Air RB Needs a total rework, badly

Game Discussion Realistic Battle
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If we could agree, that we talk here just about prop BRs, i’d like to respond:

Your idea sounds comprehensible if you share the underlying assumption that there is a higher demand for fighters vs non fighters.

  • Imho this has to be seen as a BR related assumption and also seen in the context of BP tasks or grinding events.

  • After an actually rather painful experience to spade the IT/HUN Tu-2S-59 at BR 5.7 (31 missions 30% full uptiers, 30% full downtiers) i would actually rather not recommend to follow this path as from my perspective we have at certain BRs a much higher demand for grinders.

  • You see at 3.7 the current Il-8 spam, the 4.3 Wyvern spam just followed by a concentrations at 5.7 (Do 225 B-2 and corresponding AD2 & AD-4s) which clearly shows a demand.

  • A limitation of non-fighter slots would therefore face a rather stiff resistance despite i agree that it might be suited to improve the game play in general.

The need for limitations of slots is imho also connected to the actual use versus the intended use, so “banning” of non-fighters which are acting as fighters would be a relief for their enemies at some BRs, but those pilots able to contribute with PvP actions in non-fighters have to be seen rather as a benefit for their own team, so i am not sure this might be appreciated.

I don’t refer here to guys flying out op stuff like Wyverns, i saw a lot of skilled AD-4 and AM-1 pilots able to intercept Ju 288s before they could drop - and much more “designated” fighters dying to return fire…

Imho the higher you go, the less numbers of non-fighters you see. In my 6.7 uptiers i was often the sole bomber in my team, and the other side had often 4 bombers (Ju 288 & Ar 234) and 3-4 Do 335s, so the slot regulation is imho done by the game itself, but is strongly connected to their actual combat effectiveness.

But i fully agree there should be a kind of limit - as written in an earlier post it is sometimes pointless to play certain matches just by looking at your team composition and the played map.

I really like this idea.

But imho the effectiveness of “bomber” vs bomber is not only related to “significant forward firepower”.

  • Based on own experiences the forward firepower is just the most obvious aspect - a high performance bomber like a B-18B or a Ju 288 excels not with rather limited forward firepower (fixed 13.2 autocannon / MG 131 Z in chin turret) but with very strong turrets (13.2 / MG 151) - so backward firepower. So an experienced pilot intercepts an enemy bomber best by predicting his flight path and by “parking” in front of him - and spray him down.

  • Helldivers, T-18Bs and Brigands which excels with bomber kills could be tamed just by the role they were developed for.

  • If the bomber spawn is intended to allow bombers to kill a base, they need a bomb sight for level bombing - this takes the SB2C and the Brigand out.

  • The T-18B and the T-18B 57mm were specific attack versions of the B-18B - so classifying them as strike aircraft is more than justified.

  • Regarding all other aircraft you mentioned - imho hard to justify as long as they have a navigator/bombardier and were actually used as level bomber. I mean following your logic you would have to include the B-26 too.

  • If you consider that the more dakka approach on US bombers comes from their usage in low strafing runs after or whilst attacking as level bomber (and this is also valid for all other real bombers) i would recommend to focus on comprehensible reasons like missing bomb sight and intended role as strike aircraft.

A few additional remarks:

  • Following your overall logic, you might think about strike aircraft which perform extremely well as fighters.
  • Or plain nightfighters classified as interceptors like Do 217J or P-61s.
  • Or unjustified IC spawns for Fw 190As, F-82s, etc - or even such plain things like the rejection of the air spawn of the Navy’s pendent of the XP-50, the XF5F - accompanied by several JP interceptors without air spawn.
  • Or why is the air superiority spawn deviating from the IC spawn? Why has a single Ki-61 an air spawn and all others not?

It boils down that a hell of classifications are set by gaijin in their attempt to balance - together with BRs and “adjustments” of flight models, but these effects are rarely connected to irl events or actual combat performance.

Have a good one!

