Topic is mainly about how bad is airstrike but i am going to suggest a buff to smoke barrage also because of its low usage . Buffs to smoke barrage :
Reduced cooldown
Increased smoke shell amount
Bigger smoke radius
Changes to Airstrike :
Airstrike now costs score points be called (probably between 3000 - 6000 )
Why : Airstrike is in very weird situation currently . Not very powerful , taking a lot of time to bring support , also can be easily countered by enemy . I am basically seeing it as a free 3000 point for any plane player . Bringing a point to cost system to airstrike allow us to buff it drastically because players wont be able spam it .
Airstrike wont lock other artillery calls but only itself ( will have special cooldown for its own )
Why : Because airstrike takes a lot of time to finish causing other arty be in forced cool down can cause drastic loses for the team . One new player who naively called airstrike locking 9 players from using any type of arty until it finishes . This is a weird and frustrating mechanic .
There will be more than 1 type of airstrike
Why : Because countries that fought in ww2 didnt have one type of bomber . Bombing runs done by light to heavy bombers . Not using them both would be waste for the historical game like this .
Example : Light bombing for Germany : 5-7 Dornier Do 17Z with 20x50kg carpet bombing
Heavy bombing for Germany : 5 Heinkel He 177 with 6 x 500kg bombs
Heavy bombing runs would cost more points to call and would have more cooldown to call again .
99% wont be ever added but i will type anyway Anti tank airstrike call will be added .
Why : Because it would be really nice to see that stukas with BK 3,7s raining shells over tanks . And we actually have the weapons of comparable role for the all factions
M4 cannons or wickers S for the allies
Bk37 for germany
HO-203 for the japan
NS-37 for the USSR
Last note : Its actually really sad that darkflow made rocket barrage really really plain and simple anti tank barrage . In my opinion it would be nice that if they added special sounds , more anti inf capability to the rocket barrages . Like Nebelwerfer , Katyusha , T40/M17 Whizbang !! all had distinct and unique sound PLEASE ADD THEM DARKFLOW .
The only issue I see with this is that theoretically you can use airstrike to get enough points for another airstrike (or at least make it easier to get).
I guess we would have to test this in action to find out.
I really don’t like those “buying game abilities with some artificial pseudo points” ideas. Enlisted is not primarily skilled based game. This feature is literally anti main audience of Enlisted.
Casuals will rarely get a chance to use these things, while seasoned veterans will have chance to use them pretty often to just farm those poor casuals.
These points things just widen the gap between casuals and players who spend too much time in the game.
Alternative is to have those points not related to score but generated passively over time no matter the performance.
Also in the past I made a suggestion to add something similar to engineer resources but for radio. You have certain amount of radio points to spend on strikes.
Imo certain things costing some kind of points to limit them is not a bad thing on it’s own. It allows those things to be strong like they should be (not pathetic like airstrike is now). Question is how to do this right so nobody suffers.
i understand this but this way at least airstrike would be balanced to call like rewarding the player for trying hard in bad team instead of leaving early . (like a nuke in warthunder) . For casuals thats why i tried to bring idea of light bombing and heavy bombing casual players at least would reach the light bombing run points if they just do the basic defending or attacking .
Also increasing plane number on formations would probably balance the counter attackers of enemy players and building AA’s to defend would be better option .
The cost system means more nerf which is when people will just prefer to spam more HE shells instead. Also why not give them 3k score if they fight aircraft which is what their job is for fighters
If anything like this has to be implemented I’m in favor of a team cooldown, 30 seconds after somebody on your team launches another person can launch (rough working number can be higher or lower if need be for balance). They didn’t have a lot of repeat barrages unless they had multiple teams doing strikes, those teams still had to reload more artillery shells into the tubes to be ready to launch again. Even if there was a team cool down of 5 seconds that would still be a massive help to spamming without locking casual players out of a mechanic entirely.
This would be the best case scenario to not alienate casual/new players from the veterans. I do agree artillery smoke needs its own cooldown similar to the ammo supply drop with maybe a 2:30 cool down utilizing the perk that will go down to a 1:15 cooldown since the smoke strike is meant to be more non-lethal and meant to obscure enemy line of sight more than anything.
This is just my two cents on the artillery situation, It’s the devs game They will do what they see best.