This will be short. This topic is centered around prop planes, as for jets the dynamics are completely different.
Currently we have a few types of airspawn - strike, attacker, bomber and maybe something else. Then we have normal planes that have to take off (I’ll refer to 1st group as airspawning planes and to the 2nd as non-airspawning planes).
OK, makes sense.
Except on many maps everybody gets an airspawn with no adjustments for airspawning planes.
So, if air spawn is a way to balance the game, because by some logic certain planes need airspawn to fix their performance inadequacies, then we run into the following problem.
Lets imagine an airspawning plane is PERFECTLY balanced. 50% WR etc. and there are only 2 maps - one where everybody airspawns and one where airspawn works “as intended”.
Such plane will always have lower WR on all-airspawn map and high WR on non-all-airspawn map.
This means, that our “perfectly balanced plane” is in fact NEVER balanced. It basically constantly fluctuates between UP and OP depending on the random factor of the map.
There are some possible fixes.
But I don’t have the time, so the simple one is: if everybody airspawns on certain map, make non-airspawning planes airspawn low and slow, and add proper alt and speed separation between airspawning and non-airspawning planes, so airspawning planes always retain their “advantage” - then if some airspawning plane turns out to be OP, just adjust the BR. Simple as this.
There’s a twist to it: instead of adjusting BR, we can also balance airspawning planes by adjusting their initial energy advantage.
But that would be a next step.
Reasonable 1st step would be to stop with this absolute map-based randomness, where f.e. Germany 6.0 either has a good fighter with horrible armanent (Ta-152H) or basically a worse-turning and worse high-speed handling, slightly faster G.55 S0 at 6.0 (on all-airspawn map Ta-152H gets outclimbed by like 1500m by 5.3-5.7 planes by the time we merge, GL trying to win vs Re.2005, Lf Mk IX or Mk XVIII or Yak-3U or J2M2 or J2M3 or even F4U4B with energy advantage (out of these F4U4B is kinda winnable if he really botches his BnZ pass). You are at energy disadvantage, too slow to escape and you lose every head-on nowadays.
A prop post will be made later to address this issue, but for now this is coming from the changes in jets:
Air spawn in jets is there to spread people apart instead of all in one place.
The airfield spawn was the #1 cause of teams going one direction and decimating teams that didn’t do the same tactic.
Air spawn is honestly an improvement in this regard, as it brings mixed tactics and less predictable games.
And no, air spawn spawn in this context should be all fighters or no fighters.
And I much prefer all fighters… at least for jets, cause it makes games less predictable and increases the amount of tactics used.
Whilst i agree with all you wrote - a short reminder:
This “randomness” is just the result of gaijin’s inability to identify wrong coding. I wrote in October 2025:
So whilst you described the resulting issues properly it looks for me that you try to work just on the current effects and not on the root cause.
Gaijin was unable to identify the underlying reason as they don’t care about props. So it seems highly unlikely that they are willing to adjust every affected plane class (and the connected air spawn) in order to compensate the negative effects for specific aircraft.
I mean, this is a problem that’s like as old as airspawn itself.
Unless there was time where all-airspawn was not a thing, but I honestly do not remember that well…
Anyway, current situation is just so absolutely annoying, as playing airspawn aircraft is constant emotional rollercoaster, from “I’m the king of the world, baby” to “oh my god, 3rd match in a row feels like full uptier, despite being full downtier” :D
This is nonsense - you missed the point made in the OP in its entirety.
Air spawns or Airfield spawn for fighters are there to balance aircraft vs their opponents in order to make aircraft competitive.
Next fairy tale. Certain aircraft are balanced (their BRs) with considering the air spawn.
Example:
A 190 F-8 or A-8 has a BR of 5.0 as the initial altitude advantage vs an enemy with an Airfield spawn is basically the sole justification for the BR as the flight performance of the 190s is objectively seen worse vs basically all opponents in case they have the same spawn (doesn’t matter if Air or Airfield spawn) altitude.
This is nonsense.
Air spawn for all fighters makes certain aircraft useless as they are balanced around an initial “fighting capability” advantage due to this initial altitude advantage.
