It seems very good to me, but a correct balance of the CAS is needed, because right now it is unbalanced, it cannot be that two minutes into the game you kill an enemy and three minutes later that player kills you because he took out a plane, there must be a time in the game in which you cannot take out a plane, at least have 7 or 8 minutes in which you cannot take out a plane, or that more points are needed to take out a plane, that you need to kill three enemies or capture 3 bases So that it’s not a complete spam of airplanes, which is what we’ve been seeing lately, people running, killing an enemy or capturing them and when your team kills them within a minute there are already 5 airplanes destroying tanks all over the map, and not necessarily killing super covered players, killing in the respawn, literally killing everything in sight.
Whilst I severely dislike CAS, I can agree it has its place for combined arms. Whilst CAS itself isn’t the problem, I think the bigger problem is the fact that SPAA simple does not get access to FLAK ammunition. You know, the ammunition that explodes when nearby a plane? Or after it reaches a certain time? As it is SPAA has to actually HIT the plane to do anything, and even this its a 50/50 if your HE load actually does something or not. SPAA, at the moment, is more of a TD vehicle because of the rapid fire rate and being given AP ammo. If you want combined arms to be balanced, SPAA needs a hard counter to CAS/Fighters, and that would be FLAK ammo.
There actually is some flak ammo with radar sensors and timed shells.
The Flakbus has some but it’s completely unusable. To use it you have to rangefind the plane which sets a fuze for the registered distance. The stupid part is that if the plane is at 1km when you aim at it, the fuze will be set to 1km but by the time you’re done with the rangefinder part, the plane will now be at 500m so the fuze is permanently set for the wrong distance.
Also the radar fuze ones such as the ones on the VIDAR or other SPGs sometimes just don’t set off for some reason.
Gaijin ought to be able to allow shells to detonate at ___ distance, given that rockets on aircraft have had that capability for eons.
Clearly.
A longer post in another thread dealing with the same issue:
The full post - very long
As planes and tanks are implemented with complete different set-ups to make them playable for masses - you have simply the phenomenon that you can’t balance them vs each other - to counter CAS you need another plane.
The skill floor to fight ground units with a plane is way lower than to fight an enemy aircraft. That’s why good pilots are imho rare in Ground RB.
I play exclusively Air RB and check vehicle stats of my enemies before i engage them in 1 vs 1s in order to assess their threat level. And i get very often surprised how easy it is to kill very successful pilots even if they fly better planes with severe energy advantage. Checks after the match show very often that their high number of air kills are results of playing aircraft in Ground RB.
From my pov the main point of any TO mode / CAS discussion is that rather mediocre pilots can play very successful in Ground RB due to a lack of competition with experienced pilots or experienced SPAA users.
The skill requirements for fighting planes with SPAAs are usually higher than the other way around. So the highly experienced long term player is able to defend himself vs enemy planes by using SPAAs or just with spawning a fighter, whilst the majority seems to be helpless vs average players in plane whilst driving a tank.
So with a little “out of the box” thinking you don’t need to balance tanks vs planes - you need to balance planes with other planes.
The problem is that Ground RB is not very tempting for dedicated pilots, so a lot of good Air RB pilots avoid your mode mainly due to 4 reasons:
a) rather bad economy of Ground RB vs Air RB
b) extremely low WRs (60%+) in Ground RB
c) entry barrier of at least 1 death in order to fly a plane
d) absence of markers in plane vs plane combat
Pilots driven by pure stat pushing will therefore avoid your mode either due to those reasons or because it is much easier to increase their stats in Air RB whilst clapping rather easy targets like tankers in air-to-air combat.
Fortunately not all pilots are driven by stats and play just for fun. And they prefer a good fight with other aircraft compared to slaughtering more or less helpless ground units.
After watching several hundreds of vids and replays of Ground RB in the last 7 years the majority of matches follow the same rules: Rush a cap, earn SP for a CAS plane, die and farm Ground units or kill clueless pilots tunnel visioning on revenge bombing or ground attack in general.
If you would implement a first spawn in an aircraft without any A2G load like bombs or rockets, add markers for A2A combat (so no ground unit markers) and ensure that they attack only enemy aircraft (so playing anti-CAS or just cover own CAS) you would have way less issues with balancing CAS vs tanks.
Most valid arguments against such a proposal:
- Planes with cannons and HMGs are still a massive threat for open top / light vehicles
- Pilots have their own mode, why should they be allowed to play Ground RB without playing tanks
- First spawn planes will reduce the number of available ground units for capturing and holding points. Very long and very tight matches (imho rather rare) are usually decided by tanks as they ensure ticket wins with holding / defending points.
Can be countered with:
- Simply kick them out of the lobby if they attack anything else than enemy aircraft (including choppers) or SPAAs (for self-defense). If you won’t want to kick them out: Disable damage of cannons/HMGs and map pinging in case they want to mark them.
