Imo AA gun gameplay is simply boring and not rewarding. I think the main problems are:
Typically you want to build your AA somewhere safe from infantry because you can’t aim low. So if there are no planes to destroy, you are as good as AFK. You need to go and search for targets, leaving your AA behind. But if you do this and enemy plane shows up, you may not have enough time to get back to your AA (assuming you spot it in the first place).
So you are either a hindrance because you essentially AFK waiting for new planes, or your team gets bombed because you don’t use AA. (Of course you may also try to use AA on the frontline but that’s super risky and often there is no good spot for it.)
Suicide planes make AA duty pointless. Yeah you get the points for destroying the plane, but often he gets his kills too. So your team is bombed AND has a dude essentially AFK.
It’s less common with bombs but I encounter it very often with rockets as they can be released from afar (by the time I destroy the plane, it has already fired).
Those two problems are also present for fighters in some form.
You either “AFK”, get some points and feel like what you do is pointless or you simply ditch it and go shoot guns.
Those are just my observations. Maybe I’m wrong, I don’t know.
And if you are an attacker then you may as well ignore planes and focus only on pushing. Defenders have unlimited tickets so they can spam planes 24/7, Americans can now have 2 planes with HVAR and one with M8 rockets, suicide dive, respawn, rinse and repeat till you get 200 kills and 25 deaths.
AA both buildable and trucks are completely useless against more durable planes especially ai bombers you may destroy 2 of them but 3 will still be flying and killing your team. Yeah amazing.
I remember when I wanted to finish my battle pass task to destroy x number of planes, I almost felt sorry for my entire team for doing it.
I waited probably 10 minutes for the planes to appear and one showed up. Of course, only after I quit and push to the front line, though i managed to get him down! …with HMG.
I think the best solution would be to increase target-richness in the sky, a paratroopers’ plane would be a good start… (they still don’t have lead indicators to my best knowledge)
Every time this regular post appears I write the same thing. AA are weak because planes don’t have big bombs. If they are to be better AA, bigger bombs will have to be added.
Players mostly play for points or xp and when there is a plane in the air no one will build an AA or take out a fighter because it won’t give them that much silver or XP.
Coming from Battlefield 1942 and War Thunder, I once thought I could use my Anti-aircraft gun to quickly defend our control point (it was against the USSR, you could imagine the tank spam) by building it, shooting down a couple of soldiers and maybe disable a tank or two by the tracks, but the fact that the guns can’t point directly forward argues with that ingenuity, and since hardly anyone uses aircraft in Battle Rating I-III, it’s practically useless for me to use.
Yeah AT is a problem largely because it’s very buggy how its places or when you try move it.
But AA works just fine. If you’re defending it’s worth throwing or two up near rallies - but it’s pointless trying to ‘play AA gunner’, just use it when necessary.
All I would like to see is AA to get arc restriction removed and overheat
Potentially I would like Quad barrels and bigger guns, but only if over heat is removed and the lead indicator. So you can rain glorius lead without being too OP
I couldn’t agree more. AA guns got nerfed until the point they became nearly useless for the mere thing they were supposed to do. I don’t exactly want them to be reverted to their old state as they could easily be abused again. But something needs to be done.
I remember in the old Enlisted, having some very “relaxing” games just dedicating solely on watching the skies to combat enemy aircraft (because as an infantry main in all campaigns, I h*te them with a passion). I had a particularly great bauptism of fire in Village La Perelle map destroying countless HVAR rocket planes one after the other. I stacked like 8 kills. Now it’s not even possible to do that anymore. It’s like shooting peanuts that then turn invisible.
So in their current state, they need at least a bit of increase when it comes to turning speed, and a bit more downwards vertical angle. Because if planes are flying very low, AA guns pathetically can’t even reach planes and it’s ridiculous.
We could also use two different sets of buildable AA guns, a basic single barrel one as a low level unlock for early tier engineers and then a quad barrel or something more powerful for higher tier. Because there’s a huge difference in flying speed and durability when it comes to early tier planes and late game, and a single AA gun type for all doesn’t cut it.
We need anti-aircraft guns and high-altitude balloons that can attack automatically (increased durability and smoke after destruction)
This is more useful than anything
A description of air defense balloons can be found in a previous article
I guess any U.S. military would think the same thing when they see the large number of German bombs, high-explosive machine guns, and large-caliber rockets.
But they won’t complain about this
Because the tigers on the ground are enough to bother them
But I agree better and stronger anti-aircraft guns
Of course, it wasn’t my intention to make it into a Us vs Them type of discussion. It was just an example of my experience in game. And yes, there’s aircraft spam in any nation that has great rocket planes or planes with a good bomb payload.
And all factions will benefit from having good anti air defense against them.