So the new Nucler Thunder event is awesome, the idead is awesome, but people ruined it, let me explain. Currentlly the Nuclear Thunder game proceeds as follows: from the very beginning of the match 90% of people from both sides spawn on the central airfield and fly STRAIGHT towards each other, die in 1st or 2nd or 3rd or X headon, then spawn again and repeat. Players were provided with 256x256 map with PvE that actually engaging and push game forward, and what they do with this freadom? They just go and die in headons like mindless drones. It came to the point where it is straight up worse PvP expirience than ARB.
In ARB players are spawned in a streched line, some go to the right, some go to the middle and some go to the left, you have distribution of players over TENS of kilometers in ALL directions. That allows for smart play, gives room to flank, to isolate fights to a meaningfull extent.
Now what we have in Nuclear Thunder - vast majority of players fly in a cramped corridor barrely ~5km wide. The player concetration in such conditions is absolutely insane. If you didn’t kill enemy in headon - forget about him, you’ll never see him again, he will continue flying forward until:
He dies to someone in headon
Reaches your SAMs (which happens basically in a span of 30-40 seconds because of how close frontlines are) and dies to them
Crashed
In such conditions trying to flank/dive from above to pick up a “busy” target is meaningless, the rate of engagement is so hight that you basically have no room to launch your missiles, target will either die by the time your missile will reach it, or it will accidentally flare it either by flaring missiles from your ally or by shooting missiles himself (missile launch basically works as a flare). Basically smart play out of the window. I tried spawing on the side fields and “flank” enemy from the side, by the time I got to the middles I witnessed my team dying in the initial heado IN UNDER A MINUTE. Other time enemy team was stomped in under a minute. And because some of my team died/was regrouping, the entirety of enemy team respawned and reached battlefield again outnumbering what is left of our team.
Only one aspect you can blame on the game mode itself - mid/long range SAMs “killed” vertical gameplay because they start firing at you when you even barelly made it to the middle of the map. The rest is on players being absolute drones.
I mean its practically impossible to use any other ground attacker because the AA is so powerful, plus the other jets will go after you. Plus Gaijin is doing a gaijin and milking the community in a FOMO event. You have to grind now to get it for free or pay. Gaijin created this problem. The players are just doing what gaijin wants.
Gaijin “ruined” the event not the players. The only way to win is get pvp kills, and the only way to fly is tree height because of the AA.
The event is the way it is because of the way it was designed
Agree with all arguments here… it is not the players lol…
Russian side is the easiest to play with r-73 and a plane with HMD while sparrows suck and nuclear carriers for USA aint that good either…
Ground pounding with the mighty OSAS which track you even when you scrape your bellly on the trees…
HARM missiles don’t work becuase of them getting intercepted after 10 seconds of lauch… there is a way a youtuber i believe Loner uploaded it but you wont fly alone tbh… .tried his way got dropped by a mig-29 after 2 minutes not effective to ground pound… got 300% boosters went straight up PVP earned me a lot… :)
I just lost a match to an enemy team who scored fewer kills combined than our top two guys did by themselves.
What they did was nuke the bejebus out of our ground units and airfields… in this even what happens on the ground is all that acually matters, you couldn’t possibly be more wrong.
No, it happens like 1000 out of 1000…
You do not win this mode by getting player kills you win by nuking the enemy into oblivion, what you’re saying just isn’t true.
The fastest way to get to the B-52/Tu-95 is to bag the 2-3 air kills required to get the tact nuke.
You then use said tact nuke to clear a path through the depots/AA, rack up more points and bag air kills as/when the opportunity presents. Time it right and you can nuke guys on or near the airfield.
If you only focus on killing players then you have completely missed the point… this is not a PVP mode, it is not RB, a mindset is change required.
Not really. The long range SAMs are mostly irrelevant paper tigers. You can just fly left or right and drop a chaff. HAWKs/BUKs are almost in the same category.
I think the real issue is the design of how the map flow is presented to the player.
Let’s look at it from a MOBA lane design perspective because that’s essentially what this is.
Fuel/Ammo bases are towers but they aren’t easily marked on the map or seen in first/third person.
The “outpost” should have a visible marker once detected by allies and should stay there on the map.
Tanks and AA flow from the bases. The respawn rate of AA is EXTREMELY HIGH for roaming AA.
The respawn rate of radar based AA (OSA/Flakreds) is extremely high also to the point almost invalidating DEAD/SEAD and HARMs.
Gepards/Zsu23’s roaming is fine. But OSA/Flakreds respawning constantly is wildly broken for allowing movement on the map.
The skill cap for CAS is so much higher than CAP due to how many trees there are in the map.
If this was a desert map it would be far better for CAS. But as it stands OSAs/Flakreds dip between trees while having ESPwallhacks and flipping their radar on and off.
They need to incentivize destroying ground versus the air forces.
If I can take out 1or2 jets per CAP life that’s FAR more profitable than taking out a few ground forces with rockets and bombs as CAS.
Ground attack yields much less score and available ground attack options are far too weak.
It’s much easier to just yolo at the start, kill 2 guys, die and spawn in a nuke.
Then you just fly around the map and drop it wherever you can.
If this mode were to play differently, AI AAs should have smaller range and be placed only around ground targets in a way that allows dedicated ground strike aircraft to outrange them, but not fighter jets and especially nuke carriers. At the same time rewards for killing AAs and other ground units should be increased to that it’s actually worth going for.
They should also somehow prevent you from just tossing a nuke at the targets from few kilometers away.
Gaijin would also have to ban all planes but the provided ones, in current way it’s just impossible to balance.
Nukes are suposed to be the main part of this mode, but as of now they are so strong they completely invalidate all other ground attack options so aside nerfing tossing maybe they could double in SP requirements as well
Also why bother with suffering trying to land a single hit with A-10 or SU-25 without dying while you can just get 250 SP by yoloing headons and annihilate the entire depot by tossing a nuke from a safe distance and then just go back and rearm.
this is a test run event, so there are a few things that are going to happen. 1 people grinding to get the limited edition bombers so lots of people trying to min max it. 2 the AA is insane and trying to get ground kills is unless your dropping nukes ( its the only thing SPAA’s dont target ) , as the spaa’s will switch targets and shoot down he munitions . 3 limited plane choices to use.
I have a feeling the AA adheres to the same rules players do.
Dumb bombs + Rockets cannot be intercepted. Rocket CAS vs the AA is highly effective.
Missiles+Guided bombs can be intercepted.
HARMs are prioritized over any target I think. If you fire one they’ll attempt to intercept.
A tip for HARMs is skirt the edge of the center and you can support your allies by forcing enemy AA to switch targets.
