I’m bailing out when I land and see an enemy above my airfield. AA doesn’t allways work and I don’t wan’t to die and lose SL, so if I’m in this situation, I leave the battle.
2 Likes
You said “doesn’t all ways” work. For me it never works xD
1 Like
This is why I stopped playing Prop RB.
They just doesn’t know how to save fuel/ammo and killing enemy teams without using crutch sadly.
3 Likes
The problem is not in spawnkill but in the guy who is drinking tea at the airport making the match last 5 hours. or it takes off and runs around the airport waiting for the other to go down and get killed. I think this is ridiculous, remove the AI and leave this responsibility with the team, if the team is bad, welcome to war thunder, we suffer the same in ground battles. Rapid and quickly battles, if u want to spend 5h playing, play SB, or start a new life in DCS.
9 Likes
IF you want rapid and quick battles go to AB it was designed for it.
Or you want to just camp enemy airfield for easy kills? Like we got in ppl camping Helipads.
We dont need another campfest.
You can easily kill planes on airfield if you have enough speed and high angle and start shooting early
If all airfield AAA is to week (especially heavy guns) and mostly useless over 3000m.
You already have easy kills with overnerfed bomber gunners.
4 Likes
People will get themselves killed by their own errors and then complain about others seeking easy kills. Can’t make this up.
Consider actually trying to fight for yourself instead of expecting the game to insta-kill your enemies for you.
7 Likes
I think that what we (players) all need to understand is that whatever solution is implemented will never be an everlasting solution. Every implememtation has its own set of rules in which it will work and some others where it will not. Therefore after some times there will be new ways to exploits some holes. So it will be an endless work in progress. Furthermore there is even more difficulty in establishing what players want and we must be honest with each other on this matter. We all have a different opinon of what is “fun”. I personally enjoy as much realism as possible, therefore i like the presence of AAA emplacements both at the airfiled and in the middle of the battlefield. Of course they should be adapted with every tier, as against 1.3 biplanes (from the '30s) automatic cannons are quite an overkill.
In conlusion, aside from personal taste, one should think about the AAA as part of the major need of rework of Air RB map design. Whitout AAA emplacement there should be a solution for the attackers (not only bombers); better postion of the ground targets should be considered…and so on and on. Therefore talking about the AAA presence alone is just like looking at a tree without noticing the forerst behind it.
4 Likes
Airfield AAs in jets are stupidly weak and it makes the entire concept of airfield useless.
Here’s a link to show how bad it currently is, not my game but I deeply relate to it: airfield (streamable.com)
Airfields are a place that planes can replenish their ammo after they have fought in the field, and so that they can contribute to their team later by taking off again.
Airfields are not a place that defaults to death when there’s an enemy around, and they have no means to retaliate.
No one is supposed to take down planes, especially multiple planes, that are repairing using their airfield without any punishment.
Players should not be able to get free kills by flying straight to enemy airfield and camping landing enemies for profit.
If this carries on being the case, I believe people that ran out of ammo will just decide to not land and fly afk to random places to wait for the game to end instead of landing, coz if you land you die by campers, if you fly to the edge of the map at least there’s a chance the game ends before someone chases you down.
Nerfing airfield AAAs is simply not the solution to encourage healthy gameplay. Airfield campers can be left in their airfield while their objectives get cleared, but airfield rushing has no counterplay. If you don’t want people to be able to replenish in airfields, you might as well remove the entire repair mechanic or even the entire airfield, at least that way there won’t be people playing dirty on landed planes.
13 Likes
6 minutes into the match and the whole remaining team was on the airfield:
They just got outplayed, deserved. It should be always be like this, bad teamplay should be punished.
This is not a tactic that can be done even with 0 AAA, because ARB is a teamgame and you will be useless to your team on the enemy airfield.
Players will start to learn how to manage their ammo instead of hold m1 and run to the airfield.
An enemy in your airfield has counterplay, you can kill him just like in any other part of the map and can be countered in many ways.
On the other hand players camping their airfield cant be countered, going for the objectives will just leave you in a disadvantage position.
With AAA: get free of jail card and obligate the enemy to loose their advantage.
Without AAA: teamgameplay is meta, players learn to manage their ammo and improve their awareness.
Clearly the gameplay without AAA is the best.
