This is more a philosophical discussion rather than hard statistics, specific vehicles and their ingame mechanics.
The inspiration for this topic is a combination of discussions I’ve seen play out in the ingame chat as well as sentiments of players expressed in here recently in the forums but expressed generally since the introduction of ground vehicles.
Background
In July 2017, Mike Goes Boom released a fairly influential video outlining how air vehicles at the time were exploiting the simplified destruction mechanics to overwhelming effect in game. Essentially, aircraft rocket munitions and bombs affected ground vehicles in Realistic Battles the same way they function in Air Realistic Battles. Oversimplified explanation being that any hit with a rocket was lethal, and it ignored the armour and module damage system that vehicles use when damaging each other. Within the space of 2 months this situation was patched and air vehicles were updated to behave more or less as we experience them now. At the time I didn’t understand how to use SPAA effectively but I was having reasonable success shooting down planes in Sim Battles, whether it was using the tank’s main gun or AA machine guns or actual SPAA (I have since learned and have no issues using SPAA in Ground RB). Given that the simplified mechanics of Aircraft Munitions had been updated to the same damage mechanics to the benefit of tankers, I thought the next logical step would be to apply SIM flight mechanics to planes in ground RB as I thought that it would make planes harder to fly, harder spot ground targets and harder to effectively bomb them. In addition they would be a lot more susceptible to ground fire as it would be nearly impossible to abuse the instructor to pull some of the manuevers.
I WOULD LIKE TO CLARIFY, I AM NOT ADVOCATING FOR AIRCRAFT IN GROUND RB BEING FORCED TO FLY USING SIM CONTROLS/RESTRICTIONS
What I am suggesting in response to a number of players expressing their dissatisfaction with current vehicle matchups, specifically the ‘WW2 vs Cold War’ conversation is to perhaps branch out into Sim RB. The only reason I myslef don’t play sim battles is because it’s difficult to get a match due to reduced players population, and despite having issues in the past, I generally find ground realistic battles, the current battle ratings and meta to be satisfactory.
If you are dissatisfied with some of the lineups, a perceived lack of realism resulting from undesirable vehicle match-ups, or meta’s resulting from Ground RB. Or perhaps you have problems with CAS and feel as if the vehicles in Ground RB are overly disadvantaged in the face of CAS, Perhaps you should try Simulator Battles.
Benefits of SIM for tankers:
CAS is severely limited:
Available aircraft are limited to period appropriate fighters, bombers and strike craft
Tanks are harder to bomb: pilots are limited to cockpit view and bomb sights, so it’s not as if they can identify vehicles from extreme distances with the benefit of 3rd person.
There’s no team identification, CAS players would need to positively idenfity enemies from the air adding to the difficulty of successful bombing
No Instructor - Planes are much harder to fly in SIM
Most beginners won’t even be able to get off the runway at first as they won’t know how to compensate for the engine/prop forces than unbalance the plane on take-off and during flight
Aircraft require far more experience and a deft touch to fly and manuever, this will restrict the ability for bombers and strike craft to avoid AA fire and will be far more vulnerable to gunners on the ground.
Pre-determined vehicles for aircraft and tankers
Players know before entering what vehicles they’re going to face in addition to the opposing nations being fixed
The pace of battle is slower and more thoughtful, enemy vehicles take either take time or experience to identify
Vision is restricted to the commander’s perspective in third person from the commanders cuppola, and the gunner is restricted to the position of the gun sight
– As a result Paralax error is an issue that must be considered when firing (especially at short distances)
– Bushes on the surface of the tank obscure the gunner’s sight also, which means that players carelessly concealing the front of their tank will render their gun sight useless as it will be blocked with bushes if placed incorrectly.
I don’t mean to trivialise people’s concerns but the more I think about it, the more I realise that there’s a solution to many players concerns about era appropriate match making, close air support etc, tank combat meta and scenarios etc. Play SIM
Maybe I’m not communicating the point correctly, ‘I’m not concerned or frustrated’. I have observed a number people dissatisfied with CAS and the performance of certain WW2 vehicles in the face of Cold War vehicles and how a solution may already exist in electing to play SIM battles as opposed to trying lobby for changes to RB.
AB CAS used to be OP (still can be in some situations if you know what you are doing + right spawn plane), until fighter spotting changes. It was one of the best game mechanic/game changes Gajin ever made that actually benefited gameplay (especially lighter vehicles) and almost no one knew about it lol.
I appreciate your reply but I’m going to correct you as it’s quite inaccurate.
First major point of difference:
Leading a target in 3 dimensions is significantly more demanding than leading a target in 2 dimenions, and requires that the shooter actively adjust the vertical and horizontal point of aim to stay in on the targets. Generally speaking they need to manage the horizontal and vertical tracking at different rates depening on the angle the plane is flying through the air in additoin to maintaining enough additional vertical adjustment to account for range.
