- Yes
- No
Air Realistic Battles is an old mode, dating back to the game’s founding in 2012, where at the time it initially was called “Historical Battles.” And most people who have played for the past 5+ years generally seem to agree - the mode is not in a healthy state.
The typical match in Air RB below missile tier of jets goes something like this:
- People take off, bombers and attackers airspawn.
- Bombers and Attackers usually rush right in, destroy what they can, and inevitably die. Sometimes half of an enemy team loses all their altitude over one attacker.
- Remaining fighters climb to useful (enough) altitude, whichever side climbs highest usually forces down the other side, and unless the former makes serious mistakes, the former usually wins.
- Match ends once last enemy plane is shot down automatically via triggering “No Active Players Left on Hostile Team” ticket bleed, which removes all remaining tickets in approximately five seconds or less.
- Occasionally, when the hostile team is not wiped out, and enough time is available for it to happen, all the AI ground units can be taken out by either MGs, cannons, or ordinance. Once this happens, remaining tickets slowly bleed to zero.
- In a few maps that exist in Custom Battles but no longer exist in the main map rotation, after destroying three bombing targets, the airfield would become available to be destroyed, and bleed tickets to zero when it was destroyed. This used to exist for all maps, but was removed from the game not long after introduction of the F-4 Phantom, a competent jet fighter that can haul more bombs than most propeller-driven heavy bombers (and still does).
The key feature to notice here - none of these three objectives requires input from any of the others to win the match. Instead, whichever one occurs fastest effectively overrides any contributions towards all the others, as each of the autowin ticket bleeds will bleed enemy tickets to zero no matter what the status of the other two objectives may be.
The “Fighter Team-Deathmatch Ticket Bleed,” as I am naming it, has become normalized as the default win condition. When it occurs, bombers and attackers have no time left to do anything else.
When the “Attacker Ticket Bleed” occurs on occasion, it negatively affects fighter and bomber users, who complain the attacker(s) in question are “overpowered.” This usually results in said attacker(s) being nerfed.
When the “Airfield Destruction Ticket Bleed” used to occur, it would similarly attract the ire of fighter and attacker users, who complain the bomber(s) in question are “overpowered.” This usually results in said bomber(s) being nerfed until they are functionally or literally irrelevant to winning games.
The net effect of all this is that different portions of the Air RB playerbase are constantly angry with each other, each blaming the other group(s) for why the game mode is in the state that it is in, and seemingly nobody cooling their heads enough to recognize the actual problem with these “zero-sum objectives.”
None of this mutual hostility is good for long-term game health.
As such, I propose to end said hostility by removing all of these autowin ticket bleeds, and also altering the ticket values of all targets so that the objectives themselves no longer require these automatic bleeds in the first place. To explain in more detail:
- Each match would have 5200 tickets per team
- Each of the three objectives (Air-to-Air (A2A), Close Air Support (CAS), and Strategic Bombing(STB)) would be worth in total 2600 tickets. The choice is yours how you bleed down enemy tickets - anything goes.
- For Air-to-Air, each player (16 total) and AI plane (10 total) are worth 100 tickets apiece.
- For Close Air Support, each AI ground unit (104 total) is worth 25 tickets apiece
- For Strategic Bombing, a new objective similar to “Deep Strike” would be required, with 26 factory buildings to take out at 100 tickets apiece.
Each objective intentionally is only worth 50% of the ticket bar, rendering each one fundamentally incapable of winning games on its own. This is meant not as a cure-all, but rather a new foundation for different and better objectives for attackers and bombers to be laid down upon.
How would this improve Air RB gameplay?
- Airfield Camping would become irrelevant: Because killing all players would no longer auto-end the round, the winning team has no need to chase someone back to their runway. The person fleeing to their runway also cannot abuse this autowin condition via airfield AAA killing off most/all of the enemy team.
- Climbing to Space would become irrelevant: There would no longer be a need to chase the last bomber up to the stratosphere to end the match. That bomber still could, but only to avoid dying and nothing else.
- Running Endlessly to Avoid Combat would become irrelevant: Similar story to point 2), it only becomes a means to avoid dying, and the winning team no longer has to play into the games of the runner in order to end the match.
- Hiding in Map Corners would become irrelevant: Again, similar story to point 2), the last player can hide if they wish, but there no longer is need for the winning team to track down that person in order to finish the round.
- Bombers and attackers get to “clean up” the map after the dogfight concludes: Historically, most real offensive operations had an initial struggle for air superiority followed by whatever mission(s) were to be done by bombers and ground attack planes. By removing the fighter autowin ticket bleed, both of these plane classes now have some time to do just this.
- Multirole Aircraft at all BRs would have real reason to use their multirole loadouts in Air RB: Aircraft known for their usage in several jobs (most heavy fighters, fighters famous for ground attack like Thunderbolts, certain Bombers that could also do CAS, etc.) would now have the time to go use their ground attack weaponry without games auto-ending after the last enemy plane is killed. Additionally, as the vast majority of jets in 8.0+ feature substantial multirole weapon loadouts, this would immensely benefit all of those aircraft.
- More time to finish dogfights: Now that it would be fundamentally impossible to end Air RB matches via any form of “bomber rush” or “attacker rush” in any practical sense, fighter mains would have much more time on average to do what they enjoy too - dogfight to their hearts’ content. This helps ease fighter main animosity towards bombers and attackers, as the latter no longer “take away” fun time from the former.
Thank You to all who read this Suggestion. Please leave your feedback below.
Best Regards,
Ckasaron