For bombers the job got harder - their chances to drop and to rtb decreased significantly as the Air spawn for all fighters multiplied the number of enemies able to intercept them in their initial bomb run. They faced usually just classic interceptors like P-38s but now on these “Air spawn for all” maps fighters like MB 157s, Ki-44s or Yak-3s are able to catch them.
We had years ago similar issues on a few selected maps.
You might remember the “France 1944” (out of rotation) map. All fighters had air spawn and slow climbers like 190s with Interceptor/Strike aircraft spawn were totally out-climbed when they reached the center of the map.
That’s not what’s occurring currently, nor should it.
You have no evidence of that, and there’s stronger evidence that Gaijin has made air spawns to end the predictive gameplay of 2 giant furballs facing each other.
Air spawn for all aircraft also allow for 3+ airfields to exist on maps in the future, something which I and MANY others want.
Bombers aren’t primarily at jet BRs:
My post was primarily addressing jet aircraft.
The nuance of prop aircraft I’m drafting an entirely different opinion on and that’ll take time.
So any movement of goalposts to lop in prop aircraft into my jet aircraft post isn’t helpful cause you’re not refuting any opinion I’ve stated as I’ve stated no opinion on prop aircraft at this time.
Edit:
I can say for at least Tu-4 and B-29, IF we get air spawn maps for mid-BRs that their BRs [or the BRs of fighters] should be amended accordingly.
However, that’s not my entire opinion on prop aircraft, so you’ll have to wait for such a post if you want such a take.
So essentialy every map (maybe sans Norway) with all-airspawn is actually caused by some bug that Gaijin’s “busy” devs are not bothering to fix, since nobody cares about props anyway?
I have to defend Elvis a bit here, but when I originally posted the topic, the jet mention was not there. Still the way it was worded with prop-based example should have given enough of a hint.
But then I noticed I had a “hidden response” and decided - the hell, I’ll read that. Turned out he completely misunderstood the problem, so I decided to add these jet remarks to remove any “plausible deniability” and to avoid derailing the topic.
I do not talk to Elvis, because of weird things he wrote to me via PM and because never in WT history our intercation resulted in anything positive.
The example with 5 vs 3 matches was no joke - i played a lot of those. Even in full 16 vs 16 matches the majority of players could not spawn. This lasted until they “fixed” it with the introduction of "Air spawns for al"l on affected maps.
I don’t have any issues with @AlvisWisla - but his tendency to provide off-topic comment is usually watering down the quality of a thread. I decided to react on the first hidden message (we have similar “settings”) in order to ensure that the thread stays on topic - i was obviously not successful.
The thing is, I agree with you at least a bit on the prop thing.
I brought up the jet changes because there might be lessons there to talk about with props.
Sure, I didn’t explicitly state originally but I’ve now edited the post to address that:
Cause in props, obviously bombers have been placed where they are.
With the confirmed announcement about bomber survivability improvements coming, and the idea of BR placements, it’s possible that air spawn props is doable with balance.
That’s at least part of my thoughts about props with a more detailed thought process churning in my mind.
@Real_K_Soze
Instead of insulting others, maybe… converse.
We should be all adults here; certainly we can converse?
Well, anyway.
The current list of changes heavily buffs Soviet aircraft, as they simply have 0 good fighter aircraft heavily reliant on airspawn.
For Germany, all-airspawn murdered Ta-152H, which is now struggling vs 4.3 F4U4 and 4.0 Yak-3, and 4.3 Spitfire, as they all may end up above it easily (it doesn’t meet them, but if it did, tough luck, I’m confident G.55 S1 with airspawn wiped the floor with Ta).
5.7 and 6.0 planes now absolutely denolish poor Ta.
Before Ta could work vs Spitfire Mk XVIII or IX LF because it started fights being a bit above.
Now vs Griffon Spit 1200m above you, all you can do is run to AF, lol.
And thanks to real sh*tter 3.0, everyone can win a head-on vs Ta.
Do-335 B2 remains quite useful, because it’s fast as hell and can just force head-ons - not the most fun gameplay, but it is what it is.