Airfield AAA Discussion Thread - Air Realistic Battles

Meanwhile the additional camouflage description section of my beloved Hunter F.1 says that
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/827935942790610955/1123672706395668563/hunter_.png

No offense dude - but comparing a pre-emptive surprise attack approaching below radar detection altitude (so no defending fighters airborne) with war thunder makes no sense, wt is more or less pure fantasy with realistic looking planes. You know that…

I mean just with your statement “point and click” you confirm using a totally unrealistic mechanic called mouse aim and you complain about totally unrealistic af aaa?

Imho you should check your sources. Even if you refer to Barbarossa 1941 or ETO of U8th/15th AF with 2TAF 1944/45 or Bodenplatte - the strafing fighters killed mainly material - so unmanned parked aircraft and not their pilots - major difference to wt. Same as above - reality and wt does not fit together.

Imho the actually most used tactic against fighters was to kill them with fighters in aerial combat. Counting dead material is pointless.

4 Likes

In all honesty, I do not even care about it being realistic. I care about gameplay. To add insult to i jury, some maps have AF AAA that deals next to no damage. But there’s no in-game info about this, it’s pure trial and error. Which makes it even more infuriating.
I wish all maps followed the same principles instead of AF AAA being all over the place.

And of course preferable AF AAA is lack of AF AAA and j-out exploit being fixed.

The AAA is extremely consistent for me. If I get with in 4000 yards my pilot gets knocked out. If I am on the run way and they decide to strafe me while I am repairing, my AAA doesn’t realize there is a enemy plane on the map, let alone right over them

1 Like

It all depends on the map. On Palestine it basically does nothing. On old maps it’ll kill you before you reach the target on the runway.

1 Like

Actually the previous post nailed it. On some prop maps airfield aaa is useless, so your map know-how becomes a decisive factor in tight matches. These inconsistencies are extremely annoying as they artificially alter the outcome of very tight matches.

I mean it is not really a challenge to win 1 vs 4 on Golan Heights if you kill 2 or 3 of them in one pass on their runway on the forward airfield. From a holistic pov such an example de-validates any “real” 1 vs 4 turnaround you had before on “regular” maps, so it kills the long term motivation - at least for me, as winning by exploiting design flaws is imho no real victory.

The recent changes like real shatter, “improved ballistics” or 16 vs 16 turned the outcome of 40-50% of my matches into a random event - in addition to the still increasing premium spam. 12 months ago matches with 5 XP-50s or 7 Wyverns were extremely rare, but recently it is very common to play with or against such combinations…

What ever your pov in this debate is - it would be simply fair to delete useless af aaa on certain maps, otherwise less experienced players suffer even more as they rely on consistency.
Those maps are known for years and gaijin has changed nothing. Even brand new maps have certain airfields (mostly main af) without fully functional af aaa and on some older maps the af aaa became way less effective…

1 Like

I like bases to spawn differently, I think mostly in the form of the airfield base. That is because I like the battles to be more mission/objective oriented. But a deeper, maybe more rewarding line of bases sounds better then just endlessly respawning bases.

On AA defending the AF, I don’t care about about airfield camping. Teams can fly the mission/objective instead of focusing on a single enemy fighter left.
The Luftwaffe would not have won Germany the war if it destroyed the RAF in 1940, it would have won the war if it after destroying the air force would have bombed all factories and military structures or the army landed and occupied.

Air supremacy is no goal in itself, not worth the blood and investments if not for enabling bombers/attackers to do the work.

4 Likes

The Rolands on top tier ARB dont work. I always fly to the enemy airfield and have only ever been killed in older jets (~br8.0-8.7) but for top tier i think they need to switch it to something slightly better for top tier, as it feels unfair to just fly in a straight line at Mach 1.2 and the missiles not be able to hit you, leaving the jets on the runway vulnerable.

3 Likes

Yes, the enemy can counter your AA-advantage, the enemy can go and get to work on the mission objectives. No country would send fighters into the sky for a team death match.

