Honest question here about cannon CAS in general from someone who isn’t biased against anything that flies: would all other cannon CAS be problematic if they had the level of shooting accuracy that the NS-45 currently has?
My guess is no, given most of the platforms are bricks that any fighter with more than one brain cell screaming “headon, and give me ramming speed!”
Works because You don’t have to switch vehicles in order to deal with the air, that is the biggest difference You are ignoring.
As long as people have to die in order to spawn into SPAA/Air, that “fix” won’t work for people wanting to just play tanks, so the issue will still remain.
Talking about naval system ignoring that naval units have AI AA and don’t have to switch vehicles is just misleading.
Oh well, people can’t go brain-off and see CAS kills get racked up, boo hoo. I remember a couple years ago just screwing around in my German T31 premium DD, and even though that thing has only 2-3 20mm AAA mountings, I got five plane kills without attempting to manually shoot them down, in addition to 10 ship kills. I really do not think that level of batshit-insane “effectiveness” is necessary to solve CAS’s problems in War Thunder.
People wanting to play just tanks should not have joined War Thunder, or if they did, they should have known full well that their “preferences” would work against them.
And FYI, given that the Air RB mode is such stale dogshit, I would not mind retiring that and expanding EC into a Combined Arms longform battle mode. Which would remove the “but Air RB exists” part diehard tankies love to refer to. Anytime someone brings that up shows me they really don’t know what they’re talking about.
It inspired my proposed changes, plain and simple. And based on recent events when existing SPAAGs got buffs or when new ones got added, lo and behold, AI-guided AAA that people can brain-off kill enemy CAS with is not actually necessary. On a 16-person team, if the intended counters work well, then at least a couple people will go use them at any given time.
Why not?
Why not bring TO and end the never ending nerfs/buffs? Simple solution to many problems that won’t go away simply just because You tell people who just want to play tanks that they should be playing something else.
Good, You should then also understand that naval system works because naval units have AI AA so they don’t have to play something they don’t want to in order to deal with air
give it a 1 in 10 chance when firing to cause an oil leak, if an oil leak is already happening, damage the engine a little.
Joking
Or am I?..
Because that’s not what the game’s about, and the devs have said as much. Repeatedly. Few issues have they been more consistent on, too.
And yet we have seen very similar effects by just making SPAAGs and SAMs easy to use. Nobody complains about CAS much at the 7.7-10.0 range, because every nation possesses counters ready to use, which are easy to use in a successful manner. Hence why I said that having AI aimbots control the anti-air is actually not necessary.
I know you’re probably joking, but random mechanical failures or production quality problems have no place in this game, and the devs have long since said as much.
What people need is easy-to-use and available counters to the CAS. If they exist, most people will eventually shut up about how “OP” CAS supposedly is and go start using them.
Whats problematic about the NS-45 is the hitting power of APHE combined with the pin point accuracy of the Yak-9.
Other than Yak-9s this cannon is only found on much larger twin engined aircraft, which aren’t that effective in shooting down other aircraft.
And the maneuverability and climb rate make ground attacking with the Yak-9K and UT probably even more effective than either TIS MA and SU-8.
Thanks to the instructor you can take shots from 1km away that can hit a target very reliably, as long as you have the aim down but the lack of the airplane being shaken off target means you can also make accurate follow-up shots, like you are spraying with a 20mm cannon.
Other cannons don’t have the penetration and/or hitting power.
Even though you can make the argument that Japanese Navy planes firing 30mm APHE are generally just as effective in destroying ground targets.
But it can be
There is no real reason to not add TO as it would simply help balancing combined mode.
But I guess You just want more nerfs/buffs no one asks about like You did before.
So You use asked 5 people or belive that just because You haven’t seen a topic about it recently?
Nah, being able to spawn into an aircraft that can destroy most heavy targets (ferdinands, Tiger II, Jagdtigers) with one shots while also being able to fight aircrafts after just gathering around additional 450 SP (if You are not using light vehicle) is nothing bad! It is not like You can just destroy SPAAs from very far distances because You have around 30 shells and shells act like they are laser guided. It is not like the Yak 9-K/UT also allows You to rearm and go back to the battlefield really fast.
Like really why hasn’t it been changed already? Does gaijin really wants the air to just be a cheap killstreak?
Historically cannon CAS would be the best option to damage or destroy tanks.
Bombs are not very accurate and also bounce from the ground in reality, making bomb drops like they happen in WT impossible unless it’s laser guided bombs.
Hence why rockets become the second best option, being much more accurate than bombs.
Guns are the most accurate but also deal the least damage and you still need high RoF to increase the ration of hits and lethal damage.
Because guns are heavy and rockets are effective against soft targets, they become the preferred armament for CAS.
The Instructor gives the most benefit to guns, since you can have your plane perfectly aligned with a target at all times.
Hitting a tank from above in a dive wouldn’t be very likely unless you have the RoF and ammo capacity, so shallow dive attack from the side were the best option.
But in WT you can easily spray tanks from above at long enough range to pull up before you crash into the ground.
Ki-200 and Me163 aren’t significantly faster than their opposition, so it’s a viable defense to just run away and make them burn fuel for as long as possible. The BI is much faster than the props it fights, so nothing can force them to burn more fuel if the pilot doesn’t want to. If a BI wants to kill your prop, it’s going to get there, and kill you and there’s very little that you can do to prevent it.
I guess I don’t see it as much of a “problem” per se, other than the fact that the Yak-9 is able to pull those sorts of maneuvers to make top-down attacks work only thanks to the underperformance of the SPAAG that should counter it rather easily.
The “problem” I do see however is that all other big cannons are so hopelessly inaccurate in comparison that they are not worth using when you also factor in the platforms they’re on being (mostly) defenseless bricks.
