Disclaimer: I am not arguing for removing CAS and I am fully aware that there are already multiple threads on this topic, but I guess a fresh 2025 discussion won’t be the end of the world.
Now to the actual topic:
What I would love to see ingame is a toggle (like we already have with night battles, just fully enforced rather than chance-based), where players can decide if they want to have CAS in their game or not or even a new game mode which is actually purely ground battles. After reading a bit the general consensus seems to be that especially top tier largely suffers from massive advantages which CAS has, resulting in tanks being not much more than sitting ducks waiting to be one-shot from a rocket multiple kilometers away and players avoiding playing top tier tanks all together. There are also lots of voices discussing a possible CAS rebalance but that doesn’t necessarily conflict with the idea of this toggle.
I am especially interested in the arguments that speak against this idea, as they - from what I’ve read on different threads - seem to not be compelling to me ultimately, but I am open to reconsider.
Just to give some examples:
CAS being superior to tanks is realistic and therefore fine
CAS fixes the problem of tanks taking broken spots on the map
CAS is easily countered with AA
The toggle would split the community and increase queue times
To which I would already like to respond:
Points 1-3 aren’t affected by the toggle since people can just continue playing the game like it already is, still:
War Thunder is a video game, video games are primarily meant to be fun and should therefore always have some kind of balancing in effect like we already have with battle ratings, protecting some vehicles from having to fight massively superior ones even though it would be realistic if they had to. I don’t see why CAS would get a preferential treatment in this regard.
Introducing another problem instead of addressing the root - i.e. at times disgustingly horrendous map design - has the same flavor as countries introducing foreign animals to deal with pests only for the introduced species to also become invasive. That this isn’t a good idea doesn’t have to be explained further I hope. Also: Taking a small nieche advantage (if even that as good map knowledge shouldn’t be arbitrarily punished) to justify the whole thing or pretending that the plane will instantly commit suicide after eradicating one camper instead of continuing to eradicate the rest of the enemy team are simply not rooted in reality.
Is this really a valid point for some people? Either you have to die first from a plane to spawn (inferior) AA or you spawn it from the start in hopes of getting kills with it. That both of these options are not ideal is obvious. You are also forcing players into a playstyle which they might not enjoy at all.
This might have been very valid a few years ago where queue times approached the minute mark regularly (at least at the time of day where I played) but nowadays, queues take a few seconds at most so this shouldn’t be a problem.
So… Enough from my side, what do you think?
Should a CAS toggle/ground-only gamemode be added?
Mode just for tanks is the best and easiest solution for current balance problem as it would take all the players who just want to play tanks from the current combined mode thus making it more balanced in terms of teams.
As much as i want the option for CAS to not be a problem its not as simple as that. This problem is quite nuanced and has multiple factors at play, such as CAP, SPAA being weaker than they should be, the cost of spawning in the different vehicles and rewards for the respective vehicles. There are smaller details too, although they’re more minor and often overlooked (One example is how about half the map pool doesn’t contain any major map obstructions or cover to protect or hide against CAS).
It’s a decent idea in theory but probably wont work in practice, I think the biggest problem currently is the reward gain for SPAA or CAP, if you could make CAP a dedicated assignable role to your aircraft that has less SP cost but also contributes RP to ground (Maybe less so than SPAA to incentivise still playing dedicated SPAA but still) I feel this would likely flatten out the CAS curve a little as long as all nations SPAAs are fairly evenly matched as they would hopefully become a bigger denominator and would also shoot down enemy CAP aircraft, Pantsir S1 supremacy would not be viable (I’m aware the Pantsir S1 is still not able to fully compete with CAS but it does create an imbalance in the match where a team with Russia will have it just that little bit easier.) At the end of the day I just want to be able to play GRB without having to dedicate 60% of my attention to the air as an MBT or spawn in a mediocre SPAA with 0.75x the rewards (this is assuming there are enough CAS aircraft in the air to net you a decent kill to minute ratio).
In everything lower than Top Tier, CAS is really not much of a problem. I almost never find myself dying from CAS, unless it is the Yak-9 APHE.
At top tier, the real issue is unbalanced implementation (USSR having best SPAA + best CAS), small maps, no incentive to play Anti-CAS (SPAA + CAP rewards low), SP costs and Skill Issue.
Larger Maps would mean CAS has more time to travel, and therefore SPAA has more time to respond or warn your team. Better implementation of SPAA, like how Israel has no top tier SPAA and Japan has only 1 Radar SPAA and that is Type 87 (Gepard clone, whereas Type 91 and Type 83 have 4-6km range w/o radar). Greater SPAA rewards and possibly even AI Air or Drone targets means SPAA will be rewarding, and won’t just be sitting around all the time (similar to ARB). Greater SP Costs means that you can’t take ALL your FnF missiles with just a few scouts and a kill.
¬ Even better map design would be good too, EG an Urban map w/ lots of buildings, or a steeper/higher environment around the map, resulting in CAS having to be in a vulnerable position to use their A2G missiles. Even implementing a few of these would greatly reduce the issue, and not kill Strike/CAS aircraft to the point where they are obsolete.
There will never be a CAS Toggle. Its a part of the game that gives a lot of Strike Aircraft and Dive bombers an actual role, other than just basebombing or killing AI Ground targets in Air Modes.
This is a great idea if you want fighter jocks to hijack a mode in order to get their, smaller lobby size, ARB experience.
Looking at how common it is for CAS to blatantly outrange AA in higher tiers, I doubt we’ll ever get to a point where AAs are anything more than mediocre.
AGM-65Ds facing IR SAMs and trashy SACLOS SAMs isn’t a problem ?
4km+ ATGMs facing IR SAMs that can’t lock past 3km isn’t a problem ?
Top tier jets are multi-role so they’ll perform both roles at the same time.
Making maps to be constant CQC mazes just to be safer from CAS is definitely not a good idea, as it very much kills the variety for vehicles that mode is created for.
Do you realize that placing hills around the battlefield would actually benefit CAS more ?
They could just lob their FnFs over the hills and then drop down, breaking LoS which is needed for SACLOS slingers, all the while their FnFs are unaffected by all of that.
This also benefits helicopters with FnF as they’d have loads of cover to hide behind, pop out, fire a few FnFs and then go back down, making them nigh invulnerable to ground vehicles.
Just because CAS is bad in ARB due to the mode being a cesspool, it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have a much bigger impact on that mode to begin with.
Forcing CAS-enjoyers to go to a completely different mode where their vehicles can’t even be spawned first just goes to show how crappy ARB really is. They’re also forced to perform well in tanks (which some might not even enjoy playing), which means they’ll be unable to even spawn CAS in many, many matches. I don’t think that’s even remotely fair for those people.