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The fundamental issue there is that you simply cannot please everyone.
Fighter players will always complain that a bomber or attacker is space climbing and delaying the end of the match. Attacker and bomber players will complain they can’t play purely PvE and never get intercepted by fighters ever.

I’ve been around for years, I’ve seen all this happen.

I don’t play bombers or attackers much because they provide zero actual gameplay. They’re cool aircraft and all but flying in a straight line and pressing spacebar a couple times isn’t for me and I don’t see how anyone can have fun doing so. Attackers are slightly more useful but you still rely on your opponent screwing up so that you don’t die instantly - this was hilariously the case somewhat recently when a Typhoon lost a dogfight to my Bf 110 G2, which is an overweight brick that preys on complacency.
I still question whether he was a paid actor or not.

Frontline Mozdok is just too small, you can easily see the enemy airfield right after taking off. That’s not what I want either. And besides, due to how high up the airspawns are you might be able to drop your bombs before being intercepted anyway…

The Great Heavy Fighter Rant

Spoiler

Heavy fighters just suck for the most part and are a terrible idea to fly, bar a few options. The main upside of extra range just isn’t relevant to WT, but all the tradeoffs in agility and speed are.
The only “heavy fighter” I’ve flown in an appreciable amount is the Bf 110 C, which can hold its own against single engine ones. Not as good as the 109 E4, but it’s good enough and nobody expects it to hang with them. Again, preying on complacency.

This is not something that can be argued - a plane whose primary role is shooting down other planes, that is slower and less maneuverable than the average single engine fighter at its BR is NOT a good aircraft. You can make it work by working harder than everyone else for the same result, sure, this doesn’t make them good.
I don’t think it’s a great idea to worsen the experience for everyone else because one unpopular plane type benefits slightly when what they really need is a BR reduction or an entirely separate gamemode - Air RB EC, where the increased endurance might actually matter. This also goes for attackeds and bombers, which see far more actual use in Sim EC because the gamemode encourages it with a much longer match timer and the inability to win by just killing 16 players.

People grind with premium attackers and bombers because it’s easy, not because they enjoy it. The F-5C is a fantastic fighter - how many have you seen strapped down with bombs? I’ve seen too many doing so. Even with the new F-20. A Wyvern squad can literally end the game on tickets in some maps before any of the fighter players spot the enemy team.
I ask people why they recommend the Ju288, the answer is always something along the lines of “it requires no effort to turn a profit”, as they help ruin the 6.0 ARB experience for everyone else.

Again, I don’t see a point in accomodating this type of player when they have singlehandedly ruined an entire BR range, at the very least. One could argue that Wyverns and XP50s ruined another.

The Stats

Spoiler

Yeah, some of my stats don’t look great. For starters, you can freely assume that 1/4 to 1/2 of my matches in any given aircraft are in Ground RB where not having markers and being able to sneak up on people is fantastic, but I also get slapped by AA I wasn’t careful with, or I uptier my aircraft a little too much, or I get caught out by someone who sneaked up on me, or something else.

Even in Air RB, I don’t play for the most kills. I will intentionally give my opponents altitude and speed advantages if it means they’ll actually fight me instead of floating 2km above, in front, or behind me for the entire match. I’ll give airfield campers the easiest times ever just so they crawl out of their hidey hole and play the game. I go after what I perceive to be the biggest threats instead of the easiest kills and I toy with my food. As one might surmise, this isn’t the most optimal way to play if I seeked only to flex with stats.
This is fine, as I seek cool fights and good times instead.

My suggestions address two of the major problems that the general community and myself have spotted - team imbalances caused by plane types (as in, 6.0 air rb) and too long a flight time to get into combat. It doesn’t have to be like arcade, but we can cut down on that a little for no degradation in gameplay, and I see both of these as issues that are very much worth addressing.

I’m not gonna back down on my suggestions just because they’re not perfect - issues can be fixed (rather easily when people are willing). The core of the matter is that 32 players in a match is too much, and if we’re reducing that we should also reduce map size. Attackers and bombers are simply unsuited for a mode with no respawns.

