Forum Discussion

Re: A Combat Vet & Game Designers thoughts on Aerial Vehicles: New Changes

@killroywuzhere03 very nice read! 10 out of 10 for effort. One thing to keep in mind, which dice also talked about when changing stuff up for bfv, is that the main reason for players to quit playing was getting killed feeling they could in no way have avoided it by different choices or by improved skills. With emphasis on ‘feeling’. It is why I sometimes feel there are too many choppers after the infantry now and I can spawn in on a hot flag only to get blown away by enemy air support again and again. My own fault for spawning hot, sure, but the alternative is often a flag far away and a long run/ drive to get anywhere. Jets are very hard to counter by infantry because of their speed and so they should have limited options against infantry.

1 Reply

killroywuzhere0
4 years ago
@mesterKGI could not agree more. There are definitely times where a player "feels" that way. Dice needs to also understand that sometimes it "feels" that way because it IS that way.

As for your statement on the infantry and jets. I whole hearted agree with you. Jets MUST remain mostly anti-air. Which is why outside of the VTOL planes I did not make any statements regarding the inaccuracy of the 25mm or 30mm when strafing targets. I feel this is necessary in this game due to plane speeds. While the planes do feel slow to pilots from a ground perspective they zip.

The reason I gave the Panther the ability to attack infantry in this rework is due to its VTOL ability. I believe using VTOL to attack enemy ground troops is a equally risky venture as VTOLs engage and disengage is exceptionally slow. Leaving the plane vulnerable to locks. That said if it was me in the dev seat and they used my changes. I would be watching the long barrel 25mm cannon closely on the VTOL planes that can attack infantry. If I felt the weapon was too strong I already have 3 nerf options for it. 1) would be to make it overheat faster. 2) would be to make the bloom of the cannon increase with sustained fire. Basically you would be able to take burst shots at infantry but if you slum on the trigger for too long your shots become more inaccurate. 3) would be to reduce the ROF of the gun as well. That reduces their ability to strafe at full speed and increases the need to be in VTOL.

Also the design of the VTOL planes loadouts is specifically to provide high risk. The miniguns I mentioned are in fact the same on the night bird. As you know they need to be rather close to use them. Same would apply with the VTOL planes.

Finally, with the new token system mentioned above. You would actually have less choppers in the air at one time. Because I put both Nightbird and Attack Heli's in the same group. Players have to decide which of the two to use.

Example: hourglass on a bot match you get 3 aircraft tokens. 2 for Attack (Jet/Attack Heli) 1 for Transport (Condor/Nightbird). With the current system you can actually have 2 apache's and 1 nightbird in the sky. With my token changes you would have 1 Jet (Panther/Raptor) 1 Chopper (Apache/Nightbird) 1 Transport (Condor/C-17) max. So in this case more is less and less is good for ground troops enjoyable gameplay!