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

Game Discussion Realistic Battle
1822

So I’ve noticed a lot of points people bring up when it comes to air in ground battles and I thought I’d like to share my opinion as an avid tank vs tank enjoyer.

  • This is the x number post complaining about CAS!

Ok then, if there’s this many posts complaining about CAS in ground battles then maybe we shouldn’t berate the person for not using search or whatever but instead address the issue as soon as possible because it seems to be reoccurring.

  • Bruh just get good and play SPAA/Jets/Helicopter

This is a bad approach to the argument provided as it fundamentally changes how the user wants to play the game. For me personally I find pure tank on tank engagements in this game the most enjoyable aspect of the game for me, I have no care for air battles or naval battles and I assume there are lots of other players like me. From a gameplay stand point it seems unintuitive to force the user to play something they don’t necessarily enjoy just so they can win or get some form of vengeance. Added in the fact that it is entirely unrewarding to play either when SPAA is unreliable and earns no bonuses for knocking out aircraft and aircraft (in my opinion) is so easy to get kills with it seems almost trivial and boring. I hope some people can understand from a purely tank players perspective it’s just not fun to play either of these roles and to force someone like me into those roles goes against why I play the game in the first place.

  • So what are the issues with CAS at the moment?

One of the big issues I’ve noticed at the moment is in the name, “Close” air support. In reality it doesn’t seem like the aircraft are close at all. Yeah there are some good players who maneuver close to the ground avoiding radar and effectively bomb targets and they shouldn’t be discredited. However for each of those players there is another player in a helicopter about 4-5km away from the AO successfully bombing targets from the safety of a hill top. This would make sense in a real life scenario where tank columns would be kilometers apart from one another but they aren’t in game, the scale is much smaller in the maps.

I get that some of these aircraft and their real life counterparts do carry massive payloads with pylons of 18 missiles each or whatever but is that really needed to be accurate portrayed in game? For balance reasons wouldn’t it make sense to give the apache maybe just 8 hellfires and not 16? Think about it, most top tier battles consist of players with one life premiums, maybe a backup if they got one. This means that one good CAS player effectively wins the entire game because they have the ability to knock out on average half the team with one load of their pylons.

Drones… ahh drones… they are a mistake. Yeah I understand that modern warfare is moving towards the idea of drones and the tank is becoming somewhat redundant, we are seeing the effects of this today with war footage. But does this need to be replicated in war thunder? A game which is renowned for it’s historical accuracy and amazingly detailed arsenal of vehicles just for players to reach the top tier and get reminded that their fully armored box is just a thermal image for some vehicle 8km away from you?

In my opinion I think it’s too easy to get rewarded for killing a ground unit from the air than it is vice versa, there are many more qualified people who have years of data from the game to back up which features should be changed. I don’t think we need JTAC levels of realism to obtain coordinates to bomb targets but I also think that one button fire and forget missiles are too simple and easy for the game. And all of this doesn’t necessarily make top tier air RB any more fun for people, I’m not surprised that people enjoy bullying ground forces more than getting locked on from 12km in the air by another jet after spending 10 minutes just taking off.

In conclusion I know a lot of people aren’t going to be happy about this with the “muh jets grr” and “just get good” arguments and I would employ those people to put themselves in the shoes of people who have enjoyed this game for years just playing tanks for tanks. I believe the issue of CAS only persists in top tier mainly because of the speed of the aircraft, the fire and forget being easy to use and hard to mess up, there being no reliable counter to them other than subjecting yourself to the pain that is SPAA and the fact that most players in top tier only respawn once and they’re out.

Thank you for reading this and I hope my opinions can add some value to the conversation.

3 Likes
1823

Agree with everything you wrote, but to clarify the “close” part of CAS doesn’t refer to the distance between the aircraft and the target, but between the target and friendlies. A plane could shoot a missile from 200km away and it will still be CAS if the enemy it targets is close to a friendly.

1 Like
1824

These would both worsen the problem.

This is a bad approach to the argument provided, as it expect Gajin to fundamentally change how Warthunder is designed to be played.

Warthunder is meant to be a combined arms team game. If you don’t wanna make an actual participation on your team, then play a different game or stop complaining.

Seriously? Out of all the thing in the game you choose to complain about, you choose hellfires? Not Ka-50/52s, not Mi-28s, not Kh-38 or AGM-65s or GBUs or Paveways (things that are actually useful), you choose hellfires?

Same goes for a good tank player.

1825

You’re being dishonest and acting like there’s no possibility of respawning, and that the entire team has to be the same as you every spawn.

I can’t moisten that paper bag any more, it’s already sodden.

