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

[warrior412]

@MotorolaCRO

Stakes definitely aren’t 50/50. As an experienced player you should know by now what’s the only prerequisite to joining Ground Battles. This should be clear enough, totally optional military branch can’t have the same stakes as other branch that’s literally required to join in the first place.

Half the vehicles that you may spawn are ground based, the other half are aircraft. That’s how you get to 50-50 (in theory).

As I mentioned, things skewed toward GFs in practice because GFs are given better costs and are favored mechanically.

@MotorolaCRO

If one team can have 16 players, I think limiting optional “picks” to 1/4th of the total size should be more than enough. From 32 players in total, 8 could be in the air at any given time with 24 others on the ground.

Similar efforts have been tried before…and all of them resulted in negative effects for teams (notably ODL).

It’s best to not interfere with players’ freedom of choice at all…let them spawn what they wish and let them/the enemy team sort it out in combat.

@MotorolaCRO

Implying all 15 of the random teammates can/will understand you is wild.

I didn’t say you’d be successful, I said you could try to bargain with the others. (Ultimately, their choice is theirs anyway.)

Beyond that, there’s little to be said except that efforts here to control players’ choices are an effort to affect thousands of players.

@MotorolaCRO

My point still stands. You don’t need to capture points in order to win a game, even outside Battle. In order to win, you either have to deplete enemy team’s tickets to 0 or basically kill every player to toggle that “No more enemy players” ticket bleed. None of those require you to capture anything.

Do you realize what leads up to that advantage or dominance over capture points in the first place ? Kills.
Taking the cap is just an RP/SL bonus to award a team that did better at killing the other team around a certain area on the map.

So your claim could be easily changed into: “Outside Battle, a team that isn’t able to kill the enemies with same effectiveness as the other way around is unlikely to succeed.”

Not really…the main mover of tickets (outside Battle) is traditionally the capture zones. More often than not, one side will best the other via tickets than via TDM. In Battle, the avenue to winning varies between these.

What role aircraft have in all of this is…“limited” to put it flatly. Kills are about the only direct means they have to influencing tickets (100 tickets/kill)…a measly sum in the grand scheme.

[Morvran]

Had a match last night that really puts this thread into focus. Match is going badly, our team is losing and they have an F-16C raining hell down onto our team. Stopping us from pushing. I get killed and so decide to deal with that F-16C. So Spawn in a Sea Harrier FA2. Over the course of the next few minutes. I deal with him and a few other aircraft (which was stupidly easy because no one knows what chaff is in GRB) and the next thing I know, the entire enemy team has quit, as they’ve spawned in CAS/CAP and then died and our team has capped the point to go on to the win.

TLDR. CAS is only powerful if you let it be and CAS doesnt win games. Ground forces do, they lost because they spawn in CAS.

[warrior412]

@Morvran

I deal with him and a few other aircraft (which was stupidly easy because no one knows what chaff is in GRB) and the next thing I know, the entire enemy team has quit, as they’ve spawned in CAS/CAP and then died and our team has capped the point to go on to the win.

Goading the enemy team into aircraft was a common strategy back in 2017.

At that time, tank costs were higher (roughly double) and so it was easier to knock players out of matches by coaxing them into aircraft as second spawns…before immediately killing them. They’d be low on/out of SP and out of the match based on that. (It was also an ideal time to grind defending fighters/SPAA…CAS hype lulled many to obliviousness.)

Sounds like your experience played to a similar tune.

[MotorolaCRO]

@warrior412

Half the vehicles that you may spawn are ground based, the other half are aircraft. That’s how you get to 50-50 (in theory).

Sorry but a totally optional vehicle type can’t have same stakes as required one, we’ll have to disagree on that. It’s obvious who’s much more important there.

@warrior412

Similar efforts have been tried before…and all of them resulted in negative effects for teams (notably ODL).

On the contrary, you could argue that limiting number of CAS at any given moment will also help reduce ODL, because some people will ODL when being killed by air units.

More planes → less ground vehicles → bigger chance for a ground instance to be CAS’d → more CAS related ODLs

@warrior412

It’s best to not interfere with players’ freedom of choice at all…let them spawn what they wish and let them/the enemy team sort it out in combat.