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Half of each team will experience a significant emotional event after takeoff, you say?

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Nobody asked for that.

Imho we have just fundamentally different understanding what a rework should offer:

vs:

That’s all.

That 16 vs 16 is too much for Air RB is nothing new, it it is discussed since introduction.

That small map sizes might be a benefit for guys that look for more instant action - might be true. But that things like tactics, strategy or something like a game plan got lost in the last 3-4 years is a fact. And smaller maps are imho detrimental for strategic game play.

So i agree (ofc) to smaller lobbies, and disagree to smaller maps.

No big thing. There is no need for a consensus.

Have a good one!

To outline my understanding of a more challenging game play i use a map which was mentioned in a parallel thread.

That an 8 vs 8 for prop BRs on such a map:

slika
slika1113×1108 109 KB

(see thread)

…would give all plane classes (including non-fighters) a realistic chance to follow their intended roles is from my perspective clear.

Some pros and cons:

  • Yes - guys on speed grind tours won’t like it just due to the sheer size, same as min fuel spammers as you needed fuel here.

  • And yes, the map had some drawbacks - mainly caused by stupid spawn locations, but the map is large enough that even a Sterling or a Yer-2 have realistic chances to drop and rtb.

  • But this depends on his skills to choose the right route and right strategy. So as today, the guy flying straight to a base will get killed, the guy able to “read” a game, able to spot openings and able to spot dots (not markers) can evade spotting if gaijin finally fixes the way too low contrail alt - see bug report.

  • The 4 bases were non-respawning and the 2 airfields were “killable” - despite this happend almost never as you needed about 10-12 tons of TNT for each. A base required around 0.5 tons of TNT.

  • As a fighter you had all options: Going for bombers, escorting own bombers, defendind own CAS planes or going for enemy CAS or like many US pilots - max loadout and killing pillboxes, tanks or bases - or just looking for dogfights with enemy fighters, But you needed a strategy and you knew that going low will get you killed very quick as you get swarmed and your airfield was too far away.

As a summary:

The map forced you to think about what you are doing and was a pleasure to fight on if you had some experience. The map got less exiting after the cut to 25 minutes, but is was one of my favorites.

If you add stuff like more challenging target for friends of CAS (like described here) like slowing or stopping enemy ai by killing bridges (we had this also on Korea) it would be perfect…at least from my pov.

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Who has not had an emotional breakdown because of WT 😆

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I like the underlying idea of connecting SL/RP income to fulfilling intended roles - but this would add another level of complexity, and imho punishments are way less effective that increasing rewards.

Your description of the eternal fight between fighters and bombers (at least in the community) is somehow correct, but imho not the issue. Gaijin itself nerfed and still nerfs bomber game play constantly - as they state " the ultimate goal of wt is to kill an enemy" or something like that when they introduced the (s)kill bonus.

The main problem of wt Air RB is the low entry level to participate (either by point and click by fighters or pressing spacebar in bombers) combined with the increasing numbers of non-pilots in it.

If you revisit the OP you might agree that almost all changes in the last 4 years were aimed to further reduce the necessity to learn & to improve - in other words the average Air RB player became less smart (polite) and the game play less challenging for already experienced pilots.

So ideas to avoid “abuses” of aircraft outside their intended roles are welcomed and appreciated but imho they just scratch on the surface of the underlying issue:

Gaijin tries everything to make skill less important and reduced the outcome of most matches to a random event - and the reduced skill requirements makes the game mode highly attractive for ever increasing numbers of non-pilots.

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Imho you are right with “partially”.

From my pov average fighter pilots are just acting like the overwhelming majority of wt players if they face obstacles they can’t handle either because they are unwilling or unable to deal with them - they cry for mom & dad irl and in wt for gaijin. The better fighter pilots are aware of that “real” bombers are no threat - just the the noob unable to choose the right approach or unwilling to outclimb high performance bombers complain (ofc there are exceptions).

