I spaded my ZSU at 9.3, I hated that thing it sucks donkey balls, but people will spawn SPAA no matter what even if one is up and its extremely annoying when you are in a shitbox like that and everything else outclasses you because you aren’t getting kills.
2S6 is an absolute dream to play though, if other people spawn SPAA I don’t care because im getting the kills before they do. but its still incredibly annoying because when you run into good CAS players I don’t have the option to turn off my search radar and just use TIRST to launch on them and hope they don’t notice until it is too late, because I got 2-3 other braindead idiots that spawned SPAA after me pinging and locking the guy up at 15km so he dives or is ready to maneuver. Also playing this thing like a “we have BMP-T at home” is fun, these guns have no issue shreding anything from side aspect, and i’ve been sniping light tanks from like 1500m from scout pings across the map, compared to zsu that can’t even pen a bradley sometimes, and can’t pen MBTs anywhere. Also man it goes 60km in reverse almost absolute wunderwaffe for russia with their crap reverse gears. 2S6 also benefits from not getting powercrept every patch like the 12.0 SPAA like pantsir that deals with new BS every new plane that gets added and cramed at 12.0-13.0 in ground.
Some more perspective on the SPAA vs CAS situation playing a lot of these recently. There is virtually nothing I can do to someone that slings mavs from 5-6km and has high energy and brain, missiles are not touching them, guns obviously not, and if i don’t have a 3+ story building to play around im cooked. Some maps are just BAD for spaa. Ideally I need that 3 story object to play around, LOS on the heli spawn, and not be in a crater with bad LOS for low flying CAS, thats a tall order for most maps. And even if you get the perfect position like this, you gotta deal with spawn campers, and I mean in general ground vics prowling on your side of the map. Majority of my deaths in SPAA is to these guys.
When there is multiple SPAA up there is also more pressure on me to play in more aggressive spots, which in SPAA terms is better sightlines to planes, so I can get the kill and RP/SL, and that honestly gets me killed often too, usually to getting sniped across the map by a tank.
But ya, if a CAS player just never goes within 5km or so of the field, stays around mach 1, pops up to launch mavs he can do this forever basically without recourse from anything but CAP. Theres a lot you can do with leading missiles outside of just following the radar, but not to someone going that fast and know what they are doing, the missiles just don’t pull enough. For every 50 CAS players you might run into 1 guy that does this so its not so bad.
From like the 100 or so games i’ve played SPAA this week I’d say about 75% of CAS players are terrible and just eat missiles for breakfeast if launched TIRST and no one else is pinging them, and probably half would still just job to a hard radar lock without trying to do much. I still think CAS has the upper hand in every BR bracket if piloted by someone that knows what they are doing, especially with FNF stuff, theres always a risk to dumb drops at low alt because you can still get shredded if they get a lock early enough with guns or if the SPAA can lead without it to get shots in 1-2 seconds faster.