Giving players the freedom to do whatever they want is a double-edged sword to say the least.
I’ve seen whole squads spawning Reserve tier meme vehicles at top tier and doing absolutely nothing.

Is this in line with respecting their freedom of choice ? Yes.
Is this healthy for the match/game itself ? No.

@warrior412

I didn’t say you’d be successful, I said you could try to bargain with the others. (Ultimately, their choice is theirs anyway.)

Language barrier is a thing for a reason. It’s not easy/quick to bypass that in order to even try to bargain.

@warrior412

Beyond that, there’s little to be said except that efforts here to control players’ choices are an effort to affect thousands of players.

Many (if not all) changes will affect thousands of players, don’t really know what you’ve tried to say here.

@warrior412

Not really…the main mover of tickets (outside Battle) is traditionally the capture zones.

This is true when teams have almost the perfect balance of player’s average skill. This doesn’t need to happen though and is often not the case with steamrolls being pretty common.

@warrior412

Kills are about the only direct means they have to influencing tickets (100 tickets/kill)…a measly sum in the grand scheme.

In theory, 16k tickets equals to 160 kills, meaning every player has 10 vehicles at their disposal which is surely way above average. In reality though, for example, your enemy team of 16 people might only have 30-40 available vehicles to respawn in total (remember, you only need a singular vehicle to get into a GRB game), so getting 30-40 kills will effectively equal to 16k tickets or ~400-500 per kill in this example.

It’s also important to note that even if you have enough SP and something to spawn, you might choose not to for various reasons. (your team got curb stomped, spawn camping, CASpam, bad map, etc…).

[ZendikarHaven]

@Morvran

TLDR. CAS is only powerful if you let it be and CAS doesnt win games. Ground forces do, they lost because they spawn in CAS.

I’ll pop in here with some comments, based on my AB experience - CAS’s main advantage is that sudden shock/flurry of death, especially to problematic/hard to kill vehicles.

Used right it can be fairly lethal - I have won several AB games due to well-timed rocket/bomb attacks, but without tanks, or if used incorrectly, its not good.

[DragonDaan]

I mostly play top tier and currently the only SPAA that can effectively and consistently counter CAS in the Pansir. Gaijin said they will be working on new multi vehicle AA system so that they can also give NATO countrys good SPAA.

But I think that atleast till we get those we should greatly reduce the spawn cost of aircraft with a air to air loadout. So that instead of spanning in your useless ADATS you will beable to spawn in a F15C and protect your allies on the ground. If we make it that a for example the F15E gets a spawn cost of 250 with a 9M loadout and 300 with AIM-120 people would beable to spawn them even after dying. and of cource make air to ground weapons more expensive so that it still takes the same amount of point to spawn in a air to ground load out.

This in combination with increasing the spawn cost for some of the super OP CAS weapons like KH-38MT would help fix the CAS problem in top tier. At least untill we get more effective SPAA.

[Odonhull]

Even pantsir often cannot defend their team effectively + spaa rewards for killing planes are a joke.
Imo, augmenting the spawn cost of planes with ground ordnance + making the rewards for killing them actually viable for spaas would start to help. Same with helis, and the ones with fire and forget can even simply pop in and out of cover, shoot their load and hide, before any spaa can hit them which is straight up unbalanced

[Maldrokk]

Remove ticket loss for ground vehicles destroyed by CAS

[GemmiestGem]

Massively increase spawn cost for AP belts and dedicated ground attack armament, SL rewards for downing enemy aircraft, plane module research if you kill an enemy CAS aircraft in your own, and add a spawn point penalty for very short lives/slamming into the ground to discourage revenge bombing

[Turboyota]

