We all know that flying fighter planes is mostly useless, unless there`s enemy plane in the sky as well, yes some planes have rockets and bombs , but many dont. so you kind of waste tech space if the enemy doesnt pick a plane. then you might shoot them down and back to flying pointlessly , maybe killing some infantry with mg-s from time to time.
So here`s an idea - air superiority.
as long as you are the only plane in the sky you get x amount of points every y second or something like that. maybe also transfer some % of the points gained to the enemy that shoots you down. promoting some dogfights in the sky.
I had one battle recently where we won while laughing at an enemy hurricane because it hadn’t managed to kill anyone all game, and because being up there meant taking away an infantry squad from the defense, we deliberately avoided shooting it down so it could continue to be useless.
This was an actual chat conversation with randoms.
ofc there are cases like that, but most of the time ( in my personal experience), you shoot down a plane and then fly aimlessly, then you have to kill yourself and half the time, the moment you suicide enemy spawn a bomber :D.
maybe its the “killing yourself part” that doesnt sit right with me - i fought , we both got some shots in, but in the end i won. but if i kill myself he gets the points.
Maybe add a “leave battle” option with a plane ? - fly towards a ressuply point, maybe a bit further and if you stay in there for several seconds (without enemy being near you ) you can change squad, without dying.
Parachutes have been supposed to happen Soon™
In the meantime, yeah I’ve resorted to either kamikaze tactics, jumping out and trying to hit someone with a molotov on the way down, or seeing if I can land in water.
You can actually safely jump out of a plane if you time it well. Leaving the plane cancels all of your forward velocity, so if you fly low and time it so you jump out of the plane while actually above the battlefield, you can get to the ground with the pilot. I suppose the plane still counts as destroyed, but it still feels better than just out right suiciding.
Honestly though, the real fix I think is to just make sure that all fighters have at least some rockets or bombs. Even a pair of 50kg bombs lets a fighter have some impact on the ground battle, and with some practice you can snipe tanks. Alternatively, allow a low flying fighter to have some sort of auto ping feature that lets your team know where enemy infantry you fly over are. Something that gives fighters an actual reason to be around while uncontested.
The “Just give them score points” idea really doesn’t help anything. Points don’t have any relevance to who wins or who loses. A fighter getting free points just for existing is essentially rewarding a player for lowering their team’s odds of success. It also doesn’t fix the most fundamental problem: Being a fighter is just… boring most of the time. An enemy plane shows up, you fight them for a bit, and then you’re waiting around. Unless the score bonus is so huge that you end up with more points from it alone than you do from actually fighting people, which again, just incentivizes not helping.
I wouldn’t hold my breath. Look at Tunisia, no fighters currently have bombs or rockets, it’s the way the game seems to be headed….for further evidence, they just removed the bombs from the F2 in Moscow.
Why would they do this??? To put more pressure on F2P to spend money to buy a 2nd vehicle slot. Who would use their single vehicle slot on a fighter plane with zero capabilities besides dogfighting?
It’s the way it was originally and the way it should be.
As soon as fighters got their own payloads, they started ignoring enemy attackers to farm infantry kills.
I agree…but I’d go further on reducing the advantage of vehicles….no more assists for tankers and no more HE rounds….BS easy peasy way to farm XP.
This, but it’s not the whole issue. A lot of fighter pilots (myself included) want to be contributing by maintaining air superiority, but there aren’t attackers every game, and the vast majority that do spawn just dive into the dirt immediately after delivering ordnance. We don’t have a lot of chance to stop that, especially if it’s a smaller fighter with smaller/less guns shooting at a larger attacker, they just soak rounds and don’t plan on pulling up anyway.
Conversely, a lot of infantry squads don’t play the objective, or support it in any meaningful way.
Infantry should be playing the objective. Tanks job is to support the infantry by blowing up enemy infantry and destroying enemy armor. Planes job is to support the team by either keeping enemy air down or bombing concentrations of enemy infantry or tanks. Bombs on fighters isn’t the problem, the lack of penalty for kamikaze bombing and relative difficulty of shooting down planes (damage model needs work all around) are the culprit.