If you could, how would you re-balance CAS in Ground Battles?

I think this suggestion has been made a lot of times over the years. I remember this was frequently a favorite topic of discussion even in the game chat during ground batlles.
However gaijin knows that most players are not masochist enough to voluntarily take missiles and bombs in the head when they can play tank only mode and be rid of the cas headache forever.

2 Likes

Is there a source for that statement?

The major reason why we don’t have TO is because CAS permiums sell a lot, no other reason

Sidenote but 10/10 nickname

1 Like

Premium tanks sell almost twice as much judging by amount of played games. T80/m1a1 and su30mk2/mkk for example. And that is without splitting battles into arb and grb ones. So actual difference is much bigger considering vast majority 9f those kills - air kills. Dedicated cas jets like su25k, a10a and su39 have around 1/6 of t80ue1 battles, again, without arb/grb split.

If your logic worked TO would have been in game for years already because tank players pay much more.

1 Like

Fair enough, as i said that only one of the reason yet still big because even if less then premium tanks thos planes still sell for upwards of 70$… And a company will never rid itself of any form of income

1 Like

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.

6 Likes

That is true, hence why they dont do any radical actions and instead reach for some balance. Balance isnt really their forte tho but at least they are trying.

1 Like

Sure but… Some radical action here is required, i don’t wonna say that the game will die… because it won’t but it will surely lose players

I actually thought about this some time ago. What if instead of j outs you could spawn aa/cas/fighter and be able to switch to it whenever you wish like with drones or multi vehicle sam? It would have drawback like your vehicle will be inactive if you switch to smth else. But its better than j outs

Just being able to leave vehicle like air can do on airport is enough

That heavily depends on vehicles in question. While su30sm2 can enforce its conditions to ground and air, a10c or f111f can only enforce 1000 and 1 way of “hit” to their agm65. Hence why balance decisions shouldnt be universal but individual for each case. So we dont have situations where kh31pd costs as much as harm or agm65 costs as much as kh29t or kh38mt.
And to add salt to the wound sometimes side with strongest weaponry also gets wide choice of munitions and strategies to choose from. While others are stuck with this dookie at 11.0 and 11.7:

Yeah, this is the first and most important change in attitude they need to make in regard to balancing CAS.

Weapon to weapon changes dramatically, even BR to BR on the same weapon can change it dramatically.

Yet it doesnt matter if its a reserve rank aircraft or top tier. X weapon is balanced the same

(I.e unguided bombs cost the same SP at all BRs, why? past about 11.0, maybe even 10.0, Id go almost as far to say that unguided bombs shouldnt even have an SP cost, definetly at 12.0+ if nothing else)

1 Like
  1. People would abuse vehicle switching to be in multiple places at once.

  2. People would abuse vehicle switching for low-tier scout drones.

  3. It wouldn’t solve any issues, so it’s just nothing but downsides.

Instead of giving players easily abusable vehicle swaps, we should just discourage SPAA and encourage CAP.

SPAA is boring, especially 7.0+ where all SPAA gets aimbot and or missiles. CAP actually involves effort, even into missile BRs.

If it would require you to leave your position and go special zone (spawn probably which is spot which every cas player checks) it would be too much drawbacks compared to what light tanks and multi sams have right now imo.
One guy gets eye of god with ability to spam scout markers on enemies while you have to do all that just to not die.

Ive had the same thought. I dont think it would necessarily be too powerful overall, but maybe mandate it being landed at the AF, or something?

Also, with multi-vehicle SAMs, they could also do with a relatively weak, but viable AFV option as well, so you had both something to defend your SPAA but also gives you something to do when there is nothing to shoot down. But perhaps make it optional, so SPAA would still cost 70, but SPAA+AFV would cost 300

Could limit it to 1 vehicle of each class (anti tank / anti air / close air support / interceptor). Plus inactive vehicles will be vulnerable to enemy attacks.

Well its either this or bomb in the face of multiple players after rearm. Also markers should be nerfed to what they are in sim right now. At least.

Would solve issue of having to self destruct just to spawn other type of vehicle.

You will still be able to spawn cap the moment you get enough sp and thing is you can swap between clearing skies or doing ground objectives whenever you need without sabotaging your team heavily ticket or usefulness wise. You kill enemy plane, let your plane cruise somewhere and do ground stuff until air is spotted again. Not current you kill 1 plane and wait 3000 years for another to spawn.

I think devs missed big opportunity when they introduced multi vehicle systems. And this thought got more solid after release of nuclear thunder. Its not about afv tho, mostly about aa. In this mode you can clearly see buk site (one near coast which used to slap flanking planes without radar lock) being protected by shilka, short range air defense. Why player controlled multi vehicle sites dont have this component? You can say that someone else can spawn shorad but in real battles average teammate wont do that. Playerbase is too focused on grind and not actual teamplay. Sun will explode long before your teammate decides to spawn shorad to make sure enemy doesnt just strafe you.
No need to sim ec aim wh sidam bots. Let it be manual and requiring player to switch to it. With sp increase. But at least give players such ability.

Yeah, thats not a bad idea either, but the tricky bit though is what to add to most nations that isnt trash.

1 Like

to be fair i actually dont have answer to that one.

That i agree on.

1 Like

So you’re saying every player should control 5 vehicles?

Respawning isn’t an “issue.” It’s a game mechanic featured in literally millions of games.

Or in reality, your plane is gonna be shot down while you’re in a tank fight and now you just burned 500 SP to shoot down a single guy, and give enemy team free SP.

Players do not need such ability. There is no good reason for players to control multiple vehicles, with the exception of multi vehicle SAMs meant to be operated from a single vehicle.

in a mode with limited respawns AND limited number of times you can respawn a single vehicle, it is a massive issue if you have to leave a perfectly fine tank to switch to a counter.

2 Likes