Planes are currently in a very bad place in enlisted, they are very powerful and obnoxious with no good way to counter them. Additionally, suicide bombing is a huge issue at the moment.
What should the rework achieve
Put a stop to suicide bombing
Make planes less oppressive
Make plane gameplay interesting
My suggestion for a rework
Instead of spawning in the air, planes will now spawn on the ground in an airfield ~3 kilometers away from the battlefield.
The resupply zone will also be moved to this airfield and it will require the plane to be stationary on the ground before it can resupply.
Planes will carry a realistic amount of munitions.
These changes will make aircraft spawn and resupply slower, as they need to land and take off from an airfield, removing the necessity for the spawn delay at the start of the match. But what about the “realistic amount of munitions” part? well, currently in the game aircraft carry fewer bombs than they would in real life, the plane IL-2 currently carries 8x RBS-82 rockets and 4x 50 kg bombs.
In real life the plane IL-2 would be carrying a total of 600 kg of bombs, so after this rework, it will carry 12x 50 kg bombs instead. If the plane carries 12 bombs instead of 4 it can do multiple bombing runs before it needs to return to the airfield to resupply, somewhat offsetting the longer time it takes to resupply.
With the changes mentioned so far, suicide bombing should no longer be a viable strategy, as spawning is slow and you can do multiple bombing runs without returning to resupply.
To accompany the changes to planes
Allied planes will always have an ally indicator.
Enemy planes will always have an enemy indicator on them when flying above a certain height, and never while below that height. (This is meant to represent the detection of an earthbound radar station)
The AAA stationary gun needs to have its rotation speed increased.
If these changes are implemented plane gameplay would feature some relatively relaxed takeoffs and landings, with more time dedicated to flying above the battlefield looking for bombing targets or dog fighting than there currently is. Even landings might become fun when the stakes rise as you try to land your damage plane, wrestling with the controls trying your best to keep the landing straight and steady so you can resupply and repair your aircraft on the ground.
But you still kill the enemy, and you can still clear an area of enemies and help your team break through. This also solves more than just suicide bombing.
Increasing reload time of planes will only lead to more cases of suicide with planes. Any player whose idea is to clear a point from enemies could care less about who gets the kill credits.
This will also make the tanks even more important and OP in games than it is now. If you’ve played the newer maps, you’ll know that tanks don’t even have to position well to be unkillable from anything other than the planes. With heavier tanks that cannot be penned by the lower level tanks getting added, nerfing planes right now is a bad idea. If you haven’t played Moscow, you’ll also see that asymmetric balance is brought to the game by having a stronger tanks for one faction and stronger planes for the other. Nerfing ammuntion is fine but anything that makes them useless is not fine at all.
There is also no way of undestanding which is a suicide bomber and which is not. I’ve crashed multiple times due to rubber banding, lags as the ground objects render, and sometimes due to my own mistake of having high speed on a dive. Your suggestions will punish people who are trying to play a fair game as well.
There is nothing relaxing about playing a flight simulator in an fps game.
The only problem is you can’t see the bombing targets unless you are on a suicide mission.
I’m not saying we should nerf ammunition, I’m saying we should nerf resupply. In fact, I suggested we increased the number of ammunition planes can carry so you would need to resupply less often and can go on multiple bombing runs before having to go resuply.
The plane IL-2 would carry 12 bombs instead of the current 4.
The plane Sb-2m would carry 15 bombs instead of the current 6.
And the same with other planes, all based on the real carrying capacity of the planes.
And I said it’s better to nerf ammuntion than to make the planes absolutely useless. This is not DCS or IL-2 simulator. The idea is to kill enemy infantry and the planes do that fine now.
Give the infantry more reliable ways to counter planes. That is more than enough. The spawn delay has made planes bearable to an extent. A properly working AA gun and planes that are not flying tanks will make it easier for planes to be brought down before they can make an effect on the battle.
