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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Holy shit. That was a figure of speech that “we want”…
Sorry, my bad.
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.
Aye.
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.
Tbh I dont really like aircraft being a pseudo-focus when you can spawn them in (as opposed to what we have now), and I like the awareness test that they are atm. I just dont paticularly like having aircraft be a proper viecle as opposed to what we have now, because it lets them wreak a lot more havok if they arent time-limited. At least rn they only get one run with them, and then have to get more kills before using it again.
I also like the current system since it makes there be consistent SPAA targets ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Did you try to play naval AB while getting a plane? Because it shows exactly that you’re wrong here. Having to spend points on aircraft and ditch your vehicle makes it so that the guys that keep using the air mission all the time (like me, guilty as charged here) can most often take just one plane and rarely if they do good, they can take a second plane, but the fighter instead of a bomber, because now the bomber gets so expensive it’s almost impossible to get this again.
The difference is that since getting your own plane spawned somewhere on your side of the map without interceptors on your tail is more fair, because you have time to figure out your approach and decide to evade, run away and not engage if you see others coming at you, the plane in naval AB is more expensive than in ground AB.
And about wrecking havoc - air mission is causing this exactly because you don’t care what happens about the plane. In naval AB you try to be more careful and every hit to your plane hurts.
Well, the difference will be that planes will try to avoid SPAAs more often/shoot them from the range to not get crippled and crush into the ground, so it’s more likely that SPAAs will be more survivable unless the player actually needs to kill SPAA and doesn’t care about crashing. So it might be trade off from how many planes will be there to kill vs how often SPAA gets killed, but not necessarily because with air mission you have a limit of planes at once while with naval AB spawn system it’s a moment where planes start popping up in the sky in big numbers, more than just 3 enemies at once, and also this might be a good moment to pick up SPAA if that’s what you want to do.
In naval AB you try to be more careful and every hit to your plane hurts.
That may uh… be because of how naval AA works, but I dont play naval.
plane, but the fighter instead of a bomber, because now the bomber gets so expensive it’s almost impossible to get this again.
'Cept you can reload, arent time limited (So you can take more time choosing targets, the lack of time is why people mess up their attack runs a lot), and fighters wont spawn on your tail.
spawn system it’s a moment where planes start popping up in the sky in big numbers, more than just 3 enemies at once
I prefer the steady stream AB offers, it means you can focus one and not be overwhelmed.
Anyways, crashing issue can be solved by making bombs not detonate/vanish if you crash.
But in ground AB you have more players closer together, and tanks have turret top guns etc, so maybe these could work as auto SPAA in naval. That’s also balancing thing.
But more importantly, as I said before, we can have opposite direction BR offset for aircraft, so for example when playing 4.0 you could only pick up planes up to 2.7 and when playing 5.3 you could pick up planes up to 4.0 etc.
But still in naval the fact that you have a lot of guns in one spot is somehow offsetting another difference from ground - that distances between units are more vast and thus it’s easy to pick a solo target and be far from other AA guns.
I can understand that, it does make a difference. Also another argument against naval plane spawn system could be that it introduces a phase were big chunk of the players stop playing tanks and go up in the air and now the ground has less people tanks to fight with, but this still happens even now without that the end of the match feels like that anyway.
not really - rockets and cannons will hit the target before you crash. Bombs maybe, but there’s a problem with deciding when it’s a yolo kamikaze run vs when you were chased down by interceptor that was unfairly spawned right on top of you and you’re making a last ditch effort to deliver the payload. Handling those kinds of thing fairly is hell lot of a rabbit holes where you need to have exceptions upon exceptions and it gets muddy as hell to understand when you’re getting the score and when not. So it’s not that simple.
But more importantly, as I said before, we can have opposite direction BR offset for aircraft, so for example when playing 4.0 you could only pick up planes up to 2.7 and when playing 5.3 you could pick up planes up to 4.0 etc.
Funnily enough its like the opposite of this atm (you can get A-10s at 7.7 in AB)
I can understand that, it does make a difference. Also another argument against naval plane spawn system could be that it introduces a phase were big chunk of the players stop playing tanks and go up in the air and now the ground has less people tanks to fight with, but this still happens even now without that the end of the match feels like that anyway.
True, but at least there is still tanks to kill then.
not really - rockets and cannons will hit the target before you crash. Bombs maybe, but there’s a problem with deciding when it’s a yolo kamikaze run vs when you were chased down by interceptor that was unfairly spawned right on top of you and you’re making a last ditch effort to deliver the payload. Handling those kinds of thing fairly is hell lot of a rabbit holes where you need to have exceptions upon exceptions and it gets muddy as hell to understand when you’re getting the score and when not. So it’s not that simple.
Err…because in my view it is your proposal that would “make the game worse” (destroy is far too strong) for others. I sincerely think that planes being counted as a spawn would be bad for AB…and past events dont make me think it could be correctly balanced. I think it would make air power worse and more dominant…they had a tought time managing it in Naval for instance.
BTW…i rarely play bombers…i am on PS5 and have no direct control to get a bomber…i usually play interceptor or escort…
I liked the change that no longer allows me to find open tops easily (on a fighter), even if it took a lot of kills that i used to get…made it harder but it feels fairer.
What we have now is closer to “pure tank” battles…i would prefer less airstrikes and some incentive to avoid suicide bombing than a major change in spawn. I am not the only one for sure…
Dot forget that AB is the “fast action” mode for those that want it…a too complex air mode will eventually displease a lot of AB fans…
So here we get to the core of the problem of discussing anything with you. I propose a change, you point out potential issue AS AN ARGUMENT AGAINST MY PROPOSED CHANGE based on assumptions that we can’t support with data (that people will or will not like it), I counter it with argument that there are ways to solve this issue, and then you bail out out this time and time again with “I just like the current state”.
If you’re showing the holes in someone else’s idea and state this as impossible to fix, think twice before you post about is it really unsolvable and be prepared that someone will counter it with some reasonable approach to fix it. But you keep showing those problems with assumption that they are unsolvable, so this goes to collection of your “solid arguments” supporting maintaining the status quo without engaging in constructive discussion about whether you’re right or not.
The thing with current air mission system is that it has two unsolvable problems. Changing it to naval AB-like plane spawn system will definitely have a lot of problems to be solved. The question is: can they be solved, even over time? We can have constructive discussion on this if we try to focus on finding the holes in the plan and figuring out if they can be solved. Otherwise it’s just going to be “I like this and you like that”
Holy shiet. So you don’t have easy ergonomic way to call out the bomber, so you barely play the bombers in the air mission. So you are defending a system that makes console players like you be the second category users when it comes to being able to use the feature to the fullest. I don’t know what this is? A Stockholm syndrome in small scale?
How do you feel qualified to discuss whether the current system is okay or not if you don’t actually have that much of experience of the whole system? I use all plane types a lot and I feel like I’m pretty qualified to have a solid opinion on the system. Just playing interceptors/escorts is not enough IMO.
