Main source of decline of the sim community seems more due to the fact gaijin literally hasnt supported the mode in years than a grind issue.
Also, if people were just playing it to grind like you say, that’s not really a community, that’s just as touristy as the people who pop in during events.
Equal rewards is not really realistic. Initially I thought it was, but realistically, a single 5kt nuke is killing 5+ ground targets, with people who are half decent with nukes getting over 30 ground kills per game. You’d effectively be able to snowball into a strat bomber after ~3 5kt nuke strikes if they gave equal rewards to air kills and you didnt die. The only good ways I can think of handleing the gamemode are:
- SP only when people land
- Greatly reduce air to air kill SP
- Increase strat bomber SP cost (5k+)
- Increase mission score requirements for escalation levels.
They have pros and cons, but I personally think 1. solves the gamemodes issues the best, with 4 being in second place (SP isnt as much of an issue if you cant spawn the stratnuke until later anyways)
Buffing base health is a terrible idea. Its pretty obviously balanced so that 5x medium nukes (5x 500SP) is equivalent to 1x strat nuke (1x 2500rp) because if you have all but the last base taken out, its pretty unlikely you’ll win unless you manage to squeeze a strat nuke to the enemy base, as you will lose all map control. Increasing base health basically just invalidates ground strike as an option because you cant push a front back and fighterjocks get to continue flooding the frontline a lot longer.
You’re saying your idea to reduce how meta suicide air to air is as a strat is to nerf ground attack more.
It already is though? Teams lose map control because 90% of the players spawn mid and suicide rush eachother. Whichever team has less lemmings in the middle crush the flanks and once thats done, they can attack the center from multiple directions. The general gameplay loop of nuclear thunder has a lot more teamplay and strategy than people give it credit, people just dont notice it because the vast majority of the community chooses not to interact with the objectives because running face first into eachother down the middle gives better rewards with no penalty for death.
Base health invalidates ground attack even more than it already is, and better rewards doesnt work when single nukes net you 5+ kills (some even upwards of 15), which means itd be even easier to get the strategic bomber in. Its also just silly. 3 30kt nukes for 1 airfield? Hiroshima was razed by a single ~15kt nuke, and you want a single airfield to take 3???
Frustrating for who??? You arent being penalized in your RP/SL earnings, you’re literally just being penalized in not being able to drop nukes. Thats a pretty minor penalty for dying all things considered.
Atm, the only people being penalized for dying are people using tactical nukes, since if you die you need to spend SP to get another one. Theres LITERALLY no penalty for dying if you play only air to air. Theres no point in even trying to survive, or bringing enough fuel to survive, thats horrible gameplay.
Like, watch this video, guy would have a game ender by the 12min 30s mark of the game had the one guy he was about to kill on the runway not J’d out. He has enough SP for 2 strategic nukes before they even hit escalation level 3, and its not cuz hes playing well, he’s literally just suiciding into the enemy airfield all game. Its horrible gameplay. If you want to win, there’s literally no reason to do anything but do nothing but headon rush the airfield, die, and try again. That NEEDS to be fixed for this to be a permanent mode like gaijin said they intend to make it.
