I think giving all strike fighters and bombers at rank 6+ their airspawns back is a pretty bad idea, but certain ones should get it back. The list of strike fighters and bombers that I think should get their airspawns back are as follows:
Note: the Vautours and the German, Italian, French, and Israeli F-84Fs are listed here because with the upcoming research changes listed on the roadmap, they will be moving to rank 6.
I think things like the Buccaneer which lacks both an offensive armament and counter measures needs a air spawn. Because my god it’s suicidal flying those.
I remember the 60 - 120 second matches when A-7D had air spawn.
I remember when Su-17M2s would drop on everyone from altitude mid-way to the battlefield.
I remember being one of those players personally to pro-actively cause the balancing of those aircraft.
The players that won within 2 minutes using A-7Ds would translate that to A-4s as well.
I have an issue with 4 - 6 minute matches going on still to this day.
Yeah, all that happened when the A-7D was 9.3. It is now 10.3 where it faces fighters with crazy missiles and everything at that tier has flares. As for Su-17M2s, those are not in the list of stuff I said should get the airspawn back. As for the A-4s, the difference between them and the A-7s is they don’t get crazy missiles, although, I have edited my list because I don’t know why I added it in there, but the A-4N should not get an airspawn.
The A-7s are all now at 10.3-11.0 where everything has crazy missiles and flares. This is not like the old days when it was indroduced at 9.3. As for the A-4s, they have exactly 1 and a half good turns in them and then they drop like bricks. They also don’t have good missiles, except for the A-4N which I removed from the list because I don’t why I added it there, that thing should not have an airspawn.
No, that happened when A-7D was 10.3. Air spawn was THE reason it went to 10.3 to begin with.
It just was never reverted back to 10.0 because people stopped playing it thus stopped feeding data.
The main jets that were the issue back in the old days was the Su-17s and Harriers. A-4s and Corsairs were also inlcuded but not to the extent the Su-17 and Harriers were performing.
I agreed with the change back when smaller maps and when teams were smaller 12v12, when people had no flares to counter, when people were less experienced fighting high speed jets with R60, 9J, 9G. But right now all these planes are suffering because they are entering into the fight fully loaded with tons of bombs, missiles aren’t the greatest since everyone has flares, speed is low for Harriers and Corsairs.
Some jets are fine even now but majority really aren’t. Hell I’ve spaded the MiG-27s and they were a pain to spade because I’m fighting MiG-29s and F-16s, F-14s.
Some jets are classed as fighters (MiG-27s, Mirage 5, F1CT. I want Gaijin to make these jets properly classified like IRL and give them air spawn aswell).
Furthermore in the next patch with rank changes the A-4, F-84, Vautours are going to rank 6 and will lose their air spawns… these strikers and bombers are already terrible.
Skyhawk 2 even tho its better, its still worse then its competition that it faces in regular MM. I’ve fought it multiple times and completely dominated it. The Buccaneers are terrible no doubt about it.
Ask yourself this, you’re in an F-8E crusader, half-way to the battle and a Mig-27 & F-1CT dunks on your head.
You’re in a Mig-19, not even a 17 which Nesher/Mirage 5 can still face, and said aircraft dunk on your head.
A-4 already lost its airspawns long ago. They’re balanced.
Vautours being ground spawn might actually cause a reduction of BR to 8.7, because you know what’s been preventing 8.7 for Vautours? The air spawn.
In-fact, I’ll spam out Vautours alongside you next major update since I don’t pay repair costs and the new stats will likely cause the BR reduction so many have wanted.
So no, all but maybe F-84F is a hard no from me.
Seemingly unreasonable.
And BTW, I main Ayit as one my my favorite aircraft in WT. It has a ground spawn currently and is among the best 9.3s in the game.
You don’t know how to fly A4s, these things will demolish lobbies when flown as fighter with airspawn. A4H is the strongest 8.3 in the game currently. The A4E, and especially the Israeli premium variant, are very strong 8.7s when flown right.
Just because the average Joe straps bombs under them and goes for the nearest pillbox and starts turnfighting the first Mig-17 still carrying 2 bombs and a gunpod doesn’t make it a bad plane.