I do not believe that the majority of bomber nerfs are actually connected to the complaints of fighter pilots, maybe the open nerfs of ai gunners and the hidden nerfs with accuracy of manual gunners are related to that but imho gaijin is simply unable to balance bombers correctly regarding BR settings and game impact.

I mean the total number of playable aircraft is a valid point to see this kind of aircraft classes active in wt, but gaijin is not really a fan of bombers. Because with some pilot skill, they are actually a pain to kill. This depends of course on the selected model, weather specific circumstances like heavy clouds and the average IQ of the chasing fighters.

Example of being a pain to kill

3 or 4 months ago i played in my SM 92 a 2 vs 7 on the UK map, with me a Halifax and the guy wanted to land and rearm. I convinced him to climb and he reached 8.500 - 9.000 meters and i flew top cover (at 10-11 km). I flew the Halifax on my old account and knew that the plane is very fast at very high alt - the few P-38s and P-51s pitching up had severe issues to get even on co-alt and in gun range. A few short dives on them and they had to go down - ofc we won by tickets. But without the extremely heavy clouds and without blocking their blind hunt orders long enough and buying him time to climb, i might have lost the Halifax.

Example of being a pain to kill II

If you watch this replay just focus on the enemy bomber, a PV-2D. He got almost teamkilled after spawn, repaired and killed all 3 non-respawning bases on Poland in a low level bomb run.
And he used the good speed of his plane at tree top to gun down my last 3 teammates (2 Yak 9s, 1 B-25) with help ftom his af aaa.
Checking his stats i saw a rather experienced fighter player (66days) but i also saw on his TNT dropped that he used sea mines to bomb the bases, which are totally useless vs tanks and pillboxes.
And instead of switching to GP bombs on his af he kept the mines. All i had to do was staying alive and just attack when he would kill a few pillboxes and avoid being hit by his upper turret - he attacked pillboxes with mines instead of his 0.50 cals, killed a few worthless aaa and lost.
There was no need to force an attack on a guy trying to gunship you whilst you are flying with a level 3 crew. And you see that a rather good fighter pilot is not automatically also a good bomber pilot.

And being a pain to kill means longer match times (which increases queue times) and an increased level of difficulty for the average player - both are not desired goals for gaijin.

Imho there is some truth in it, as from a holistic pov the sole purpose of the game is player interactions. And markers in Air RB for enemy and friendly bases or ground units are just gaijin’s way of “engagement optimized” map layout.

You could also argue that PvP activities are just implemented to create a kind of more realistic scenario than pure PvP. Or you might argue that PvE game play is just implemented to increase the number of available air targets for PvP players…

The main issue of PvE in a bomber is the effort you have to invest in a game to contribute to your team effort to win. If you exclude high performance stuff like B-18Bs or the very rare Tu-2 at 4.3 all bombers are killable, it just depends on the skill of your opponents. For “average bombers” above BR 3.7 it is hopeless to play Air RB…

And - if you had a long day and you need to calm down:

Use the Ju 88 A-1 for one or two relaxing matches - very effective with some experience (80% WR) in 144 matches. And i actually lost just 2 planes in these matches (one to buffed midfield aaa and one vs a pathetic stat padder with 177 days as fighter in rank I & II, there is nothing you can do vs a Jap 109 with 20mm) - just because i was able to avoid enemy fighters by reverse climbing. And the high win rate is a result of airfield kills - i came in very late and very high, usually the bomb load was enough to kill one base and the enemy af.

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Chat has been disabled for everyone. I don’t think you were chat banned.

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idk the exact reason; some have put hypothesis forwards but i’d rader wait for an official reason if it’ll be given.

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In an EC mode, attackers are far more relevant if you want to do ground attack. The better payloads alone justify it.

Of course they’re nowhere near as important when you can simply win the match by shooting the entire enemy team down and there are no respawns.

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What I’m seeing is more evidence that we need proper manoeuvre kill credit more than anything else…

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Ah, I see we’re back to terminator AAA.

Even with detailed DMs for tanks, having more bombs on board is definitely an upgrade.