1826

Maybe it’s actually you that isn’t playing the game the way it was designed…

1827

One of the reasons I have pretty much quit(Maybe it’s just a break) is that I play GRB and my ground forces has really outstripped my CAS forces.I have tanks at 7BR for nearly every nation and my CAS is 3 BR behind on the small nations and two BR on the big ones.
I stopped at 7BR with US tanks but my CAS is at 5.
I have next to know interest in the air games,it really is childish and boring,more so that GRB is now it’s spammed with artillery.

I’m probably not the only one who has this issue.When you do get mid game with no premium it does grind to a halt unless you play for hours at a time and I don’t have the desire to do that anymore.
At around mid BR many of the lesser nations have hardly anything in the line up ,like Sweden or France and I am(was) only running one vehicles to try and grind them.

Now the maps are narrow and the big maps filled with no go zones I cant even take a light fast vehicle and do what I should be doing which is hit run and hit again.I can’t even get a kill and run to avoid the revenge kill I “deserve”.

The game has just killed itself regardless of my enthusiasm for it. CAS is just another thing that has killed it for me as I move up.So much payload ability mixed with WW2 or lightly armoured but mostly unspaded light tanks from the 50s that I can’t use.

In short there is no fun in the game.I can’t take a light German tank of the Cold war era and flank,snipe and move and I cant move to avoid CAS because the map is too small and my destinations become red zones when I move to them. I can’t even hide one of those crappy M109s in a bush because all the cover was hacked away.I have to play GRB like arcade, another game I despise.Boxed into a corner and pushed out of the game.

It’s all just FUBAR and constantly raising air SP wont change it.

1828

You need to die before you respawn, so damage has already been done.

2 Likes
1829

This is not a bad argument at all. I’m simply stating that maybe the design they want is fundamentally flawed. The fact that I’m proposing this argument means that at least one person has thought that the idea of combined arms in ground battles especially at top tier isn’t fun for the ground forces and statistically I assume there are others like me as well. “This is how they design the game take it or leave it” is not a valid argument when me and countless others have spent hours and (in my case) a lot of money having fun in lower BRs only to not have a fun time in top tier wondering why I spent all that effort. Just saying that “this is how it’s designed” and “go play another game” is such a slap in the face to the player (like me) who loves the game and has been playing for going on 10 years and wants to see it evolve. All the successful games out there haven’t stayed the same since their inception and many have had to have fundamental overhauls to their systems to adapt to the player base as it gets older. Warthunder is in a weird position right now since it’s right at the edge of the modern technology available and is having a difficult time balancing around that fact.

This is just an unneeded pedantic argument which adds nothing. I simply stated hellfires because hellfire 2s are quite effective and it was the first vehicle I had clicked on and saw it’s payload. I could go on a rant about how the Ka-50/52 can ridiculously kill you with 50 rockets whilst half the helicopter has been shot off but the idea is still the same.

Yes exactly, but a good tank player can be countered by an equally good tank player on the other team. However a good tank player can also be defeated by a CAS player with (at a minimum) a keyboard.

I refer to my first statement. Maybe I’m not playing the game “as it was designed” but if I am part of a larger group of players who play the game “not as designed” then maybe there should be a design in place for that group of players. After all, I don’t see why my contributions towards the game over all these years should be ignored just because others disagree with my points. I’m not saying it’s an either/or with CAS because I can understand that aircraft are the only reason some people play much like tanks are the only reason I play and boats (lol) are the reason others play. The wish for all of us really and Gaijin know this is to have an entire combined arms battle of ground, air and naval but that’s out of the scope. I don’t think there should be no CAS in ground battles it definitely has it’s place but I think (and I’m not saying this is how the system should be RB) AB has it in the right ballpark where air can only be spawned in when two players decide they both want to participate in an air battle.

Again I want to rehash this point that I see all the time and it’s getting boring, it is no good telling people how they should play the game or that they should play another game. Gaijin are a company and they want to maximize their audience because a larger audience = more revenue and that’s fine. I am totally happy to give my money to a game that I enjoy. Like I said, it’s not an either/or scenario, the team behind the game doesn’t need to sacrifice ground players for aircraft players and vice versa, there’s common ground to be found. However, invalidating other people’s playstyles and experiences is definitely not the way we achieve that.

Thanks for the clarification I appreciate it.

1 Like
1830

The difference is that you can actually fight back against a good tank player even if they have skill on their side, and you will probably even come out of the engagement with new insight even if you lost. It’s the same reason why a lot of people hate hero shooters like Overwatch where if the opponent uses X, you have to use Y or you have no way to fight back even if you hate playing as Y. There is no possible way for a ground player to fight back against CAS. Even the Pantsir which is vastly better than any other SPAA is still vastly outmatched by CAS.

