Idea for encouraging players to pick off-meta planes and join lobbies even if their favourite vehicle is bottom bracket

Hello!

The way spawn costs and the useful actions system interact leads to some anti-fun behaviour being incentivized. It makes flying bottom-bracket vehicles doubly-punishing as not only are you an underdog, you lose just as much SL as if you were top-bracket. Thus, if you only want to fly a specific plane you might opt to skip playing air sim until you’re middle or top bracket for that plane’s BR to minimize your losses.

This I feel is bad for population numbers.

Having read that in the past, there were spawn points you had to grind and under-bracket planes were free to fly - I’ve had an idea to bring a positive element of that back.

Simply:

  1. Keep spawn costs as they are.
  2. If you are at the middle or above in a bracket, nothing changes for you.
  3. If you are flying a bottom-bracket (minimum BR or below) plane and do NOT have premium, you receive a 20% discount on spawn costs.
  4. If you are flying a bottom-bracket (minimum BR or below) plane and are a premium player, your investment and support of the game’s continued health is rewarded as a 20% boost to your earnings instead

The numbers naturally are free to be tweaked, they are only working propositions.

This would also encourage entirely new players to try air sim and fly riskier planes as they can fly a “trainer” aircraft (bottom-bracket vehicle) and thus minimize their losses.

5 Likes

I like the idea, but why not just give 10%(random number) more rewards per step under the max BR?
E.g. in a 12.0-13.0 game you would get +10% in a 12.7 plane, +20% in a 12.3 plane and +30% in a 12.0 plane.

But only if 13.0 planes are in the game. Otherwise it opens the door for lowest BR pve farm lobbies…

5 Likes

I like the idea.


In my opinion much more emphasis should be put on in-battle economy. Not just for air, but also for ground.

Not only would it add flavour to battles, it would also add another dimension for balancing. Some brackets could have unequal top vehicles (within reason), further balanced by price. Currently BRs do all of the balancing.

It then can’t directly impact SL though. Otherwise it becomes pay2win, premium account would inevitably give an advantage.

The vast majority of wars are decided by country’s economic potential. It’s a crucial aspect when designing a weapon of any kind. It shouldn’t be a surprise that some vehicles don’t make sense, if you take this aspect away, while some vehicles become disproportionately better.

A prime example of a vehicle that can’t be balanced without the economy aspect is the Maus. The equivalent for planes can be F-14A (only A, B is fine) or F-22.

Maybe combining both ideas…

A Silver Lions reduction aswell as a booster for both current and next spawn:
Playing a lower BR plane would benefit your next spawn -that top-bracket aircraft you wanted to use in the first place- with a SL reduction and a SL boost (RP would most likely never happen).
The ammount depending on vehicle rank and BR step below top-bracket, something between 20-50%, similar to how “new nations/top vehicle bonus” applies.

SL economy for Sim EC is already very fluctuating and unstable and can be extremely punishing with 1hr+ matches resulting in a BIG net loss (jets are expensive). That is severely discouraging in a mode where is challenging to even fly…

So a way to cut on these losses would actually help a lot and encourage lower BR planes use at the same time.

A good idea that has been suggested and ignored many times in the past.