Well, I don’t punish myself. I just don’t like RB. I prefer seeing the target markers because straining my eyes looking for targets after day of work at the screen is not my thing. And yeah, I’m also jumping around arcade modes and different nations to finish the tasks quickly.
So anyway - that means you’re just jumping into arcade to complete tasks from time to time because they are easier? Good background for someone arguing with people discussing arcade here :P
Yes, and what of it?
Doesn’t mean I don’t play it or understand it… Lame strawman arguments are abundant in this realm.
Being good in AB requires much more than being good in RB/SB.
That is why I have full respect to people playing AB as their main mode and being good in it. That is why also I don’t feel confident enough to talk about AB matters, but it makes me laugh that some try to do it, especially when they aren’t even good in mode they ‘main’.
Edit: Some RB/SB player got mad about it
I would like a tank only mode as ouch as the next guy but the snail has pretty much rejected that notion at every turn. The best fix for AB would be to impliment the naval plane mechanics with some changes.
Planes should cost spawn points. Points are earned through actions in battle just like RB and Naval AB. With this mechanic in place; players would be allowed to bring their own planes.
The change I’d like to see for planes in this mode is the removal of in-air reload. Planes should be forced to land in order to rearm.
A short term fix would be to just remove markers for attack aircraft like they did for fighters.
Anyway I have a deep-rooted hatred of planes but they’re here to stay unless Gaijin have a change of heart.
I’ll drop my two cents and say this is one of few reasons why I prefer AB over RB tanks
Others are quicker pace and CAS not being that much of an issue (it can be bad but not nearly as bad as in RB)
Agreed!
Not entirely - define a starting altitude near the ground and force them to fly over the airfield to reload - this brings heavy bombers down so they need to climb up. And makes heavy bombers stupid if they need to start at further away airfield for example and climb higher to not be that vulnerable.
Don’t force people to land, but force them to climb down and reset their speed. And make sure airfield doesn’t allow enemy to chase down there and going towards the enemy airfield is penalised by sure death.
I think all planes should have markers only for vehicles that are scouted/marked/called in for CAS strike rather than allowing freely attacking easy targets. Roaming around the battlefield trying to find an easy target should be penalised by SPAA surprise, and so it should be that if you have ordnance for the ground targets, you go at the ones marked by players needing your help from the ground, and you score significantly less for non-marked targets and the daily tasks for planes are counted only for marked targets.
Apart from this - if we give players their own planes - bomb reticle on the ground should go. Players should learn how to drop bombs when they are in their own planes. Rocket sight is like that - it doesn’t give you exact position and you need to know how to shoot rockets from specific plane. You’re given a plane on your own that you chose, learn to drop bombs. What remains is figure out whether bomb fuse should be forced or not and whether your own bomb blast should damage you so much as in RB or not.
I still cant understand players that want to bring RB aircraft mechanics to AB…knowing that those mechanics make aircraft STRONGER in RB and make it much harder to balance CAS.
Arcade is supposed to be faster…and i for one prefer the current system…less impact on ground battle and more fun to me…i spend a few (fun) moments on planes and most time on tanks.
CAN BE IMPROVED for sure…but using a spawn for planes on AB would create far more problems that it would solve…IMHO.
I think this is a valid point
If I understand correctly, it would lead to CAS being even more powerful than in RB, with all the assists from AB and point system similar to RB one (while also giving players impact fuse and armament of their choice)
I too prefer the current system. It isn’t perfect but it works.
My biggest issues with planes in AB is two-fold.
Planes spawn at a constant rate. Some matches can have 3-4 planes in the air for the duration of a match with only a few seconds between waves. In short: plane spam.
The second issue I have is the fact that planes in AB currently act as a chance at free kills with zero risk to oneself. Sure AA can shoot down the plane. But that plane ultimately means very little to the enemy team. Once it’s gone, it’ll just come back in 20 seconds.
Conversely, if the plane kills the AA; that player is now down a spawn. That’s something which is basically free to spawn and spam which can eliminate one of a player’s 3 spawns. The plane is rewarded more than the AA in this situation. You can’t spam 8 different AA’s in one match the way you can spam planes. I would argue planes have the advantage here. Even a situation where the plane and AA trade, the plane wins.
AA also has finite ammunition and crew while planes spawn with a full load and a fresh pilot every time. You can see where the war of attrition favors the planes here.
Now let’s look at an imaginate world where some of the earlier suggestions are complimented.