5 Likes

“If you get killed on the airfield it is because you threw away your alt and speed advantage and the enemy took that advantage and killed you.”
I only return to base once I run out of fuel, ammo or am badly damaged. So it isn’t really “Throwing” your advantage away. It’s more like you are doing something necessary for your survival.

4 Likes

Your “counter” is pretty much: give up position, get slaughtered. Also on many maps a lot of planes can’t really do anything against most ground targets. Some maps have extremely harsh ticket bleed that favors one team too.

3 Likes

Well, and why is that? Because you made some mistakes. For some reason I almost never have to land, and when I do, it’s because I made some mistake. In most instances I don’t really need AF AAA because my teammates keep the enemy busy anyway.

3 Likes

Bruh. getting hit by a AI anti air from 5000 yards away is no mistake. also carrying onle 240 20mm ammo and shooting down three bombers and running out of ammo is no mistake either. you never have to land probably because you are never in any condition to land ie completely mangled and unable to because you got shot down

4 Likes

Going for bombers instead of fighters is a huge mistake, typical of low skill and low IQ players.
I average around 3 player kills per battle so I’m pretty damn aggressive gameplay-wise. I am as fair as it can be - of course I get shot down, because I do not even try to “run to AF”, I run towards friendlies, which is usually suicidial because they are too busy chasing bombers or ground pounding or shooting at AI to help, and by help I mean take a shot at enemy plane flying straight below them.
So yes, I just casually die more often, than I land. But what’s wrong about that? I make a mistake, my team has played badly, I do not expect AAA to fix my situation.
Of course I absolutely could do this and start using AF AAA to reset fights, deny enemy asvantage and getting them killed. Last time I did this, I took out 4 Spitfires with alt and energy advantage using Fw 190 D9. It was extremely easy. Luckily most.of WT playerbase is so bad they fail even at AF camping. But does that mean AF AAA is good? Nope, it’s still horrible, because often there’s at least 1 guy who knows how to camp the AF and there we go,.

3 Likes

Air battles, at minimum in realistic, were not designed to solely be treated as TDM.

These demands to have it treated and redesigned as such is outrageous and insane. I pray that Gaijin never gives such insane demands any due.

5 Likes

It’s not TDM, you can win via tickets. But AF AAA is detrimental to skill and gameplay and it promotes toxic, malicious behaviour.
The only thing “outrageous and insane” is zealous defence of a feature no semi decent player should ever utilise.

2 Likes

What you people are proposing will kill realistic air battles as a mode. Almost nobody will be able to land to refuel, repair and rearm because to do so will get them immediately strafed.

Many of you people who complain about AF campers are the same types who either do nothing the entire game except near the end or refuse to actually hit ground targets and play the objective accordingly. Air realistic isn’t TDM; there are other objectives to complete other than killing all player aircraft. You complain about losing to AF campers but refuse to play the objective to prevent it.

Sure, PTFO’ing doesn’t always net the win. That’s just how it is sometimes and there are factors to it, however AF campers do not count as one of those factors when there’s other objectives to complete.

Advocating for the complete removal of AA, especially at AFs - Is absolutely insane.

6 Likes

Air Realistic Battles existed before Airfield AA was implemented and it did not prevent people from being able to land and re-arm. You just needed to have a little bit of situational awareness or have team mates to cover you.

The initial reason that AA was added was to prevent spawn camping on Enduring Confrontation modes where you could just sit above the airfield and kill people before they took off.

This was never a problem in Air RB because there are no respawns to begin with.

4 Likes

Most of the people that are complaining about airfield camping play the game for the PvP experience. People aren’t just complaining about losing to airfield campers…but even if you “PTFO” you are still stuck babysitting some guy for 15+ minutes because he won’t leave his protective bubble. The amount of gameplay that is actually happening is basically confined to 5 minutes of climbing into the fight, 5 - 10 minutes of actual fighting…and then the rest is just babysitting 1 or 2 guys while the timer runs out. People don’t want to spend the majority of the game babysitting some try-hard that doesn’t want to see his KD drop below 5.

5 Likes

And you are also saying that returning to airfield and repairing/reamring to go back and fight more is dumb? Sooooooo you aren’t a team player. your goal is shoot stuff down get shot down and move on to next match?

3 Likes