8 Likes
I completely agree with Metra on this topic - the current proposal with three airfields effectively negates the rare case of somebody griefing their entire game to camp airfields while also hard countering people camping their own AAA for minutes on end. The fact is most players in current meta wouldn’t bother to circumvent the entire game objective just to kill people going RTB, its not effective or time-efficient.
Especially in high tier, the only moment where people on the opposite team are sticking around your airfield is late in the match when the outcome is already mostly decided. If you find yourself in such a situation you shouldn’t be handheld by a mechanic to help you land and rearm. If you get in a bad spot in the match it was due to your or your team’s decisions so just take the loss and go next, ggs.
As it stands, a team that has won the match fair and square in the middle of the map can be forced to wait around for 10 minutes just because the last remaining person on the enemy team decides they are not willing to give up their kaydee. This is especially apparent in props where airfield AAA effectively creates a timed death bubble.
Anyone defending current state of airfield AAA probably does so because often times they abuse this mechanic themselves and aren’t willing to admit it - it’s all because of those pesky airfield campers, right?
3 Likes
Airfield AAA is not a particularly bad problem, currently. If you have a ticket advantage, airfield AAA is at best a minor annoyance. If you don’t have a ticket advantage, why are you camping the airfield anyway? The player hiding could probably just as easily climbed to space and would accomplish the same thing.
That being said, I would have no problem removing it entirely, as on all but the most well-protected airfields it is easily avoided.
2 Likes
First things first: what i’m going to say is just my experience, therefore is subjective.
When I started using planes usually i never had the necessity to go back to the airfield because i was killed without much fuss. After a while i learned to stay alive and fight and the need to rearm and repair came up. I never camped the airfield, not once. If I was able to, I returned to fight, but if I wasn’t (as it was considered too disadvantageous) i pressed J. Now i just don’t care. Even if i’m the last of my team i always come back to fight to the death…and sometimes i won even against 3 or 4 enemies.
Long story short, every time that i got the possibility to continue the fight was because i had the chance to gain some energy to actually use my plane. When airfield were without AAA you didn’t have the possibility to fight as you were strafed right after taking off or in the middle of the airstrip, and it was atrocious in my opinion because i wanted to fight. So what i’m afraid of is the risk of returning to that situation. @Metrallaroja stated that “An enemy in your airfield has counterplay, you can kill him just like in any other part of the map and can be countered in many ways”…Well if the game was designed with a set of rules where energy state, velocity and altitude aren’t meant to count maybe i would support that statement…but this is not the case, as i can’t fight with a plane that just took off against someone 2/5 times higher than me and with double (or more) the speed…or at least can we all agree that the chances of a potitive outcome are veeeeeeeeeeeery tiny?
3 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.
It is a fair way to die, the next time you will think how not to die like this and you will manage your ammo better, take more fuel or take bigger risks to kill the enemy.
On the other hand with AAA the advantage of your enemy gets cancelled and that is way less fair, the enemy has no counterplay and there is nothing he can do to improve this in the future.
2 Likes
I will try with the BI…and every time that I will run out of my 90 rounds I will blame myself. Dude do you recognize that just stating the the only reason to rearm and repair are related to a misuse or bad play is a very pretentious semplification? You have just decided to cut so many variables out of the picture. There are some planes which consumes fuel much more faster, others which have way less ammo…Sometimes you get damaged and you need to repair. So as an example, if i get damaged by a friendly, it will be my fault to have the necessity to repair? Than why bother if in that case i will have to accept to “threw away” my “speed advantage” and then again, die in a “fair way”?
9 Likes
The BI is one of the most broken and unbalanced planes in the game.
It has the performance x4 of everything it faces, the only disadvantage is ammo and fuel.
No AAA is the best way to balance this vehicle because it would have a weakness and it could be killed by regular fighters.
With AAA is just an invincible plane to face which you cant do anything against it because the only disadvantage that it has it gets nulified by AAA.
If you get damaged by a friendly, it could be because of your fault (for example your friendly is about to kill an enemy but you are too greedy and step in between) or it could also just be bad luck.
If you get unlucky there is nothing you can do, just like when you get rammed or teamkilled.
But at least it is luck fault or your teammates fault and it is not how bad the gameplay is designed.