There’s nothing in coastal battles that will help you help you adjust to aiming at targets in 3 dimensional space, given that you are placing on the surface of water, even the terrain variation in ground RB constitutes a greater challenge to a gunner than in boats.
Second and Almost Equally Important:
On the ground and on the Sea you can observe your shell impacts and judge whether they hit before or passed the target to correct range, and in terms of lead, you can observer the shell landing ahead of the vehicle or behind the vehicle to correct for the lead angle.
In aircraft, the only time you can reliably correct the range of your shots is if you can observe the tracer as it passes the silhouette of the aircraft. If you tracer disappears behind the aircraft, you’re shooting to far but have no way of knowing by how much. If the tracer appears in front of the silhouette you are not shooting far enough. Now for the kicker, the you can only observe the tracer and the aircraft if you already have judged the correct lead. Additionally, planes are flying fast enough and close enough that in order to lead some shots, you actually have to have your cross hair so far in front of the plane that it’s not on the screen (mostly when zoomed in on the sniper view, but in some cases even the wider field of view in the sniper view is not enough obsever both the plane and your cross hair and it necessitates aiming in the third person view)
All of the above while it needs to be known, all has to become embodied skill and the player needs to be able to do everything above based on intuition.
In terms of improving, leading air targets can be very difficult to improve because you only get feedback when you hit the plane. As mentioned above, a miss doesn’t give you any indication of what you are doing wrong. Based on the frustration I see in people’s comments I would be surprised if they’ve ever had enough succesful hits to be able to develop any confidence in their ability to aim at planes.
Third point of difference:
One of the major challenges in getting your guns on target is the disruption from the surface of the water. If coastal was played exclusively in calm seas leading would be far less challenging as you are all playing on a fixed surface elevation.
Last but not least:
In Naval battles you are constantly given precise feedback on the location, and range of the enemies as well as constant range indication of your guns.
The reason I suspect that this lead information is given if due to the parallax error as the point of aim is far away from the origin of each shell being fired which distorts the perception of the shell tracers in flight. If anything this requires compensation for a very specific bias which if applied to different situations would have negative impact on the ability to adjust fire.
Just a bit of Background while we’re on the topic:
Generally speaking the limitations of unguided cannon SPAA and AAA are overcome by teams of gunners and observers which distribute the load of observing the fire and adjusting the fire, additionally, the coordination of several gunners and observers improves the ability to judge the travers relative to the targets and give more accurate information to correct fire.
Furthermore, (and good players do this in battle already) Gunner will position their SPAA as to limit approach vectors of the aircarft to situations more advantagous to the emplacement. This only works defensively as it’s no use to other teammates who’s movement can’t be accounted for.
Question for the experts
Do wingtip vortices vortices indicate a stall, and does anyone pay attention to this in order to determine the energy state of a plane from afar?
I would say in some cases yes air-air especially turret use is slightly harder due to climb/descend being more, BUT the general concepts are there as you can have similar closing velocities and lead scenarios when facing aircraft (I should have specified this). The 2d isn’t quite as useful but can significantly aid lead training.
I get where you are coming from but also disagree, because when you play coastal AB and you play against hordes of planes, with the shake and roll of small vessels, with a ‘general’ lead indicator that gives you enough hint, while traveling at 80-120kmh or more relative, you get the 3 axis correction and yes it is quite similar to a plane, except you specifically, can’t climb or descend. They can. My SPAA ability significantly increased after this experience.
My greatest tip for your 2nd (last) point is that yes you only get feedback when hitting the plane, but viewing bullet path and convergence will usually tell you pretty well how you are doing, if using multi barrel systems.
Wingtip vortices are how I spot many planes when there are multiple targets, or I spot who is going to die next when doing CAP. Most (90%+) plane users (incl very experienced youtubers…) generate them as they turn far too hard, I typically do not unless I am flying extremely slow/around stall deliberately or have to make a hard turn to kill someone. I usually play BnZ planes, hardly get shot down because of this, have over 100 hours IRL piloting planes (PPL/CPL theory too) and can make them perform extremely well. People say wyverns lose energy turning, yes, because they turn too hard. Maintain turns at 600kmh+ IAS and you have no problem, it’s just a bigger turn. They still won’t catch you lol.
These are the same people that tell you x is a brick and doesn’t play well.
It’s because 90%+ turn way too hard than necessary. If you aren’t scissoring or anything last-ditch, you should never turn at maximum rate.
TLDR: Play AB naval and AB Ground SPAA for free lead indicator to learn better with. Lead indicator is middle of plane, so you still need to ‘lead’ that sometimes.