Highly doubt Gaijin will compress BRs again, so Vautours nvr gonna go down. They are fine at their current BR, they aren’t fighters they are bombers (Vautuar Interceptor is a bomber pretending to be an interceptor). Either maps change again, objectives change, or MM changes to give these poor bombers and heavy weight interceptors a decent gameplay experience.
And the F-8s are good fighters and they have flares, if they didn’t had flares then it would’ve been a fine argument.
Tbf, F84F should lose it too, so it can get it’s proper BR… it was useless at 8.7, it’s still useless at 8.3, it could probably just sit at 8.0.
Having planes at an arbitrary high BR because of airspawn is not great design. While at the same time leaving obvious offenders like the XP50 reign free with a too low BR and an airspawn.
Bucs are definetly in need of airspawn. The issue with air spawn is where jets have actually A2A power. Buc doesnt really and therefore is a minimal threat in most cases
The SU-25, A-10s for sure need an airspawn as they are extremely, painfully slow even, compared to what they face in most matches.
The A-7K, SU-39 and SU-25T are a special case as they are high enough in BR to get “EC” maps, they also need an airspawn and/or need to be prohibited from joining EC maps.
I think the best way to do it is to give Strike Aircraft/Bombers Air Spawn that lacks air combat capabilities or are way subpar to their BR setups for air combat but are strictly oriented towards ground.
A-4B, Buccaneer, A-7D and E series etc deserve such an advantage since they’re slow, have poor climb rate and lack potent air combat capabilities compared to their dedicated fighter jets. A-4E however seems to be way more potent (due to a better engine) - perhaps going up to 9.0 would be better to counter any exploit.
Aircraft like F-105, Su-7, Harrier, Yak-38, Su-25 or A-10A can be exploited to get an air spawn advantage and be used against aircraft - that’s what lead to grounding most of these aircraft in the 1st place anyways. And to be honest - I always favored using the Harriers in air combat due to their great acceleration and decent armament.
A-10 is slow, but those Aim-9Ls at 10.0/10.3 are very potent and there’s moments when you can use them against planes without flares, giving you a guaranteed kill. They’re also fairly agile and gets plenty of flares/chaff for defense, it can be problematic since an A-10 can be easily intercepted but you can counter the attack and gain an easy kill with the cannon/Aim-9L.
Su-25s are even more lethal with their R-60MKs and good engines - even if they’re not supersonic, if they’re loaded for air combat they can be exploited pretty easy. To be honest, I see the Su-25s as a better version of A-7D/E due to their All Aspect AAMs for defense (+ the broken damage model than can eat missiles and cannons at times).
Su-7, even if it lacks AAMs or flares, has a great speed and acceleration and saw it many times bombing then rushing for attackers/bombers for an easy kill. At 9.3, you have the opportunity to outrun many aircraft and stay away from danger and only a few can intercept you. Giving it back an air spawn will also give you the opportunity to run back to base before any interceptor can reach you.
In the same time, lower BR Attackers can be exploited in the same manner like A2D-1, F3D-1, Me262A-1a/U or the Wyvern - where players can focus these planes on air combat and bring little to no ground armament in the loadout, giving them speed and altitude advantages over the others.
I could go on with examples, but I hope I’ve made a point where not all of them deserve a spawn, at least from my opinion - but there are some of these Attackers/Bombers that really need them while others are greatly exploited for their good flight characteristics and potent anti-air armament.
Not gonna make new suggestion but once since gaijin thinks american F-84F keeping airspawn while french italian german israeli ones don’t is fine and not a oversight I’m bumping up this suggestion. This doesnt even go into which planes are too strong to have airspawn or not. Either all F-84Fs should have airspawn or not. Seems pretty logical given they are the same planes and fight the same stuff in air ab/rb. This issue has nothing to do with rank 6 strikers abusing airspawn just for no reason US one gets to keep it which is pretty silly. Sad to see all of the feedback on the F-84Fs was ignored for last month and will be probably for much longer.