Possible ways to soft balance CAS ("pretend RTB" instead of midair rearm, timer between sorties, XP penalty for kamikaze)

Suggestions
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DISCLAIMER: this is not meant to be your average “nerf CAS, all pilots have small pp” thread. I fly CAS too. These are just a few ideas to POSSIBLY make it less prone to abuse, easing the life of infantry, while at the same time keeping planes useful and letting players free to use them.

ALSO DISCLAIMER: everything here is subject to discussion, if you think something wouldn’t work feel free to point out (but please elaborate a little further than “this is dumb, **** off”).

1) Remove midair rearming, make it a “pretend return to airfield” point instead.

The goal here is to prevent a single plane from spamming ordnance over and over in a matter of seconds.

Currently, rearming points allow CAS planes to perform roughly a drop per minute, if they just fly back and forth for maximum efficiency. Someone suggests to put rearming points further, but while this would ease the pressure on ground units, it would also create a lot more dead times where planes would just be cruising back and forth for longer, being no fun for the player and no help for the team.

So I thought, rearming point could stay where they are but become “return to airfield” points instead. Upon reaching it, the plane would de-spawn without counting as killed. That airmen squad would then be unavailable for a certain time (1 minute?), pretending the plane is busy landing and rearming; meanwhile the player will play other squad(s). As soon as the timer is over, the plane is rearmed AND repaired, and the player can spawn it again.

Key points:

  • No more midair rearming means that pilots have ONE ordnance load per sortie. They will need to be more careful where to drop, to avoid wasting it. Airstrikes remain powerful support, but available in less quantity.
  • Safely flying to RTB point → no death counted, plane is locked for a short time but can later be flown again without being subject to the 3 squads rotation.
  • Dying/crashing → squad counts as killed and is locked for a longer time (to discourage kamikaze runs)
  • Lock timers are also intended to prevent players from just spawning and suiciding 2 other random squads just to hop in plane immediately again.
  • Timers will also prevent the same one or two players from being the only ones flying, allowing more rotation.

POSSIBLE ISSUE: Planes being able to just despawn make it harder for fighters to shoot them down. Hence, enemy planes nearby should prevent despawning, but in order to avoid fighters camping enemy RTB point, there should be more than one spread across a wide area.

2) XP penalty for suicide planes

This is rather simple, and can work with or without the previous suggestion. In case a player crashes his plane without anyone being credited for the kill (“you killed yourself”), their XP earnings for that sortie are severely reduced, meaning 50% or less.

No malus if an enemy is credited for the kill.

6 Likes
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point 1 will make flying a plane boring and then people won’t use planes.

If I have to return to an airfield, land, rearm and return, is a waste of time and this game is a fast combat experience and not a flight simulator. people want to use their plane, kill a lot or get killed.

Don’t get wrong with me, I finally get my bomber, and if there isn’t any pilot who chase me is really boring. Use a bomber is reduced to bomb a zone, rearm, bomb, rearm, bomb and the rearm zone is really far (it is needed) so if there is no one in the sky, it turns really boring while I’m going to rearm, imagine if I must go to an airfield, land, rearm and return.

To play this way, I prefer going to flight simulator. It is better if devs give more experience for killing a plane, then other pilots will try to dogfight instead just bomb

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You wouldn’t need to actually fly to base. The current “rearm” point would turn into a “despawn and play another squad while we pretend your plane is flying back to base to rearm” point.

I edited the OP to make that point clearer.

4 Likes
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Then, it reduce the bombers game to, “go, bombing run, go to rearm and use another squad” I don’t like it. There is no sense for planes, is like in COD, but you use the plane instead selecting the zone.

I mean, it is like “im going to bomb that zone and continue playing infantry”. There are a lot of people who enjoy using planes too.

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Indeed, but I’m trying to put up ideas that leave planes viable while solving the “CAS OP” complaints.

