Attackers, especially those with 250kg/500lb bombs are probably the most hated aspect of this game right now, with particular scorn reserved for kamikaze pilots.
Many ideas have been brought forth to deal with this, here’s a short recap of past suggestions:
reduce all bomb damage/ damage radius
outright remove the biggest bombs
give infantry the ability to take cover
buff AA
reduce plane durability
give better rewards for shooting down planes
relocate supply points further away or planes have to land on an airfield to resupply
limit the number of plane spawns per team or per player
time limit, before a player can use a plane again
That should be most of them.
I like some of these ideas and a combination of them would improve the situation a great deal.
But there’s one thing, that (afaik) hasn’t been addressed yet:
The difficulty of intercepting newly spawned bombers. One crucial aspect of the kamikaze problem is, that all planes spawn in an ideal position to commence a ground attack immediately and at high speed. It is almost impossible to stop an attacker from dropping their first bomb load. An interceptor would have to be positioned just right to catch a diving bomber and land a lucky hit to take it down in such a short time. They are just too close to the target and flying too fast.
So I propose this: Bombers (or even all planes) spawn at a much lower altitude, just over the treeline. Now they have three options on how to attack:
Climb up while on route to the target. This costs them a lot of speed. Watchful fighters and AA have much much more time to react. Even if the attack is a success, it took a good while longer to execute.
Climb up in safety away from the combat zone and then attack in a dive. This gives the best results but takes even longer.
Screw it, just attack low! This is super dangerous and gives a poor view of the battlefield.
No matter the choice or the outcome, the total number of bombs dropped in a match would be reduced. On top of that, suicide bombing is no longer a quick and sure thing. Pilots, that survive the first run are rewarded, as the next attack will be easier. Fighter escorts might become a necessity.
I think this solution on its own would make bombing a lot more bearable and air combat a lot more dynamic. Still might be necessary to combine it with something else mentioned above for best effect, like reduced plane durability.
Simply relocating plane spawns farther away from the action has a similar effect but gives fewer tactical options. I prefer my way.
TLDR; Currently, it is almost impossible to stop a bomber’s first attack run. Make them spawn close to the ground , so that they are more vulnerable during their approach or have to waste a lot of time climbing to a safer altitude before starting the attack.
What you say is totally true the first charge of a bomber is practically impossible to stop, I doubt that going out to the root of the trees will solve it because the distance to travel from the spawn to the battlefield is less than 10 seconds I think it should move away considerably the spawn point and also implement this that you say that the bombers and attackers leave the root of the ground and the fighters leave at the same height as currently spawn
So we have two different styles of game.
We have Invasion/Assault and Conquest.
Conquest games tend to be significantly shorter then Invasion/Assault so solutions for one may not work for the other.
My suggestion would be
In Invasion/Assault, limit one plane spawn per objective marker cumulative as the game goes on, as well as giving planes a specific number of rearms or a specific Time over Target, after which they can’t rearm. ToT would encourage fast strikes to get as many as possible, limited rearms would favor careful strikes. So once you are out, what do you do? Withdraw. Have a point further behind the rearm that pulls the plane out of the fight and puts it on a CD without costing you one of your planes or tickets. And really the marker should be there at all times for instance if you get in a fighter to shoot down enemy planes you can withdraw after. This would also help rotate out players playing planes. You could even do the same with tanks since they have finite ammo in this mode.
As for conquest, with the significantly shorter matches, probably a cool down on spawning the same plane repeatedly, IE if you crash your attacker 1 it goes on CD for 5mins, even if you crash two other planes it still won’t be selectable until the 5 mins are up. Could also give them the withdraw point for people that want to do specific air objectives and then withdraw instead of keep flying.
As for the bombs themselves even 250kg are just way too big. The maps are the size of a postage stamp, bombs that large just do not work with it especially when they can hit you through buildings. I think the absolute largest bombs should be 100kg, and only on dedicated attacker planes. If planes need something for AT other then bombs/large rockets, give them APHE or something similar for their cannons so they can ground attack armored things with them. But as a mostly infantry game, with tiny objectives and maps relatively speaking, the bombs radius is just too big. Tanks, Grenades, and other explosives also have greatly reduced kill radius for this reason, bombs should not be the exception and have a massive kill radius that can wipe entire teams with ease.
My way of thinking was this, and maybe I should have mentioned it already, but my post was already quite long:
Having bombers spawn further away reduces numbers of bombs dropped in a match, yes, but doesn’t make them much easier to intercept. It is difficult to spot a plane in pristine condition (no smoke trail) from a large distance. So the only way for fighters to intercept bombers in time, would be for them to loiter closer to the enemy spawn and thus away from the battlefield. This can be quite boring and I doubt many players would be willing to stand guard like that.
