The game really just needs a system to prevent more than 4 players from taking enough bombs to kill one base. This is never a problem in low tier, because only 4 bombers can spawn and everyone else has to protect them to take out bases. (admittedly no one does this since bases became less important, which is a shame IMO.)
When you queue up for RB, you should have to have a “heavy” bomb loadout selected, and then the matchmaker will group you with bombers (4 max per team). If you don’t select this, you can’t take any bomb loadout that deals one bases’ worth of damage.
J-7D with 4x 250kg (not worth enough to take one base out, but still no AAM because they used all four pylons for bomb) will be going to like that idea.
It is going to be difficult to catch this discussion again from being 1 line posts.
There are other options to consider:
There is no clear set in stone damage for napalm bombs. They could simply be made to cause far less initial damage and then take much longer to destroy a base. So whoever drops napalm is gambling. If someone else drops TNT stuff a little later, that player will get most credit. Only if the base can simmer for much longer, the credit will go to napalm. And if the game ends before, tough luck. This will shift players towards TNT. Which will then alter the base food chain. This solution would likely only require to alter two numbers in game, which are responsible for initial and subsequent damage.
You could also make bases so that only 50% (or x%) of a base can be destroyed by napalm. So hard explosives are needed anyway.
This kind of tinkering with napalm would help attackers to recover their income to some extend. But it would not stop people from bombing in fighters with napalm. But it might be an incentive to look for ways to improve income, which might decrease napalm use.
Another option to change things would be to remove base icons for fighter pilots and not count fighter base damage while the bases are not shown as targets (The game already employs a somewhat similar solution in ground arcade for fighter planes). Once certain conditions are met, bases become visible targets for fighters. These condition could be stuff like: number of red figters alive, respawned bases, a timer…
This would not only keep napalm in game for fighters but take bases off their list of priority targets. Base bombing tasks for fighters would only be viable once other objectives are met.
I am sure there would be other simple options which would both stop fighters bombing with napalm and make the game more historic.
TL/DNR:
Options to consider
Have napalm make less damage now and slow down further damage.
Make only x% of the base destructible from napalm.
Hide bases from fighters until some trigger condition is met.
Honestly, it’s very annoying to see that half of your team just taking napalm bombs and racing with each other who takes the base first. Not to mention that it’s almost impossible to use and spade strike aircraft (such as A-10C, Su-25SM3, Su-24M, F-111C etc.) at higher tiers only because of these “fighters”. Also this way half of your team is gone in under 5 minutes. The addition of napalm for any fighter except multi-role aircraft was a huge mistake. But I doubt this situation will change soon.
I think one problem is bases used to respawn much faster, Gaijin nerfed the respawn rate after the rebellion against their economy changes, I think it used to be something like 3 to 5 mins (I never actually timed it) so it wasn’t too hard to loiter and wait for them to respawn if you missed the 1st wave. Now the game is usually over before they respawn.
It was far less annoying having a F-100 wipe out all the bases before your A-4 could get there when you could just side climb a little bit and get a respawned base in a minute or 2.
The other thing is that you should be carful about removing something because some people are abusing it. The root cause of the problem is that ground spawned attackers and bombers cant get bases due to faster fighters beating them to the base… BUT attackers have ground spawns due to players abusing the air spawns to absolutely destroy fighters that had to take off, climb and gain speed. So now players that want to play ground attack are bombing in fighters because attackers are now to slow due too losing their air spawn. Which happened because people who wanted to dogfight where flying attackers to abuse the air spawn (the SAAB-105s are a good example of this still in action).
So you can see how these problems need more carful thought than “Just remove X from Y”. that is why we have the problem to begin with.
Recently I’ve had a very interesting experience, I’ve managed to get 6 bases (+2 enemy planes) in a single battle (1 returning to the base for reload) using French Kingcobra with napalm lol
But also lighter than normal bomb counterparts
2 1000lb BLU-1 needed
While GP Mk.1 needs 5
Which makes you shamelessly faster than other ones who are armed with heavier bombs.
Then only napalm guys win the race
Even if we don’t consider flight characteristic differences
What if fighter bombers couldn’t first-spawn ground-attack ordnance?
You can only load up napalm and bombs and all that after 5 minutes pass in the match.
After all, even as far back as WW2 - P47s/F4Us didn’t get sent into enemy territory completely kneecapped with bombs when there was still a highly contested airspace.
First, the airspace gets cleared/air superiority is achieved, then do fighter bombers swap to ground-strike roles.
It’d also encourage people to try and stay alive rather than head-on suicide the first thing they see, which means more fun and prolonged battles.
Depending on BR, the “5 minutes pass in the match” means match is almost over, your team is dead and enemy is taking altitude advantage and you (or any wannabe “bomber”) wouldn’t be able to do shit because enemy already diving on you, enemy is dead or bored fighters started to expend their guns on ground targets
Air RB desperately needs a rework to make this style of gameplay relevant, but in its current format its completely irellevant and anyone who base bombs is pure dead weight, so I really struggle to have any sympathy for people complaining about other people bombing bases so they cant.
The number of super close games where its down to like 3v3 that Ive lost because my other two teammates happened to be mindless base bombing drones so its really a 1v3 are disappointing.
I never understood this, I genuinely cant understand wanting to waste thousands of RP that could go straight into getting better missiles and flight performance on bombs instead. Bombs are always the very last thing I unlock, Ive never base bombed at anything above prop tiers in my life.
I normally go for AI planes and pick up the occasional “pity howitzer” as I like to call it (which gives like 1k RP by itself even if you do nothing else at all) when stock grinding with stock missiles.
If anything it then lets you learn the relative strengths and weaknesses of the plane itself before you get the top missiles, and then by the time you get them you’ll already know how to fly and your KDR will pick up quicker, rather than mindlessly flying at bases for 30 games and only then starting to learn how to actually fight with the plane.
There are jets classed as “fighter”, which are “fighter-bombers” irl, for example you mentioned F-104, Italian S variant had two configurations “Cacciabombardiere ognitempo (CBO)” - fighter-bomber and “Caccia intercettore ognitempo (CIO)” - interceptor.
I agree that napalm equipped supersonics make life of jets without such option worse, this is especially annoying when you use such stuff as Yak-28B (dedicated bomber), but imo it isn’t a problem of planes, but there is just a lack of targets to bomb, plus killing ground targets is less profitable than destroying bases.