An Experiment in Air Assault

Game Discussion General Discussion
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Howdy good old Nuke here and I have done something insane.

I found above around BR 3.7 I was not enjoying planes. I love acrobatics. I love dancing in the air. I love my Zeros and my Ki-43s, and to a degree my Ki-44s which are my best planes. Most Zeroes are higher unfortunately, but they are fun planes- I played them into about 5.7? 5.3? Somewhere in there. But planes become more BnZ and so aren’t fun.

Ahem Anyways.

I have done everything in Air Assault. And I mean everything. I have completed all of the Kikka’s tier in Air Assault (Kikka, F-86F-30 and 40, Ki-200), I am close to getting the T-2 via Air Assault, and I did the vast majority of the previous tier in air assault- only getting the first plane in that tier from regular battles.

I simply play a battle every night when I get home from law school. Or while studying for finals (which are crazy in law school and I’m not a spring chicken anymore, my focus thus wanders!) I play an air assault match every hour or so.

And honestly, with premium, it worked really well.

But here are the bad parts.

-Norway at top tier is impossible unless you get a good team. Base HP is reduced to 56, the lowest of any tier and any map. But the ground is not reduced at all. Because of this while I haven’t timed it it is completely possible if they spawn at the wrong place you can lose before your team reaches it- you won’t be out of HP but you will be aroun 10 base points left and the second ground spawn will kill it.

-Some tiers are crazy. Sicily is always bad- French bombers often outpace the fighters and they have nice meaty 20mm guns.

-Difficulty scales like a parabola. First two ones are so easy I can sleep through- 1.0-2.3, 2.7-3.7. After that it gets tricky. The next to last one is insane unless your team is all good, and you have days where I would lose literally 10 in a row, while being number 1 in each match, because they are horribly balanced. Then top tier, outside of Norway, is a snore fest, because you have Kikkas side by side with Mig-29s. It’s literally just 6.7 and above. Some maps have AI bombers which are 4.0 or lower.

-Speaking of maps, the rotation is wonky. It seems to be just get XYZ map 5 times in a row then the next map 5 times in a row.

-Lots of obvious bots. Bringing an He-51 or P-12 to a match with jets should boot the person from the game. They are a bot or a griefer.

-Finally, rewards. Rewards are basically guranteed based on position in the team. 1st always get the same, 2nd always gets the same, etc. Then multiplied by activity (I think). But heres the rub- even if you lose on the last wave you get next to nothing. Even if you were number 1. I had a match where I literally killed 50% of the enemy bombers AND all the ground. My teammates were flying in circles and being biots and the like. My reward? About 10k SL and 1k RP. I would argue there should be a bonus both for number killed (because as tier goes up you get less score per kill, so get less rewards) and for ground targets killed. Nothing major- but something to make it feel rewarding when you are on top of a losing team. Or when you help lead a team to victory.

-Finally, I’d like to see it expanded. I am not a bad PvP player. If I’m being arrogant, I would say I am pretty good. But I don’t enjoy high tier gameplay. I do enjoy blowing up some bots to blow off steam. This is the only game with a PVE mode and I would love to see it, and ground, get attention because they are dang fun… if you get a good team, if you don’t care about rewards, if you get a good map. Without premium they would be worthless due to repair costs but with it I average ~7k RP and 35-40k SL (after repairs/respawns) per 25 minutes for top tier matches. Obviously the rewards are scaled per tier.

And yes, I am insane enough that this is not the only nation I am doing it for. Also doing it for Israel to get to jets- I got the Spitfire from randoms but then switched to Air Assault.

Cheers! Would love to hear y’alls thoughts!

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Wait, you don’t get reduced RP after first game or some shit?

I always thought it’s only worth it to play once a day. Could use it to grind modifications if you don’t get reduced RP for winning

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You get full rewards everytime you win. The once a day is because you also get a modifier you can use in PvP for your first match each day in Air Assault.

But if, for instance, you win 10 air assaults in a row, at 6.7 or above, as first place, with premium you will get ~7500RP each time.

I have all my F-86’s in Japan, my Kikka, and more fully kitted out without ever going to a random match.

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Nice to see another Assault enjoyer here. I left about 2 years ago, because the economy was really bad and, even with Premium, I wasn’t able to progress. I heard that the economy got better so I’m considering coming back, and I play Assault exclusively (I play before going to bed and don’t want the adrenaline of PvP messing with my sleep).

Generally, I like your ideas. To summarize my thoughts on your suggestions:

  1. Norway: agree, this map is really hard to win. IMO that’s the case even with a good team. I invite Gaijin’s data people to have a look at win rates for all Assault maps, I’m pretty sure Norway will be lowest. Paradoxically, it gets easier at higher tiers, because players’ planes are faster so they can get to the howitzers faster. Higher tiers also brings more bombs per planes, allowing 1-3 players to kill most howitzers in one pass rather than relying on guns.
    One thing you can do is just tell your team that you’ll stay near the base so you can go for the howitzers as soon as they spawn, and invite some people to join you. Some matches people will ignore you, others there will be 1-2 others who join you, and that increases your chances to win.

  2. Difficulty scaling: I had good moments with the F-82E, a.k.a. the laser beam. With the gunpod you get 14 x 12.7 machine guns, and they’re fairly centered too.

  3. +1 on auto-banning players with a very low tier plane. IMO this should simply not be allowed, period. If you’re on a team where people have different tiers, everyone should pick planes of the lowest tier within the team and join that tier. From my experience, they’re not even bots, they’re people with low tiers who have friends in higher tiers. They should be forced to join low tiers.

  4. +1 on tweaking rewards. I’m not even saying to increase them when winning, but to scale them better with waves reached. IMO, if you reach the last wave or second-to-last, you should get enough rewards to not lose SLs, and if you have Premium you should still get a decent profit.

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