I’m part of Anti-AF AAA as well but, I’m against them from a game design perspective not “historical” stuff.
I mean there are some aircrafts that can be untouchable even you brought same BR aircrafts if someone played correctly such as rocket aircrafts and F-104A/C so, Jet RB needs nerfing AF SPAA/SAMs or removing them from early Jets to early supersonic jets tier as counterpart of untouchable things.
Tunesia (as an example) would become more fun if AI targets are spread more across the map. Some ground units could be more back, maybe even within some kilometers if the AF. That way both sides, the air supremacy guys wanting to kill every player can add something to the game while ground units should remain very important for the mission as well. And having targets spread out more also gives the benefit of fights occuring further away from each other, so if I dive on a wyvern both he stand a chance and I stand a chance of not getting third parties.
Roland missiles are pretty easy to evade since the missile guidance overhaul. They need to buff them as now they do not provide sufficient protection for planes on the ground.
I have no problems with povs pro or con af aaa - but i think your example contradicts the whole purpose of the availability of highly specialized planes.
Their purpose was to be op and untouchable and your expectation looks like you want to nerf a game mechanic just in order to exploit their weaknesses.
So imho your game design requirements are already met by gaiijin - the BR setting policy tries to flatten certain advantages of planes with BRs far away from reality and create more or less a pure fictional / fantasy game design with more than questionable BRs. We have certain planes able to be untouchable even in full uptiers and without af aaa.
So i do respect your pov but imho the main strength or wt thunder lies in the vehicle variety, and plane class variety - following your logic to remove af aaa to catch op rocket planes helpless when refuelling, makes them useless. Nobody would really fly this stuff anymore.
In case all u have to do for a kill is to wait until your enemy runs out of fuel, the whole purpose of PvP interaction (who is better?) would be pointless. Even if some claim this would be realistic - it simply de-validates any “real” air to air kill if kills can be achieved that easy.
Except he doesn’t because it’s very easy to create ticket advantage no reasonable amount of brainless clicking in a fighter will fix.
Also yeah extremely good solution - wasting my time clicking on ground targets for 15-17m. Extremely fun and engaging.
So overal:
I mean, seriously, how anyone with any amount of skill can’t see this doesn’t help good players, it only helps people who are extremely malicious. So do we want to really promote players that are bad in every way?
Once again - running the clock is not a feature any serious game should have. PvE aspect of Air RB is absolutely atrocious and forcing anyone into playing this probably means you guys simply DO NOT ENJOY AIR RB.
Yeah, exactly this. You basically take the only true PVP air mode in game and work hard to cripple the PVP aspect, the only thing that makes it playable.
Any sane pilot would prefer an airfield being defended by AA, you do not want enemies getting near when you need to slow down and land… It starts to feel you are whining about something every military pilot in the world takes for granted.
Landing and taking of are normal, nothing strange. There is no need for the enemy to be near the AF. Sure there are AF campers -which is boring- but AF camping only helps someone win a game when the team already did a better job then the enemy.
I never fly Germany, but I do have a Bf109 and with the cannons I would not know why you would be bad for the ground mission. At least German planes on the deck have their turn and climbrate giving them much better options the US planes.
The game has never been as PvP oriented as it is now, yet you are still very disappointed. While the real disappointed players should be the bombers and fighter bombers which performed the majority of sorties in WOII and in the end made Overlord and the whole destruction of the German war machine possible. In the past they had a much closer representation of their mission and role in battles then nowadays. Sure there have been real world crazy fighters who lived to fight another day, but most people do not go out in the sky just for a fun dogfight.
While the F-104A/F-104C example is due to BR compression but, for rocket aircraft (Me 163B-0/B-1/Ki-200), if it becomes useless, at some point the BR should go down. As a matter of fact, before the implementation of AF SAMs, Me 163B-0 and Ki-200 had lower BR(8.3/8.0 iirc).
However, when the AF SAMs were implemented, these aircraft were given “proper protection” when on the airfield, making them one of the easiest planes to play in Jet RB match, as long as fuel management was taken care of. Therefore, Me 163B-0 and Ki-200 were moved to 8.7BR (same as the MiG-15bis/F-86F-25 lmao) to face aircraft like Harriers, F-104A/F-104C, MiG-19, which should never face against rocket aircrafts.
The Me 163B-1 still remains at 8.0 BR, probably because the average player doesn’t know how to aim with the MK 108. If AF SAMs are further nerfed and rocket aircraft BRs are changed, the playstyle required to play them will just be back to what it used to be pre AF SAMs/SPAAs.
