6 planes per team in sky at one time no, its not a limit that they can spawn only 6 planes only 6 planes can be in the sky at one time per team, someone got shooted down next person can get to a plane, person that died in plane have a cooldown for 2-5 minutes from spawning in plane he cant wait in “spawn chose screen” so we wouldn’t se plane campers he is gonna be auto spawned in first available tank in next minute, players who would take only one tank rest planes just gonna be kicked out of the match after death in one plane or they don’t gonna be able to spawn anymore
I’d say make SPAA br redundant, what does it mean? Make it works in a way similar to CAS which the better SPAA requires more points to spawn, example you can use the Strela at 6.0 if you could afford to spawn it with 1500sp etc, because players like to argues that CAS is balanced by spawn point so their A-6E or SU-25K are allowed to get free kills because theyve earned it, but I would prefer Tank-Only-Mode as the best solution.
put bases for bombing in GB, and more tikekts/more time
It would be interesting if you could bomb the enemy runway and put it out of action or severely damage it.
3 Likes
In response to the OP:
Increase ground ordinance SP depending on its type (especially Heli ATGMs and absurdly large bombs like the Pe8)
Leave base spawn points for specific Air combat loadouts the same as current. Redo some of the weird SP costs for some air specific options (why is the air targets belt for the M61 vulcan 150sp gaijin??)
Thats about it really.
Basically make it so you cant cap a base in a BT-5, J out, and then spawn in FAB-5000 Pe-8 immediately. But you can still spawn in a blank fighter with that to shoot down said Pe-8.
3 Likes
That actually sounds like a good idea, I wouldn’t mind first spawning the Sturmtiger and range find the airfield or helipad and toss a few 380mm into the hangar, this also somehow makes artillery platforms like BKAN or M109 variants more useful and doing exactly what they are design to do.
That mechanic does actually exist in game already. Called modular Airfields They are used in EC gamemodes like SB. Drop enough bombs on the runway and it prevents spawning on it.
But there is 2 issues I see
The first is that currently, the amount of bombs required would mean that would be entirely impractical. Youd never put enough bombs in a single match to disable it. This amount could be significantly reduced but it leads onto problem 2
The second and the biggest issue. It would only make things worse. Whichever team got CAS up first, could knock out the enemy AF and gunarantee easy air supremecy. Not too mention it would also likely disable the ability to spawn CAP. Which again only further buffs CAS. Matches would snowball even faster than they do now.
1 Like
…We’re turning ground battles into air sim with player tanks?
Thats a bad idea because some nations have infinitie more stronger CAS planes than others and is not the same 6 stukas with a single bomb than 6 A1-H with 6 bombs each.
The only good and easy way to fix the CAS problem is increase the SP cost.
also whoever is using T-6-1 command to call air alert, that command should shortly display the location of the enemy aircraft in the minimap
There is another command for that
so ? there are always mix nation games and you compare 6.7 plane to 1.3 plane? still that gonna lower planes in sky SP cost don’t
6.3 to 3.3 is just example but you want compare another BR and is the same, certian nations have better CAS than others.
SP increase is necceseray, is stupid see people just can spawn a P-8 with a 5,000kg bomb just after cap a zone in a reserve tank and press J.
Love your ideas. As someone who plays a lot of SPAA, I have some ideas for buffing it.
- Add plane spotting to SPAA. It would function similarly to spotting on light-tanks, but planes would be outlined as in Realistic Air Battles. If distance are also given on the plane, then it should be rough estimates, at most.
- More places for SPAA to reload. Capture points are always checked by enemy planes for easy kills and its a death sentence for any vehicle to stay on a capture point.
- Greater spawn point reward for shooting down planes, especially strike-craft and bombers. This will also give teams on the receiving end of CAS spam some way of spawning more replacement vehicles.
- Ability for SPAA to change vehicles. Nothing is more boring and awful than spawning in as SPAA, and then finding no planes. At best, you’re in a SPAA that can flank and capture points. But you’re always less useful on the ground than other vehicles.
3 Likes
That looks to be coming sometime in the summer. I guess September
Planes in general are problematic on ground because, unlike in reality, AA capabilities are not a permanent thing around and there needs to be some level of compensation to it.
Playing at 4.3 RGB iam thinking about these things:
On the plane side i would like it if a couple of options would be testen to determine how viable they would be:
- lower fuel/ammo count to require more frequent refueling, preventing planes to dominate an area
- lower top speed, to prevent fast responses and allow for easier tracking
- lower flight ceiling to prevent bombardment from heights where SPAAs struggle to hit
- larger auto spot area around ground spawn points
- reduction of bomb effects, requring more precision to destroy something
- more spread on gun weapons
- spotting or even auto spotting towards planes under certain conditions (close enough to an ally, when firing weapons, something like this)
- also a mode without any planes, i would realy like to see how this would play out
For Ground forces i would like to see this:
- propper training Area for SPAAs
- better zoom on SPAA guns to make it easier/possible to see tracers and get some assumtions
- snap in for the range finder if the cursor is near an airplane and faster range finding if the target is an airplane
- better turret rotation speeds for SPAAs to make it possible to react better
- XP similar to hit XP for near misses to make SPAA worthwile even if the target is not hit, but nearly hit, would also help to get some idea how far players where off
- Moveable turret MG for all Tanks. Especially on the lower tiers this is not a thing, which is not suprising as the reality often had dedicated AA units nearby or tanks with specific roles where no target for planes
What would I do personally for rebalancing CAS? Many things.
