Regardless of which nation we look at, I think we all understand that the introduction of jets was the largest jump of power creep for an individual weapon or vehicle type of any battle rating of all time in Enlisted. It also limits the potential of future factions based on whether or not they had a jet or super-prop fighters.
But of course, these are my takes. Some people are happy that the jets are in the game now compared to before. I want to know why people think they are a good addition, if they do. I’ve also thought in the past it would be interesting if Jets became a part of an “Interceptor” plane class that obviously has better flight characteristics than fighters of the same BR, but carries no or very limited bombs or rockets, as a way to keep them in the game but not make the BR 5 prop fighters irrelevant.
All of this to say: what do you guys think about Jets as they currently stand in the game? Do you think they need to be reworked? Are you happy about how they are currently in the game? I want to understand other perspectives on them. They are a point of contention for me (and yes, I own both premiums).
That to me is the main issue with them. Something shouldn’t be so strong that it rewards a single player greatly, while removing the fun for more than one person at the same time.
I personally feel like BR 5 prop fighters like Ki 84 Ko and Bf 109 K-4 are examples of what the meta should look like.
Jets need nerfs across the board to make them alternatives instead of just upgrade over existing BR5 planes.
nerf the turn rate so most prop can out turn them (forcing jets to boom and zoom) and nerf their climb rate a little too, so they need to pull up earlier than prop planes, thus reducing their accuracy in ground attack. (Kinda like current Me262)
Propeller fighters feel very out-of-date now… which is unfortunate (there is no incentive for me to buy the Tempest, for one). There is obviously a power-gap between BR V props and jets, but perhaps even worse is the power-gap between BR IV props and jets… it’s really unfair to the BR IV airforce to have to put up with jets.
I remember @Myrm1don (my prefered guy to consult on aircraft combat and balance), voicing the opinion that most propeller aircraft (certainly the fighters) in BR V should probably be down-tiered because of the scale difference, and all current popellers being rebalanced around BR I-IV alone. That is understandable, but it would suddenly make all BRs rather dense in options… not nessesarily that good a thing.
Personally, I don’t see a clean solution to the issue of jets… my prefered overall solution is to rebalance the game around six BRs, rather than five… it’s not a popular direction I’ve noticed, but I really do believe in the merits of it - it’ll solve quite a few balancing problems in the game, not just the balance of jets. BR II power-creep, BR IV useless/niche tanks, the large gap in usefullness between BR IV rifles and BR V rifles as well as in BR III tanks and BR IV tanks… there is genuinely quite a lot of gear that is too good to be X but not quite good enough to be uptiered to Y (or vice versa).
Imagine though, we could return to the pre-jets aircraft balance of BR I-V - which obviously worked. Then, jets (and some of the other really powerful aircraft, like P-47 attackers) would be free to be just as dominating as some people think they aught to be.
I guess some people hear “BR VI” though and think that people are talking about cutting BR V in half… no, the entire game should be stretched, not a single BR divided in half.
The BR VI solution seems the cleanest to me too. As far as I remember, it was originally EVA_Gladitor’s idea, and he laid it out pretty well. Jets would obviously work as the BR VI fighters, and current BR V props would fit nicely into that progression at BR V.
But if BR VI never happens, I feel like introducing an Interceptor class that fills one of the 2 plane slots (or gets it’s own slot) that specializes in air superiority but lacks ordnance would be a great solution. They would fill the same role as someone who spawns an Engineer squad just to build an AA gun, but not be tied to a single location and have better armament and typically better speed/maneuverability than equal-tiered fighters. Those who bought premiums still get to keep something that has a role/value in combat, and air combat suddenly has more rock/paper/scissor dynamics and tactical depth.
The jets to this day remain unbalanced they are far better then all props not only do to good payload but also insane performance and powerful guns. BR IV and BR V are very bad spot for props.
They Ruined BR IV and BR V for sure and made all props at BR V useless and not gonna mention the poor free kills that are BR IV props.
A reminder that your opinion about these is irrelevant if you don’t play BRV or BRIV for other reasons that you dislike the tier.
Disliking the fact they make props irrelevant in the BR? I can understand… but most of it is just complaining about how powerful they are… which high power things are a core to BRV.
This is an interesting direction, but there are some flaws I would like noted;
If “interceptors” takes up the same slot as regular fighters, then we have an aircraft with little to no ground attack capabilities (depending on if they same a weak or no payload) who will steal the slot of potentially more useful aircraft.
Aircraft who are not able to do ground support are quite often a waste of a slot in most people’s loadouts, unless you are going for some sort of theme. To add on to that, someone could genuinely have brought a fighter aircraft because they like the payload it has, but now they can’t provide their team with support because one guy is hunting down enemy aircraft… or perhaps just loitering waiting to ambush enemy aircraft, or wasting their time trying to strafe the enemy.
