Right, finally had time to sit down and go through this.
I have no issue accepting that your intended argument was about game design rather than realism.
however that wasnt what your original wording said. your clarification does not make my interpretation retroactivelly incorrect.
it is the responsibility of the person making an argument to present it clearly enough that reader can understand what is being argued.
If your intended meaning only became clear after another explanation, that is clarification of your position, not proof that my initial reading was made in bad faith.
What wider scope am i ignoring then, according to you?
entirely different argument. youre arguing player retention, im arguing game mechanics. you can retain players while not cattering to the lowest common denominator.
you dont need to minimize nor entirely remove consequences of poor decision making to retain a playerbase.
Issue is, most tanks (as in not IFVs, not tank destroyers, not SPAA) often offer next to no meaningful counterplay. Most tanks lack the elevation, traverse, detection tools, or effective weapons to contest an aircraft, and they entirely hinge on CAS player making a mistake.
Except issue is whenever CAS is balanced, not if it has reason to exists due to game being marketed as combined arms.
narrow scope is not the same thing as a reductionist argument.
CAS completly removes consideration for my tank armor, weapon, weapon handling, gun depression, effective range and significant portion of the terrain consideration as planes do not care whenever im holding high ground or not from the PvP interaction.
mechanic can add complexity while still reducing the importance of existing mechanics through bypassing them. Why would player ever need to learn where to pen heavy tank when he can just bomb it?
with how many ground scouting vehicles and air spotting gadgets such as TGPs there are, how small maps are, and fact plane can see where the cap points are and whenever is someone capturing them currently, ON TOP of aircraft having bird eye view of the battlefield which removes lot of spotting issues ground vehicles are facing, that really is not an issue.
Except you should move after firing most of the time anyway to prevent counterfire from enemy tanks.
CAS does not create this skill.
except not every position that hides you from the CAS is beneficial to ground gameplay, ie. forest might cover you from air, but you might be exposed to tanks. Again, CAS wins back positioning I gain from destroying enemy just by existing, as im now forced to cede position just because i could get bombed and i can do nothing about it without Jing out of my tank.
not to mention many maps dont even offer cover from CAS at all.
Except I can still interact with the rushing enemy and shoot them with the tank im already in, i dont have to switch to CAP or AA by Jing out to deal with them first. I can reposition, switch flanks, flank and ambush the enemy ground units.
CAS offers no such interaction without me switching vehicles, ie. losing the one im currently in.
issue isnt simply that nobody wants to play AA.
You could have team full of IRIS-T SLMs vs. team of 1 Mi-28NM and 14 other tanks. team full of SLM would lose, and not to tanks.
you need to have VT-1 for that. But VT-1 cant deal with fixed wing Kh-38MT slingers. So you need to have at least two players active in two different vehicles at all times to have all your bases covered against one player that effectively dictates the conditions of the engagmenet by simply choosing what he wants to spawn.
In this scenario, single attacker has more flexibility how to attack than i do selecting how to defend.
I need to predict what threat will appear, whereas CAS player just picks what he wants.
And once again, I cant do that unless i lose the tank im already in.
Im not saying CAS prevents me from flanking (kinda does but not the point). Im asking why CAS must be the most efficient solution with little to no drawbacks. if CAS the faster, safer, and more reliable solution, does that make those ground tactics less relevant? and thus new player does not need to learn flanking, map and vehicle properties? once again, bypassing most of the tank vs tank interaction?
im not saying youre literally repeating the healer example. Im saying that the point from the example remains, that encountering a disadvantageous engagement means the solution should be a separate counter rather than using tactics within the existing interaction.
Im not saying CAS removes ground tactics, im saying it heavily devalues them. Why should new player spend 5 minutes studiying map, planning a flank route and then executing it when he can just spent 1 minute larping as Tomahawk missile and deliver 500kg bomb right next to my forehead?
If warthunder in the next update addsmechanic called “the button” which, if pressed, kills a random enemy on the map no strings attached, its technically more player choice, but it does not improve the gameplay.
Once again, issue is whenever CAS is balanced, not if it has reason to exists due to game being marketed as combined arms.
game does not need to accomodate for every playstyle at expense of the core mechanics.
Im however not saying they should be punished, im saying actions should have consequences. Its PvP game afterall, if they want to live out their powerfantasy and be unkillable machine, they can go play some singleplayer game with cheats instead.
warthunder is niche game, and it shouldnt compromise its niche, and thus, identity, to catter to wider audience.
I find it funny this somehow implies you equate “thinking” with “not having fun”.
Except, once again, CAS completly bypasses this problem. the player lears nothing but to larp as tomahawk. if he cant do that next time he runs across someone in the exact same position, what will he do then?
Asking for people to learn basic tactics isnt asking them to play chess at grandmaster level. People complain about somua SM having too strong frontal armor, is telling them to “just flank it since it sides are paper” same as demanding them to learn some difficult chess strategy?
You cant simultaneously use real-world tactical roles as justification for why CAS provides meaningful gameplay depth, and then dismiss tactical gameplay considerations by saying WT is not tactical game.
Thats overstatement af.
Advantage does not neccesarily need to have hard counter.
Sniper holding down a lane can be countered with smoke, team tactics etc. You dont give other players button that nukes every enemy sniper ballsack.
allright so someone earns an advantage, and as reward for earning that advantage, game should provide a hard counter that requires less skill to the enemy?
However im not saying I should be unmolestable by CAS when i make mistakes, I say that even if i dont make any, CAS can still decide to molest me and theres little i can do about it.
Two issues with this.
First, what we dont have is Tank counters AA counters CAS.
We have an orbital cannon that counters both rock AND scissors.
Second, players dont get to meaningfully choose. You first spawn a ground vehicle not knowing what, when or even IF air threat will appear, whereas CAS will always spawn only after cards been dealt (in regards to GRB at least).
That i can agree on, but issue with me having to lose my tank before i can get in said counter persists.