the base respawn times have been a complaint for a while in ARB, so I think it could be a good way to do something about it.
And “according to intelligence” is already a reward in the game so it should be simple enough to apply it to stuff found by the recon plane.
Exactly — base respawn times have been a complaint in Air RB for ages, and tying them to recon flights could be a smart way to make that mechanic more dynamic. It not only gives recon aircraft a proper job, but also helps smooth out the pacing of matches.
And yeah, the “according to intelligence” reward already exists, so the groundwork’s basically there. It’d just be a matter of connecting that system to whatever the recon plane spots or triggers. Feels like a small step that could add a lot of depth.
That could work and wouldn’t be stupidly OP
This makes little sense, it’s not a “real time recon” plane like say, a Fw 189 or OV-10. It has cameras in the nose which record images into film and that later gets analyzed after landing. It would be wholly useless in a setting like WT.
Even in Sim EC this is useless as every worthwhile target shows up in the map anyway.
Drone scouting would work great
That’d be cool. It should only get rewarded when a scout target dies so it can’t just farm infinite rewards off backline tanks.
I’ve always just peppered enemies with my MGs in hope that friendlies would figured it out(and get me a assist)
Maybe they could add scouting if you get close enough to the target?(this was you have to expose yourself to danger in order to get the scout off)
True, in a historical sense the FR.9 wasn’t a real-time recon platform like the OV-10 or Fw 189, and yeah — it recorded to film for post-mission analysis. But I think the idea behind adding a recon mechanic isn’t to simulate photo development or make it fully realistic, but to give those aircraft some unique, gameplay-relevant utility.
Even in Sim, sure, most targets already show up — but if recon flights could influence base spawns, mark passive objectives, or trigger bonuses through a “return with data” mechanic, it’d at least give the FR.9 something to do other than be a downgraded Meteor.
Not saying it’s perfect, but I’d rather see some creative use for these jets than have them sit around underperforming.
It’s a Meteor Mk8 copy, there’s nothing wrong with its performance. If scout mechanics for aircraft do show up I’d much rather it be in proper scout planes instead of “fighter with a film camera”.
Because suddenly you have every single 109, P-51, the Ki-83 and the likes, which could ALSO be fitted with cameras in this style (and some have a second seat), doing the exact same thing. It’s just too much.
That’s fair — the FR.9 does fly pretty much like a Meteor 8, and performance-wise it’s not bad at all. I totally get the concern about opening the floodgates if they give recon mechanics to any aircraft that ever had a camera variant. It’d definitely need clear boundaries.
If they ever did go down that road, I think it’d make the most sense to reserve those mechanics for dedicated or semi-dedicated recon platforms — things like the OV-10, Fw 189, maybe some two-seaters that were explicitly built for recon roles.
FR.9 was more of a light recon/strike aircraft in practice, so I just thought it might be a decent candidate for lightweight gameplay features. But yeah, if it risks diluting role clarity across the board, it might not be worth it.
I mean you can already fly over the battle and “Attention to the designated grid square”
Especially now that you can toggle between the two maps
That is different though than a 30 second moving marker that highlights your exact position both on the map and in the world.
Map marks arent always 100% accurate, especially when coming from someone flying over in an aircraft
I suppose you’re right, but then again now you can toggle between maps, you can squad ping the ground then tap the ping on the map, accompanied by game chat and it’s dead accurate. “T-34 moving towards Alpha, on my ping”. Sure it’s not the same but I personally think it’s not that bad of a change
Which is where the idea of perhaps just having the PR cameras act like fixed TPods would work better.
There is a difficulty to that and you cant maintain track on the entire enemy team.
Having a PR aircraft “scout” properly “scout” and mark the enemy team, would be insane.
Oh so you could like, have it like a targeting pod, but when an enemy is in the pod’s FOV within say a certain range and for a certain time (say 10 seconds) it is scouted, this way you wouldn’t be able to have the whole team scouted, only realistically 1 - 3 players scouted at a time, but as soon as the targeting pod leaves it stops scouting them?
The only 2 ways I can think that PR could work without being insane is:
- just having them like a fixed Tpod, useful for seeing but not necessarily for scouting or anything
- The PR cameras will “scout” but only on RTBing and would mark the previous known locations, not necessarily their current locations (not my idea)
Not to mention the people that spam spot the enemy spawn with drones is already annoying and distracting , I’ve started turning radio alerts off at drone BRs now so I can actually hear.
As I mentioned before I think photo recon could be a good air RB/ sim addition, but I’m weary of how it could effect ground in its current state if it was a added as real time spotting. If they ever add stationary SAM sites into ground it could be good for finding and marking them for SEAD.
Yeah, it is ASB that I think could see the most “benefit” from such a system, but… given it has SOOOOOO many issues at the moment and the devs have abdandoned it. I just want new SB brackets or new enemy ai aircraft before we start to explore reccy gameplay. Let alone SEAD that would be needed first anyway