Planes, vehicle best used for infantry sublimination in this game, should be put on a point based timer
Citing works by W. Woodsman (2023), Woodsman say that plane can be best utilised by spawn, dive in, bomb, suicide
This can be good usage for plane, but I feel to build on this plane should work based on points - you need 700 score points to spawn plane. You have two minutes to use plane ordnance. You get kills - every 10 soldiers killed is another 5 minutes on top of your timer (Woodsman, 2023)
Having vehicle spawns as a sort of “point” system would be very welcome from my perspective, but I think there is a particular segment of players who want to use vehicles all the time. They’re gonna get angry if they have to help on the frontline.
As a professional P-38 enjoyer, I think a points system for vehicles in general is a good idea. I disagree entirely with the timer since I think nobody would bring planes for 2 minutes willingly. But if you need to get at least 700 score (perhaps increasing each spawn) it would prevent spam diving since if I need 5 kills or something to extend that’s exactly what I’ll do.
Tanks should be similarly limited to a lower score based on light/medium/heavy/TD/AA with different scores needed for each based on type and BR. Same for planes. But again, no timers, just play until you die then you need to gain more score.
Stuff like this is why I think if we spawn limit vehicles (not a terrible idea) it should be for all vehicles. Idk exactly what it should be but I think as an example a sliding scale of 500 points and 700 points for a heavy tank and a plane respectively are decent starting points but not absurd. Then they could scale up each death by 20-50%. So something like (for the heavy tank/plane example) 500/700, 600/840 or 750/1,050, 720/1008 or 1,125/1,575 etc…
Obviously the starting number or increase could be adjusted but this would definitely make you not want to suicide your plane if you may not be able to spawn it again. Also these numbers are achievable even for AI squads in a game so I don’t think it’s prohibitively high.
My proposal for starting points would be as follows (based on capability vs vulnerability generally specific vehicles may need different costs):
Light tanks 300
TD’s 350
Medium Tanks 400
Heavy Tanks 500
Fighters 600
Attackers 700
I’ve got an alternative.
Force aircraft to land on airfields/carriers to replenish ammo. No more air refills.
It’d be harder to do the same for tanks but you could always just force them to spawn farther away to give it a feel of reinforcements.
There is no fix for this because you can’t deny folks trying to “upgrade their squads” or the vehicles that come with them. Just as you grind an INF or MG team the vehicle player has to do the same with their squad, and in the same manner that you’re pumping upgrades into your small arms, the vehicle player is doing it for their vehicle.
The campaign mode dealt with this reasonably well, the post merger army bucket does not.
Nevertheless there is no simple fix for it that will not have 2nd order effects on the game elsewhere - that is the price you pay for an ill though out game mechanic change mid game.
