A very significant number of fighters in this game either have no suspended ordnance or very little. Take spitfires for example - only later ones get bombs, and that’s a single tiny bomb until you get to the Mk 18, 22 and 24. Typhoons get 2 bomb drops. Yak 3s don’t get anything. La-5s and 7s get a couple of bombs, 9s and 11s get nothing. Sure, American fighters have pretty good carry capacity across the board, but that still doesn’t let them stack up against dedicated attackers and bombers. And most fighters that can carry bombs, only carry one or two small ones (like 50kg, 60kg, 100kg, 250kg, 250lb, 500lb). I don’t even know if the 50kg ones can pop light pillboxes, but they certainly can’t pop regular pillboxes.
A spitfire can do bugger all to destroy anything other than howitzers with its piddly .303s, and the moment it destroys a few, the new midmap AA mechanics will start lighting it up.
So that leaves you in a lot of cases with just cannon fire. Which, seeing as you’re using that to shoot players, and given the limited capacity of fighters, is gonna run out pretty quick, and can’t damage tanks at all in most cases, especially with air belts loaded. And then you have to RTB to get more bombs and ammo after destroying only a couple of ground units, and by that time the game’s already over.
To say nothing of how silly it is to carry ground ordnance at the start of the match, seeing as that’s sabotaging your earlygame impact and is gonna leave you at a huge energy disadvantage against enemy fighters.
So no, most fighters don’t have armaments and munitions capable enough to equalise a ticket disadvantage.
Does it have to be listed or named? It’s an elimination gamemode. This is how elimination gamemodes work. Are there other win conditions? Yes. Are those other win conditions achieved nearly as frequently? No. Is it reasonable for an alternative win condition to be achieved solely because of an AI game mechanic that requires no player skill or even input? No. And that lattermost one is the topic of debate, so engage with it.
Like it or not, playing to destroy all enemy players in a fighter is playing an objective - it’s playing the fighter objective.
The entire point of this thread is to debate over whether it’s reasonable for said option to be untenable purely because someone is trying to learn how to draw a perfect circle in the sky above their airfield. We are not debating whether some losses are inevitable regardless of what you try.
It’s pretty ridiculous for the loss to be “simply out of your hands” because somebody fled to their airfield and camped, letting a busted game mechanic play for them.
Instead of calling others idiots, dishonest, and generally insinuating that you’re better than them, you should learn some humility, listen to others’ contributions to the topic, and engage honestly in the discussion.