This is partially an extension of “Air Spawn for Strike/Bomber Aircrafts at Rank 6+”, but to specifically encompass strike drones.
Strike drones suffer from a steep spawn point cost, significantly higher than strike aircraft fully loaded with guided ordinance at similar BR’s (for example, an SU25BM with 2x R60, 2x R73, 4x KH25ML, 2x KH25T costs 736SP where a strike drone with two weaker missiles costs a fixed 750. They also suffer from being easily countered - the most egregious example being the MQ-1’s 8km Hellfire versus the Pantsir, but also the Orion’s 10km Konkurs and Wing Loong’s 10km AKD-10 versus ItO’s and VT-1’s. However, I do not believe these should change, as the downsides and steep cost of spawning a drone offsets the fact that one can do so without having to grind the Air tree of a given nation. I believe that these trade-offs are acceptable for what a strike drone offers.
However, in addition to their steep spawn cost and general vulnerability to aircraft and SAM vehicles, rearming a Strike Drone is essentially non-viable, as it requires an extremely lengthy process to fly back to an airfield due to their slow speed, and gaining enough altitude to effectively use their ordinance at their intended ranges is nearly impossible to achieve within the timeframe of a given match. This is especially egregious for the Orion’s guided bomb varieties shown on 8/15/24’s “The Shooting Range”, which require a minimum of ~3000 meters of altitude to dive, pick up speed, and then level out and glide to the target. This portion of the strike drone gameplay is unenjoyable, and results in a strike drone being effectively a single-use, high-cost revenge-killing tool rather than a reliable, re-usable part of a ground player’s tool belt.
To remedy this, I believe that having a drone respawn at its original air spawn after rearming would be sufficient. The drone still requires a lengthy time to fly back to an airfield and re-arm, as well as fly forward back into engagement range, but would make the drone potentially reusable multiple times within the scale of a 10-minute match.
- Yes
- No