yeah
id be fine if prop aa gunfire was actually modeled like it is in top tier aa…but it’s not
You can’t dodge it, and it essentially acts as a DoT spell with 100% perfect tracking, which is kind of ridiculous that it’s still like this in 2024
Just add in wirblewinds and some 88mm flak trucks or something
2 Likes
I recommend reading the first few pages of the old version of this thread (link in first post / OP).
It boils down that gaijin tried various iterations of af aaa accuracy in the years before 2017. So sometimes af aaa was less accurate, sometimes more. I saw even reports of concentrated fire on a single aircraft - whilst nearby flying enemies were totally ignored.
I played with less deadly accurate af aaa before 2019. On flat maps like Sicily or Tunisia 2 determined P-47s were enough to wipe out all af aaa in 2 or 3 passes - the received damage was minor and most of them made it back to their own airfield.
Ofc this had side effects (own af aaa is marked on the map) as smart bomber pilots saw this and decided not to land and j out due to the missing af aaa cover whilst landing.
If you ever tried to land a Me 264, B-29 or He 177 you faced the Ta 152 H fate: They don’t lose speed. It took ages to reduce alt and speed and thanks to the partly extremely high repair cost your chances to survive increased with space climbing - even as the matches lasted 1 hour those days.
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Here to mald at a game I lost tonight because the enemy P-39N could just use his superior speed to run to the airfield every single time he was caught in a bad position, including running for about half the match around the edge of the map to do so.
And while I kept him busy, my teammates who said they were going after ground targets either didn’t actually bother or couldn’t find any they could destroy (tanks, light pillboxes, etc). So despite us having absolute air superiority and a numerical advantage over the battlefield, we still lost. Pretty sad too since I hit several shots with the 37mm.
If he was spaceclimbing I wouldn’t have an objection to it, but running to the hitscan AoE death bubble anytime you’re inconvenienced still doesn’t belong in a gamemode that is 99% TDM.
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Which is exactly why I think AA should only be active when someone has landed on the airfield. It gives vulnerable planes protection, while also not allowing abuse such as what you experienced.
3 Likes
I’d go a step further, AA only turns on if you are landed or have your landing gear fully deployed (and thus at a speed low enough for this to be the case, with all the performance penalties of it).
2 Likes
Imho this is a prime example that af aaa is used as rather cheap excuse for wrong decision making of random team mates.
Short version:
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Your team attacked way too late the wrong targets - and the rookie with less than 1 day total game experience used af aaa exactly one time to his to his advantage: After 24 minutes - with a ticket lead of 600 vs 444 points.
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You had the chance to kill him (just unlucky), but the side effect of playing a BR 2.3 aircraft (Ki-45 Ko) in order to bully rookies is that your team mates at this BR are inexperienced too.
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So the root cause of your ticket defeat is not af aaa - it was wrong decision making - and the enemy team played the objective (destroying ground) way earlier than your team, whilst 3 of your team had done nothing (until 15-16 minutes) proved by a mission score between 51 and 76 points.
Long version:
Hidden as rather too long
Winning from your side of the map (Operation Uranus) by tickets is a milk run as the nearest ground units are 2 km away from your attacker spawn. I use this map very often to get the Thunderer reward as you are able to kill ~ 20 ground units without getting molested by enemies.
After watching the replay:
Gaijin Entertainment - Single Sign On
…it became obvious that not af aaa was the root cause for your defeat.
A few highlights:
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After 10 minutes your team played 8 vs 3, 4 of your teammates had between 0 and 70 points - whilst the enemy killed 27 ai units and your team just 5. Tickets 1.244 vs 3.100.
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Your team stopped the own ticked bleed (by killing enemy ai planes) way too late, your tickets bleed stopped with 444 own tickets.
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At around 16 minutes the rookie in the P-39 came the first time into af aaa range - as he ran out of fuel, having 2 behind him. Playing 2 vs 6 but with 2.000 vs 444 tickets. He and the A-20 G landed and took off at 18:30. Your game was lost at this point as 3 guys within your team had between 51 and 76 mission score.
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Your team decided to go for the A-20 G first instead of focusing on the climbing P-39 - subsequently 2 guys died whilst you had just bad luck as your shots at around 24 minutes just damaged him. He managed to escape into af aaa range after 24 minutes.
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Your attempt to kill one cluster of the 3 x 6 late game truck spawn directly below you (which would have won you the match) came too late, you lost 3 vs 1 with 444 vs 600 tickets.
