Revised ASB EC spawn mechanics and related costs

Suggestions MM/Eco/Prog
1
[Would you like to see this in-game?]
  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

Even with the great introduction of shifting brackets for ASB, the issue of people using the same meta planes persist, but now in rotation, which at least grants some nations to be better at some points.

Without hindering player agency the system could be the following: Spawn prices stay the same as they are now, based on player data, as a baseline. If you die and are forced to respawn, there is a 15 minute timer on that crew slot, and the same slot is spawnable again immediately, but with a multiplier of 400% spawn costs. Each minute that passes will procentually decrease the multiplier (5 minutes pass = 300%, 10 minutes pass=200%…) until it reaches zero and the slot returns to baseline spawn cost.

In addition to that, planes at the top of the bracket get the full baseline spawn costs, and planes at the very bottom (or lower) get a procentually reduced spawn cost at 50%.

To put it in practice:
I have two planes in my lineup - a Spitfire Mk.69 (BR 3.0, spawn cost 10.000SL) and a Tempest CDXX (BR 3.3, spawn cost 8.000SL). I join a 2.5-3.5 lobby, spawn the Spitfire with 7.500SL, and die on takeoff.
Back on the spawn menu now, the Spitfire is on cooldown, BUT, I can still spawn it immediately for 30.000, which I won’t because the price seems too steep, so I spawn the Tempest for 7200SL and go about shooting down planes, but I crash when landing.
Looking at the spawn screen now, I have both planes on cooldown, Tempest on 15 minutes with 28.000SL spawn but the Spitfire is now only 2 minutes away from complete cooldown and the spawn price is at a reasonable 10.500SL

This method could incentivise using a varied selection of planes, cost benefits for bringing undertiered planes, and reduced risk for days when the bracket is unplayable for your chosen plane, punish using the same plane for “zombing”. Additionally, players who would like to have a roster of as many premiums/good planes for that bracket would possibly have to reorganise and select even more crew slots for different combinations, which means they will spend more money, trust me.

The only issues I see in this scenario is that people who do not care about SL (Especially nearly free premiums) would still take the maximum penalty of respawning the same plane over and over, thus only the “poor” get punished, and leave the lobby prematurely. And we would probably see more lobby shopping if someone lost all of their small lineup and decided it’s not worth to continue in the same lobby.
To alleviate this, maybe a 5-15 minute hard lock would be imposed, and only when it runs out, the cost multiplier timer starts running.

2

Making the sim economy worse is a horrible horrible idea.

Game mode is already dying and you want to not only increase repair cots by THREE TIMES but also force players to spend more sl into other planes and crew, not to mention punishing them for dying by crew locking that plane

Which is perfectly fine, the beauty of air sim is the agency it gives the player, unlike gsb which has premade lineups. let the players play what they want

Revised ASB EC spawn mechanics and related costs

The only spawn revision Air sim needs is removing spawn costs for repair costs

3 Likes
3

Sim already has the worst economy with the highest repair costs in the WHOLE game and you want to make it even worse? Yes, a good idea if you want to give the final stab to this mode, brilliant, congratulations!

2 Likes
4

Not a fan of the elevated cost.

Additionally, the crew skill system punishes using multiple crew slots.

For a crew slot to be equally competitive, you must play that single slot for 25 hours (with premium) or 50 hours (without premium)(using 109 F-4/P-51C/etc economy as baseline). This is able to be bypassed with GE.

Flying aircraft with a novice crew against someone with a maxed crew is… not an enjoyable experience (you both enter a descending spiral at 5.5G. Player with maxed crew is able to sustain it indefinitely. Player with novice crew blacks out and flies straight or is forced to ease up on the turn) and this system would make it even more likely and thus introduce more snowballing.) (added bonus: this makes sim an even more frustrating experience for new players when we want to encourage newbies to play, not discourage them.)

As it stands, I’m not a fan.

A much better approach is to simply give discounts for sub-BR aircraft (as I suggested here: Idea for encouraging players to pick off-meta planes and join lobbies even if their favourite vehicle is bottom bracket by compensating repair costs (non-prem), additional rewards (prem).)

1 Like
5

Ending the spawn costs entirely to incentivize people stay in losing matches would be infinitely better than this.

5 Likes
6

Yes, but I have no aced crews, an possibly just two slots of one nation maxed out in Stamina and G. I would gamble that people do have at least 2 slots decent, especially premium users. And usually there is choice of multiple planes to be brought 109+190 for instance, or a Spit+Tempest (if focused on fighters, let alone navals, strikers, bombers) so you can juggle between them in the case of death. I find it hard to believe that you would die again in 15 minutes after spawn under normal cirumstances.

I see that completely reasonable. But together with disabling rewards as well. Give nothing, get nothing, just enjoy.

7

There’s no reason to disable rewards.
Repair cost/spawn cost is not an economic thing in sim, it’s an anti-exploit measure.

