"Spawn Zones" instead of Airfields for Air RB

Suggestions Gameplay
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[Do you feel that this should be implemented in-game?]
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Howdy y’all!

Lately, despite the influx of new aircraft, Air RB has gotten stale. I’ve been thinking of some ways to mitigate that staleness, and have come up with a fairly simple “first step” that I’d like to present!

The first step is one that I thoroughly believe would improve gameplay at all BRs: Removing the default airfield spawn and modifying it into a “spawn zone” for players like this:

Mod_Map1

Essentially, rather than forcing a player to take an airfield spawn, players would be randomly spawned in groups of along this “spawn zone” within the first grid square of the map.

This would take into account aircraft type (fighter, interceptor, bomber) to determine altitudes and forward/rearward positioning in the grid square, as well as squad status to spawn you near you squadmates (if applicable). This enables a certain level of randomness in spawn location, unlike the current airfield spawns, meaning that teams can’t predict exactly where the enemy team is going to be right away, leading to a more entertaining battle experience.

Secondarily, this also balances out aircraft performance. All aircraft will start out at the same rough altitude and airspeeds, giving players a more even playing field to fight on. This gives fighters ample chances to find and intercept bombers while giving bomber players the advantage of spawning in a random location to sneak by unseen.

Third, both of these things become crucial at top tier as we move into the Fox 3 BVR fights that will likely come in 2024. Both the randomized locations and the equalized energy states give us a much more interesting and accurate representation of air combat in the modern age. Having these randomized locations will require a player to use their radar to search more vigilantly, and maybe even lead to a command/control implementation of AWACS or GCI in the future for target information!

Lastly, this also comes with the benefit of diversifying potential air battle map locations. Rather than having to have an airfield on a particular map, some open ocean maps or maps over terrain too difficult for airfields to exist in can be made and used, with a retreat beyond the spawn zone counting as an “RTB” with a timer for repair/rearming.

Feedback is appreciated, and thanks for your time!

-LDA

6 Likes
2

The idea is really really good! I like it a lot. Tho i wouldn’t remove the airfield spawns, but make more of them instead, and limiting the type and amount of planes taking off from them. You can have 6 airfields in the spawn zone, for example, mainly and randomly asignated to one type of aircraft, and if there’s and overnumber of one of that type, it gets reparted into other airfields, so there’s no Fighter Spam to the left side of the map, for example, and eliminating the posibility for the enemy to exactly know where to go at the begining of the game, just as you said. Maybe some maps with airfields, some others with airspawn, so there’s more variety. Overall, your idea seems really good.

2 Likes
3

i like this, we’ve been asking for something like this for a while, I’m glad this got accepted
+1 from me!

2 Likes
4

I support this.
I’d prefer scattered runways, without the option to choose which runway you initially spawn from & it evenly scattered.

1 Like
5

Imho this looks nice for jet BRs, but i see no benefit for props. The whole game play in wt is designed to enforce player interactions (ok excl. Air SB) with known ground targets, possible flight paths, markers, contrails, etc.

In addition the air spawn is a important and very powerful tool to balance conceptual advantages / disadvantages of certain nations - some “crap” planes like P-61s, SB2Cs or 335s work only with an air spawn advantage.

Again, looks nice for jet BRs, for prop BRs this proposal is nonsense for several reasons.

  1. There is no such thing as “balancing aircraft performance” as long as the main factor to determine a BR of a plane is the average results of players using it. A good plane with a lot of rookie pilots gets dragged lower in BR; a “bad” plane flown by better pilots gets a higher BR. Period.
  2. “Sneaky by unseen” for bombers is impossible as long as their targets are known, any prop fighter unable to find a dot / contrail / marker of an enemy bomber has a severe skill issue. That experienced fighters go for bombers last just delays their fate.

No offense, but you used for your example the map layout of Moscow 1941, Operation Iskra & France 1944 - exactly those maps where it was impossible for the average bomber player to get to a bombing point. Both bomber spawn altitudes were 1.000 meters too low (2.000-3.0000 meters) - and all fighters had at least a 700 meter airspawn. Even as they fixed the bomber spawn alt (thx to my bug report) the map was way too large, so even average fighters could outclimb any bomber before he was near a bombing point.

Imho your suggestion looks quite nice for jet BRs, but for prop BRs they are rather not suited.

Have in mind that the main selling point of stuff like Wyverns or XP-50s is their air spawn advantage vs other - flattening this advantage with “air spawn for all” is highly appreciated, but rather unlikely. Your proposals for bombers looks like made “in good faith”, but are imho rather counterproductive for them.

Have a good one!

1 Like
6

Very fair. I wrote it oriented around jet BRs, but on second thought it wouldn’t really make sense for props. I feel that there’s probably a better solution out there for that. Maybe a solution like the “multiple airfields in the zone” as RivianWhiteWolf suggested earlier would work better for that.

Thanks for your time and feedback!

1 Like