Would you like to see an optional Night Battle for Air RB?
Yes
No
0voters
Do you like the Spotlight Idea?
Yes
No
No, since I don’t want optional Night Battles for Air RB
0voters
With Ground RB now receiving optional night battles, I thought the same could be applied to other game modes too! Starting off with Air RB. Back in the day (before the update that added the modern clouds iirc), we would get night battles that take place in the twilight hours, dark enough to not easily make out the enemy planes from the background but bright enough to make out their silhouette when you are close enough. On the grounds, there were often searchlight stations that would sweep the sky when you flew near them, adding to an amazing atmosphere.
So I propose we bring that back! Furthermore, perhaps the searchlight can actually actually try to track aircraft that it spots. To break the spotlight’s focus, you can try to do evasive maneuvers to break the beam’s tracking. Bombers, of course, can’t really do this, which leads to something of a minigame to avoid getting shined on in the first place and flying between the beams.
Getting shined on probably won’t do much mechanically (maybe increase the accuracy of AI flak but that could be annoying?) but it certainly will tip off your location to the enemy.
All in all, this would add in a difficult - but optional! - spin to standard air battles. Tie it to special rewards like on the ground and maybe people would be willing to give it a try.
I remember the night battles of yore, but I don’t recall any searchlights turning on when people got near. I can’t find any mention of searchlights except on ships for the maps that have them. What I do remember is that they were particularly awful because your spotting distance was more than halved. Gonna be a no from me dawg.
I remember those matches - and the searchlights. If you mention searchlights - you might want to limit this to WW 2 BRs.
But those matches were a pain as they boiled down to a contest of adjusting brightness and contrast - and pc players simply had more options to “adjust” than console players.
Even later versions of night battles (like in an old Ta 152 vid by Defyn) in a brighter environment were most of the time just a pain.
Imho this would make sense for a small portions of planes - a few radar equipped nightfighters either killing or protecting night bombers, maybe a few (2-4) slots for day fighters looking for a challenge.
But in the current state of Air RB i do not see the average skill level high enough for being a toggle option like for the Ground RB players.
Yeah, I’m not really sure what the Cold War+ variation would look like so any feedback on that part would be great!
While there are people who might choose to meta-play like that, I just assume those would be more edge cases of most people who participate. And if nothing else, guess there’s the shorter spotting distance which is something you will have to take into account (unless you are used to dogfighting in Ground or Naval where enemies don’t get labeled in the first place)
Yep, ultimately, I just see it as an optional challenge mode for people who are interested.
The mechanic is probably a representation of your pilot radioing your position to the team, but yeah that happens regardless of night battle or otherwise, if anything the night battle would allow you to escape that situation quicker if you choose to break away.
Actually not - the problems you had were insane if you got somebody at your six (in case he was faster) as even in those days your plane produced a contrail - all you had to do was following the contrail.
You only chance to get out was to do a split-S, cut the engine to avoid a contrail and gain enough separation (around 3.5 km) to restart your engine - otherwise you were able to locate enemies just due to listening to engine noises.
As written earlier - a pain.
This idea for itself might work for props if the markers would be completely disabled for such matches in Air RB - otherwise you have the same effects like today in heavy cloud / storm weather - as soon a marker pops up u have a furball.
I see this as a niche option for experienced pilots bored of this 16 vs 16 nonsense - but more for enthusiasts; the new generation of players even refuse to climb in props.
With some imagination and a few new planes (Mosquito and Beaufighter with radar) you could give the fellow UK bomber players in Lancs etc. a purpose in Air RB - adding historical tech like RWRs would be nice too…
Night battles … I still remember how they were, sometimes, normally in the game.
They were mostly good because the map was modeled so that the moon was full and there were also ground searchlights above the target locations played on the map … tracer bullets from the ground AAA were climbing up … great show …
But then someone had the idea to put a map as black as a hole in the ground, without the moon and without stars … in addition, the markers were limited to a distance of 5 km and there was no functional feature that a friendly aircraft, which is maybe 20 km from you, will illuminate the enemy for you, who is close to him…
And it went on - roaring, shouting, crying, how bad everything is and Gaijin … did everything to make the players feel satisfied and turn off the night battles…
An optional button for night battles would be one solution…
The second solution would be night battles from a certain br, simply where there are already radars…
Of course, a full moon and spotlights…
Landing reflectors on airplanes could also be functional, they would be connected to the undercarriage extension…
There are a lot of other lights on the planes, position lights, signal reflectors, the so-called color of the night, it would be nice, but there are still enough players who forget to insert the landing gear, so that is something to consider …
For now, it is most effective to set the filter - night from day in the Post Fx settings.
It doesn’t limit the markers in any way and it effectively reduces the nuclear sun that is sometimes on the maps…
I absolutely want night matches at WWII BRs, not just for Air RB but Naval and Ground as well. There isn’t really a good reason to oppose this, seeing as they’re now optional.