I will say it again and again.
Ground spawn for planes without exceptions. And place the airfields in top tier even further away then now.
The surrounding air map of the GRB map is also big enough to place either AI Patriot or S300/400 batteries or equivalent systems + some SHORAD to protect them in random places behind the respective airfields. And if not, make the maps bigger.
The modern battlefield isn’t a free fly zone. Players need to work for that.
Likewise ARMs can then be introduced to give CAS players more to do then just ruin the fun of ground players while being unchallenged.
Seeing helicopter players just climbing straight up above their field without even retracting their landing gear because they know that (in lower BRs) IR missiles and SPAAGs can’t reach them drives me f****** nuts. Heli play in absolute top tier is harder but even there you get the occasional match where for some reason nobody thinks about spawning some AA in. That is the players fault. Otherwise you also see the edge case where every AA is just overwhelmed by CAS and get killed by planes far out of reach while trying to deal with the helicopter threat.
War thunder always claims to depict a realistic battlefield but CAS gameplay is so abysmal and so far away from actual combat on a battlefield with two peer factions that it genuinely ruins the fun for the majority of the players in every top tier match.
And don’t even mention the combat drones. Whoever had that idea hopefully gets the same socks for Christmas every damn year. Just get rid of them (although Patriot/S-300 etc. would cover this bs)

[Aenrion]

Add CEP to weapons, currently they feel like they are laser accurate, add a few meters drift here and there, a lock on should not guarantee a kill, having to commit more than 1 missle per target would be good, but bombs would be relatively unaffected

[_zok]

One of the simplest solutions to making it balanced is forcing first person only. It’d make it far harder to see targets and force more skill tbh.

[Pangolin_Fan]

@Maldrokk

Remove ticket loss for ground vehicles destroyed by CAS

Huh? Do you have any just how few tickets are drained when an enemy is destroyed?

This IS a discussion about GRB and not ARB.

@GemmiestGem

Massively increase spawn cost for AP belts and dedicated ground attack armament

Just saying “InCrEasE cAS SpAWN CosT” doesn’t work. The cost of a planes needs a complete rework, factoring things like

• BR of the vehicle
• Flight performance
• Effectiveness at strafing
• Multirole capability
• Countermeassures

And that’s just a handful of factors for the plane itself. The ordinance it carries also needs it own set of factors, and would also need completely separate factors for WW2 and post-war weaponry.

Just increasing airplane spawn cost doesn’t solve anything.

@GemmiestGem

SL rewards for downing enemy aircraft, plane module research if you kill an enemy CAS aircraft in your own

Increasing the reward for shooting down CAS only encourages more players to be useless.

@GemmiestGem

and add a spawn point penalty for very short lives/slamming into the ground to discourage revenge bombing

There’s already a penalty for crashing your plane for a revenge kill. It’s called burning 500+ sp on a singular 100 sp vehicle.

@_zok

One of the simplest solutions to making it balanced is forcing first person only. It’d make it far harder to see targets and force more skill tbh.

No, that wouldn’t increase the need for skill, that would just be a dumb inconvinience. A better solution is forcing full-real controls in GRB, but keeping third person.

[Maldrokk]

@Pangolin_Fan

Huh? Do you have any just how few tickets are drained when an enemy is destroyed?

This IS a discussion about GRB and not ARB.

Yes it is. 100 per. So losing thousands of tickets to planes in GRB is annoying.

[Pangolin_Fan]

Bro is really choosing the most insignificant factor of CAS in Warthunder to complain about.

The only scenario where CAS effects the outcome of the game with ticket loss from kills, is where both teams are on the brink of losing.

[Maldrokk]

Taking small steps toward balance is bad since they aren’t doing much else?

[McPlopish]

i would stop pandering to one nation when it comes to AA and make sure every nation got a decent defence throughout the BRs.

but it seems “that” nation will get every AA know to man while other gets to wait up to a year, because they are finally they might have overdone it.

[Pangolin_Fan]

@Maldrokk

Taking small steps toward balance is bad since they aren’t doing much else?

Do you truly believe that Gajin would waste their time, money, and manpower on such a stupid balance chance that doesn’t even slightly address the actual issue? Idk how It’s so hard for CAS haters to understand this, but when something is overpowered, not every nerf is a positive change.

[Maldrokk]

@Pangolin_Fan

not every nerf is a positive change

When it’s CAS it is :)

[masinator2012]

Remove the ability for CAS to kill any Ground vehicle and only be able to disable it.
The CAS abuse has reached new hights and needs to be balanced.