I have no problem with aircraft in GRB as long as they are balanced (which they aren’t even close to being) as playing CAP is my favourite thing to do in this game, but for someone who hates playing aircraft there is simply no way to fight back, which is just unfair with how far the scales are tipped in the favour of CAS. If there were apropriate SPAA to viably shut down CAS to the point where they need actual skill to get a kill rather than just pressing two buttons and waiting 20 seconds or features which make playing CAS a lot more boring / uneventful then it would improve the game a lot. You’re improving it for strictly ground players by giving them more of a fighting chance, and you’re not making it unplayable for CAS players as they just need to actually get good for once just like people need to do in every other aspect of the game. The only thing you’re doing to affect CAS players this way is dragging them down from their pedestal to everybody elses level and changing the gameplay away from the current COD-like fast gameplay where you can get kills 20 seconds after spawning which more or less everybody hates regardless of gamemode.

3 Likes
1831

Again, you’re either playing absolutely moronic dumb, or you are just arguing to argue…

You don’t NEED to spawn the tank first, and you don’t NEED to die to spawn SPAA…

I feel it’s the latter, but I cannot rule out the former.

1832

If we move the airfields back to a reasonable distance, it makes a lot of sense.

1st: It improves CAP gameplay. No longer do you get planes phasing into reality mid-dogfight you had no way to react to or predict
2nd: It increases the time between the last time you had accurate, first-hand intel about the status of the battlefield and your ability to respond to it
3rd: It increases the time to offend with aircraft in the match without creating an artificial gate. Having to take off and fly ~10 km prevents people dropping bombs at 23:15 minutes left.

It does require a more reasonable runway distance. The runway is way too close even at BR 4-6 brackets. At this bracket, aircraft can consistently reach 450 km/h if it’s a fighter-bomber. Heavy bombers are slower, but even front-line bombers and strike craft can fly quite quickly. 10 km runway distance and runway take off should be mandatory.

Heavy bombers may get a float-plane spawn over the airfield or a proper air spawn behind the airfield at altitude.

1 Like
1833

When you talk of balance what exactly do you mean? What are you trying to balance exactly? What are your aims?

1834

So are you playing this combined arms game or ducking out of it every time you spawn a plane? Do players spawn a plane to kill enemies or spend game time away form the game and flying to the kill zone? That is the issue I have.

I hear “oh its a combines arms game” ,then I hear those same people trying to make so the planes they are defending dont feature in the game. Then those same people shout down the notion of a CAS free GRB.

Where is the logic?

1835
  1. Make SP costs higher for CAS, especially guided munitions with targeting pods. CAS is already way too cheap. A single cap and a kill is enough to spawn a plane with enough ordanance to wipe out half a team in 2 minutes. Aircraft with these capabilities should be rare, not have 6 of them in the air within 5 minutes of the round starting.
  2. Remove the airspawns for everything but potentially slow heavy bombers since they are forced to gain altitude if they are to be effective and an AF spawn would force them to climb for 5 minutes before flying towards the battlefield. Would also make it a lot harder to revenge bomb since players would have moved withing the time it took you to reach the battlefield. Only campers who sit in a powerful position all game would be affected by revenge bombing, which should be the entire purpose of CAS, punishing camping.
  3. Move all airfields further back, if aircraft spawn on the airfields and they are further back then not only would it make revenge bombing even harder, it would reduce how quickly CAS can rack up kills since it would take more than 1-2 minutes to get a full new loadout of bombs and missiles.
  4. Add much stronger SPAA for every single nation. You should have to fly low and duck and weave if you are to see any success whilst playing CAS, not press spacebar a few times with impunity since no SPAA can even reach out to the ranges where they can kill you from.
  5. Potentially experiment with the idea of removing friendly markers whilst in an aircraft, forcing people to actually get close to the battlefield and take a hard look at what they’re actually shooting at just like how they have to do IRL. Would be a lot harder to implement since there understandibly would be a lot of TKing from it, but it would have a net positive if the entire TK problem could be worked around in some way.
3 Likes
1836

This brings us to the previous point.
Spawning AA first just so you don’t get killed in an unfair way defeats the purpose of playing tanks.

1 Like
1837

Tanks have far more potential kills than planes. The reason planes cost more is because they simply has less risk, under certain circumstances. If players were smart enough to spawn CAP, then that would negate the entire advantage that comes with 500 sp added to spawn cost.

Yes, in rank 1-2, favor is towards CAS. In rank 3-6, favor is heavily towards SPAA. In rank 7-8, favor is again towards CAS.

