Regarding Nuclear thunder of course.
For context, pretty much all of the time I’ve put into the event so far has been ground pounding, I have almost no interest in the center furball
Recently gaijin upped the score for killing ground targets, thinking this would be enough to make players spread out and actually do SEAD. From my experience I have seen more ground pounders in my matches, but the majority of players are still just doing the center dogfight.
This is because as it stands, doing SEAD is simply not fun. For me, it is the veggies that I have to force myself through before I’m allowed to attack some convoys for about 2 minutes (after I RTB, rearm and fly back out) before the SAMs respawn. In any other air game I’ve played, including the game this mode is based off, SEAD is my favorite thing to do.
As it stands, the only way to effectively do SEAD in War Thunder is to missile bait and use your ARMs after the SAM has fired. I’ve seen claims that this is “realistic”, and while its kind of sort of partially true, it is also just so wrong.
SAM operators are not stupid, if they see an ARM headed towards them, the realistic behavior is to drop lock and intercept the ARM, or just turn their radar off to avoid it. That being said, here are some some reasons I think the current SEAD gameplay is not fun
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Too many SAM sites. Currently there is an absolutely unreasonable amount of individual units. This is an issue because it drastically limits your options for attack. It also results in frustrating moments where you get smacked by random convoy SAMs that just happened to drive over a hill smack you from a random angle. It also means that players are less likely to coordinate as there are so many different “sites” to attack at any one point. In my opinion, SAMs should be MUCH more concentrated, so they are more predictable for the player, and may result in teamwork as there are fewer, but more difficult sites to attack. SAMs should also not be allowed in convoys at all. Convoys should be gun based platforms only to prevent random, frustrating deaths.
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SAM aggressiveness and accuracy. This was an issue earlier on in Nuclear Options development, where their long range SAMs would immediately fire on you the moment you popped out of cover, and it lead to a frustrating experience of being constantly spammed by locks even if those missiles had no chance of killing you. This was changed and it is much better now, with SAMs only engaging at higher PKs. The same problem exists in Nuclear Thunder where SAMs are insanely aggressive and will fire on anything that moves, including air to air missiles, even at max range with tiny probabilities of kill. This is unrealistic and unfun behavior. It is also near impossible to defeat these missiles once locked, aside from putting a physical barrier between you and missile. Dodging missiles IS extremely FUN, and gives the player a good dopamine hit. But it has to be reasonably possible. Currently it is unfair and frustrating
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Player count is too high or objective concentration is too small. Currently not a big issue due to everyone clumping in the middle, but once (if) players start spreading out, it will make Ground Pounding and SEADing extremely difficult, as chance of meeting an enemy player will be extremely high. You can say “but your teammates will help you”. This fails to account for the fact players do not care about their lives and will divebomb easy kills even if they know they will die to another to enemy. We see this behavior in Air RB already. Making the objective area wider or making the player count smaller will give more breathing room for SEAD and ground pounders to operate and have FUN.
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Player tags. This is a similar problem to number 3, but i think player tags on causes massive clumping issues. With player tags on, the range at which players will see and fight each other is around 15km or so. So players fly around with these massive “contact” bubbles and it causes massive clumping as more players are drawn to the swarm. With player tags off, these “contact” bubbles are more like 5-10Kms and give the map more breathing room as players spread out a bit more to find each other, and arent drawn to the big shiny player tags in the middle.
This would be one REALLY good thing to test before the event ends. See if player behavior changes without player tags. If you wanted you could keep player symbols visible on map, so things like search radars are still useful, but this is up to Devs
Even if we solve all these problems, the gameplay loop of actually doing SEAD and hunting SAMs is just not fun or rewarding, so here are some suggestions for fun SEAD gameplay loops which could be reasonably implemented into War Thunder.
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Saturation attacks. Probably the most common in other games. Involves putting as much munitions on target as fast as possible. The goal is to get as close as possible to the target to minimize the time the target has to intercept these weapons. This is a fun risk reward cycle, trying to sneak up and fire as fast as possible. Currently near impossible with how UNREALISTICALLY fast the SAMs acquire and fire on new targets.
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Fear attack. SAM operators, upon seeing ARMs being fired, (or even simply hearing the word magnum" on radio if vietnam accounts are to be believed) will turn their radars off, making them unable to effectively intercept targets. This is an extremely fun gameplay loop, where after a player fires their ARMs, they have a small amount of time to either hit targets (depots in WTs case) or hit the SAMs directly. This could be implemented into the game when a SAM knows it has been targeted by multiple ARMs, it will switch off for a small amount of time, and rely on a REALISTIC version of inaccurate SACLOS guidance with LONG acquisition times and poor accuracy. This would mean players can operate around this small window of relative safety to get bombs on target.
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Pop up attacks: What it sounds like, if a target is on top of a hill, a player can sneak up behind cover, expose themselves for a very brief window to get bombs on target. Currently this is not possible due to the SAMs unrealistic engagement time, meaning the moment you expose yourself you are fired on. You can get a few moments of safety if the site is fully offline, but often they are activated by a random missile flying by so their radars are on and immediately wipe the floor with you. Yes I know this currently CAN be done, but its extremely hard to pull off and reliant on luck more than skill.
Happy to hear others thoughts, and if you think I am stupid. Id really like to see this game mode succeed so I hope a dev will read my feedback and take it into account