The problems I see, summarized, are as follows:
- Revenge bombing sucks.
- Planes are a cheesy powerup that are always going to be imbalanced so long as they remain such. No matter what gets buffed, nerfed, whined, dined, or screwed - one team will always get it up before the other, who will then resultingly complain about being on the receiving end.
- The counters are not available enough, or if they are they do not function well enough to coax the average joe to bother so much as learning them
- The mode allows people to enter into it totally unprepared, thereby enabling said people to get bombed and then complain how unbalanced it is when each of those souls knows damn well they didn’t bother learning what counters do exist.
- CAS is completely lacking most of its real-world objectives, forcing it into a role it only did a little - direct tank-busting.
As for how to solve the problems? Each of those points above has multiple sub-problems needing fixing.
Solving Revenge Killing
This is to some extent inevitable in any shooter. But it is my firm belief that no game should intentionally encourage it without giving any means to truly stop it. War Thunder has an infantry shooter-grade kill cam in a game where 99.9% of tanks are not agile nor small enough to realistically relocate in time. Hence, I think the mechanics encouraging it need to be completely removed. We can’t have intelligent discussion on CAS when half of the respondents are fuming more than the BI-2’s nitric acid over being revenge bombed. So how would I reduce the frequency of it to where it’d become a tolerable annoyance?
- Remove the kill camera completely, instead provide its current footage in server replays. Then players can learn how they died and not abuse the knowledge while the game is still going.
- Force planes to spawn on the runway, or low alt takeoff-speed behind the runway if they physically can’t take off.
- Remove both helicopter pads, modify the airfield complex so that helicopters spawn to the side of the plane runway. Helicopters now get functional AAA protection that doesn’t snipe planes over the tank battlefield.
- Remove the “team is capturing zone X” messages - are ticket bars flashing’ ceasing and icons changing color not enough? This message is little more than “hi Im a stationary tank, please shove a bomb/rocket/cannon shell/missile up my exhaust pipe!”
“Sky Is For Heroes” Must Go
The best counter to a plane is and always will be another plane. Having planes be powerups, and having any weapon be locked to powerup status (other than the nuke) will ensure that weapon is fundamentally unbalanceable. In Air RB matches, fighters and attackers spawn at the same time - except for airspawning ones, a clean fighter will always get to useful speed before a loaded plane. Thus, if the Combined modes allowed plane spawns regardless of loadout from the match start, fighters on the enemy team would always swat down CAS on yours, and vice-versa. People would quickly learn more planes =/= higher win chance.
- Implement Simulator’s style of Spawn Points - each player gets 1000SP at game start, but cannot earn more through kills, hits, caps, assists, etc etc.
- Lower tank spawn costs so it becomes impractical for CAS to directly knock players out of a match so easily unless the player in question was already on his/her last legs. This replicates reality, and encourages CAS to focus first on new objectives added for it (and tanks) to do instead of just donking on player tanks.
- Remove point doubling. Tanks should be so numerous that CAS practically can’t kill even a third of them.
We fight fire with fire here.
Making CAS Practically Counter-able
Most SPAAG are not fun to play for the average player, unless they can also delete tanks easily from reasonable distances. For any SPAAG to be in a useful position to help defend their team, and thus not sit in the spawn zone, they will 9/10 times need to defend against at least one tank of some kind. Problem is, many cannot.
In addition, using SPAAG against planes is not exactly all that fair, and it depends solely on the plane being dumb enough to headon your SPAAG or nearly so. Most average joes are NOT going to play dozens of matches per SPAAG gun type to learn the lead. Derp artillery VT shells are no serious replacement, either, due to gun traverse speed. Thus if we want the ranting to end, SPAAG must be made far easier to use. Planes gain far more advantage from 3rd person camera than tanks or SPAAG do.
- Give non-radar SPAAG lead indicators at shorter ranges than what radar ones get. No more than 1.5km on an aced crew, no less than 1.0km on a bone-stock one. This teaches average joes both where and most importantly WHEN to shoot.
- I would also give derp artillery the same lead markers vs aircraft only when VT fuse rounds are loaded.
- Undo the long-since-redundant nerf to SPAAG belt compositions, and lift the tiny shell count limits on high-tier SPAAGs’ AP(FS)DS belts.