Players have to at least do something in battle to get enough points for a plane. That plane now has value to the player who spawned it. Once that plane is gone it’s gone. Players may think a little bit harder about diving the nearest open-top lest their shiny new attacker get riddled with bullets and not make it to the airfield.
Right now you get a plane and try to find the first cheesey kill you can. I’ve seen players sit in spawn for a whole match and attempt to spam planes only. Quite disgruntling to see.
Tl;Dr. Planes are under-priced and overspammed.
Despite the all discussions we had and you looking over them, you still choose to ignore the fact that CAS in RB is stronger because there are no lead indicators for pre-radar SPAAs. That’s where the difference comes from. In AB it’s from not being penalised for crashing into the ground lawnmowing etc.
The fact that the plane is free in AB is a systematic problem of air mission apart from air mission having a systematic problem of being constructed in a way it cannot be fairly balanced between its participants, before we mention issues of planes vs ground balance.
When talking about putting naval AB system being put into ground AB - note that we’re strictly talking about the spawn system wich is a mechanic and additional balancing can happen on top of that - either with just numbers like specific BRs for planes in ground AB, or BR offset as it’s in naval AB, but also it can be balanced with mechanic changes like removing bomb reticle and reload in the air and markers for non-scouted units etc.
But the core problem is the air mission system having those two fatal flaws.
Changing the system doesn’t mean the current balancing features wouldn’t change as well as I said above. You want to apply whole thing 1:1 from RB without thinking what needs to happen for the balance as well.
It works, but it doesn’t mean it’s good. It’s a simple system based on things like Call of Duty airstrikes, but it’s unfair in multiple contexts and it should be replaced with something better.
That’s a good point, and I did want to suggest a solution based on this issue back in the old forums - if the plane attack would be treated by actual support for the sake of playing the objective, and since you’re not penalised when you get killed in a plane - you don’t lose a life - why not create a mechanic that when you get killed by the plane, it also doesn’t fully count as a kill. Fully meaning that for example if you’re 100% of your health and get killed by a bomb or rocket, you can respawn in this vehicle right away, but your penalty is that you’re driving again from the start. But if you were damaged before you were killed by the plane, or the plane did damage you that effectively make it easy to kill you - you can respawn, but there is a cooldown on this vehicle based on how much damage you did take from ground vehicles vs how much from the plane.
But as all interesting ideas come to an end - it cannot be accepted by moderation as this could be a precedence to suggesting vehicle having different treatment in context of kill scoring, which would flood the gates of suggestion section with stupid ideas, so moderation doesn’t want to allow that. That’s the reason that we can’t have 1:1 situation when it comes to air mission spawns not being penalised vs air mission plane kills being penalised.
istg if you remove reloading I will-
[Insert very angry Air AB noises]
A short term fix would be to just remove markers for attack aircraft like they did for fighters.
This one is… a wierd one, because of varying aircraft BRs. The main issue at the moment is open-top strafing… and tiny tims.
Imo LT’s and SPAA should not have markers for CAS, possibly as part of a rework for their overall role in AB. However, mediums, heavies, TD’s, should still have their markers.
Apart from this - if we give players their own planes - bomb reticle on the ground should go.
Aight lemme just chalk that one under 'completely removing AB mechanics…
What remains is figure out whether bomb fuse should be forced or not and whether your own bomb blast should damage you so much as in RB or not.
Aight so this is the one major advantage of our current system, and why I think its overall pretty fine-
There is a very limited pool of planes that cant be modifed by the player, are restricted to default ammo, and gaijn can change loadouts.
The current system is fine imo, just needs a few minor tweaks (as I dictated above), but those should come in an overall GAB rework. For now the major thing should be getting tiny tims tf out of ground, because they are a massive issue.
This is even MORE making it like RB… :)
Some of us prefer it as it is…i like as air works in AB…and a funny thing…players HAVE TO spend a lot more time in tanks…air attacks are short by design…
BTW…AB player base would not like to have to go “somewhere far” to reload…wasted time flying around…and games are already short…
Same thing for bombsight…
So this is a tradeoff - either have forced fuse time, or have easy aiming with reticle on the ground. For me, when I would use the plane that I own and I can reuse time and time again, and be prepared, it’s something I can learn how to drop the bombs, so if I can’t hit - that’s a fair skill issue. But if I drop a bomb exactly where I want and forced fuse time makes it so that enemy has time to escape - it’s penalty.
I think these could be swapped because with exact marker on the ground it will be really easy to drop bomb from high altitude really precisely with no skill and then the forced fuse time doesn’t trigger.
