This is even funnier when we realise, that in real life it took 1800 heavy AA shells to shoot down a single bomber at altitude.
And even with VT shells, it was like ~100 or so shells.
And even .50 cals are effective.
This was debunked more times that flat earth.
With this, and your explanition on it, i can more than 100% agree.
Tho, the BF1 example with the behemoth is good, in the game it rarely worked, especially the Airship and the Train.
However, the Battleship was in fact a very effective tool, and did it’s job perfectly. It’s just a shame that it was only on trash maps.
Now, on the balancing parts.
There have been a lot of proposals on how to solve the spawn issue, and the CAS spam.
That is all good, but they do not solve the fundamental issue: CAS needs no skill to use.
I don’t care if i play in a Churchill 1 against a fully bushed up KV-1B, because that KV-1B still needs to learn map positions, enemy tank weak spots, reload times, shell penetration values, etc.
That player still uses some skill to defeat me, even tho realistically i stand a little chance against him. BUT, and here comes the but, that small chance is still more, than the chance of me defending myself against a plane, because that is, practically ZERO.
And guess how many times can you survive (aka dodge it, or not die when it hits you) a missile in a ground unit, that is the size of an apartment complex with the armor made from 1 layer toilettpaper with the overpressure mechanic working against you, while CAS has no such mechanic, since a plane can survive 10kb+ TNT exploding 3m away, and keep flying like nothing happened…
Not literally afk but flying in a straight line for several seconds without a real reason.
Like, spawning in and retaining altitude/direction before reaching the battlefield.
I found those missiles to be pretty meh against anything that’s actively making inputs and not flying in a straight line.
By the looks of it, he started locking and dropping his guided turds at 6km+ of range, practically outranging most SAMs of it’s BR.
Guided ammo at such a low BR is busted to hell.
Against Jets not so much. The video you posted is a prop plane using unguided rockets. It’s well within the range of SPAA at its rank. It’s not the plane that was the problem in that situation.
Limit how much CAS can be active at any time by creating “CAS slots”, similar to how Ground AB works. Say 1 fighter, 1 strike, 1 bomber and 1 heli per team at any given time. First player to be able to spawn CAS from one of those categories blocks other players to spawn aircraft of the same type.
It’s an assumption of ground mains and it’s mostly wrong. As an aircraft, you don’t just get a clear view of every player on the map, it’s quite difficult to detect players unless you happen to focus on one area and someone pops up. It’s why the most CASd people are the power position abusing campers, because as an aircraft I always check around those areas first. If there is any SPAA up, you can’t just fly out and about. Yes lowtier SPAA is quite weak and I do agree CAS on lower tiers is indeed too powerful, but pretty much as soon as you hit 8.3 your safe sky days are over. If you don’t constantly maneuver and keep a keen eye out for SPAA fire you will be shot down out of the sky.
If you think CAS requires no skill, try to play a piston fighter or an early jet (and I am speaking of 7.0-7.3 jets not just subsonics) against radar SPAAs, or a flareless jet against an IR SAM SPAAs. There are areas in hightier where you can literally do NOTHING against SPAAs unless you detect them first, then you might get a chance.
TL;DR: I agree CAS is OP in lowtiers, which is mostly due to how dogshit lowtier SPAAs are (something which CAN be improved as I specifically discussed on my methods to improve CAS mechanics ingame), but pretty much past 8.3 (or even 7.7 really) the argument of “CAS takes no skill” is futile.
Edit: underBRd strike aircraft having access to PGMs against poor 60s SPAAs is not an issue of CAS, it’s an issue of balance in general. Ayit is cancer. Gaijin I beg of you give us separate aircraft BRs for air and ground modes!
I typically have 5 rules that I try to abide by when I play an SPAA, all equally important:
Awareness - Always scan the environment for aircraft with your eyes, your ears, and your radar if you have one. If you die to an aircraft you did not know was there, it’s 100% on you.
Location - don’t just sit on the spawn like a dummy practice target, CAS will always look first towards the spawn location. Instead, push towards the area between your spawn and the middle of the map, and preferably hide near a vertically high but horizontally small cover. Aircraft will have a much harder time detecting, let alone targeting, you if they cannot see you properly, and if they do attack you then you need to have cover to protect you from bombs and rockets.
Another important part of this rule is to not stay still, especially if you are being actively engaged always move! A moving target is way harder to engage and hit than a stationary one.
Trigger discipline - Wait until an aircraft or a helicopter is inside the optimal engagement range of your SPAA, don’t just shoot your guns on an aircraft way too far from you. It does not intimidate them, it screams “hey I am here and I am stupid, come bomb me!”. For SAM SPAAs, especially IR SAM SPAAs, try to not stay too long in a single location, and NEVER fire multiple SAMs from the same area if you know the first SAM you fired missed or failed to kill the target. From experience playing CAS, SAMs are incredibly difficult to detect, even the ones with very thick smoke, but if I know I am being fired at then I will focus on the battlefield to try and see where the launch was from.
(Note specifically for the Ozelot: the 3rd rule is especially important for that. Someone who knows how to play an Ozelot, by hiding in forests and debris and shooting from different locations and never multiple times at once, is one of the most cancerous SPAAs to fight as an aircraft. It is EXTREMELY difficult for an aircraft to find a well-hidden Ozelot.