- Give any SPAAG cannon its missing anti-tank ammo types. 40mm Bofors guns are missing APDS on both varieties. 37mm Flak are missing APCR. The Chinese ZSU-57/2 is missing APCR. Obviously the low tier trucks do not need these rounds, but from the M19/Ostwind-level onwards, they do, with appropriate BR adjustments of course.
- Undo SAM controllability nerfs, and remove any and all ability for SAMs to be prematurely detonated by incoming missiles or unguided weaponry. “Rocket Walling” should not exist, period.
Mitigation of Future Complaint Ability
This is more a personal gripe of mine - I see the mere ability for players to enter into a mode without using (or even knowing how to use) all the appropriate tools as dangerous for the health of the game at large, as well as the sanity of people posting here sifting through dozens of CAS rant threads.
- Give all players BR-appropriate default fighters, CAS, and even SPAAG/SAMs with preset loadouts & ammo loads in their decks whether they intentionally take those unit types from the hangar, or not. This already exists in Combined Naval AB and RB modes, where it is quite balanced, and served to snuff out any trace of “Naval Only Mode” before it could truly ignite.
This “solves” the entire “tank only mode” debate, because now there are no more tank-only players. Coupled with the aforementioned spawn cost changes and SPAAG/SAM rebuffs, no player will be able to complain “CAS OP” without first answering why they didn’t use the counters. If they try to complain anyway, they won’t be taken seriously any longer. If they say they tried and got outplayed, well that’s just War Thunder luck. The horse is dragged to water, and its snout is shoved into the water to make it drink - if it still doesn’t drink the water, it’s its own fault if it dies of thirst.
With that loathsome debate finally snuffed out in a way to where it’s never coming back, then real discussion can take place on how to make CAS truly fit the mode.
Giving CAS Actual Purpose
CAS is lacking most of its real objectives. The real weapon mainly shredded supply lines, blew up trains, bombed supply bases, strafed airfields, snuffed out artillery, and annihilated static defenses. Ingame we have none of that to do, making player tanks the only target for CAS. Easy to see why there is so much complaining - tanks rightfully feel like fish in a barrel. Maps for tanks are urban sardine cans, and frankly even Russian tanks aren’t that great on said maps.
- Make current spawn zones double as caps, and current caps double as spawns for the team controlling them. Inspired by OG Star Wars Battlefront (2) Command Posts, but Naval EC already has caps working like this.
- Tank maps can now be made much larger, giving tanks more room to move and not be fish in a barrel. Upon first death, a player can then spawn near the frontline at a cap in most cases. The larger number of and increased variability of spawn location also handily solves spawn camping.
- The new fused objectives are surrounded by fortifications with working guns (or missile launchers in high BRs). These must be destroyed to begin de-capping a zone. Naval EC already has this. This gives CAS something quite important to focus on to help their team advance that isn’t player tanks - every piece of ordinance used on an AI is one less complainer here.
- Make the artillery support we call upon actual map targets using player tank-fidelity models. This would also enable inclusion of larger artillery that would be impractical as actual player units, and even make it varied by nation. Artillery barrages would increase in caliber and lethality over the BRs, until modern tiers arrive where current 150-155s firing in “multiple round simultaneous impact” style would be for everyone. These would be targets for CAS, again drawing considerable heat away from player tanks.
- Reintroduce bombing targets on Combined Ground maps. More stuff for planes and helicopters to do besides hit players.
- Add supply lines which drive from the bombing targets to the tank map. For every vehicle that arrives safe, that team gains a chunk of tickets. Yet more stuff for planes to kill that isn’t player tanks.
Lastly, increase the match timer so we have time to enjoy all this stuff as well as current slugfests.
This response is so massive and complex because the problem it aims to fix is that massive and complex. For those who read to the end, thank you.
3 Likes
This would make all open-tops and lightly armored tanks go obsolete. Not to mention planes with 12.7mm, 20mm, 30mm (doesn’t require anti-tank belt) destroying other tanks with ease.
And works because naval units have AI AA.
It doesn’t.
All You have proposed won’t change a thing when it comes to air vs tanks balance and will only be an excuse to silence people wanting just a tank vs tank gameplay. We all know that You just don’t want it to get added ;).
1 Like
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Increase SP cost for bombs exceeding 2000lbs dramatically. They are the lowest skill weapons in the game and some work more like nukes than bombs. They should cost way more to spawn in.
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Give all SPAA spotting and allow planes to be spotted.
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Make revenge bombing against TOS, resulting in account timeouts.
I think that solves the most annoying aspects of CAS mechanics in WT, but it also counters the tools the least skilled players resort to so obviously it will never happen. As much as I love playing air I’d probably play half as many games with an air spawn if some Timmy couldn’t kamikaze me in an Me262 because I had the audacity to kill their Tiger II H.
1 Like
How should this be regulated?
I’m automatically screwed if the opponent who killed me is also generally an important target that has to be taken out of the battle. We know how well you can rely on important targets being ignored for a long time in battle.