Most of those do not have sufficient ammo supplies to be all that much of a threat, outside the R2Y2 which is permanently fighting a wall of radar SPAAGs.
My biggest concern is that if snail ever did somehow do a 180 on this idea, that they’d throw in a half-baked mode, say “there, CAS fixed, we’re done” without actually addressing any of what is wrong with CAS.
In addition to that 180 setting a nasty precedent of “pester the devs enough and they’ll eventually cave to give you your custom-made game mode.”
Thus, the closest thing you’ll ever get to a compromise from me is fix the actual problems of how CAS works first, then bother adding TO afterwards if demand for it is still there once the problems making people so irrationally angry at CAS are resolved.
TO does not address the causes of revenge bombing:
TO does not address the intended counters to CAS being either inadequate for the bulk of the game or unavailable when they are needed:
And finally, TO does not address the complete and total lack of healthy objectives for CAS to perform other than directly killing player tanks. Even when token objectives other than killing players did exist, they were not important enough for players to do very often.
Now, could TO be added in some capacity after all THAT has been addressed? Yes, it could, even though I will never see it as “necessary.” A full split queue is not likely, given that much more popular mode ideas like RB Air EC keep getting shot down by the devs. Now whether the “some capacity” ends up as a Sim-style rotating event (or few), a Night Battle-style checkmark queue, severe weather banning aircraft usage, or something else entirely, neither you nor I have any idea.
But You can’t do that with people who just want to play tanks present in combined mode thus this “fixes” won’t do anything.
The “fixes” will help everyone but them, because those people are beyond help. No amount of additions I propose will ever “convince” them to actually pick up and use those counters, because helping them isn’t the purpose of the changes I propose. Helping everybody else who is willing to help themselves is.
If people you specify were such a significant fraction of the playerbase as you and other TO supporters claim, wouldn’t we have had the mode tested more than once in the past seven years? But no, we’ve seen it even less than RB Air EC.
It won’t help anyone as it will only divide playerbase more.
People who want to just use tanks won’t be satisfied and Gaijin will remain nerfing/buffing things that no one asks about.
People who want to enjoy using planes won’t be satisfied because the game will be much harder for them.
With first people who only wants to play tanks gone from the mode, we would truely see how teams that are focused on combined gameplay really work and Gaijin could conclude how to balance things better instead of as You are suggesting just switching the lever from one side to another.
If people who just want to play tanks were insignificant then Gaijin wouldn’t focus on nerfs/buffs every update regarding air to ground balance ;)
After so many years You should understand that for many and Gaijin, air in combined mode is and always will be a killstreak mechanism that helps people who are bad at the ground. CAS units that are OP sells the best.
Giving people more options to counter CAS themselves with will help most people. We saw this with the Coelian buff a while back. We saw this when new top tier SAMs got added. We saw this with the accumulation of effective Radar SPAAG at 7.7-9.0. If effective, easy-to-use tools exist, most people will in fact go at least try using them.
At least you and I both seem to agree that this is terrible for everyone involved. Frustration weakens people’s resolve, then intentional addition of something “overpowered” sells like hotcakes to relieve the frustration.
It won’t help people who just want to play tanks and seeing how things are they are the ones having problem.
Do You have any data to back it up?
That is why there is no TO around and won’t be, no real changes are going to happen because frustartion is what motors the cash flow.
Seeing how after all those counters got added, there was a general cessation of complaints about dying to CAS here and on the WT Reddit, first of all. Secondly, when playing in the BR ranges where the counters are present, such as when I play my 7.7 decks, nobody bothers complaining about CAS much, and the hordes of Radar AAA get many plane kills.
Seems we actually agree those people are the problem, even though we don’t agree on how to resolve said problem.
Since you understand the stuff working against your own idea just as much as it works against mine, have you come up with any alternatives if your main idea is not feasible? If TO never materializes, what is the best alternative in your opinion?
So You don’t have anything to back it up, thanks.
People are not the problem, the problem itself is Gaijin not wanting to develop gameplay as adding new vehicles give them more money.
There is none really.
The only thing people can do is abuse system as much as they can (see my stats on both Yaks and other planes) and talk about it and encourage people to abuse it as much as they can.
No amount of nerfs to air, buffs and changes to SPAA is going to change situations like this and this is what people are mostly angry about. A situation where You die to something You can’t do anytihng about and no matter what You do with SPAA/Air, it won’t change for people in tanks.
Like any complex issue, there probably isn’t one singular cause, and thus it’s likely some of both. Overly stubborn people, overly stubborn devs, and devs also using overly stubborn people as an excuse to remain stubborn.
Considering how you argue many particular topics to death (much as I do), I’m genuinely surprised you haven’t thought of an alternative.
In my own case, I’d at the minimum go after the causes of revenge bombing, as that seems to get people irrationally angry for no good reason. Kill cam, planes spawning in midair, giant text notifications about caps changing hands all contribute to that. Then if nothing else we can all stop screaming at each other as much.
Some amount of revenge killing like this will always occur, yes. The most that can be done here is axing the aspects that make this as easy as it does. Removing the kill cam, forcing planes to runway spawn, and removing the giant text notifications about cap zones changing hands would be a good start to get people to calm the hell down.
Beyond that though, enhancing the potency, utility, and availability of the counters is the only other major option. Likewise, adding other enticing objectives for CAS to perform and coercing them via rewards to do those instead of hitting player tanks directly could also help. In my eyes, air-to-ground PvP is not inherently bad - having that as the only (practical) option for CAS to do is.
Unfortunately, that is what real warfare is like - everyone has a specialty, nobody can do every job, much as they may want to. The few times we had any vehicle be a “do-everything” the vehicle(s) in question were nerfed into the ground. An example would be Bombers in Air RB being flying tank gunships back in 2014.