A new game mechanic that requires atleast 4-5 minutes to resupply your plane in games that last 10-15 on average.
How is that not useless. You are also forced to learn how to take off and land with damages. And these damage models are so broken in the planes right now that the player has zero say in what happens about it.
I’ve been killed by planes many times and I kill infantry with my planes too. Other than the lack of a consistent counter to them, I have zero issues with the way planes work now. They don’t spawn kill you at the start of matches anymore. Their handling has been tweaked to be a bit more difficult to fly depending on how effective they were before. What you are suggesting is nerfing them to ground and all I can ask is WHY? Because you get killed by them?
Long reload times for most of them - the vast majority of allied planes are marginal utility - they rarely get lots of kills of infantry. Only the A20 is an exception - hte P47 might be - dunno what bombload it is going to get.
For the rest - the P38’s and 51’s, the Il-2 and Pe-3 and SB2 - you can kiss them goodbye as useful squads.
How is this a nerf? currently you need to fly 3 km away from the center of the map after every bombing run to resupply, I’m suggesting that resupply involves a landing, which would also let you repair your plane, and that you only need to resupply every 3~4 bombing runs. This isn’t a nerf, it’s just different.
Btw, I play assault aircraft, specifically IL-2, hence why I used that specific plane as an example. People are mad at the current state of bombing and I would like a place where I can repair my aircraft.
One more thing, it doesn’t take more than 2 minutes at most to land and take off again. I tested it in the training mode, and that was on uneven ground where I needed to dodge trees to land and take off.
You are simply not seeing what effect this will have on the other faction and planes. Everything you said is tailored for IL-2 which can have a large loadout and is a flying fortress that it can sustain a lot of damage(500 rounds atm xD) and still manage to fly like it came out of factory.
Most planes in the game is already maxed out and can give you 1-2 bombing runs at best. Making their resupply time longer will reduce the effect they have in games which is clearly a nerf. This will also lead to tanks being much harder to kill. Especially the ones that are making use of the poor map designs we have now. The balance in this game is on very fine lines that once you make a complex change like this, you are going to tip the whole thing over.
I can agree on a landing strip for repairs tho. But should be farther than 3 KM.
But it wont reduce their effect? they will spawn with around 3 times the ammo, so if they really are as fragile as you claim then with this they won’t ever need to resupply
When did I say they were fragile. No. They are tanks with wings atm. Especially IL-2 which has damage bug that won’t see it going down even if you empty your whole cannon on it.
IL-2, that is the plane that you fly will spawn with 3 times the ammo. I see suggestion that is intended to make it better for you and not anyone else.
Buffing ammuntion on things like Stuka is a bad bad bad idea.
You do realize I’m suggesting that increase across all planes right? it’s just that I don’t have the assault pilot unlocked with other factions so I can’t actually look at their planes stats.
You can’t increase it across all planes without breaking the whole game. The current counterpart of the IL-2 is maxed out already. The only way to increase it would be to give it a 500KG bomb which is capable of wiping out half the tiny maps we have now. This will also affect the loadout of bombers further up the campaign. Increasing load out of planes will only make it worse for infantry. People will be more than happy to drop them all at once, wipe out two spawn locations at once and then crash the plane. How is that better than the current suicide bombings which rarely has any effect on the ground. I’ve never been killed by a plane that hit the ground.
JU-87. It’s current load out in game in 250 KG bomb with a pair of 50 KGs.
You’d also want to take a look at the planes further up the campaign. Check the Axis campaign tab. You do not want to increase their ability to be dropping bombs continuously at all. 2-3 minutes per drop we have now is much much better. All that it needs is a functioning AA gun and a reworked damage model.
There are a lot of variants of Ju-87, not sure which of them is the correct one but they vary with a bomb capacity between 500 and 1000 kg, with most at 700 kg.
Assuming it’s one of the 700 kg version it should have 2 x 250 kg bombs and 4 x 50 kg bombs.