The most efficient way to use an airplane is currently to spawn it, fly to the battlefield, fly directly at the enemy tank and throw out your ordnance the second before you crash.
This saves you around 1.5 minutes that you would spend pulling back up, turning around towards your resupply point, flying there and turning back around to the battlefield. Even if you’re not a premium user, you are generally still more efficient crashing and spawning as an infantry squad in the meantime. It also makes it possible to land your bombs on target without hours of practice.
From my experience, around 40%-60% of pilots use this strategy.
There have also been various suggestions that make it less likely for players to choose this option: Airfields, bomber sights, …
Here is an additional concrete plan to make the strategy non-viable for farming:
Pilots no longer receive EXP immediately, but instead receive potential EXP. These potential EXP are paid out as follows:
-
If your plane crashes/has already crashed and your pilot dies/has died in the crash (or on the field without getting tagged), you do not receive your EXP.
-
If your plane is shot down, you eject from the plane and the pilot survives, you perform a crash landing and the pilot survives or if the match ends, you receive 100% of your potential exp.
-
If you perform a landing with an intact plane, you receive 130% of your potential exp instead of the current +100 score bonus and faster plane respawn.
This means that plane cyclers no longer receive any reward for their current crash strategy. And if they try and circumvent this system by ejecting from the plane, they A) still do not receive EXP if their pilot does not survive the drop, or B) Must play their pilot until they take damage from an enemy unit, since killing the pilot with e.g. your own molotov will still not pay out their potential exp.
This is owed to how the game’s tagging system works. This system also comes with a major issue concerning my suggestion which I’ll describe in a comment.
Lastly, the bonus for a successful landing addresses a different point that makes sense to include here: One pilot may occupy the plane for the entire match. There have been suggestions to impose a penalty on this, which I am strictly against. This 130% EXP multiplier, however, incentivizes successful pilots to cash out on all of their earned exp by landing - and in turn opening up the plane slot to a different player. (On airfields/aircraft carriers, players should be repaired as usual after landing but can choose to exit the plane afterwards instead of taking off again if they want the 130% EXP multiplier)
