Not all ideas require new mechanics. Things like removing the kill cam, limit ceiling of planes or making them markable would already improve the situation and make life for planes harder.
I would increase the size of the air map to at least a 30 mile radius and force all planes to spawn at a airfield 20-30 miles away, but still give them a forward airbase to repair etc. This would allow Combat Air Patrol players to intercept Close Air Support before they could do harm.
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Or put them like really close to the battlefield so tanks can drive into the airfield to kill them while they are taking off lol since CAS can spawn kill ground vehicles why can’t we do the same lol
So I thought about a system that can work in war thunder for balancing CAS in the future when longer range weapons get added (AGM-88, JASSM and so on).
Gaijin can put on the map for every tank spawn a small empty field where you can spawn in an Anti-air system (Patriot for NATO and S400 for USSR and maybe a copy of the S400 or smth for China) that can work like a normal SPAA. Just like drones. You will need idk how much SP and you can spawn an long range SPAA. There can be only 1 for one enemy spawn(or they can add a limited number of aircraft and a limited number of SPAAs to balance it out like: one S400 for 2 planes or smth idk). However this will not limit the mobile SPAAs that can engage aircraft below 20 Kms and maybe add the CRAM or something so you can engage the ordonance dropped by enemy aircraft. This is my idea, let me know yours.
in the future, I’d like to see those as fixed base Anti Air. Patriot and S300 or S400. after they MASSIVELY increase the size of the battlefield of course.
I’d like to preface this by saying that I fly CAP most of the time (as in, using planes as SPAA), but also do CAS regularly in small amounts if there’s nobody for me to shoot down. These suggestions are also mostly relevant for mid tier.
Reduce spawn cost of the actual plane, severely increase spawn cost of any A2G stuff. Especially the very effective stuff like the FAB-5000 and 12000lb bombs.
Using planes as SPAA is the most effective method and this would improve that, as a pure fighter wouldn’t cost almost as much as one loaded with bombs.
Just add more SPAA, the forum is FULL of great suggestions for almost any tree. Especially USA in the 4.0-7.7 gap. I can name quite a few just off the top of my head.
Potentially add some form of ground radar station which would tell SPAA (of any time period) if there is an aircraft up, and direction/altitude. This is more of a general idea, nothing specific.
Increase SPAA rewards. Shooting down aircraft doesn’t pay well due to low activity % (hence little incentive to do so), a possible solution is having SPAA be spawnable from another vehicle (similar to the AT guns from the Sturmtiger event, or the scout drones on high tier light tanks where you can switch between either vehicle at any time). This way, a player wouldn’t have to throw away the tank they’re using to shoot a plane down.
Lower airspawn of all aircraft so they’re easier to intercept and heavy bombers mentioned above aren’t nearly invulnerable to gun SPAA just by virtue of being so high up. Regular attackers would also arrive slower at the battlefield, being easier to shoot down with both SPAA and aircraft.
I don’t want airfield spawns for them because in a marker-less mode like Ground RB, they’re much harder to spot than when they’re contrasting against the bright sky.
Ability for SPAA to resupply all their ammo, anywhere on the map, just once per spawn. Hit a key, and it gets instantly replenished, or a resupply zone spawns on the ground under your vehicle.
At high tier, introduce an artificial ceiling done by longer-ranged SAMs - go above a certain altitude, say 5km, and you get bonked by an S-75 or HAWK, or even the bigger stuff like an S-300. There should be an on-screen warning for this similar to the map border one - this is to deter someone sitting 10km up dropping guided bombs.
Also not entirely sold on this idea, but WW2 spaa would have a sorta aim assist where if you target a plane, it’ll show you a little straight line of the direction it is travelling in. Won’t tell you lead or anything, just its direction.
Also not entirely sold on this, but high tier SPAA could enable its player to spawn a ‘free’ fighter kinda like Arcade, with a longer timer or none at all. This would enable players who haven’t ground out an air tree to also hit aircraft beyond the range of their SPAAs.
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Of course increase the size of the battlefield. Like now they can spawn the planes like maybe 40 kms away instead of 20 so you have time to do anything
20 clicks is about the average distance, airfield to battlefield (SPAAs). The battlefield is roughly 25 km in radius. Both are too close at Ranks 7 and above in my opinion for a multitude of reasons. Trying to get a suggestion passed for it atm.