That can be solved by simply lowering the airspawn and moving airfields to prop distance in early jet BRs.

It already takes a while to get to the battlefield, especially with uptiers at 6.7. The only time having intel about the battlefield about the battlefield from a previous life matters to aircraft is if som1 is camping, which in that case they 100% deserve a good bombing.

It also increases the chances of som1 spawning a plane, and the game ending b4 they reach the battlefield, which is a bigger issue, and also increases the amount of time that you’re just flying in a straight line, thus making CAS more boring.

The simply solution is increasing SP cost.

1838

I have one big argument against it.

Copy paste, or "Is that an american B-25j, a russian B-25j or a chinese B-25j?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEqti1Fd46U

At least in sim you can usually rely on your team communicating their position to make IFF judgements about copy-paste black silhouettes (none of my team’s b-25s did in this example). I very much doubt you could acquire such for GRB given shorter matches and communication issues.

And I can’t imagine it to be much better for ground vehicles either, especially given match-ups are far less consistent (ergo you get america versus britain and whatnot). It’s… Sherman. On top of a sherman. Shooting a sherman. While running from a sherman (a cursory search gives me SIX countries with a 3.7 sherman)

1 Like
1839

So I read what you wrote.All of it.I asked and you answered .Well most of it.

I have to ask though, If you want to ruin the game to that extent for CAS players then why not simply remove CAS form the GRB game and make a new game with no CAS while leaving the old game as it is?

How high? They keep raising them.It is a combined arms game so why take make the planes hard to get in a game where the makers and even the players want to fly?

A single cap and a kill is a dream to many on here : ) Again ,it’s combined arms so lets combine arms,at the start the middle and the end.

Wow ,sounds like fun lol really so we all waste our Five minute GRB game flying to a battle to drop one bomb on a tank that may be invulnerable due to spawn protection?

Is that what people play War Thunder to do? Take out most of the game flying to the game?

Moved? Where to in a game that now features no cover and tiny maps or larger maps with huge areas on a red zone time out?

The whole idea of CAS is meant to be to remove those who are out there causing trouble from hard to reach areas.

Again all about removing planes from the game without committing to actually removing planes from the game.Just remove planes from the game : )

That old chestnut.Well it’s only been 12 years.Maybe in another 12 we will have SPAA that can empty the skies but again if you signed up for combined arms then why drive planes out of the game? How strong do you want SPAA?

In reality planes don’t fly where SPAA is heavy.It’s suicide and commanders wont commit to that.They dont like writing letters to widows and joking aside it will ruin the game.Don’t you ever wonder if you are actually living in the days of balance already? Or maybe those days have gone but still we all scream for balance.
At what point will the GRB game be balanced? Has it ever been in 12 years?

Why do that in planes made to take out tanks with impunity from miles away.
I have seen helis at work and you dial them up and they fire from behind a hill at a target painted by a man with a laser or pop up, fire and get back down.They don’t charge in like Rambo anymore.
You guys begged for modern warfare and you sure got it : ) Wow my tank is redundant ,who would have thought.

Sorry bro I am not by any means having a go at you.I knew in advance what you were going to put .It’s the same old story often repeated so many times and mostly by those who actually defend the combined arms game and shout down a CAS free GRB option.

I call for a GRB game with no planes. I don’t want to see planes nerfed to death like every other aspect of this game. If Gaijin cant make them work then try removing them , see if they can save top tier that way.It would be a start.

The reason the Allies did so well in the Iraq was because the decimated the enemies tanks with Aircraft, annihilated them and with hardly any comeback.

Most of the tanks we encountered were empty or probably empty,the crews had fled,we blew them up anyway just to be sure.
That is what happens when you put the cat among the pigeons and its what you can expect when you put Helicopters and A10s in a tank game but God how you guys begged Gaijin to do it.

The only solution I have ever seen was to at least offer people a break from CAS and the only way is to make a game with no CAS.

You can try it once or play it forever more but only if you have the choice.The game is old and possible dying so what does it matter?

Edits:many : )

1 Like
1840

Oh don’t get me wrong I would definitively enjoy a CAS free gamemode, but that’s just a pipe dream at this point as Gaijin has shown multiple times that they have no intentions of ever adding one which is why I’ve sorta given up and defaulted to trying to at least make it a lot more balanced towards the ground side of GRB by limiting CAS in a way without directly nerfing the planes in question but more so the way they are played in GRB.

1 Like
1841

The runways being close doesn’t just make CAS easier, but it makes doing CAP harder.

You can’t really have a fight because of you go 2km away from the battlefield, you’ll be wrecked by AA. It also gives CAS an easy way to get good cover.

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