i was thinking more like a 16 v 16 but half of both teams has to be in SPAA and the other half in MBT or Light Tanks to try protect the spaa while there shooting down nuclear aircraft
This is really good, I do appreciate the transparency.
One request,
Can you bring back free vehicles with premade load outs for the nuclear escalation mode? I understand they were in the April fools event so that everyone can enjoy the event, but they were certainly ideal for people without great lineups too!
It would be a great QOL and additionally can act as a training wheels of sorts for newer players to try jets and train on them. Just a suggestion id love to hear feedback on
2 Likes
AWACS would be cool. Especially for lower BR where planes dont have as powerful of a radar. It can help with situational awareness. AWACS could maybe even be programmed to create texts for the team to see, informing players of particular targets of interest. Example: the AWACS only currently sees up to a certain range so id would say "2 enemy aircraft spotted at B4, they are flying 2 X altitude and heading bearing x. (If bearing is too much then dont add.) My only worry would be AWACS spamming chat.
Either that or just have AWACs only feed info directly to players direct surroundings. “Enemy aircraft spotted and heading your way” with additional details regarding who is approaching and how far they are from you and what is their heading.
Why do you keep undervaluing Chinese vehicles to the point where many of them become completely unplayable—for example, the J-15T, and the PL-12 missile, which has now become the worst-performing active-radar missile of all? Continuously downplaying Chinese vehicles will cost you the Chinese market. Is that what you want?
As far as I know, in Tieba, one of China’s mainstream online communities, the daily active user count was around 600,000 in 2025. But now it’s less than 300,000, and at times even only about 200,000. Is this what you want? You are losing the most dynamic market in the world.
You want them to artificially buff vehicles to make money?
1 Like
this is already a thing, even if you dont bring ARMs on chinese planes you can use ESM modes
The dev knew the unbalancing of the Red and Blue but decided to keep it just like the current situation of every GRB match, Russian rule the world. Speechless. You only craft new mode because of the drama but there is no youtuber complain about the unbalance between Red team and Nato so nothing change. Welcome new modern and longer range SPAA, faster KH missiles for the Red and new WW2 tanks and ships for NATO. Funny game desgin.
US is stomping RN from 10.0 onwards, what are talking about?
give us split throttle axes please
bmt？jm22？
russian equipment getting artificially nerfed as always
“My colleagues and I have been playing Escalation for the past few days to better understand how the mode works”
Thank you for finally testing the mode for yourselves. That said, regularly playing your own game to identify problems would have been just as relevant—even necessary—in order to fix them effectively.
“Balance is a complex matter”
Yes, especially when Russian and Chinese equipment is heavily favored over Western equipment. Under these conditions, talking about balancing becomes difficult, because the current state of the game is very unbalanced—and that’s an understatement.
“but we decided to try to keep the asymmetry as an interesting feature of the mode for now, even at the cost of problems with balancing, but we are not ruling out this option (your opinion is also interesting here please let us know your opinion on this).”
So you’re deliberately maintaining a major imbalance under the pretext that it’s “interesting”? That’s hard to understand. Today, Russian equipment clearly dominates, whether in air defense or air-to-ground capabilities. You yourselves admit that their anti-radiation missiles are the best. In this context, it’s legitimate to ask what your vision for balancing is, and how you will consider the player experience.
“The BUK launcher reload time has been increased from 20 to 30 seconds.”
This change seems largely insufficient. It feels like a token adjustment, with no real impact on the overall balance of the game.
"1. Each SAMP/T SAM site now contains two TADS and four launchers.
2. Each SAMP/T SAM site is covered by an additional Ito90 SAM."
It’s difficult to talk about balancing when several Western systems have to be combined to compete with a single Russian system. This reinforces the feeling of a structural imbalance.
“we don’t want to significantly nerf the air defences overall, as this could devalue teamwork in suppressing air defence groups and make the mode much less distinct from Air Realistic Battles with respawns”
The problem of excessive anti-aircraft systems has been known since the mode’s introduction. The community has been pointing it out for a long time. Why not take it into account? For years, you encouraged individual PvP gameplay, and now you expect advanced team coordination. This change seems out of step with players’ actual habits.
“Our goal is to ensure that both teams are required to make equal efforts to achieve this objective.”
In that case, more significant adjustments are needed. Either you rebalance the different factions, or you reconsider their presence in this mode, because currently the effort required is not equal.
"Further plans include, but are not limited to (there is no guarantee that all of this will be implemented):
Moving Escalation to other existing locations.
Developing the mode for earlier eras of aviation (the 1960s and 1970s).
Creating a new location specifically for Escalation.
Airfield recovery and capture mechanics
Use of helicopters in this mode
Player-controlled ships and air defence systems (in the longer term)
Some of these ideas are very interesting, particularly the integration of helicopters and aircraft from the 1960s and 70s. As an air defense-focused player, the idea of being able to use these systems in a mode centered solely on aircraft would be particularly appealing.
“This mode is in active development and is taking up a significant portion of our resources”
It’s positive to see resources allocated to this mode. However, the game as a whole also needs significant improvements to remain playable, balanced, and enjoyable in the long run.
4 Likes
Some aircraft, including J-15T, J-10C and J-11B have ESM built-in on their RWRs, its independent from whether you use ARMs.
The Rafale, Gripen E and other that feature ESM in real life as well, but don’t have ARMs, didn’t get the ESM feature yet.
Is BVVd someone important?
exactly so get the reports going
Idk if the Sampt is bugged or what, but the reason behind doubling SAMPT veichles is not about effectivenes,but about the superiority of KH31 respect to NATO counterparts.
Also, nearly everyone here would prefer an asymmetric mode respect to a simmetric one, NT can be balanced, but being a massive and complex mode, it requires time and cold heads.
Also in the old NT the problem was the short range AA, while here is the long range BUK overperforming and SAMPT underperforming, short range AA are doable to kill with modern munitions and HARMs, not easy but doable, in the old one they were litterally untouchable.
Using gbu39 and upab1500 killing short-range AA is kinda easy, too.
AA should be dense and challenging, and the shirt range one seems perfect right now. Once the problem with long-range AA is resolved, the mode is already in a good state.
If you want no opposition to you flying on the map, just play ARB.
“It’s difficult to talk about balancing when several Western systems have to be combined to compete with a single Russian system. This reinforces the feeling of a structural imbalance.”
Strange the SAMPT performed much better than buk in GRB, but i didn’t see people complain about a western system performing better than a russian one.
I think the biggest issue is not having a stable of relevant aircraft with capabilities included that everyone can use. This would increase participation in it, as some people haven’t been grinding out certain modules or aircraft and are at a severe disadvantage.
1 Like
I think the repair cost is also a bit of a problem, since it’s top tier, you often die, either by other player missile or by AI ground to air missile.
I did once game, die twice and lost 20k, and thought “I won’t play this game mode if it cost that much”, cause doing some CAS won’t give you enough SL, and killing other player will just transform this mode into a usual Air RB …
1 Like
Yeah I agree with that. If they implement AWACS I would really like to see a removal of the marker, especially at top tier. (Unless they are spotted by radar).