Air simulation battles has long had the same handful of objectives for players to partake in beyond being an EC team deathmatch. These objectives are paramount for a team to have a good chance of winning the battle, but have many glaring issues that are overdue for being corrected.
Objectives have no real impact on the general game-state beyond tickets.
Objectives barely interact with the players, and do so in questionable ways when they do.
Objectives are not roughly period appropriate in the vehicles involved.
Objectives are often poorly optimized
My suggestion is a general rework of objectives, with an emphasis on the top BR brackets (12.0+). With this, I will be making a series of suggestions, which I will link to be accessed easily.
“Bombing Targets” should be replaced with some tactical objectives such as:
GBAD batteries. I’m partial to a site with some Pantsir systems personally, but I do understand this might be “too strong” for some players which might prefer stuff like the airfield Roland + Sgt York/Gepard setup.
Ground based radar providing similar enemy target spotting and later datalink support within a certain area.
Forward airfields, which would allow players shorter turn around times instead of flying all the way back to the main airfields, but at the risk of being less protected and possibility of the airfield being destroyed.
Bridges (on maps with waterways convoys have to cross). The convoys themselves could “repair” the bridges when they get to them, but would require a delay in which they’d be stationary.
In all 4 cases, the “bombing target” would now make more sense as battlefield objectives, but also interact with players or the game state, with GBAD sites providing AA for one team within a radius of itself, ground based radar providing intel, forward airbases providing shorter aircraft turn around times, and bridges increasing the ease of killing “Convoy” objectives, all of which could be destroyed to deny the enemy team said advantage for a temporary period of time.
This suggestion in particular is somewhat similar to other gameplay suggestions, most notably this one:
But differs in that I’m suggesting the existing “Bombing targets” be replaced with GBAD sites and ground based radars (among other tactical objectives) instead of creating a new set of objective.
Would you like to see the proposed changes to the “Bombing Target” objective implemented in-game?
We absolutely need these objectives to be expanded. SAMs at top tier would be an amazing addition and let aircrafts individual strengths and weaknesses be on display.
Agree 100%, sim (and EC in general) has a lot of potential to be a really fun sandbox and unlike Air RB it allows all types of aircraft to shine. The problem is the often mundane activites like bombing targets where it doesn’t even matter what you hit as long as it is within the radius or ground targets that have little purpose and feels unorganic.
I’d also like to add that anti-ship could use some similar overhauls with period correct ships, better balance between reward and effort (maybe give rewards just for damaging larger ships instead of needing to sink it if it requires multiple sorties) but that might be more suited to its own post and discussion.
Ive actually been wanting to make a similar post for naval maps, but we only really have 1 viable naval map at top tier (Denmark) and one debatable one (Dover). Both are interesting maps to play due to their uniqueness, but imo are generally pretty terrible maps when it comes down to it, so I’ve been slacking a bit on the suggestion.
If I get in the mood to do so tho, Ill make another series of suggestion posts for naval air map objective reworks. Period appropriate ships would be very cool, as would CV escorts, shore based AShM batteries, etc… Its a bit odd at the moment when I see a modern tanker ship being escorted by WW2 DD’s… Score for killing naval targets also needs reworking. They are harder targets to sink generally speaking and the score in no way reflects this. Atm striking them is more for fun and match state progression than anything, which is unfortunate.