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The inactivity of 3 guys within your team (51 - 76 mission score) for the first 15-16 minutes was the main reason for your defeat. Even if they would have just destroyed all 4 non ticket bearing flak trucks groups this would have been beneficiary as your remaining ai aircraft would have attacked ticket relevant targets.
Your conclusion that 99% of Air RB is TDM is imho somehow near the truth regarding the overall game mode, but at prop BRs this ratio is way lower; even admitting that most of these non TDM endings are based on basic map design flaws.
I lost or won countless matches whilst being in the middle of a dogfight on the usual maps (old ones: Tunisia, Poland - new ones: Mysterious valley, City, Spaceport, etc.) whilst 30-50% (on average) of the lobby is still alive and kicking…
He used it more as after he took off and started coming for me, he then turned back to the airfield. Then as I described above, as he was actively losing he did it again.
It’s a cool little plane. Unlike japan’s higher BR twin engine fighters this one can actually hold its own, and the tracerless 37mm makes for pretty fun moments. If I had kept more ammo for it I might have been able to kill him at the end, or it might just have missed since its tracerless and pretty low velocity.
I mean that’s kinda the point isn’t it? Many people earlier made the claim that you can get teammates to “just attack ground targets” while you keep watch on the last guy and prevent him from doing anything, yet even when I told them we had to do exactly that (and they replied positively) not much was done simply because this is a RANDOM MATCH where teamwork is a distant suggestion.
If even when teammates are fairly active in chat and (presumably) able to read and we lose, what then when you’re left alone or with unengaging teammates? The enemy can, again, abuse his hitscan AoE death bubble to play the game for him and never actually have to do the hard work himself.
1 Like
It looks like that we talk about similar things, but from different angles.
I tried to present the root cause for your loss:
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The pew-pew mentality within the player base - that’s why everybody wants to be the guy to watch and to kill the last enemy and newer players don’t feel the need or necessity to invest time in knowing how this game works. And if things go wrong it is either packet loss, “sorry misclick” or something else. In this case af aaa.
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Gaijin actively tailors the game to be playable for everybody without the need to learn to progress - af aaa at prop BRs is just a minor tool for them to avoid the necessity to learn.
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There was no need to kill the last enemy if your team would have played the objective “defend A” way earlier - a single kill of an ai Il-2 way earlier would have prevented one or 2 ground kills of this ai IL-2 - and the ticket pressure would have been on the P-39 to leave the “Bubble of death” - no af aaa would have had an impact.
So i agree it is annoying to lose this way, but you can’t blame af aaa for this specific defeat.
In this case his random team did the hard work. :-)
The rookie guy in a P-39 was chased until minute 16 by 2 of your team - with some good will you could even create a case that his inability to kill them (but keeping them busy) allowed his team to do some of their hard work. Keeping a Yak-2 out of the fight for that long was rather helpful.
Applying your overall logic is somehow comprehensible in a pure TDM mode, but i agree to disagree with my previously mentioned view on this.
As long as gaijin provides RP benefits for staying alive as long as possible and (as posted earlier) even has the balls to recommend using af aaa as a legit strategy nothing will change.
Have a good one!
I was already there, I have more than enough fuel and ammo for a single P-39. My teammates went to rearm/repair, and this was after I went to help them with him.
It makes the most sense for them to go after ground targets while I keep him busy.
And that goes back to what I said before - even though they were active in chat, they couldn’t/didn’t actually do much when it was clear we needed a ticket lead.
At least next patch, AI attackers won’t cause ticket loss. Perhaps this will make maps like Tunisia actually playable.
I could have just kept chasing the enemy that has more than enough ammo and fuel to stay in the air (and didn’t actually land as far as I noticed, not that it would have mattered), taken more time aiming, and probably gotten the kill. Vs having to turn away because again, hitscan AoE death bubble.
Yak-2 was out of ammo and hadn’t been in gun range for a long time. He was out of the fight anyway. If anything it shows how bullshit the P-39N is.
Yes but they recommended it specifically for heavy fighters that lack the performance to engage single engines. A P-39N is far from it.
The solution to this that Gaijin’s already been doing in the midmap is to use detailed damage models and SPAAs instead of AAA. Heck, use a skink so you have no shot at destroying the airfield AA unless you bring heavy ordnance. Stick a flak bus on it for high altitude shots with proxy fuse.
I think that’d be a pretty fair and balanced approach all things considered, with how much AA is on the airfield. Makes it dangerous to approach but manageable with skill and planning, whie giving an extra objective of destroy/protect airfield defences. Could even lead into adding back destructible airfields too.
