes in base HP, with 3 needing the amount of tickets depleted attached to a formula relative to the damage that wouldve been done, with 1 just needing a boost in line with the amount they are strengthened, I do agree that its the wrong way going about bombing in general, however is we are honest with ourselves, F-111 players would goo to air RB and not really a PvE mode, some will however most would not and we would need to ajust for this reality

yes they do, however the time they take is too long for 3 IQ players that take the outer pylons and refuse to drop to die and have no game presence, if hte base respawn time is what it was on the dev server then it would help however it would still be a major issue as it still takes time for them to respawn, plus a bombing rework has been long needed, especcially after planes with extremely high loads were added with the F-111A being the latest and biggest offender in this chain, being able to take 7 bases a go with max load, and whol eteams that after the first round of bombing would still be able to take 5-6 bases each would be easy targets for opponents of the BR especcially when you see how much the bombs limit the F-111s speed and turn

the F-111 with full bomb load will be an easy kill though. The problem is people not going for bombers. I don’t see why you want to nerf other people ability to grind SL/XP, when the issue is clearly on people not paying attention to the map and planes they have in front.
Looking at videos of the 50x750lb bomb kit of the F111 two things comes to mind: It is the slowest plane (pretty much anyone else going for bases will get there before) and very sluggish (pretty sure you can’t even dodge an AIM-9B). So if the opposite team does the work the F111 with 50 bombs will get killed before getting to any bases.

Im of 2 minds for this

First the negative:

  • Whacking up base HP would have a negative impact on everyone else. You get a bonus when you destroy a base, so everoyne else would get a major RP/SL nerf. We already briefly experienced a minor base HP increase in SB before it was reverted and it sucked.

  • Increasing the number of bases might work, but the issue there is people will still fight over bases and there still wont be enough

  • We already have high bomb load aircraft like the Buc and Tornado that have struggled with this for a while. Im not sure they will make changes now just because the F-111 was added.

The positives/solution with that said above taken in mind

First off, there does need to be some improvements to ARB to further improve PvE aircraft like the F-111, Tornado, Buc, etc etc.

The idea that comes to mind would be for bases to respawn rapidly but too also add the modular AFs we see in ASB come to ARB. That would open up a high HP target for aircraft like the F-111 to attack and that could actually have an impact on the match

Additionally, prehaps we should look at an RB EC gamemode, something where bombers actually have value. I know in something like the Buc you are just dead weight in RB but in SB you can do a lot of damage to help your team.

3 Likes

I think another system would be better, and that is a faster respawn rate for bases. Lately I’ve played some matches in the A-7E (it’s so bad, but I digress), and I’ve noticed that on the new bigger maps (the ones with 2 airfields) have bases that respawn rather quickly (<1 min maybe?). Which meant that often enough, even me in my slow plane would be able to bomb something granted I wasn’t killed before I reached halfway to the base.

So another proposal would just be to significantly up the respawn time on bases even more, to maybe as low as 5 seconds…? Preferably with the bases having fixed positions rather than random ones. This allows multiple planes to go for the same base more or less, but also not allow one single plane to drop ALL their bombs on a single base (which would be the case with infinite HP or increased HP) which would mean that planes with high bombload still need to go for multiple different bases, which balances the earnings a little (I don’t want Gaijin to nerf earnings because of these changes).

Another would be to make base HP completely client side so to speak. Everybody has their own bases with their own HP. This would fix the annoying thing where some allies only half bomb bases and you need to rethink your entire bomb planning or go for further bases that are not bombed (which again, harms slow planes a lot).