If interceptors are their own class, then that’s (potentially) a third guy who isn’t on the ground.
Yes, I know, damned if you do - damned if you don’t.
But, with the previously discussed problems - an aircraft that has little direct impact on what happens on the ground - it would be ironic if the most impactful thing on the ground an interceptor does is… not being on the ground. Yikes.
It would be an unfortunate loss in roles/capabilities that these aircraft historically had.
Mostly talking about the Meteor and the 262 here, because the other ones didn’t see service, of course.
Historically, they were used at times as ground attackers. In the case of the Meteor - when it wasn’t chasing ballistic missles over the English Channel - ground attack missions is what it was primarily doing. Of course, jets as interceptors is also a historically important role… but it would be unfortunate if we lost this capability.
Of course high power things are a core to BR V. However, we have to consider the entire ecosystem, and how every element compares to each other in strength.
Enlisted is, at it’s core, based around infantry objectives. If jets are able to drop ordnance payloads double that of prop fighters more frequently, that means a larger percentile of deaths is going to be from ordnance, compared to before jets were added.
Right now, in terms of the entire ecosystem, Jets are far over-tuned. People make the same argument for Select-Fire rifles, and understandably so when compared to other weapon types of the same battle rating.
But it makes prop planes useless. Now I would’ve preferred if the Jets were only premium and event planes. Would’ve the current situation in Br 5 and 4 slightly less extreme then how ot is today
I feel like people get stuck on this idea because of how prevalent ordnance is in the current aircraft ecosystem. If a plane is capable of straight-up denying enemy ordnance from dropping before it reaches the battlefield for an extended period of time, because of how much of an advantage it has in air-to-air combat, that can also be a huge benefit to your team.
This just doesn’t get talked about often because every fighter without ordnance is equally as capable in flight characteristics to other fighters of the same battle rating, that also have the benefit of ordnance. This would change up tactical opportunities. If the enemy is constantly spamming CAS, an Interceptor may be the one thing that reduces ordnance drops long enough for a team to capture an objective.
The easiest solution is to move props from BR V to BR IV and some from BR IV to BR III and make BR ±0 and problem solved. However devs don’t wanna do it since no one will play the fantasy BR V.
Su-9 1946 is an absolutely unacceptable spit in the face of anyone remotely interested in WW2.
Clearly post-war vehicle shamelessly added “for balance” is pathetic.
If you can’t balance Me 262 with prop planes, you simply don’t add Me 262, simple as that.
And in general, having jets roar over Normandy, Berlin, Manchuria, Stalingrad 1942-43 & Rzhev 1943 (lmao) is just “how NOT to make a WW2 game 101”, a complete resignation of game dev competency.
Since they where same year of production and there is a lot of allies jets also I dont even wanna start since the list will be huge … even ground attacker jets…
I should add that one thing that could at least be done in the meantime - no matter what else the devs decides to do - is to reduce the fuel aircraft currently fly with.
This was actually forwarded almost a full year ago, from one of @Myrm1don 's suggestions. Nothing has been done about it as of yet.
Currently, aircraft does not need fuel in Enlisted to function (ever flown around with supposedly an empty fuel tank after your aircraft got damaged…?) - yet the weight of its fuel does effect the aircraft.
This is by the way the suspected reason (or one of the reasons) for why certain aircraft - like the FW 190 line of aircraft - “glide” sideways in the air, and are generally very unwieldy compared to how they operate in War Thunder.
Jet aircraft are the only planes in the game that don’t fly with a full fuel tank (they fly with half, IIRC). This was done because the Russian and German jets had the same issue as the FW 190s - all jets got fixed and/or buffed, while the Fw 190s and P-51s remain bugged…
Ironic, really… some props remain bugged or unfairly unwieldy… while the last group of aircraft in need of a buff were the only ones who recieved said buff.
Reducing all aircraft to only having 50% fuel (or even less for props, why not) would be a noticeable increase in their performance across the board - and the start to closing the parity gap between jets and props.
I would feel less bad about fighters with no ordnance if the air rendering distance was actually noticeably longer.
I would love to strafe infantry with my fighters - but it’s suicidal to do because infantry just doesn’t render until your airframe is basically already kissing the ground… and also because strafing with anything but 20mm guns (or above) is quite useless, vehicle MGs hardly do any damage.
The only reliable strafer I’ve found is the Mk V Spitfire with quad-20mm guns - because it has the perfect combination of flying slow-enough to let you see the infantry on the ground before you impact the eart, the nimbleness to pull up late after aggressive strafing, armaments capable of actually one-shoting infantry, and the ability to take on almost any enemy fighter you are likely to encounter (even in uptiers).
