i used to think that suicide bombers were not a problem for the game and it was just whining from couple of tankers that were butthurt cause enemy fought back (with shitty strategy, but still not a problem)… until i saw most disgusting playstyle using them.
simply player had extra vehicle slots, put attacker and fighter planes with best load on them and just suicide bombed every single time as defender (so no ticket penalty) after he dropped the load and then just cycled to next squad. he had 29 deaths in 25 minute game (effectively 24 minute cause you cant spawn plane in first minute).
after i thought about it, i found that it is simply most effective usage of planes cause:
you get reloaded plane much faster than going to reload point (you need 30-40 seconds to reload, but you get only 20 seconds of suicide penalty)
you start with much higher speed and altitude when freshly spawned compared to losing speed and/or altitude when making turns to reload
you can just drop whole load at once and go quantity over quality with your strikes.
suicide bombing should not be more effective strategy than reloading your plane and as such it needs nerf. couple of solutions:
bigger penalty for respawn if plane is killed in first 2 minutes after plane is spawned (30-40 seconds)
spawn planes at much bigger distance (double or triple reload point)
disable plane cycling and make it mandatory for next 2 spawns to be infantry units
or any combination of those or some other solution.
I remember bombing you twice in one game while you were grey zone camping in your tiger.
Hi.
I think 1 & and particularly 3 might be fine, but at the same time we should do similar penalties to grey zone camping tanks. Also the flight penalties should be halved if you blow up a tank in grey. That’s a legit suicide bombing target in my view.
Blown up in grey zone? 2 min respawn & mandatory 2 infantry spawns.
I think rather than trying to address the symptom, lets fix the cause.
Add proper sights to planes so they can drop their bombs more accurately with greater consistency.
Most suicide bombers are not doing it to piss you off, they’re effectively using their entire plane as a bomb to at least achieve a higher probability of a hit/kill on target.
Planes are hard to get used to for new players and when not upgraded many handle like bricks. Flying skills aside, some players are just trying to have an effect in game and so they’re less interested in learning the mechanics of planes, and more interested in getting kills and helping their side win.
I also like flying and I have tried to maximise the effectiveness of using planes - but that takes time, time that my team was effectively missing a player whilst I learnt to control my plane and then ran the shuttle runs to pick up and drop bombs, sometimes accurately and othertimes I’d do 3-4 runs with no effect. Not to mention that most teams are too busy/self absorbed to keep track of planes or much less keep up the indicators for where the enemy is at.
Many players think they pinged once and thats it job done, not realising that it takes a while for planes to get into the right spot to commence the attack run, by which time many of the markers fade away and the bombs go at best guess…
Rockets are much easier to use and I find the rocket equipped planes far more dangerous than those with bombs.
i dont have problem with them introducing general mandatory 2 infantry squads after vehicle is destroyed (no matter in gray zone or not). this is mixed warfare game, not WT with infantry targets.
Though just to make the point again: from my perspective grey zone camping heavies & downtiered mediums are a much bigger issue and needing punishments than suicide bombing.
I’ve personally yet to see a suicide bomber shift the outcome of the game, with grey zone tanks you see it quite frequently.
I did, I’m just suggesting that rather than discover novel ways to constrain the struggling “air game” even further. It will be better to add the sights which is generally why ppl suicide bomb.
The scenario you’re describing is never going to get fixed by any means other than imposing greater restrictions on the player base due to one min/maxer as they used to be called in the table top gaming community.
The fact that he’s used 6 of his 10 slots on planes should tell you that you’re not dealing with an average player who enjoys the game for what it is, but some narrow minded number cruncher that has to have the best combination of weapons allowable by the rules of the game to ensure the best chances of winning.
Each to their own I guess, who am I to deny them their chain suicide tactic if that’s what allows them to grind the tech tree.
If you’re super desperate about punishing them, then potentially suggest an implementation of what WT does, and assign a “money cost” for each vehicle, weapon, soldier and ammunition expended if we adapt it to Enlisted and subtract it from the funds when you win or lose the game.
In many cases you’d have ppl losing Silver per game and going backwards, but it would certainly discourage them from suiciding expensive planes
if you did then you would know that problem is not in suicide bombing, but that cycling suicide bombing is more effective than actually reloading the plane. this would not change with or without sights.
I don’t believe you can cycle this with 3 slots, the game forces you to have ratios of infantry to vehicles, and so you’d need at least 5 or 6 slots open to have 3 vehicles - I can’t remember the limitations I have 10 slots open so I know I could cycle 6 vehicles.
It’s a moot point you get it and I get it, but its the gamer here not the system is what I’m trying to say and you won’t proof the game against this sort of gamer.
And yes the last throw away suggestion was a joke, I wouldn’t want to make the grind harder, I don’t think the game has any economy to speak of per se.
Something else I thought of when re-reading these for better context.
Essentially the entire game is based on squad cycling, the question is to what effect. There will be tankers that cycle tanks having theirs destroyed and then spawning in another tank to take out the tank that killed them, same for planes.
Cycling is part of the game, the better long term strat would be to reduce the need to suicide cycle in the manner that you describe.
like i said having mandatory 2 infantry squads after 1 vehicle could fix lots of stuff. suicide bombing when happens once is not a problem. players that constantly cycle planes for suicide bombing are.
They could potentially introduce global cool downs so effectively you can have one fighter and then one attacker but then both would be on a cool down which means you’d have to pick another type of squad.
would that solve the problem? idk cause you could easily take radio men with 3 players and just kill them from menu and still have more effective planes with suiciding than with actually reloading those planes. with 2 mandatory infantry squads you would get at least 20 seconds for respawn+time you would need to suicide making reloading actually better (or at least competitive) than just suiciding.
The global cooldown would be for all squads, infantry and tanks included, so this would be a good way of separating light, medium and heavy tanks as well as the different types of infantry squads and force a bit of squad diversity into the game.
Edit they could play around with the length of cooldowns and the global types, but you could effectively restrict it to a max 2 tanks (if you only had light / heavy categories) , 2 planes (attacker / fighter) and a single type of each infantry squad cycle. They could potentially have a faster cooldown on infantry squads so that players with fewer slots are not too disadvantaged.