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The thing is though, in an infantry focused game like Enlisted, one needs to balance any additional factors around such, and ultimately air gameplay is even more detached from the infantry gameplay than Tankers are. As such, it is ultimately a detractor to the overall gameplay experience of the game for most players if you have a few plane aces continually dropping bombs without competent competition on the other side.

Meanwhile, this would also be a good idea for the devs, as well, beyond just the balance of the game, as it would even more greatly promote monitization through those wanting to stay in the air exclusively, by forcing them to buy premium and/or additional vehicle slots, to have a rotation of three aircraft to switch between, between RTB runs.

And this is certainly better than nerfing planes into the ground or removing them from the game.

4 Likes
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Or give them a realistic hp.

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I mean, this should be done as well, but I think that’s plausibly more bugs than anything, as planes were far more fragile in CBT, and I don’t remember reading about a plane durability buff.

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Expect resistance from people who really really like to have multi kills with zero to low risk of dying.

would want a more manual approach on the planes issue like takeoff/landing give them a 4man squad (pilot + ream repair crew) but the best solution to this I think is to put Friendly fire the same as artillery strike.
I think the best solution to kamikaze is to have a “automatic eject” function at a certain altitude direction and speed, the server can detect if the pilot is doing a suicide run or not and will have to eject him to the battle area so he can fight resulting to more time wasted in returning for another bombing run (also removing any connection to the plane in case it hit and killed someone meaning no one will be credited for that kill).

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yep, I understand. I’m not trying to give a bad point of view, simply I try to see it from a pilot perspective. We must find a mid point where it is fun for all.

I always suggest:

-Make trenches and buildings/bunkers, a place where you can hide and it reduces a lot the explosion damage.
-plane sounds should be listened a lot when they are approaching (to give time to hide)
-Give more points for destroy planes
-improve AA (but I’m sure devs are working on it)

This way we make fun bombing runs if ground forces don’t hide, but ground forces have an oportunity to hide when they listen planes or artillery, and fun dogfighting because fighter pilots will try to destroy planes instead try to bomb zones

(sorry, English is not my lenguage and sometimes is difficult to say what I mean)

1 Like
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Just remove the stalinium armor current planes has → make it worthwhile to shoot planes.

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Also, but that’s not strictly related to the point.

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Yes, RTB over re-arm; however, plane experience should be increased substantially (maybe a “Completed Sortie” award.)

Return to base is more inline with how aircraft were traditionally used and I feel it would be more interesting. As it stands now I suicide out of planes more than I get shot down. This primarily is an Infantry game and Aircraft easily have the greatest longevity with rearming and are hardest to counter.

It also would allow more people to use planes. The way it is currently two good players can lock out all other players on a side from even using Aircraft.

For those that only want to fly… by more slots and get three planes.

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Won’t this make the fighters sort of useless? Flying circles above in hopes that someone will eventually use a bomber and you are there to prevent a single bombing run?

This is also very brutal from a bomber pilot’s perspective. You can’t see shit on ground until you are on a collision course. So, you are relying on luck to make a run count or your teammates communicating. The latter is out of question and the former is kind of what’s happening now.

As for penalising suicide bombers, what is considered an intentional crash and what’s not has to be mentioned clearly first. There’s obviously the draw distance issue which causes a lot of planes to crash. There are also the issues on server side which causes your plane to act weird at times and causing crashes. This system can punish fair players for using planes. Less planes is not a terrible thing to happen but I’d rather not have it that way for the wrong reasons. A nerf to the bombs is imo a better a way of doing it. Making them harder to aim with or reducing their effectiveness against infantry…

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“Completed Sortie” award for exp on a RTB.

If they were to move to a more realistic Return To Base meta, then the awards for a successful mission would need to be in place. Otherwise, grinding aircrews would be horrendous. They also really wouldn’t need a suicide penalty if there was a decent award for completing a sortie.

It also would bring way more meaning into Ammo loads for Aircraft. It is ridiculous how we can just keep reloading ammo and bombs mid-air allowing one aircraft to remain over the battlefield the whole match.