So here’s the problem:
Too many matches end up with the first player to spawn getting in an aircraft and staying there for the entire game, and never giving anyone else a chance to help from the air. Sometimes they’re doing great—awesome, respect that.
But sometimes they’re struggling and I respect that one needs to practice, but if the enemy team doesn’t send up fighters, then someone can hog the plane slot. Post match you see they got 9 kills.
Meanwhile teammates who could help never get a turn.
What I’m Suggesting
There is a fuel indicator in the game already, but it’s not used. I propose it be used as a timer representing the amount of fuel = the amount of time the player can be in the air.
Nothing crazy or punishing, just enough time to do multiple attack runs or defend the sky, actually contribute or just practice but give it up and let someone else have a turn.
Once the timer expires, the engine stops, and you are now a glider. I say the plane can count as landing by returning to the arming point, or make a runway somewhere if they feel froggy. Get the +100 points for landing and you don’t count as having crashed and incur the extra time until your aircraft is ready.
Landing frees the slot for a bit, like tanks will eventually get destroyed because everyone has the ability to destroy them with any of a number of weapons. Planes could stay up there the entire match. I’ve seen it many times.
This would:
stop “sky campers”
let more than 1–2 people fly per match
reward pilots who use their time wisely
add a bit of realism too
To Be Clear
This isn’t “nerf pilots”.
I love flying. I am one of those pilots.
But it sucks when someone hogs the slot the entire match . At least with fuel limits, you can’t piddle around for 15 - 20 minutes and deny everyone else access.
They alredy have a limit - although mostly it is greater than the length of a match - but it is possible to take wing tank hits and lose it all, becoming a glider.
I mostly fly dive bombers and bombers, and for the most part, I am lucky to get more then a couple passes before I am shot down, so time limit has never been a factor for me.
A fuel limit of mere minutes…? That’s not realistic.
Fighter aircraft had like 1.5 to 2.5 hours of flight time at the time, could even be pushed up to 5-6 with drop tanks.
Loitering was often done for 15-30 minutes (even longer depending on flight mission and weaponry equiped), about the average length of a current in-game match.
It could be whatever, I’m more concerned about limiting the time people hog the sky. If no one else takes it they can respawn and go back.
The line between balance and realism is where you want it to be. This is not a milsim, but its not a sweaty deathmatch (although some players sweat more than a hooker in church) There’s great flexibility so we don’t have to be shackled to realism but we also don’t have to completely ignore it either.
It’s not very realistic for the plane to get supplied with bombs and ammo from the angels by just flying into a specific zone in the air either. If we wanted realism, the plane should have to land, resupply, then take off again each time it wanted to drop its bombs
Resupply does represent several sorties, though, constant low-level air contact. One aircraft comes in, drops its payload, then flies away, then gets replaced with another on scene.
Sure, you never switch aircraft, that’s a gameplay simplification, just as your tank crew doesn’t have to dismount and begin transfering shells one at a time when you resupply your tank.
If you want though, we could add a respawn function, where your plane despawns and reappears in a new location with a new bombload loaded, simulating the sortie.
Wouldn’t add anything, though.
Would also add that if the above original suggestion was implemented, it’d kill premium aircraft.
I’d want my money back for the one’s I’ve bought, and I’ll never buy another one again. Probably would even leave the game permanently if the devs decided to shit on my premium squads like this, I’m not paying 15 to 30 euros for a squad I get to enjoy for only a couple of minutes once in a while.
I know the devs may never acknowledge this, but the issue at hand is the lack of bomber scopes. Really comes back to that, as do so many issues that planes have.
The average pilot is bombing completely blind - on the objective marker, against walls, outside the play area, you name it. They get lucky to hit something.
And, as I can attest all too well playing on a small screen, that is entirely because it is extremely difficult to see enemies within the few moments you have during a dive before having to pull your plane back up again, when you have to look over large areas and still need time to aim your plane for bombs/rockets/ even the MG which is especially difficult - for an average-skilled pilot that usually means, in my experience, that they won’t bother even looking. Let alone that they can’t even aim their bombs when they DO look!
And then they botch 2 runs and it starts to feel really bad that you can’t replace them.
But the issue, at core, is still that visibility, from a plane, is bad, and even when you have it it takes dozens of hours of experience to actually capitalize on it. Kicking players out of their planes for this isn’t the just approach.
