Letās remain fair here. Doing all of these together would make bombers close to worthless. Who would want to bring a plane to the battle, if it is limited like that? Almost every player would only want to bring tanks, unless you nerf them hard, too (and they donāt deserve it). Nerfing radiomen hard is one thing, but planes are a big part of the game and I doubt the developers would want so much of their hard work to go to waste. I think it would be a shame.
I like the āglass canonā gameplay for planes, so that they die fast but deliver lots of dmg.
having planes deal little dmg, but letting them be invulnerable is no fun at all.
Risk reward needs to be a thing.
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I donāt disagree with planes being more vulnerable. Even so, I donāt like, that every plane gets a guarenteed successful first bomb run, because they literally spawn just a few seconds away from the target. It is almost impossible to intercept them in time, no matter how squishy they are.
So far there is no risk to hopping into a plane, shooting your load and then continuing with another squad, glasscanon or not.
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Soā¦ as a bomber you could be deployed right over the warzone without bombs, and after first pass overviewing the battlefield, you should refill your bombs to be able to turn from reconnaissance to actual bombing?
Iām not playing planes so it might be a crap idea.
EDIT: my biggest issue with it is that itās an idea to address the issue of untouchable bombers, nothing that comes from reality and does not add much to pilotās life. So a refined version:
If you crash your bomber, after changing squads and the possibly introduced cooldown period is over, next round you start off over the battlefield facing your refill point, but without bombs. So first you must reload, then return to the battlefield giving enemy fighters time to prepare for you.
Hmm, that would also be a functional possibility. Very similar to just putting the spawn point further away but with the added benefit of alerting interceptors to the presence of an enemy bomber.
On the other hand, with that solution, bombers are very likely to have an enemy fighter on their six right from the start. Bombers should at least have tailgunners, before such a thing gets implemented. Or they need to spawn at a rather high altitude for safety. It could work. The stakes would certainly be higher for bombers.
I still like my idea better, though, because it gives more tactical flexibility. Bombers have the choice to play it safe or launch a risky attack immediately.
let planes spawn 15 km far away, but have the bomb refill spot be as close as 2 km, so that if you kill a plane, it will need a lot of time to respawn.
thus āmaking it desirable to even fight planesā,
because AA guns are not worth it, not so much because they are too weak at killing planes, but AA guns require you to not play the objective- you have to wait for a plane to attack, which is hurting your team more than you getting wiped from bombers from time to time.
So right now the best defense against aircraft is āattacking from multiple flanksā and ābuilding spawn radios inside of buildings, where they cant get destroyed from bombsā
Ok, that would surely put a damper on kamikaze and certainly sounds much better than what we have now, but there is one downside compared to my idea of having bombers spawn at a low altitude:
A freshly spawned bomber would take a long time to reach the battle area, yes, but once it is there, it is approaching at high speeds and interceptors will still have a hard time responding quickly enough, because planes are difficult to spot from a long distance, unless damaged and smoking. The only way for interceptors to react fast enough, would be for them to wait between the battle area and the enemy plane spawn. While they wait there, they canāt make themselves useful in any other way and they would surely grow bored quickly, not knowing if an enemy plane will come or not.
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might be better for air to air combat, indeedā¦ oh man " interceptors", yet one more aspect of air combat that needs to be looked at.
Balancing all of that is a nightmareā¦
Me too. Just you werenāt satisfied with first wave attacks so I came up with something different. 
An idea that was mentioned by someone else: on some maps where there are radar stations, team holding the station could be aware of enemy planes until station gets emptied, thus fighters would get visual alerts of enemy planes.
Too boring - would remove planes from the sky which I donāt wish.
Another idea hinted before: be able to build the AA gun with its own personnel (one or two of your squad members remain there) and then you can go and forget AA until time comes, then press some button and switch to the turret, even 3 squads later. Just like radio operator. Complications come when the enemy kills the guy, but I donāt think itās a problem - if you want him protected, donāt build AA in the middle of the battlefield.
Could be heavily abused against infantry as I see (e.g. two AA guns operated simultaneously by same squad, switching to other one while reloading), so needs some extra care/ideas to make it balanced.
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Yeah, I remember that one now. That was a good idea.
Balancing really is an intricate puzzle. Amazing results can be achieved with many interlocking elements, that influence each other in subtle ways. But I suspect the devs will just someday swing the mighty nerfhammer once and shatter air combat to pieces.
