So, strike drones. the bane of every player when they were implemented, And now just a forgotten snake oil attacker that isn’t worth taking out with the new spaa.
Now I’m not asking for them to go back to how they were, but is there really anything the snail could do to make them worth taking out? This can range from loadouts, how they’re spawned, anything really.
Just to spitball some ideas: At lower tiers, we limit their range to 5km before they can fire, Basically acting like an atgm heli. The higher the BR the better the range and loadout of the drones.
Perhaps adding Drones into a TT could work? Different br’s, different drones and loadouts. This would also help with the addition of more fixed wing drones that arn’t in the game yet.
drones are very special as a basic CAS option for players that have no planes.
it’s limited fire power, just meets the basic standard, and it’s current br is set to ensure that drones will meet SACLOS SPAA.
Drone’s IR signature is very small, and the flight performance is very bad, this caused a problem, if you can’t reach it, it will be OP, but if you can, it will be useless. it a 0 and 1 problem not 0 to 1.
it’s not like usually planes, which has similar range as SPAA in same br, your efficiency depends on your skill.
this problem needs to be dealt if you want to expend drone line
What they could do for top tier (where the strike drones are currently suffering the most) is to let them spawn further away, further up and give them the upgraded fire and forget hellfire missiles with mmw radar guidance. This would give Gaijin a good way to test the effectiveness and functionality of mmw missiles in a way that doesn’t impact the matches to much.
A second option would be to give them the ability to scout instead of having weapons. Same as above, spawn further away and further up but with no weapons and the “scout” ability (perhaps to a limited degree?). This would however be quite a boring version to play so they could implement a system where the drone can call in support of various kinds through the map (in the same way artillery target is currently selected). Things like ammo boxes, smoke artillery, a smaller limited version of regular artillery (otherwise it would be to over powered), and possibly other things as well.
To also throw in a different gameplay side to it. Would having IFV’s be the scout drone carriers and light tanks be the strike drone reinforcement? Obviously having like 5 kills to call 1 in but comes with the benefit of not sacrificing your tank to hop in one.