I have been playing Me 163B-0 and Ki-200 since before AF SAM was implemented and the play style of it was not that bad, there were frequent dogfights between jets due to non existent or only early AAMs, and many times you could carry your teammates in rocket aircraft even you gets full uptier games a lot and face against MiG-17, CL-13A Mk.5, F-2 Sabre.
If you were in a supersonic jet you would not have died like they did unless you overused the afterburners.
Your logic is flawed.
I’m on the receiving end of AF AAA 99% of the time. I almost never use AF AAA myself. I keep fighting till the end.
And somehow I’m doing way, way, way better than any of AF AAA apologists in this topic. Why?
Because I play Air RB to have fun and I keep improving.
While AF AAA apologists basically want to avoid the PVP aspect that defines the mode as much as possible. Some are compulsive grindfest participators. And they do their best to kill all the things Air RB enjoyers love.
No pilot who hits the enemy a lot more often than the other way around is benefitting from AF AAA because his enemies will keep using AF AAA to deny him the advantage he worked for.
Any WW2 pilot would probably shoot himself rather than see his enemies dive into death-ray zone and be invulnerable every 2-3 encounters.
Real life pilots often flew a for a few hundred kilometers before actually getting into combat zome, planes like Fw 190 had range around 800km for a reason, don’t know if that’s counting drop tanks, but it’s clearly visible 200+km to the battlefield was probably pretty normal. With 200km to the AF in WW2 plane, you’re not getting away after being shot in the engine. In WT? Easy-peasy, because AF death zone is 10km away if you’re paying attention to your positioning, as most AF runners do.
AF AAA benefits bad and malicious players. Bad players who do not climb, who can’t go for reversals, who do not work for position, and malicious players who use AF AAA as one of the most important parts of their tactics.
Both groups do NOT deserve protection.
Bombers are not good for gaming and that’s why DCS is full of fighters. Why? Because flying a slow, hulking beast is not really enjoyable and in fighter-heavy environment, bombers IRL were toast.
Reality is, heavy bombers were never really making this game better in any way and I would rather see them as AI. However, Gaijin gave players a chance to fly them. AF AAA doesn’t help them anyway. It’s just an ability to choose a non-meta nad mostly useless planes - you should be thankful. Yet you keep somehow being disappointed that these bombers are not useful.
They are not meta, they are not useful, and almost every game has weapons and vehicles that are just bad/not meta/extremely situational but you can play them anyway if you like such gameplay, but any problems that arise are on you!
Bombers get next to nothing from AF AAA. 97% of AF campers are fighters and super-fast bombers with good armanent like B18B. I can usually slap a heavy bomber in a suicidial raid if needed.
My ayit doesn’t have afterburner and still kills planes on runway
take more fuel or kill all enemy team before ran out of fuel then.
Problem has been solved.
If people would stop camping on AF I would gladly do so. When enemy is alone and circles around AF while you don’t have enough time and points to win only viable solution is to go on his AF and kill him.
Despite all this I still want missile AA buffed as now it’s easy to evade missiles.
Well, I don’t think there’s much complaining about missile AAA.
But god damn, the hitscan AF AAA is a living nightmare.
Also recently I’ve been running into M163 quite a lot in my Ta-152H, not very enjoyable, but at least it’s dodgeable to some extent, unlike AF AAA.
I think his point was he doesn’t need afterburner to kill planes on the runway at jet BRs.
Well most of players on jet BR-s are wallet warriors that drop bomb on bases and continue to enemy AF to be shot down by AF AA. Hardly will they complain about it.
I don’t see how could you fight against M163 when he is 8.0 and TA is 6.0. You can fight in +1/-1 window but not above and below that.
Unfortunately the fellow player is right, gaijin has issues with proper BR allocations of midfield aaa or af aaa and props - a famous example:
Will look for the replay, because I have encountered M163 several times recently, if you really have problems believing me and think I make stuff up for some ridiculous reasons.
EDIT:
here you go, warning, includes some interesting chat and a drastic miss at the end (but I guess my plane being damaged and on fire may have something to do with not-perfect approach).
https://warthunder.com/en/tournament/replay/89819220840851630
You just proved that there is no ME163 in your game. That’s all I was saying.
It wasn’t M163? Ok, I’ve seen M163 so maybe will try another match. I thought it was firing fast enough for M163 here. Anyway, once I prove I do meet M163, will you f.e. stop posting here forever, so my effort gets properly rewarded?
EDIT:
Here you have a screenshot from the match. it’s M163
EDIT2: Golan heights has M163 too, and they were able to nick my wing from 2km away, luckily I dodged the res.t
I tought you mean plane not SPAA. My bad.