Unfortunately, too many developers are unwilling to go back to the drawing board on balancing and either opt for simple and shallow patch jobs or they just destroy an element, that doesnāt seem to fit.
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I think a good nerf is with bomb delay that gives you the chance for scape
bigger the bomb bigger the delay
and add a reload time bigger the bomb bigger the reload time in air resupply
and of course higher damage for stuka they are more resistant than the IL2
it can help a lot nerfing it without nerfing spash radius
No. Planes are fine in current status
Yes half of them have only unrealistic stats totally fine 
Definitely like the idea of planes not automatically lined up for a bombing run from spawn.
Yet amazingly as infantry, you spawn facing a random direction that is never facing you towards the current objective. Go figure 
Make bombers a more attractive target for fighters by making the reward for taking them down equivalent to the number kills they have acquired from bombing??
Really like this idea as well. Would give bombers another target as well rather than just bombing cap points.
After a sleep my idea still seems to be a viable solution against bombing abuses, so if all else including OP idea of initial low flyover fails, I summarize it in details.
In short: a player crashing his bomber plane could be punished by starting next bombing session of same squad with an empty loadout low above battlefield, 1) forcing an extra refill round that he would have cheated, and 2) making it possible for a fighter already in air to immediately intercept.
This would only be fair toward good bombers if there is a way to change back to other squads without suicide (e.g. at refill point a āreturn to airbaseā ALT-command). Fighters could have different rules.
Three use cases:
Bombers:
- normal bombing: same as before, plane starts off fully equipped from usual plane spawn point, bombs deployed, return to refill, bomb againā¦ as long as you donāt crash/suicide the plane or donāt return it to reserve, nothing changed. If you return it to reserve, next bombing run may go the same way with perhaps a repaired plane after cooldown (unsure about auto repair).
- kamikaze or otherwise crashed: after plane starts off fully equipped, and bombs deployed, plane crashed. Next round it starts off at low altitude on the opposite side of battlefield (compared to refill location) and must refill first. So no quick rotate-2-squads-bomb-again abuse, instead 2x the refill distance to be traveled. Fighters present in the air have plenty of time to track down the bomber. So better get rid of fighters before bombing again.
Fighters:
If fighters rule the sky, no bombers should be able to easily bomb without risking even the first round. If no bombers, after a while fighter pilot will get bored to hell and will return the plane, then there is a window of opportunity for the bomber to refill and bomb without immediate fighter retaliation, and for the fighter pilot to jump back and shoot down the bomber.
- If the fighter crashes, unlike bomber it should not start from battlefield as that would be a benefit for it instead of punishment. But then the question of bomb/rocket load arises - I guess it should start off from different location than refill point and must go to the refill location if it wishes to use something else than MG after a crash.
As I donāt fly planes, these ideas lack any experience behind.
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Adding weather restrictions removes plane use from random maps. As a novice I have used planes on quite a few maps, and it makes a HUGE difference when players mark targets.
Add to that a coordinated team and you have a recipe for a slaughter.
This is tough for me to put forth a solution. As much as I hate plane spam and suicide play it DOES add to the realism of the game. Playing LF you notice the lack of planes and tanks, and it is refreshing, but also the calmer battlefield feelsā¦odd.
Right now there are no spawning restrictions. They could increase spawn times, move the rearm point farther out, introduce weather and use that to provide random restriction for plane use, etc.
Great summary of some of the community feedback about this topic.
I especially like the point about planes starting lower altitude as well as that at least gives the fighter a chance to stop him as he gains altitude or less accurate bombs if he decides to take a low pass.
Also this in conjunction with some of the other fixes you listed above would be a great improvement to the game.
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I really like the idea of a plane withdraw point especially if your in a fighter or you do a few runs and the map goes indoors. I would like an option to not crash and just dock my plane and get back to the ground action.
They really need to fix the damage models though as fighters sometimes just straight up donāt have the ammo to take out bombers at the moment. I would even say the IL 37 is actually better than most fighters because it will kill a plane reliably if you can land the 37 mm.
Another way could be limiting planes to 1 per player per match, if you kamikaze you donāt get to fly again that match. Refilling ammo could be done by landing at an airstrip off map.
Good in theory. But in practice, it would just result in everyone using up their planes at the beginning of the match. It would also give the upper hand to the team with more planes in their squad lineup.