Hello there!
I got some rather obvious balancing suggestions, some may be controverse, but let’s see:
First: Artillery.
As of now, you can have either a 4min cooldown or a 1min CD (~10s from call to first impact, 20 secs strike, 30 secs wait), if you have a radio-team with the high frequency strike skill.
The “only 1 strike at the time” change was a really good move, but I feel like the radio-teams are near OP while radiooperators in other squads are close to useless. So I would suggest:
Reduce the base CD from 4 minutes to 3. Have a skill in the squad-tree (blue) to reduce the CD by 60/50/45/40/30 secs, while having a skill in the troop tree (red) to reduce the CD by 60/50/45/40/30 secs, not sure how to distribute. This way the radio-OP-squad is less dominant, while radio-OPs in other squads are more usefull, since their CD isn’t 4mins but 2-2.5mins. Currently they often get to call one strike (if that), then die before their CD is up again, even if you play carefully and well. This won’t lead to more spam in many cases, since the 1 active strike per team is allready doing a very good job at beeing the chokepoint.
Second:
Similar to the radiooperator skill in the red tree, I would suggest other skills in the red tree for other roles. e.g. a smaller AA-battery for pioneers/engineers (or whatever you call them) on other squads (like a multi MG-mount with 0° depression and barely any shielding, so it doesn’t get abused against infantry), or a medic (carry +1 medkits without backback) or a grenadeer skill (carry +1 grenades without grenade without pouch) for infantry or stuff like that. One skill (maybe a choose 1 situation) per red tree wher eit is needed, just to give basic infantry more usefullness and give us more flexibility on our troops. Atm you either choose: waste time with pioneer squads, waste time with fighter planes or get bombed over and over and over. Or play the arti/mortar squad or basically play without artillery support, since communication with teammates is… difficult and often fairly onesided.
Third: Airfights.
While it is a lot of fun to find somebody who knows how to fly and do dogfights with him/her, it’s insanely imbalanced, tedious and unrewarding in terms of score and XP. You whip out your Ju87, get 1 or 2 decent divebombs out (which are really easy with any bomb bigger than 50kg) and you are set, earning at least 2k XP for that crew. Or you take a fighter, only having 50kg bombs or none at all, beeing more fragile, fighting an enemy for several minutes, gain 1k XP if you are lucky. I mainly play Germany, that may or may not be a factor (it does seem way easier to kill German planes, but that, again, may be very subjective). What to do about this problem?
Well, first check the picks of the aircraft we have currently… so you expect people to shoot down an IL2 with aircraft, that only have 2*7,92mm MGs?! That’s… optimistic. What is the IL2 doing so low on the campaign anyway?
After that, let’s talk damage model and ammo… There is quite a bit of War Thunder in Enlisted, if I understand correctly (put maaaany hours, some month even, in that game), the planes I flew in Enlisted and the effect of the ammo I witnessed (e.g., the P38 Lightning is absolutely devestating, while the BF109G6 is distinctly… meh.) leave only one assumption: You probably took the aircraft model from WT, simplified it, you equipped them with standard ammunition belts, which makes the russian 23mm, US 20mm and 12.7mm absolutely deadly, while the russian 7.62 and the german 7.92mm are meh and the German 20mm MGFF/M and MG151/20 are barely a thread… My solution here: Give fighters better belts (more HE/HEF/Minengeschoss on canons, more AP/API/APIT on MGs) than bombers/attackers, done, fixed. Seriously, that’s all we need right here. (Or you didn’t bother with ammo belts and just give each projectile a damage number, in which case: Wth, why?! Change those numbers to something more logical or even better, change the system as mentioned above)
Then there’s the reward… flying a loop to rearm, drop your bombs, get 1-3 kills (100-150 points) or if you are lucky to get a good target (kill a tank or a bigger goup, can easily exceed 500 points, my record was close to 900, I think), that takes about 2-3 minutes. But if you choose to do your job as a fighter, you are easily out of the ground battle for 5 minutes and more (with current damage mechancis for German fighters, that is), if the enemy knows what they are doing, not even guaranteed to get any points. So, unless you change the fighter balance, PLEASE at least increase the XP-income for fighters. I’m starving here! D:
Fourth: Tank selection.
Some of this really makes me question your sanity… You throw a M5A1/Puma and a M4A3E2/Panther in the same pool, they face each other as equal opposites on the battleflied? Sorry, but that’s rediculous. You can barely beat the Jumbo with a perfect side shot from the Puma or Pz III N, even with the Pz IV J you have to get a pretty flat sideshot to kill it. Hell, even the M5A1 vs the Pz IV H is a complete clownshow, a few weeks ago I ran circles around a Pz IV H with my M5, completely overwhelming him with my literal weeks of WT light tanks expertise (really, I stayed out of his gun for way over a minute, pumping shots in his side and rear), but I could not pen him for the life of me, allthough that canon should be easily capable of punching through 60mm of armor on short distances in angles better than 45°, according to any game or documentation I ever read or heard of… hope that’s fixed by now, didn’t touch that thing for weeks, in fear of PTSD. No, seriously, you got to figure out a way to seperate vehicles, that simply can’t compete, T-50 is just godmode vs most tanks on that campaign, Pz III J barely has a chance to kill it, but objectively, T-50 is just way better in Enlisted.
So, there we go. Feel free to tear me appart 