Air-to-Air, Ground-to-Air and Air-to-Ground
This page describes in detail the changes introduced to air warfare in Frontline compared to GRB
Last updated
This page describes in detail the changes introduced to air warfare in Frontline compared to GRB
Last updated
I've already talked about several changes to air warfare, but there are quite a few left, first of all we'll talk about the two different stages of Air Battles
As there are dedicated plane slots from the start, planes can takeoff right at the beginning of the battle, however there are a few restrictions to that:
While ground vehicles spawn after 45 seconds, planes are delayed; The delay is proportional to the plane's top speed. This is done to give more time for light tanks to move and get to cover and to reduce airfield overcrowding
Where planeTopSpeed is the plane's top speed at sea level
Where x is the amount of additional seconds added on top of the base 45 seconds
At first, only fighters (any type: twin engine fighters, heavy fighters, air defence fighters...) and CAS planes (though not recommended) can spawn. On top of that, they cannot load any bomb, rockets or Air-to-Ground missiles. This is the first stage of Air Battles which consists in fighting for air superiority, and is also the most important as it will pretty much decide what team gets the air superiority for the rest of the match
Bombers and helicopters get unlocked and regular planes are allowed to load bombs/rockets/Air-to-Ground missiles once at least half of the enemy ground forces have been seen (marked by light tanks or been hit). This, instead of a simple timer, is done to dynamically adjust when CAS duty can start based on how fast each team gathers intelligence to encourage players to actively scout, but can be replaced by a timer of ~5 minutes if necessary
Just like fighters and CAS planes once the battle has begun, there is no limit to how many helicopters can be deployed
The second stage of Air Battles starts at this point, fighters should focus less on fighting for air superiority and cover friendly bombers or intercept enemy bombers
Players who chose their Air line-up as main line-up get, just like the ones who chose ground, 2 uses per vehicle (similar to Simulator Battles) except for bombers that are single-usage only, hence how important it is for fighters to protect them
Jailing out of a plane takes 5 seconds instead of 3 (Reason is explained below)
Now let's get to the Air-to-Ground restrictions, part of why CAS is so destructive in Realistic Battles is due to the high amount of reckless strikes. You'll regularly see players hoping into their plane after getting killed into their tank and do a suicide strike on whoever killed them, and when pilots don't do a suicide strike, they still crash because their greedy manoeuver didn't give them enough time to pull up.
In real life, not only the life of the pilot had high importance, but also the good condition of the plane. Producing and repairing planes takes too much resources to just recklessly crash into the first target you see.
Because in War Thunder the pilot's life has basically no value and repair costs are relatively cheap, players too often don't take the necessary precautions to safely deliver a ground strike.
To fight against this, the following, perhaps a bit overboard restrictions apply:
If the plane crashes on the ground battle area without having taken any critical damage, then it is considered a deliberate suicide strike or a reckless one
Such crashes multiply the plane's repair cost by 1.5x, removes all the spawn points acquired until now and notifies the player of it
Crashes outside of the ground battle area are very likely to be due to risky manoeuvers to shake a hostile plane off and as such aren't counted
And finally let's talk about Ground-to-Air, which may seem underpowered against a constant air threat.
Just like in ARB and NRB, to help counter CAS, ground vehicles should be able to enable their machine guns to automatically fire at planes within 500 meters as long as their ammunition last, machine gunner stays alive and is not filling the role of another crew members, or until the player decides to turn it off if they want to stay unnoticed.
This is to make a better and more realistic use of a vehicle's crew and secondary armament, as in real life some vehicles could both engage planes with their machine guns and ground targets with their main gun simultaneously.
The dispersion, and thus accuracy, would of course be poor, on top of the minor damage the bullets do; However it may scare hostile planes off, and even be quite deadly if multiple tanks are concentrating fire. This will also help against the above mentioned reckless strikes.