So don’t increase the distance (well, maybe a little bit; on some maps it is really much too short) but reduce the approach speed of bombers instead.
Let’s remain fair here. Doing all of these together would make bombers close to worthless. Who would want to bring a plane to the battle, if it is limited like that? Almost every player would only want to bring tanks, unless you nerf them hard, too (and they don’t deserve it). Nerfing radiomen hard is one thing, but planes are a big part of the game and I doubt the developers would want so much of their hard work to go to waste. I think it would be a shame.
I don’t disagree with planes being more vulnerable. Even so, I don’t like, that every plane gets a guarenteed successful first bomb run, because they literally spawn just a few seconds away from the target. It is almost impossible to intercept them in time, no matter how squishy they are.
So far there is no risk to hopping into a plane, shooting your load and then continuing with another squad, glasscanon or not.
So… as a bomber you could be deployed right over the warzone without bombs, and after first pass overviewing the battlefield, you should refill your bombs to be able to turn from reconnaissance to actual bombing?
I’m not playing planes so it might be a crap idea.
EDIT: my biggest issue with it is that it’s an idea to address the issue of untouchable bombers, nothing that comes from reality and does not add much to pilot’s life. So a refined version:
If you crash your bomber, after changing squads and the possibly introduced cooldown period is over, next round you start off over the battlefield facing your refill point, but without bombs. So first you must reload, then return to the battlefield giving enemy fighters time to prepare for you.
Hmm, that would also be a functional possibility. Very similar to just putting the spawn point further away but with the added benefit of alerting interceptors to the presence of an enemy bomber.
On the other hand, with that solution, bombers are very likely to have an enemy fighter on their six right from the start. Bombers should at least have tailgunners, before such a thing gets implemented. Or they need to spawn at a rather high altitude for safety. It could work. The stakes would certainly be higher for bombers.
I still like my idea better, though, because it gives more tactical flexibility. Bombers have the choice to play it safe or launch a risky attack immediately.
let planes spawn 15 km far away, but have the bomb refill spot be as close as 2 km, so that if you kill a plane, it will need a lot of time to respawn.
thus “making it desirable to even fight planes”,
because AA guns are not worth it, not so much because they are too weak at killing planes, but AA guns require you to not play the objective- you have to wait for a plane to attack, which is hurting your team more than you getting wiped from bombers from time to time.
So right now the best defense against aircraft is “attacking from multiple flanks” and “building spawn radios inside of buildings, where they cant get destroyed from bombs”
Ok, that would surely put a damper on kamikaze and certainly sounds much better than what we have now, but there is one downside compared to my idea of having bombers spawn at a low altitude:
A freshly spawned bomber would take a long time to reach the battle area, yes, but once it is there, it is approaching at high speeds and interceptors will still have a hard time responding quickly enough, because planes are difficult to spot from a long distance, unless damaged and smoking. The only way for interceptors to react fast enough, would be for them to wait between the battle area and the enemy plane spawn. While they wait there, they can’t make themselves useful in any other way and they would surely grow bored quickly, not knowing if an enemy plane will come or not.
Me too. Just you weren’t satisfied with first wave attacks so I came up with something different.
An idea that was mentioned by someone else: on some maps where there are radar stations, team holding the station could be aware of enemy planes until station gets emptied, thus fighters would get visual alerts of enemy planes.
Too boring - would remove planes from the sky which I don’t wish.
Another idea hinted before: be able to build the AA gun with its own personnel (one or two of your squad members remain there) and then you can go and forget AA until time comes, then press some button and switch to the turret, even 3 squads later. Just like radio operator. Complications come when the enemy kills the guy, but I don’t think it’s a problem - if you want him protected, don’t build AA in the middle of the battlefield.
Could be heavily abused against infantry as I see (e.g. two AA guns operated simultaneously by same squad, switching to other one while reloading), so needs some extra care/ideas to make it balanced.
Yeah, I remember that one now. That was a good idea.
Balancing really is an intricate puzzle. Amazing results can be achieved with many interlocking elements, that influence each other in subtle ways. But I suspect the devs will just someday swing the mighty nerfhammer once and shatter air combat to pieces.
Unfortunately, too many developers are unwilling to go back to the drawing board on balancing and either opt for simple and shallow patch jobs or they just destroy an element, that doesn’t seem to fit.
I think a good nerf is with bomb delay that gives you the chance for scape
bigger the bomb bigger the delay
and add a reload time bigger the bomb bigger the reload time in air resupply
and of course higher damage for stuka they are more resistant than the IL2
it can help a lot nerfing it without nerfing spash radius