And that can be switched to percentages instead.
If you die to another player, AI, or RTB: 100% rewards.
If you eject/crash: 50% rewards.

2 Likes
8

Depends on the lobby.

Is it a highly populated, competitive lobby at 12 vs 12 where both team’s top 5 players each have 8-10 deaths and 10-15 kills?

Quite highly probable.

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1 h 52 minutes left. That means the top player on my team died every 10 minutes or so. I have also died every ten minutes or so.

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1h 20 minutes left.

These two matches were some of my favourite experiences - enemy team was dangerous, my team refused to surrender. People were going down and fighting non-stop for a good hour each.

By your system, this would not be allowed. Your system encourages people to leave after dying once or twice which is not healthy for the game mode. Lobby too hard? Enemy can kill you? Leave!

By my preference, every lobby should look like the above 2.

Also forcing people to constantly swap planes is a fast way to break people’s familiarity. I find that if I’m able to fly say, 109 F-4 for the whole week and nothing else I’m much more able to execute more advanced or risky manoeuvres successfully. Whereas, for the first few games my aim is non-existent and my expectations for how it handles at edge of sane flight causes repeat departures from flight.

9

The point of Sim EC is not to go down, though, which is kindly suggested by the infront spawn cost and all subsequent spawn costs, with a pinch of UA.

But if you like this type of constant action of a furball that gets infinitely fed planes, you then have no right to complain about economy or “kills should give me more money, im not even breaking even” while going straight for the fight everytime all of the time when you a.) always have the choice not to participate at that rate and b.) can try to avoid death by priioritising survival over kills. That’s kinda what arcade and realistic are about.

Remove spawn costs, remove UA and it becomes the other 2 gamemodes where it’s just killing for the sake of killing, but now in sim controls, and with hopes that others are worse than you so dem cheeks can be clapped even easier, because they cannot rely on the instructor.

10

Even in IL2:Great Battles, time between dogfights over objectives is less than 15 minutes on Wings of Liberty and even Combat Box.

1 Like
11

ever played, don’t know, top tier sim? Maybe not

12

Or just any sim lobby against a high-threat player or multiple on the enemy team.

But the standard advice is to leave the lobby if people can kill you so…

1 Like
13

years ago tier 3 was the only one having balanced lobbies, but above that most of the times you find yourself outnumbered. Lasting 15 min is rare, unless you have the fastest aircraft and you don’t accept a dogfight at all

18

Maybe even get people to try simulator, I remember my first match being jumpscared by an SL cost to spawn and a second time seeing it adds up to the repair cost.

Why is spawn cost even a thing?

1 Like
19

Bots, and passive farming

1 Like
20

Back when there wasn’t a punishment for crashing/ejecting it was the only way to prevent that activity.
However, ever since they introduced punishments… there’s no reason to keep spawn costs anymore.

1 Like
21

Genuinely interested in crash/eject punishment, people still do it either zombing or being generally weird.

Although no spawn cost is alright, (especially currently since premiums can’t go negative, making it literally pay2not lose and ez event zomb grind) but only some sort of cooldown on slots would prevent abusing the same OP plane with no reprecussions. Downside is what Runa said about not being able to run the same plane over and over after getting shot down. Upside is that Ariete, 288C and the likes will have something to think about or bring inferior stuff to continue after being shot down.

22

One thing that some Il2:GB servers do is balance such by limiting what can be spawned from what airfield.

Front-line airfields closest to objectives usually have worse/more outdated aircraft and limited supplies at that.

Rear airfields usually have more modern, fancy equipment but require longer flight to affect the mission.

Some servers also implement dynamic supplies: Very limited front-line selection, but players can fly modified bombers/paratrooper planes to resupply the frontline and open up more advanced aircraft again (Finnish Pilots) or protect convoys bringing in supplies (Apollo).

Another thing some servers do is auto-balance which airfields are available based on playernumbers (Apollo).

Apollo document (altho bit old I think. IIRC it had some changes since: https://static.combatbox.net/Combat-Box-Apollo-Project-Manual.pdf).

As an example for my last sortie (normal combat box, not Apollo):

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I wanted to fly P-51B with 1000 Lbs bombs. None of the airfields near the front were available as a spawn point.

I had to spawn from Y-70 Matzborn (grid 3026) and fly to Germany Artillery (Grid 2830) and then to friendly bridge (2526) rather than spawn at Obendorf (2424) while enemy aircraft could spawn right next to said bridge.

Result is: Able to spawn the plane I want, but my impact is reduced compared to if I just took out a P-47 that was closer to the front at cost of reduced dogfight capability after dropping my bombs (or a spitfire with reduced ground-strike capability for the inverse).

1 Like
23

This is great, but we are sadly in WT where just slightly tweaking 2 numbers takes 3 years. :D