But there are two things that can handle balance in this: first is that we can have BR offset for planes as it is in naval AB but in opposite direction - for example when playing 4.0 allow planes up to 2.7 for example. The second is that loadouts affect the cost, so gaijin can balance this by making some OP stuff extremely expensive. And if there’s a plane that would be OP in its default configuration, then it should have a higher BR in ground AB then.
Well, we’re already doing this by removing all markers from fighters, while the problem of bombers/CAS having markers for all units on the ground still remains. Maybe specifically marking or scounting is not exactly what we want, but at least only having the markers on vehicles that are already visible and marked for the ground players of your team would make sense, so the bomber doesn’t have SPAAs and other vehicles on the ground marked.
What are you talking about? You can’t reload right now, if someone goes in and drops bombs, going back to base to reload and repair will be a premium. And I never said that airfield should be far away. It could be really close if it was made in a way that enemy team planes cannot cross to your side of the map without getting shot down quickly. If that happens, then airfield/reload&repair point could be close to the ground combat area. But the whole point is that you have to get low closer to the ground to reload the ammo so you are not able to keep going up and dropping the bombs like it is in naval AB.
Alternate take could be some in-air reload & repair zone that dims the screen and you respawn at the lower altitude with initial speed but reloaded. Still could work, but the principle is the same - don’t let people keep climbing up while reloading bombs, they need to get back down so other planes and SPAAs can have a chance of shooting them down. But you keep going straight to a no for every potential change because you like a free bomber without caring that it destroys the game for others.
what about it? Is using a bombsight in a heavy bomber a penalty for AB player?
So this is a tradeoff - either have forced fuse time, or have easy aiming with reticle on the ground.
Forced fuse time. It makes the bomber pilots have to actually pick their targets, and rewards being aware of planes since you can actually run.
The second is that loadouts affect the cost, so gaijin can balance this by making some OP stuff extremely expensive.
Only compounds the issue of the winning team curbstomping with CAS. The main advantage of now is that while CAS can be extremely useful and turn the tide of the game sometimes, it also puts your tank in a vulnerable position, and there is a limited amount that can be up at once.
The only issue I find with it atm is Tiny Tims, and thats very easy to fix by simply removing them from the loadout pool and swapping em for HVARs.
(And LTs/SPAA having markers vs aircraft, which should be changed imo, but not for heavies/meds/TD’s. This would tie into an overall AB rework.)
But if I drop a bomb exactly where I want and forced fuse time makes it so that enemy has time to escape - it’s penalty.
Thats why you have to choose your targets and not just drop blindly on things. Go for slower viecles, or tanks that are in a cramped sniping position, or ones that are disabled, dont just drop it on the first tank you see. I get kills with even 250lbs in a dive when I do this.
But the whole point is that you have to get low closer to the ground to reload the ammo so you are not able to keep going up and dropping the bombs like it is in naval AB.
Or we… keep it how it is, so that isnt as much of a problem? They dont do that much because they only have a minute to fly lmao.
technically they are but I agree, I rather would have RB EC and tanks by players in there.
We have ground targets like ai tanks or bases and munitions as well as special aircraft that are designed to attak those ground targets.
Just gaijin making that not worthwile, and forcing air RB to be almost a TDM, including mostly ata.
Ye totally agree. I am always very upset when any idiot in +1BR farm one tank and one assist and then owning like hero with helicopter or plane.
or atleast make it way harder by needed points, not this shit which is in for the years.
But you know that forced fuse time the way it’s implemented now is not enforced when you’re dropping from high altitude? It’s only enforced below something like 1200 meters I think. So when you’ll be able to drop from high altitude with current implementation, it can still be instant. Unless I missed something and they changed it always force specific timer.
With air mission it forces you to dive down to gain speed as soon as possible to run away from the interceptors, but if you don’t have anyone on your tail, you can climb up a bit and drop the bombs and it’ll be either that they’ll explode instant or the fuse time will be so short that if you’re not already moving, you can’t accelerate fast enough to move away.
There is another problem in this, because before we had a bomb whistle that worked most of the time, but there was some audio rework that made it so that if you’re standing close to something and not on fully open field, you’re not going to hear bomb whistle at all. I don’t remember last time I heard the bomb whistle sound in the game.