Yes and the range of the Pantsir is 20 clicks
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so i’d do :
- higher reward for shooting down a plane
- introduce a reward (SP, Lions, and RP) when shooting down an enemy missile
- easier access to reload while playing AAs (already in the works)
- lower the SP cost of AAMs equipped-only planes
This would require SPAAs of all nations to be able to shoot down enemy missiles though, so either make IR ones able to lock enemy missiles, or introduce SACLOS / guns for everyone
in parallel, try testing a TO mode for a few weeks, and see how that goes
I though about long range AAs, but let’s face it current maps and gameplay mechanics are ABSOLUTELY not fit for them right now, and bringing them in would probably prove to be costly. The only way i see them being introduced would be through naval
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You hit a lot of the nails on the head.
I’ve personally seen CAS as 50% a game mechanic problem and 50% a player opinion one. You change the former by removing needlessly frustrating aspects which interact with CAS to make it seem like a bigger demon than it is, as well as giving CAS a whole lot more to do than just kill tanks. You change the latter by giving people counters that actually work and are practically available.
I personally think SPAAG in the non-radar tiers need massive (re)buffing. Most of them save for sometimes the Falcon & ZSU-57/2 are helpless vs tanks, and also totally dependent on pilots being careless to actually kill planes. Nevermind the rewards being lacking as you already stated.
Hence why I have suggested so many specific changes to them in the past:
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Bringing back full AP/HVAP belts on any SPAAG lacking them due to a long-since redundant nerf from years ago. Yes, even the Falcon and AMX-30 DCA. If we want people to use AA more and be well-positioned to help their team against incoming CAS, chances are they’ll need to kill a tank or three to get to that good location.
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Giving the M42 Duster, Ostwind, Ostwind II, Coelian, AMX-13 DCA, Leo 40/70, Lvkv 42, R3-T20, and other similar machines their missing APCR & APDS rounds for their respective guns. Same reason as above. I do not know if the likes of the M163, ZSU-37/2, Tunguska, and other high tier cannon AA are also missing such ammo, but if they are, add them.
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Undoing the onesided nerf to MK103 HVAP penetration. Isn’t the Horten already long dead at this point save for exceptional alignment of the stars? Stop punishing the Kugels because of this plane.
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Give all AAs proper spiderweb gunsights they can toggle to at will.
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Give all non-radar AAs short-range lead indicators, minimum 1km stock crew to maximum 1.5km aced crew. Too many players use AA incorrectly, get wasted, then come here complaining AA is useless. Waiting around for such folk to learn hasn’t worked. Planes fly in very unrealistic manners with unequal benefits from RB-standard mouse aim & 3rd person camera features, thus I see an equally unrealistic lead marker as just compensation so AA can easily hit their targets with no more practice than learning most tank guns requires.
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Give all the derp artillery units the same lead markers only when HE-VT rounds are loaded and said fuse is activated.
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Make all HE-TF rounds function like VT fuses in AB & RB modes, to encourage the use of “heavy AA” vehicles as AA and not just reload meme TDs.
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Remove the shell count limit on high tier SPAA’s AP(FS)DS shells. In some cases we have IFVs with the exact same cannons and limitless APDS stocks in addition to missiles to kill armored targets with. I see no problem with an SPAA going “Ersatz TD” mode, because then at least the AA moves beyond the confines of their own spawn and is in position to surprise CAS from an unexpected location.
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Implement the roadmap idea on turning proxy fuses on and off for SAMs as well so SAMs can be dumb-fired like big HE shells to kill tanks in a pinch. Give people a reason to not sit in their own spawns using them just waiting for CAS to nuke them from orbit.
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Remove all ability for SAMs to be prematurely triggered by incoming ordinance, except for IR ones vs flares. Rocket walling is beyond stupid.
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All IR SAMs should be as easy to use as the Strela in regards to lock time & missile aiming. The Starstreak missile should actually function correctly and stay that way.
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Add better SAMs so that if guided weapons can nuke from orbit, SAMs can hit said planes in orbit reliably right back.
Would these changes make SPAAG & SAMs approaching “overpowered” status? Yes.
I would rather have that than continue to see onesided weaponry nerfs to CAS whose effects extend well beyond this game mode.
SPAAG and SAMs are for the most part not all that fun to play, and the above changes would practically make them fun to play. Actual tanks would still be far superior at killing other tanks, but now SPAA & SAMs would not be total pushovers. SPAA below radar tier would no longer require idiot enemy pilots to score air kills.
