Convoy Objective Rant

Game Discussion Simulator Battle
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This is by far the most broken objective in the game.
Convoys are hard to hit with bombs or bullets since they move around and are numerous.
They’re the complete opposite of the surveillance aircraft, which is probably the easiest objective in the game.

But the bigger problem is their SPAA, which is so unbelievably deadly compared to anything else in the game that it could give airfield AA a run for its money.
In fact, every time an attacker objective (cover/ destroy attackers at [XY]) moves towards a convoy, it just dies to them in seconds, thus failing/succeeding the attacker objective by default.

I just lost an SB game to tickets when we were ahead by a small margin because we failed a “destroy convoy” objective.
I have never seen anyone actually complete that objective, it’s uncharacteristically difficult and unfun.

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I wish it’d use the same AI as the battlefield AA guns. Those are actually fair and can be avoided. The convoy AA is ridiculous.

Taking convoys on in an IL2 or a Stuka is just a death sentence. Are the convoy/cargo ships still as bad?

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The best part of “Destroy convoy” and “destroy naval convoy” is if it’s near an A point.

Especially if it’s a cloudy map and you notice there’s nobody over the clouds so you descend to a lower altitude to search for hostiles. You circle around at ~1.5-2km altitude and suddenly… wing gone. No warning. Killfeed shows AAA.

You look at map: Convoy was passing nearby.

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I would like all objectives to be challenging. This should still be a Sim, and not a RB from the cockpit.

Is it really interesting to fly in a straight line from the airfield and just drop bombs? This turns into a boring grind. That’s why the rewards are low. Why give them?

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PvEing in air sim is very relaxing, which for me is the main appeal of completing these objects.
If you want certain certain aspects of Air Sim to stay or become frustratingly difficult for the sake of realism, then I’d advise you to look for realism in other places first, because the last thing this game mode needs is an even higher skill floor.

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What places? We have two and a half combat flightsims on market.

Bombing defenseless targets is the most boring thing. Especially on these small desert maps, where everything is clearly visible.

Ground convoys and Forrestal are the last interesting targets in the whole mode.

They even immobilized attacking ground forces, so they just stand still and shoot the dirt infront.

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What places? We have two and a half combat flightsims on market.

As in, make the game more realistic in other places first, not as in, look for other games.

Ground convoys and Forrestal are the last interesting targets in the whole mode.

You may not like useless SPAA, but everyone else seems to prefer it that way, considering I’ve never seen a convoy get destroyed. As of now, it seems like it’s disrupting the experience of most players.

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Ah, I misunderstood you

Most’s experience is soulless maximum effectiveness grind. I despise this type of gameplay.

Depending on the map and your aircraft, this may or may not be easy. If you have optics and ATGMs, you just kill convoy AA first. Other vehicles are easy target for your cannon.

However, destroying ground units is my favorite pastime. And this greatly speeds up the team’s victory.

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Most’s experience is soulless maximum effectiveness grind. I despise this type of gameplay.

That’s not what I see in my lobbies, though. Most players I see don’t play bomber, the game I am in right now has 5 fighters and 0 bombers. I didn’t even know that people still grinded this ASB after everyone figured that the ASB economy is kind of crap.

Depending on the map and your aircraft, this may or may not be easy. If you have optics and ATGMs, you just kill convoy AA first. Other vehicles are easy target for your cannon.

I think this could be why we disagree? I cycle between 2.0-6.3, while your description and screenshot show late jets, so we have different ideas of how powerful convoys are.

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Soon I will start from the very bottom again, when I finish USSR aircraft and start working on a new nation that I haven’t played yet.

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I wish the convoy vehicles didn’t faze through destroyed ones, so you could destroy the first 3 and last 3 making the entire convoy trapped

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The problem is that it’s not realistic.

There’s no way that some WW2 SPAAG would be able to first-strike hit a plane flying at 1.5 km altitude over 400-500 km/h.

If it was actually spraying towards you and walking its shots in? That’d be fine and perfect.

That’s what battlefield SPAAG do. If you try to CAS the battlefield tanks and SPAAGs, you’ll notice they start spraying bullets in your direction with increasing accuracy the longer you linger and keep flying in a straight line. If you engage in rapid maneuvering, they’ll still struggle to hit you but if you go for a head-on strafe or extend away in a straight line - they have a pretty good chance of hitting you.

Especially things like gepards in the korean jet tier. In the korean jet tier, I found for CASing I’m best off diving in at a high, near supersonic speed then fire off my rocket pods/drop my bombs and immedieately disengage while weaving through the air like a snake to avoid the gepard’s shots and thus, they barely whiz by me. If I approach gepards like I do ostwinds, I get shot out of the sky because if you linger after your bomb drop, they’ll get a shot at you which is perfect and sensible.

The problem, once more, is that the convoy A.I is not like those gepards. It hits you immediately without walking its shots from a mobile platform (this is probably the craziest part - have you tried to use an ostwind to shoot planes while moving?) just because you flew near them under ~1.5 km altitude regardless of your speed or time spent loitering. You die regardless or get severely damaged.

Your mention of using ATGMs and targetting pods and all that is what the usual consensus seems to be from what I read: Until you’re flying such a jet - avoid convoys like they’re death incarnate.

I imagine the issue is probably from the lack of BR scaling of their accuracy/effectiveness. A modern radar SPAAG will be able to hit you with its first shot and likely have stabilizers and whatnot to do it while moving as part of a convoy. An ostwind won’t - unless you’re doing a head-on suicide charge or stalled out over it.

At least with WW2 airfields, one can imagine they employ flak boxes to completely deny an airspace and hit you by virtue of sheer saturation.

When that convoy SPAA one-hit me at the A point, I was flying around 1.5 km-2.0 km altitude in cloudy skies in a sabre at ~8-900 km/h while circling and changing my flight path quite regularly. I saw no missed shots.

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It sometimes works. Depends on map and vehicles, I guess.
EC mission scripts seem to be bugged not being updated for years.

Sometimes I see convoy vehicles just ignore bridges and go under, sometimes even underwater.

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I see disobeying of game physics all the time

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Good old dolphin LARPing and warp speed CL 13 sabres and scimitars at korean tiers.

(which according to the bug report manager is “not a bug.”)
https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/nN6154YjYZXo

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Didn’t know physics is “a.i behaviour.”

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AI ground vehicles in EC don’t use physics. They just move between waypoints normalized to surface.

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Yep. Long slow zigzags on target approach is a way to stay healthy.

That’s because they don’t use physics while moving. They just “slide” on flat surface.
This simplification was made to reduce the load on servers, I think.

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Problem is it makes no difference for convoy AAA, only battleground ones.

While more than understandable, it should however be considered part of the functions that determine their accuracy and effectiveness. Especially considering WW2 aircraft have a much worse chance of taking convoys out compared to ATGM carriers with targetting pods (dive bombing, glide bombing, very inaccurate tiny tims/hvars, some strafe-capable guns or use of stuff like lancasters and pe8s to drop from out of gun range).

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If anyone else in the thread is wondering, the same user I’m replying to also believes that sim rewards are fine as is because quote “sim is easy” and should give less rewards than the “harder” RB mode. That extra information should help you understand his PoV here on why he thinks what he has said here. It’s extra funny when he goes on to say:

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It’s harder to you, because you have less than 300 sim battles. And you are not used to any aircraft.
I guess you still struggle with takeoff and landing.