If we want to allow planes picked by the player and owned by the player, then I’d either have the bomb fuse forced at specific time, and not like it is right now, or remove it and make it so it’s not that easy to exactly trop the bomb as it is with reticle on the ground, but it can be either way - I just prefer the skillful way rather than giving someone fast aircraft that he can quickly and easily drop bombs and run to airfield or reload point. There is a reason that hitting someone with rockets is significantly harder than with a bomb despite the bomb delay.
The main disadvantage right now is that people with better connection or in a squad can keep taking the air mission over the opposing team. When I’m in a squad with someone I’m on discord together, he can tell me how many seconds are there till the end of current air mission so I know when to be ready to press the button. When there’s three of us at least, it’s often that we’re hogging to air mission all the time denying it to the enemy team despite there being people having points for that. So even before we start winning decisively, if we have points for air mission as a squad we can steamroll the enemy team continuously.
Clean way for me it would be to first mark only the ones that your team on the ground can actually see. This would prevent going right away on the guys on the spawn or the ones that are positioned in a way that your team doesn’t see it, unless scouted there, because it would mean that you’re risking going right at SPAA without knowing that’s an SPAA. And of course it’ll matter more when it won’t be a free plane, but you’re risking wasting your own plane and not having it again till the end of the match.
I do this, but still, this a penalty. This penalty makes sense in context of air mission’s free plane, but with your own plane I’d prefer to make it so that the skill is about knowing how to drop the bomb and not about being lucky with the enemy being blocked. And by the way it’d be more realistic because it can be more realistic in this context.
LMAO… have a bigger buffer when reading to keep track of the discussion. I’m talking about replacing the spawn system and handling the problem of mid-air reload, and @GhostSoph countered it with the fact that AB players won’t want to go far to airfield to reload. And it was all the time in context of being able to have time to do that. He picked on that as a problem to counter the whole idea, I said that it can be solved in various ways.
Well, the problem is that once you make a mode where you can spawn in planes from the start, the whole game becomes about the air domination. AB SQB was like that and effectively there was barely any ground combat because it was always clash in the air, then winning team introducing a bomber and that guy clearing out anything on the ground while the winning team could have one light tank going around and capping zones. Stupid, boring and frustrating when you’re on the receiving end. So don’t expect people to want to be on the receiving end of that. Unless of course gaijin would merge the modes and force ground players to play in a mode where you can play planes from the start.
I’ve seen a similar issue in DotA2 when they introduced Ability Draft mode - in essence there was a random queue where you would pick a hero and abilities in queue which would effect in some interesting customized combination of abilities, a often some of them over-powered. But the match usually ended after few minutes, after first clash simply because the other side didn’t want to play anymore a lost battle. And the same thing was happening with AB SQB that after initial air clash, a lot of teams were simply leaving the match.
It’s not often an idiot that gets those points quickly, but the fact that he can safely leave the tank on the ground and get back to it, makes it so there’s not a big of a trade off unless you stupidly jump onto the air mission while in the middle of the fight. I often can survive the whole or at least most of the match with my first vehicle while having bombing runs multiple times, maybe even up to 5 times per match, I think.
The thing is that if the guy that can pick a plane with naval plane spawn system needs to go up into the air while he’s doing so good on the ground, more often than now he just won’t do that because it’s giving up the tank for free for something that’s potentially more vulnerable.
If we want to allow planes picked by the player and owned by the player,
Thing is, I dont.
I like the current system.
It’s only enforced below something like 1200 meters I think.
Add that onto the list of things I want changed, then.
Clean way for me it would be to first mark only the ones that your team on the ground can actually see.
I would be fine with this, but the spaa/lt stuff is for an overall AB rework for them, (because they do need it.)
Holy shit. That was a figure of speech that “we want”…
You keep cutting into the discussion where others try to counter my idea of replacing the current system with problems that may be there with my idea, and putting those things back into the context of current implementation which doesn’t make any sense.
Yeah, along the bomb whistle not working most of the time, and maybe there should be also a text warning like with the artillery or you get some radio warning that other crew is telling a plane is strafing onto you etc. I fully agree with the sentiment.
But gaijin doesn’t want to do that because this is what lets them control the outcome of the battle with “RNG”.
Anyway, back to the context of I pick my own plane and use it after ditching my tank, full forced fuse time might make aircraft useless, the current approach with a threshold of altitude will still allow precise bombing, especially when you can stay up longer, so I’d rather put the skill require onto knowing how to drop the bomb than make it easy for everyone to drop a bomb on you when you’re in a pinch, especially when you don’t hear the bomb and you’re in the sniping mode.