The issue with “CAS” and im going to use that term very loosely. Is that at some BRs, on some maps, in some nation vs nation match-ups. CAS can be very very OP.
A well played CAS, under ideal conditions can essentially be untouchable by SPAA and can put down a constant stream of fire that a lot vehicles may not be able to defend against. For example:
I queued in my 11.3 line-up and got a full downtier (10.3-11.3) on the big Tunisia map. I eventually spawned in the Tornado Gr1 and spent 10-15 minutes firing PGMs cross map and the 10.3 SPAAs the enemy team had were doing nothing. Now a single CAP would have killed me with ease. But none decided to spawn a CAP.
(CAP SP costs is an entirely seperate issue and I think CAP shouldnt cost more than maybe 150-200 SP)
The challenge is balancing CAS that is fair without nuking it. The biggest change should be a total ground up overhaul of how SP costs are calculated for aircraft. Which would both simutaneously buff and nerf CAS.
But first they need to add SPAA to fill all the holes, generally buff/refine SPAA and especially at top tier. Decompress and add better SPAA. I think until thats actually done. “CAS Nerfs” are rather tricky to get right, for example for me playing Britain. I have no SPAA between 5.3 and 8.3 So the Skink or Bosvark gets used extensively throughout that BR. A 5.3 Skink SHOULD be bad vs a 7.7 CAS jet. But despite the fact that Britains only SPAA for that BR is a 5.3 doesnt mean that 7.7 CAS should be nerfed…
I read that and see the issue but you nail the real issue and that is not the Tornado but the fact nobody bothered to spawn cap so why nerf CAS if that is the case? Its a human vs human game with every permutation that brings so why keep nerfing and fixing the program when its the players that are the issue?
Yeah… Its a… tocuhy subject that. But in fairness. SPAA costs 70 SP and pure A2A jet (with stock belts, air belts often add a load of SP) is often in the region of 550 SP.
I routinely fly the Sea Harrier FRS1e as CAP at 10.3 and do a good job at maintaining air superiority (at least when im not competing with 11.3 CAS/CAP). But it does sting that I have to spend basically ALL my SP to spawn in to do that role and there isnt necessarily any guarantees that the enemy team is gunna spawn in any aircraft for me to shoot down. I had a match the other day where I got a nearly immediate triple kill vs enemy CAS and then immediately followed it up with a match where I was ciricling the airspace looking for trade for about 10 minutes.
So in that regard. Something needs to be better. Pure CAP aircraft, like the Sea Harrier (running no rocket pods or bombs) should have an SP cost of maybe only 150-200 SP at most. A lot more people would run CAP under those conditions I think.
I want them to drop the spawn cost of ALL aircraft down to like 200 SP, but have loadouts cost significantly more SP to compensate. So in the end, something with bombs costs exactly the same as it does now. Lower BRs where guns can be used effectively as CAS, maybe it should be higher, but often you need ground belts to be effective for that, so just maintaining high ground belt SP cost would mitigate that too a fair degree
Additionally. Some dont want to play aircraft. So may not have a good CAP (or maybe even CAS) aircraft to spawn in. So they could also do with adding the NRB fighter/bomber spawn option so that everyone is on an equal footing on having something they could actually spawn in
You didn’t really witness what CAS used to be in 2016 when British tanks were introduced where single RP-3 could land just near your tank and blow it up. No not even hitting it. Just landing near it. Given how many rockets most planes could carry, single plane was able to wipe entire teams.
After that all rockets were nerfed into the ground requiring direct hit which also translated into AirRB.
Helicopters used to be able to spawn at the start of match with guided missiles. Ka-50 spam we see today is nothing compared to swarms of them back then.
??? what do you mean? SP can significantly be reduced with just 6 kill assists and can spam the same jets multiple times after each death. Fighter jet has their own set of SP and Ground Striker role as well.
I am specifically asking about times CAS had a function REMOVED or reduced in function in order to make playing ground more bearable.
The only thing you mentioned that is an actual nerf, rather than a wish list of buffs, is the capture range of GBUs. I can add the removal of the ability to spam vikhr missiles from Russian helis and the massive up-tier of drones to the list. Maybe the weather effects could be considered a nerf, but they hurt SPAAs at least as much as CAS.
The SP costs are also not worth mentioning as the increases are tiny and don’t actually effect the performance of an aircraft. When there is an A6E sitting 6km above your spawn, completely out of range of all SPAAs at the BR, bombing your entire team back to the stone age, it doesn’t make anybody feel better that he needed 1 extra assist to completely ruin the game for everybody.
Yeah, I started playing in late 2018 so I missed the rocket stuff, I do remember the helis though and later the Mi28s spawning with the S103F rockets at the start of the match and deleting up to 10 players right out of the gate.
What makes you think that a player that doesn’t have a CAP plane because they don’t like playing planes wants an option to pull a plane? Or has the skill to be effective in it? If a player that hasn’t flown before pulls a Mig-29 into a top rank game, even if they have all the needed controls set, will likely get absolutely rinsed and hung out to dry, lose all their SP and probably never try it again.
Additionally its hard to research your ground line up when your forced spending most of each game flying and earning air RP.
How about suggesting we have a no CAS TO GRB to antagonise CAS supporters into telling us how great CAS is followed by a 1000 word essay on how to nerf this brilliant CAS to death?
I already put my suggestions in here, none of them involve removing planes completely or even nerfing them for that matter. they revolve around methods for making the number of planes up more consistent, both to prevent surges of air that simply overwhelm one team and leave the other with no active ground units and to make it more worth while to spawn an SPAA as you would have more consistent engagements.
In many peoples opinions, yes the game is actually that broken. As for why not 8 to 12 years ago, for one I have only been playing for 4 or 5 years, and frankly people where raging about CAS when I started playing, so its nothing new. Also fire and forget A2G weapons with 10 to 20 KM ranges are relatively new as are fighters that carry them. CAS with props and sub sonic jets using dumb bombs can be annoying but A) often miss their rockets/ bombs and B) have to actually fly in close enough that you can fight back with you machine guns.
What you need to understand it that most people who play ground ONLY want to drive their tank and could not care less about planes and do not enjoy being a point and click adventure target for somebody sitting at 10 to 15km in the sky that they cannot even see, much less defend themselves against. And the people that do want to fly and dogfight are SHOCKINGLY mostly playing air battle modes where they don’t have fly in circles and hope somebody pulls a plane for them to shoot.
Now unless you have an actual suggestion please stop wasting my time complaining about people trying to float productive ideas on how to improve the game FOR ALL PLAYERS both tankers and pilots!