So basically we all know how important fighters are for air superiority in this game - a well played, uncountered bomber/attacker can easily win a defensive match on invasion mode. My problem is that using a fighter is not really profitable, as a non premium player having to chose between a fighter and a tank, in 95% of the cases I’d chose a tank. The problem comes, when the whole team thinks this way (and there is obviosly nothing wrong in that thinking) - then a bomber can be uncountered for the whole game and nuke your whole team. My suggestion is to either drastically improve rewards for killing planes in order to encourage players to play fighters (or at least to use AA as intended), or give every player an opportunity to take one additional fighter squad into the game.
This would sufficiently balance the overpowered explosion radius of bombs, as most players would go into a fighter for revange kills or for good exp gain. Currently the only reason to play a fighter is to have fun, as the xp is ridiculously low and most fighterers have very low anti-infantry capabilities. What do you think?
I agree that the incentive to choose a fighter is lower than an attacker. That being said, fighters have ground attack weapons. They aren’t as good as attackers, obviously, but multikills are fairly easy with rockets and small bombs.
It’s kind of like Engineers - you sacrifice your score (generally) to help your team win. That being said, incentivising both Engineer and anti-air gameplay further would be a good thing IMO.
I believe the main idea with the fighters is to target other planes. I go with the tank on non-premium as well, though I would agree with the other poster - A fighter can do a bomber’s job as well, you just have to aim, as opposed to the bombs which require no skill whatsoever.
If you ask me, each pilot squad should have access to only limited plane spawns. The playstyle is too free, and the ways to counter it are too níche and unrewarding. Needs work!
With the tougher plane damage models as well, the IL-2 is a better fighter than the Chaika is because it can actually kill what it hits.
Honestly, this does not apply only for fighters or (as mentioned) engineers. Pretty much every class (excluding assaulters, gunners, mortars, troopers) should get at least small bonus exp for doing what they are supposed to do, because playing support role full time is generaly very unprofitable in terms of earned exp.
Fighters are very special case, since they are 99,99% of times nothing but a waste of space and thus I agree that their exp reward should be drasticaly higher when taking out another plane.