A problem that this creates is that this encourages more planes to take bombs. And I get really sad to see things like F-5Cs or F-5Es carrying bombs around, but that can’t be helped I feel, it’s already a big problem.

i see where your coming from however for the F-111 that can take 7 bases it would take a while especcially while allies are squabbling over the second respawn of the base, however if the bases are personal than that is a different story, and it would be super effective, and if bases have current respawn rates, than they would respawn by the time the 4th base is bombed

ARB is only made to spade planes with base bombing for using it in GRB for destruction of oil warriors. Don’t interfere process

some changes need to be overhauled for sure, i forgot to mention it in the post but if bases are to have a HP increase their reward would need to go up but an amount relative to the amount they had been strenghtened, to keep the rewards in line, plus yes the bucc and tornado are already in game but the tornado can only bomb 2 and 2/5ths bases with all 12 1000lb and the buccaneer is slow enough and defenseless enough so any players go wide and bomb the second round, plus there will be many more F-111A players in a week than Buccaneer S.2 players in a year, but if there was a PvE mode for bombtrucks it would be a nice additon but the problem would be trying ot get people to go to it over air RB

apart from the fact that for purely GRB oriented planes like the A-7 and Su-17/22 and which are balanced for such, they are so bad that playing then is unbareable, when was the last time you saw an A-7 in air?

I am fine with planes that clearly can bomb a lot of bases and are fast enough to have them take longer, as that would limit the effectiness of bombing bases. This would hopefully keep the earnings overal the same as now except that it won’t harm other players trying to do the same as much. So Gaijin won’t absolutely demolish the BR of the vark or nerf bomb earnings overal, that’s what I aim to maintain.

Personal bases probably would need to get coupled with an increased respawn time most likely then. Not a lot of planes can bomb 4 bases in one go anyway, so this is mainly then to balance out the Vark in particular.

but if its personal then it wouldnt need a increased or decreaced time?, cause you can inevtably only bomb at the rate your aircraft it is capable of, and increasing the time would only harm 4+ vehicles like the Buccaneer S.2 and vark, and increacing the time would only delay the inevitable bombing

It’s more of a way to prevent basebombing being too lucrative. If these particular planes with bombloads capable of bombing 4+ bases earn too much, it might prompt Gaijin to either to up BR them into uselessness completely or nerf basebombing earnings. I mean best case then would be that they nerf the eco stats of the vehicles only, but that harms players who for instance want to play the Vark as fighter. If it does prompt general econ changes, it would also hurt planes that can’t bomb 4+ bases more, of which there are a lot more.

In the end, I think 4 more reliable bases with caveat that you it takes longer for 4+ is overal an improvement on losing on the ability to maybe very sometimes get 4+ bases in one go. Unless you’re telling me you right now do 4+ bases reliably in the bucc or something, in that case yeah it would be a nerf and maybe increased respawn times are not needed then.

The first measure I can think of is limiting the number of strike aircraft per team, to four, the same way only four bombers can be on a team.

Beyond that, the infinite base sounds interesting, as it gets rid of many of the problems present in base bombing currently.

2 Likes

that would also somewhat patch the 9.0 all aspect missiles in an uptier problem

First of all: Imo bombing is no solution at all to win a battle in AirRB. It’s only earning personal rewards. The only sort of maps bombing is an advantage are the EC maps because there is no auto ticket bleed.

It’s a huge problem in AirRB with this bunch of ground attackers, especially when they were used for grinding, because those players have no impact to the battle. They fly straight to the base, bomb, and rtb or die. Most of them do nothing else, not even a single ground target. So one flight bleeds 300 tickets. Even most A5C players in a downtier bring back their 2 magic 1 missile to af although they have free kills with it. And with this horde of planes added especially for GroundRB it’s getting worse.

The biggest problem imo is the unbalance of reward and ticket bleed. That’s the reason why the team with the most ground attackers loose most of the battles in higher tiers.
If you decrease the personal reward, maybe at the same level as a kill, most of the ginding players doesn’t do that stupid flights anymore because it’s not profitable.

The respawn of bases today is so fast you damage the respawned base with the napalm thrown at the first on. So it can’t be faster.

Increase the base hp will castrate all the planes carrying only bombs for one base with actual hp.

You can’t limit the number of ground attackers so they will fly fighters with bombloads as the F4s.

Anyway…as long as i saw the F111 can’t fold the wings with full payload. So let us see how effective they will be at bombing. ;-)

2 Likes

But your guaranteed to drop bombs on a base

same chances as whats in the game currently, plus in less bomber populated battles you can get the bases anyway, so i really do not know where or why this coment came from or why, it would just reduce frustration and teamkills, it would also just end up in people having an easier grind, and the warthunder grind isnt easy or forgiving