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Or maybe just have TO mode instead of buffs/nerfs which will only make more people angry ;)
I didn’t bother mentioning that because fundamentally TO does nothing to solve problems with how CAS works. Its whole point is an escapist band-aid.
If such a mode is ever seriously experimented with at all, it should be after CAS gets the reforms it needs, not before.
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Sorry but it solves everything.
People who just want to play tanks have their place to stay and combined people is full of people who want to play combined gameplay.
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No, it doesn’t solve anything.
It doesn’t make revenge bombing any less annoying or distasteful in the Combined Arms mode. It doesn’t make tank maps any better. It doesn’t make SPAA any more fun to play. It doesn’t upend the broken SP system which enables abuse & snowballing. It literally accomplishes nothing regarding how CAS itself works.
The only thing it does is it enables people to ignore the problem. While also arriving with its own slew of problems no matter what method you go about implementing it.
It’s akin to applying a band-aid on an infected shrapnel wound, when the actual remedy to save the patient is disinfectants, antibiotics, and removing the shrapnel via surgery.
Sorry but I think You don’t understand how much the game mechanic would change if people who just want to play tanks weren’t in that mode.
Reconsider it and You will understand what I mean ;). With nerfs/buffs You won’t get anything. I know that You will never accept the need for TO as You have said in one of Your comments, but trying to make other people angry by nerfing/buffing won’t change a thing regarding the situation of people who just want to play tanks. No matter how much You nerf the air or buff the SPAA, the situation for people playing tanks won’t change.
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I honestly don’t see the former ever being practical, at least not in Ground RB. If we add NPC targets, they could be easily farmable by a CAS player, leading to severe ticket loss without any counterplay aside from spawning a fighter.
So the latter option it is.
Yes to both, though I’d prefer SPAA didn’t become TDs as like with the Falcon, it can cause them to increase in BR past their usefulness for AA work. Hence why I suggested for SPAA to be a secondary vehicle of sorts that you can spawn in while still using a tank. This would also fix the earnings/rewards issue, as you wouldn’t spend so much time in SPAA to begin with.
Gun SPAA always requires planes to get quite close and by then they’ve already dropped their bombs on your team. Tracers are very visible and outside of server desync or snow/desert maps making tracers nearly invisible, an alert pilot can easily fly well within the range of gun SPAAs and remain unharmed.
IIRC the M163A1 added some form of APDS, which wasn’t too shabby. Don’t have penetration data on hand, though I don’t think it would be too useful.
Ostwind did have APCR, it uses the same ammo and is pretty much the same cannon as the BK 3.7 mounted on a few german props. About 110mm of pen, which is quite nice. It also had full caliber solid shot with much less pen, but still better than the current APHE’s 49mm.
I could see that working pretty well.
I really like this, though heavy AA like the flakbus could also get a mechanic where, like naval, the crew has to calculate the aircraft speed and lead, and then it’ll have a lead indicator at much higher distances. AAs like the Flak 88 were used for much higher-flying targets, so this could be an interesting way to model that.
100% agreed.
I don’t doubt that the Stinger is very capable IRL (and it is missing a lot of performance in-game), but the Strela is a much bigger missile and that brings its own set of advantages. It could be big out of necessity (due to less advanced technology), but it could just outright be a better one too. I’m not sure on this though, just pointing it out.
Big issue there, some countries just don’t have better SPAA - and even the Pantsir and Type 81, probably the two best SPAAs right now missiles-wise can’t always do this.
Most countries moved to stationary or multi-vehicle systems to deal with higher-flying aircraft, and/or are accounting for having air superiority. Hence my suggestion to add an artificial ceiling to ground RB, so that even MANPADS can be reasonably threatening.
There was AI tanks in GRB at one point, they later removed them though. Basing this off from memory since it was a long time ago.
Yes, there were:
-AI tanks
-AI controlled AT guns
-AI trucks
-AI AAA
If I recall correctly only the trucks and tanks affected tickets
Edit: on the Jungle map there used to be an AI destroyer near the beach. It did nothing, but it could be sunk.
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This was also only in existence while in the “starter pool” of pre-3.0 vehicles from what I recall (Or might have been Tier locked as they altered what Tier does over updates).
Do new players no longer have this starter pool? And did they remove AI from that? Of course when I experienced this we still had the D point spawning at random moments.