- Air RB is flooded with tankers which perform actually useless tasks like base bombing or farming ai units. They are playing PvE in a TDM game mode with severe impact on the outcome of matches - basically the team with less tankers wins. By allowing dedicated pilots to defend own ground units in Ground RB dedicated tankers could focus on the ground battle.
- Just limit the number of first spawn planes (2-4 based on lobby size) and allow them to load ground loadouts and to attack other targets as outlined in point 1 after 15 (?) minutes or earlier if just a few players are left.
Summary:
I follow this CAS issue and connected points like ODLs for years now from a pure pilot perspective. It is obvious that gaijin is aware of this, but despite hundreds of threads and thousands of posts i see not substantial changes in their game design.
So from a holistic pov gaijin assesses the current situation as fine. Any attempts to weaken planes in Ground RB or to convince them to implement TO modes are a dead end as they would have a severe impact on their earnings. I mean Ground RB players are forced to buy planes to defend their tanks - so why would they change anything?
Have a good one!
they’re at 14%… how about that? only 14% are happy with the statu quo ! :)))))
How about this? make spawn zone completely immune to attacks. then it would be easier for someone to come in a SPAA, stay there for permanent immunity and ammo refills and could afford to shoot non stop 'till they kill the planes. in my experience, the short invulnerability period isn’t enough for that and most of the time, especially around BR 7-8-9, you need to shoot a lot to even hit ONE jet bomber / fighter with those kugelblitz and such. right now (i currently play BR 8.0), even if i spawn in an AA and there’s ONE jet, i can’t do much: they’re too fast and sent a lot of missiles / bulets my way from far away, while being very maneuvrable.
people generally only come here to complain. most players (millions) never enter thje forums once
I ain’t the most observant player, but I can see people on the ground fairly easily unless they’re near a tree or building. People really do discount the benefits of trees & buildings.
You don’t need to even spot anyone to be a fairly successful CAS main.
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Go bomb the location of the guy who just killed you, who you don’t have to spot, because a literal wizard that canonically lives in the War Thunder universe cast a scrying spell to reveal the location of the enemy to you in your dreams before you took off from the runway. Because War Thunder is actually a subsidiary of Dungeons and Dragons, little known fact.
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Then go drop whatever you have left on the enemy spawns of known location (also pretty much a magical spell that your enemies are compelled to move through one choke point that was foretold to you before the battle, without any choice in the mater)
You can do all of this ultra fast since you aren’t even looking for targets, so you also generally don’t get shot back at significantly yet until you’re done already.
We should unironically expand on this lore, because it sounds sick af.
The kill cam stirs and will not let me sleep. I dreamt I saw a BT-7 with a “did you angle today?” decal ammo-racking an AMX 30, aye. I dreamt of a Jagdtiger without an engine deck MG42, waiting on a bridge that swayed and swung. On its hull perched a joyous gnome with a Christmas hat on his head. I dreamt of a roaring river and a P-47 that was a fish. Dead it drifted, with a full HVAP belt unloaded into its airframe, but when its bombs did drop anyway, oh, I woke from terror. All this I dreamt, and more.
I dreamt a Falcon howling in the rain, but no one heard its grief. I dreamt such a clangor I thought my head might burst, Soviet engines and machine guns and arty and smoke grenades, but the saddest sound was WE ARE WOSING. I dreamt of a Maus in full uptier that’s just fired its coax to bait you out of cover. And later I dreamt that Maus again, somehow dying to a FAB 100.
But I see a shadow, one most of all. A tall and twisted snail with one black eye and ten long arms, sailing on a sea of blood.
Most players that kill me tend to be skilled in general, so they rarely actually stay in the same place.
Are you suggesting it’s a good thing that one of the “skills” you need in a video game about WWII tanks is “Being sure to not let the literal magical spells tracking your location from the aether get a good spiritual lock on your soul energy”?
When you approach the airspace above the B cap, you will meet a spectral wolf who will pose to you three riddles. Answer boldly and without hesitation, for the spectral wolf knows only of fear. He will guide you to your quarry once worthy (developer’s update: for balance reasons and player complaints, we have made the answers to all riddles “any randomly mashed 3 or more keyboard characters”)
There will come a time, after a long S.U.M.M.E.R., when the sales bleed, and the cold breath of power creep falls heavy on all BRs.
I hope a change happens fast, because atm it is unplayable with the german faction at 11,7 BR.
F15 lobs a paveway and relaxes an swerves a bit (not even gonna start with KA-52 which chills 15km away) , while your missle bops up and down even if you do only subtle corrections. I have no chance to hit a mach 1 jet flying low (since you only see him for a second)
If a Ka-52 chills at 15km he can’t reach you.
**LISTEN the Userbase of the game:
41% - There should be a “Combined Arms” mode with CAS (similar to Ground Battles now) **
and a “Tank Battles” mode without CAS or other aircraft
So simple and perfect solution for everyone but gaijin…**
Here we go again