3 Likes
There are a lot of designs air realistic has that punishes bad team, but the most important part is that they lose. And a team doesn’t have to lose due to running out of planes, they can lose because they run out of tickets (which is supposed to be the proper way to win, with team wipe only being an addon).
Your entire argument would be valid if this was on air arcade - but this is air realistic.
*The fact that airfields are protected are realistic:
You never have airfields undefended realistically. If an enemy flies close to enemy airfield realistically he should be placing himself in much more danger than in a random area with no military.
*The fact that planes run out of ammo is realistic:
in a realistic fight in the plane, if you have the chance to shoot someone down you will use as much ammo as you need, especially if you know you have a place to return.
With AAA: allow strategies to be made and has opportunity cost on landing at the expense of not being able to take down enemy tickets and being less relevant on the map for a while.
Without AAA: turns realistic into an arcade playstyle - because its not close to realistic if taking down enemy planes is the only objective in an operation, and conserving ammo is necessary because returning to one’s own airfield is considered dangerous.
Tickets was a good system, and is especially crucial to serve as the balance control air realistic and make it actually realistic. Any airfield campers can be denied by balancing the ticket system in order to prevent game from being dragged too long, including but not limited to automatic ticket drain if the entire team is landed, etc. Spawn campers on the other hand have very limited ways to be balanced, unless you actually make them suffer opportunity cost which in this case is actual danger around airfield. Removing AAAs on airfields are just destroying the gameplay experience of realistic players that actually plays in a realistic style, and punishes them for doing a standard realistic action - rearm.
4 Likes
Strafing airfields was the most used tactic against fighters in ww2.
No AAA is more “realistic” than current AAA protection.
With good aim you will need way less ammo.
If you go to hit ground targets the airfield camper will be 3km above you, you will have no chance against him. How is that a counter?
In ARB “spawn camping” doesnt exist, you only spawn once. Everyone has the same chances and that is why it is easy to counter an enemy attacking your airfield.
I see most of your post as reasonable statement - and i actually support the proposal without af aaa, but with exit zones - but the quoted comment does not deal with actual realities.
My approval is solely aimed to force the majority of players to see the need to develop and to play Air RB due to the fun of flying and not due to economic necessities which encourage them to strap on bombs and bomb bases.
This whole conversation is imho pointless, as mainly experienced players discuss well known facts. So what ever position they might take, they are not really the problem (besides a few players mainly bundeled in squads, another fellow player has profund knowledge about them) - the problem are the masses outside this forum.
It is the same with the guys flying op planes like Wyverns - dominating high score list and racking up k/ds of 15:1 or more - they are a few, not active in the forum and only a problem if you meet them in a match.
Despite playing props only, i observe what fellow players report from their game play experience in jets - and i watch enough replays and vids to see that there are two different words:
A) highly effective af aaa in prop BRs (few exceptions)
B) much lower effective af aaa in jet BRs (can be countered)
Some guys want to reduce effectiveness of af aaa in word A, others want to increase effectiveness in world B, others like to get rid of all af aaa without changes.
Others see the need for changes for af aaa and support a removal if there is an exit zone for weaker plane classes, as they hope quality of Air RB improves.
So there is no real defending of anything as most guys do not differentiate their opinion what exactly they mean. If some guys ask for the same effectiveness of af aaa in jet BRs like they got used to this in prop BRs, this sounds comprehensible.
Your whole argumentation regarding “fair and square” or “team or own decisions” is on the same level like “bad decisions” or “bring enough fuel”, “don’t get damaged” like seen here or in the old forum is right from a certain pov, but simply not the whole truth.
It comes mainly from fighter mains which do not consider that PvE is part of Air RB too - and usually the guys playing PvE are their main victims - at least those guys die usually first.
If you follow the overall logic there would be no need for anything else than fighters in Air RB - No ground targets, no bases, no additional objectives - at the end of this chain there is no need for an airfield at all.
It is the same like a guy taking off with 7 minutes min fuel - hoping that his performance increase helps him to get kills (or easier kills), and some others try to manage to outfuel him to get an easy kill if he runs out of fuel.
Both parties try to benefit from game mechanics, the major difference is that in prop BRs af aaa can’t be countered, there are just a handful of maps without af aaa, one got lost today.