3 Likes
This is one of the big problems. You should have to learn how to dogfight or otherwise be effective with your aircraft in the aircraft-shooting-each-other game. You should have to learn to use new mechanics as you progress through the tech tree. Instead we have muppets buying top tier premiums, not knowing how to use missiles, loading up bombs and trying to camp the base. Or just muppets at prop tier camping the base because they’ve learnt it’s the most reliable strategy to avoid consequences.
2 Likes
Or we have muppets unable to learn basic game mechanics like “do not fly closer than 4 km to af aaa” and complain within in-game chat or in the forum.
Example?
Gaijin Entertainment - Single Sign On
In this replay you see 3 of my team totally braindead dying to af aaa - 2 direct and one indirect; 2 of them had the audacity to blame af aaa for their own mistakes.
- In a 6 or 7 vs 2 a 109 started to fly parallel to the runway - within af aaa range, killed by af aaa.
- A JP premium P-51 flying near got peppered too, had a yellow plane and got his engine damaged.
- A P-63 scored a kill on an enemy P-38 on final approach - shot down too by af aaa (ok it was his 4th kill).
- The damaged P-51 decided it was a smart idea to fight an identical aircraft (as last enemy) with a dying engine - and got subsequently killed.
Just based on the above mentioned example - which also shows the average skill level of current Air RB pilots quite accurately - it is more than obvious that any comparisons of average pilot skills from today vs the “good old times” are futile: The Golden Age of wt prop Air RB is long gone.
So we are back at square #1:
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Gaijin has decided to “dumb down” the necessary skill level to participate and progress at any BRs in Air RB in order to support their premium sales. Thx to premium products they don’t even lose SL when they got shot down without any game impact.
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Consequences start with basics like when you lose money (SL) when you play and got killed. That’s also the reason why the average pilot skill at prop BRs was way higher. Depending on the nation and aircraft you flew you needed 2 kills to compensate your repair cost in case of a victory and 3 in case of a defeat.
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Therefore this whole af aaa bashing is pointless - in no world average players will invest time and energy to become better pilots if they struggle to make a rather easy decision: Staying 4 km away from af aaa or getting killed - at least not until gaijin changes their approach “progress via premium, no skill required”.
Having a 4km death bubble that is permanently turned on, in a gamemode that is won or lost in 95% of times by shooting other players down is just bad design.
It is not. Airfield AA was already removed from the forward airfield, a further nerf to a blatantly unbalanced mechanic in the future is very possible.
It’s also much harder to become a better player when your enemies are more concerned about doing the Mozdok 500 above their airfield than actually playing the game, or just dive out to the airfield whenever they start losing.
So until gaijin makes it so airfield AA can’t be used as a free ticket out of being bad, I will keep complaining and so will many others.
3 Likes
I agree
it’s far past the point where having unmodeled AA with a hitscan AoE effect rather than any actual projectiles at prop tiers makes any sense beyond people would get mad if they changed it, especially when we have modeled AA at high tiers that creates a similar balance to what you said for prop AA
just port some wirblewind and flak88 models to the af or something and then adjust from there
3 Likes
The peak prop br experience, happens essentially every game, people camping on their airfield being completely untouchable
Prop BRs should have no AA, this is insane
4 Likes
Give it actual AA that you can dodge, rather than the magic hitscan stuff we have now.
Removing AA will just make everything worse. It allows players to get kills they don’t deserve, and it doesn’t make the game funner for people who actually play it.
4 Likes
Airfield protection is one of the many apparent weakspots of Gaijins game modes design. Whats more annoying though is that these are largely untouched for almost 10 years now.
Another weakspots that come to mind are the role of bombers in ARB, naval destroyers being able to shoot into the coastal spawns straight from their own spawns while being near untouchable themselves from coastal, or the improper spawn protection in ground battles. At least the latter saw 2 (!) adjustments in the last decade.
The game simply could offer a much better user experience if these gaping holes would see some kind of “repair work” by Gaijin - even if it would just be experimental and revoked again, if it doesnt improve the experience for the community. That would require though getting in contact with your customers in first place, i.e. by surveys.
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They did improve it by removing AA from the forward airfield sometime last year.
Just shows the weakness of airfield AAAs game concept imho.
Despite being the most widely used airfield, removing AA defense from the forward airfield didnt break the game for anyone. Removing it entirely wouldnt break the game either.
When someone is the last of his team airfield AAA holds no gameplay value. There´s no realistic enabling of improving chances for the guy at the airfield anymore. The mechanic just steals time from everyone and enables toxic behavior.
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Airfield AAA still has a place, but not requiring the player to be anywhere close to landing makes it way too easy to abuse.