Role - Remember what class of a ground vehicle you are. You wanna go hunt tanks? That’s perfectly fine, but don’t ignore the enemy aircraft or avoid engaging them “because it will reveal your location to enemy tanks”. Always remember the 1st rule.
Bullshit - Shit happens. Sometimes you can follow all the rules and still die to some bullshit low-flying aircraft or a helicopter you did not notice. That’s perfectly fine. It happens when you play tanks and get sniped by campers from 2km, and it happens in air RB when you die to some unmarked aircraft that was following you for 20 seconds. Don’t take it too hard, just continue to play, or spawn another SPAA if you have one.
It’s so, so difficult to detect players on 1x1km maps we have, especially if you’re looking for SPAAs, they have even less available movement.
Ah, good old power positions that are totally counterable by a ground vehicle as well. But I guess it’s way easier to counter it by something your enemy has no response to at the moment.
Keep a “keen” eye on something that has a 300x300m workable area to move around, you definitely need eagle eyes to spot that lol.
Also, at those BRs helicopters start to pop out, again rendering most SPAAs useless as they’ll outrange them.
You complain about how small the maps are, but completely forget they are riddled with foliage, buildings, and other cover. Desert maps are typically easier for CAS and harder for SPAAs, but the opposite is true for European maps where the weather is usually bad, there’s tons of cover and trees, and SPAAs can hide in many areas.
I am an awful pilot that gets absolutely rekt in an air match, yet i can get kills in an aircraft against tanks much easily than in any OP tank in a complete downtier ever.
Meanwhile tanks get marked, and you can easily spot them even if they move - again, i am terrible pilot, yet even i can do that.
Nope. Most people who get CASd are those who are capping a base, or helping to repair, or those, who just spawned.
CAS players will go for the most kills, and that 1-2 player camping an “OP position” in a few games are not juicy enough.
But even if you are one of those, who target them first, do you go into an idle mode after you killed those, ooooor, you go and kill tanks that are not in an OP position?
And even if you are one (i doubt), then you are a 1 in 10k player. wooooow.
Or you can just kill all SPAA first, after all, you out-range them, and then freely abuse the defenseless tanks…
Nice tale.
Yeah, this guy used so much skill! If he were to use it on solving global warming, we not only could have solved it, but we would instantly be transformet into an intergalactic civilisation!
And if you go with the “buuuuuuuuut ThE eNeMy SpAa PlAyEr WaS bAd, He ShOuLd HaVe ShOt ThE pLaNe DoWn” “argument”, then please try to honestly answer this question:
What tank can get this number of kills in this time (excluding arty strike) with that much consistency as CAS does?
Go ahead, and aswer that!
Ah yeah, here goes tha strawmen.
You can still answer it honestly.
How do you know if those SPAAs were operational?
How do you know that they had ammo left?
What happens, when there are too much planes for SPAAs to “counter”?
What happens, when there are no SPAAs, because the team is already outnumbered, on the ground alone, and they can’t affor to spawn with a unit that is useless against tanks?
Why should something that outranges you outright simply go into your range, doesn’t make any sense.
Cover works both ways buddy, thick foliage will obstruct your view as well and you won’t be able to shoot through buildings.
This still doesn’t change the fact your SPAA will be limited to staying in a very small portion of the map to avoid interaction with enemy ground vehicles.
They were, they were on the spawn, and it did not look like it was under attack by ground vehicles.
They had ammo left 100%, SPAAs have a shitload of ammo. Also, any SPAA using the 35mm Oerlikon KDA and the M247 specifically have dual-feeding autocannons, so they can switch ammo types in an instant. Anyone who asks “how did the SPAA still have ammo left” obviously never played 7.7+ SPAAs.
What happens when there are too many tanks to counter on the ground? You get spawncamped. At least in an SPAA, there is the chance that you’d shoot all of them down in under a minute like I did multiple times. Lemme tell you, amazing feeling.
The spawn cost of SPAAs is disconnected from other tanks in your lineup, it will always stay small unless you chain-spawn other SPAAs. SPAAs are usually a last resort, especially for people who only bring one (unlike my gigachad self). If your team ran out of SPAAs, it’s the equivalent of if your team ran out of tanks: either way, you’re boned.
That is irrelevant. You need skill and game knowledge to kill a tank, even if you are spawncaming. You don’t need to have any of thatif you are in a plane. Even a monkey could press the SPACE bar.
Ammo availability on SPAAs is a legitimate issue. The max ammo isn’t inherently the problem it’s the ability to rearm. As a tank you’re moving and clearing towards a point, you’re generally going to have control and be able to rearm then move off. As an SPAA you’re forced to sit on a point for multiple minutes to fully rearm and you’re generally unable to defend yourself.
There’s no legitimate reason SPAA shouldn’t be able to rearm while in Spawn. Staying in Spawn as an SPAA is already a death sentence as it’s a giant kill me sign for CAS. This wouldn’t change by allowing players to rearm there, and it wouldn’t be unbalanced against CAS for them to face targets with ammo. They can easily fly back to the airfield completely outside of enemy range and rearm without a care in the world, why can’t SPAAs?