Same with this teamplay mantra - outside a (communicating) squad you will have some kind of teamplay as soon you play with some smart guys in 2 vs 2 or 4 vs 4s. Just assuming they understand English. Otherwise you are randomly assigned to strangers. Even without the 16 vs 16 setup the outcome of matches became a random event in the last years.
So if you have a team with 5 Wyverns you will most likely win on Tunisia, but you will lose most of the times on Ardennes map. Just based on experience.
The majority of matches is decided just by numbers in the first 6 to 10 minutes - you play either 8 vs 2 or 2 vs 8 in most cases.
This is true in 1 vs 1s in prop BRs if just 2 players are left, fully agree.
But from my pov this is rather the exception. I support your proposal for a removal of af aaa with exit zones just to get rid of such scenarios:
replay/84883092236110574 (sorry, link does not work)
I played 2 vs 1 in a major ticket disadvantage and their last player, a Wyvern (what else) camped his af aaa with 9 minutes left and 2.000 points ticket advantage.
Based on current game mechanics the game is lost, cause on this map i had to kill 20 tanks or pillboxes with MG 151s as arty or aaa kills won’t reduce tickets fast enough.
I see others with MG 151s killing pillboxes, but i can’t.
In addition i saw that my teammate was not experienced and patient enough and i assumed he might die to af aaa, which happened quite soon.
So just by the fact that my enemy was going to kill me (as slow and clumsy heavy fighter) and left his af aaa bubble (instead of just keep running) i had a chance to kill him - as he a had a rather low experience level i was able to built up energy and the necessary speed to dodge his headon attack (what else) and managed to kill him.
I agree to this just from a very holistic pov - as written above team play is a random and very rare event just due to wide spread of experience, plane classes and BR spread.
I saw some months ago this amazing F-16 player - killing all af aaa (SAMs) with skill and Mavericks and the remaining fighters with AAMs - i respect that. But i saw also a hell of players celebrating af aaa bugs giving them free kills without efforts.
So if your suggestions will be considered - i appreciate that and hope that quality will improve as assumed and predicted. But tbh - i have serious doubts about that. I mean if your goal is to improve quality of Air RB there are much more important issues, but i respect deviating views.
I mean we have just a few days with revised maps and i noticed that some af aaa is way less effective on some old and some revised maps. And of course we have some guys who learned quite fast to benefit from that. I watched today on “Battle of the Rhine” my last 2 teammates dying as they got killed directly on the runway. The 2 (out of 5 left) enemies thought it was a funny idea to kill all af aaa after that.
You argue that they got killed fair and square, but imho they simply died as they relied on game mechanics which were broken and they got killed whilst trying to repair and not to camp…btw the af aaa on the other side of the map is not that easy to kill. No idea why…
Finally: The overall game play experience in the last years went downwards. This game is full of major flaws regarding game play, game mechanics and implemented changes nobody asked for - like real shatter or 16vs16 recently - everybody is aware of them.
If af aaa is seen by some of you as a major concern - try to get rid of it. I hope it will help to improve game play, but i have my doubts. Mainly as gaijin is following this topic for years now without any substantial changes - i mean their business model is based on protecting new players in more or less expensive premium planes - af aaa is a very cheap way to keep them spending money…
1 Like
imo they should make airfield aa only work within 3 km of the airfield, but keep it as it is, also add more bases to bomb per match or make them respawn faster since 90% of players in top tier arb just bomb and nothing else, and make the aa slowly damage you over time like in low tiers instead of instant missile annihilation
refering mostly to jets - its hard to believe AA missiles are way worse than the missiles jets themselves are using, like rn
its simply inhumane to tell pilots to reserve ammo especially on stuff like mig21smt, or a lot of other jets that has a few seconds burst at best, imagine yourself in an actual combat
you have not read my statement carefully, I talked about ticket system as an alternative way to reduce airfield campers, for example automatic ticket drain that does not require you to clear ground targets. It’s obviously not the best possible solution we can get to, but the key idea is that we dont need to kill airfield campers at the cost of a normal player trying to enjoy the game.
Overall, you are denying the fact that airfield is necessary for any player in ARB, and considering landing a punishment rather than a backup. You might as well suggest removing airfield as a whole and shift the gamemode to arcade style TDM where first team that gets wiped loses, I see no ideological differences.
tldr: you are ruining the game for people that uses airfield as intended, there can be other ways to deal with airfield campers without hurting normal players
6 Likes