I do not know whether you responded elsewhere. This is a long post.
I want to bring your attention to old bf 1942. Surely outdated, submarines, ships in pvp which I never experienced myself, since I was only coop with/vs bots.
If you have somewhere bf 42, go jump in a plane and try doing vertical climb 90 degrees right from the start. (it will not do that and will slow you down/crash if you flip) First I played only with keyboard. In bf 109 in alamein I always somehow had AI spitfires on my back. Later I got a joystick and then I understood that my super sharp turns were bleeding me more energy than my engine was able to produce, even making me crash. I also learned of energy management, where altitude was to be traded for speed. Too much speed reduced turn rate and flying level with increased speed at low altitude would drop speed to maximum on that altitude after a time, so it was imperative to go back high while you still had high speed.
bf 42 flying was easy to do if you understood these concepts, but for a long time I thought I could simply never out turn or outrun a spitfire. All needed was climb, and you could then dive to escape or dive to bomb. It was very arcadey from a standpoint of simulators back then, but not too much worse. Before that I played Flanker 1.0, 2.0, I was 10-12 back then. I managed to land with instruments in night with all sorts of damages. I considered myself pro.
Do not consider children stupid or incapable of learning things. I learned English, Russian from games mostly.
However, bf 42 wasnt a simulator, it was a casual fun game that was fun to play. Physics and flight model were for its time not too dumb or simple compared to old moderate flight simulators. You controlled no airbrake, no flaps, but it was still fun. When it comes to flying, managing energy is what differentiated between good fliers and those who nobody told how to fly., or were not talented enough to really fly. When I did play 42 online after years, I found myself among the best. My flight skills however were limited in BF 2.
why ? I used to be on PoE forums mod for bf 2 and those modders back in 2007 were telling that it was impossible to make jets fly normally, because the engine removed gravity from jets. And that it was hardcoded. My energy management skills from bf 42 and other simulators did not translate - for me the game lost much of its appeal. Together with guidance systems which took away pure competition out. There were then people who knew how to maneuver so no flares were even needed. I want to say that bf 2 took skill out of flying. 42 had such sick/mad dogfights that newer games never experienced.
For example, take bf 4, go in a helo, or bf 2. It is pretty much the same. Switch pilot position to WSO. The helicopter turns engine off. Does a free fall happen ? (bf 2 it starts spinning) It floats slowly, downward, where that OP TV missile gets fired. Jump back, in 3 seconds, the helo from a slow free fall manages full rotor restart, and fires the engine like again it has no weight. Rotor blades dont disintegrate in the process and it doesnt fall in a fireball. And Im not going into flight sim that I did study due to my interest in say Mi-24Pushechnyi in digicomsim. Going super-fast downward/front should make you rotate due to retreating blade stall, etc.Other crash states like vortex and stuff would make flying definitely harder. Rotor blades should be damageable. Didnt bfbc 2 at start have the tail able to be shot off ? (something like that seems to have happened in very early versions after release)
Vietnam jets were already dumbed down, flew like rockets pretty much. BF 2 same vein but worse, in that engine gravity was hardcoded -gone - .... 2142 no gravity as well. bfbc 2 seemed similar, yet helos didnt have high ceiling. (unlike bf 2, that cobra so high not even visible) then came bf 3 and 4. Physics like gravity not present. few das ago I saw in bf 4 an empty plane fly/float at 30 km/h across half the map. It seems, no gravity. No throttle, no gravity to pull the aircraft down, no gravity to limit effectiveness of thrust when going directly upwards, no real stall. BF 1 I played aircraft years ago and while mechanically flying seemed better, instead of a lack of thrust/weak engines/small wings inability to fly very high through 'simulation' there was some gimmicky limitation that I forgot. I still think there was something to slow down aircraft when going directly upwards, but I didnt play bf 1 that long, 4 years ago. So I could be completely off on this one.
I took advice to not buy if I did not like the cyborg revisionism thing, but I did watch air gameplay. (each bf story campaign was likely US recruitment propaganda US good guys, the rest bad guis misleading primitivism) One thing was good, that forced reload. (present in bf 42, vietnam, bf2 2142 I dont remember) I did not see if auto repair without doing it yourself was present. Still, no gravity so big children rake up 100 kills and even believe that they are so skilled. Because they turn down all the settings for easier target visibility, and increase draw distance. They see no exploit. I do.
BF 42 10-15 bullets from tank turret HMG was needed to bring down a plane. Engine started burning ? You were in actual free fall in the air, gravity worked nicely. In BF 4 ? YOu have gimmicks mobility hit, disabled. HMG bullet does 2 dmg at long range, 4 at close, from a tank coax hmg at least. (+all hyper fast movement, no skill run and gun, quake style, win tanks as well, maps feel small even though being large)
If you flew wrong it was very easy to be shot down. BF 4 planes are essentially tanks. Do you go through trees ? No problem, no damage, starting engine on a cliff. Great. It supposedly takes immeasurable skill and it is supposedly unforgiving. 100:0 is not skill, but a combination of problems. Helicopters arent that privileged/gifted with as unrealistic physics like the jets are, (but similarly broken op weaponry) because they dont manage to have full speed in any direction always without a loss of potential energy stored in their altitude. Helos do resemble RL more, because to gain much speed you are going to lose altitude, or you accelerate slowly. Jets are able to fly like rocket planes, it just goes and goes. Helos do trade altitude for speed, jets really dont. Like fish in aquarium or something.
AA missiles could have proportional navigation, not tail chase. I do not consider mouse flying to take skill, bf 4 dogfights are strange due to a lack of reasonable physics applied, they do not make sense to me. In this regard it is hard to learn because aerial vehicle behavior is completely illogical, you have essentially an 'excess of thrust' (via jets not having weight). From my perspective. It feels very unnatural. Turning is not reminiscent of an airflow/wings creating lift, engines making directional thrust. There are speeds/angles at which the wing does not create lift, same for rotor blades, so-called rotary wings.Lack of lift means being a heavy object in air that has no reason to not fall out of the sky essentially.
So, really do try out bf 42 dogfights if you are able. It takes more skill, more planning to accomplish much, bombs, guns arent endless. Repairs should require landing. Energy bleed, gravity bleeding/overpowering thrust in going vs gravity. Thrust/weight ratio IRL is important and dully fuelled, loaded, your aircraft wont not just maneuver, its climb rate will be limited. When you are good, you are similarly very hard to shoot down, however it is not due to your vehicle surviving so much, but via utilizing physics. Making dives, high speed to minimize exposure to enemy fire, outside the strike envelope of tank rooftop MGs, especially if there is no overlapping fire. (or gunners cant lead)
newer jets, heatseekers with off-boresight capability, helmet mounted sight, IRST ? Like old MiG-29 9.13 or so, for export with R-73? Off-boresight usually means that the missile has to beat its carriers vector so its effective range wont be as great. BF games always use vietnam-era HUD_only lock. Newer jets tend to have thrust vector. Most gunnery is superronic, so to make sound atmospherical, have it travel and distort with distance.
Rockets IRL are not sniping precision weapon, but an inaccurate area filling weapon that is made for relative inaccuracy to cover more area with rockets or their shrapnel. I saw a video of P-51 with rockets in BF5 and saw a guy with big monitor constantly snipe people with it and was completely in awe of his awesomeness. In BF4, you have this indicator on HUD like in a helo, where the rockets will fly, because they somehow seem to fly straight. No skill required, except pointing at the target. (if you want to see Ka-52 firing rockets from up close, watch Zapad-2017 exercise mishap that managed to not kill anybody but see how rockets are fired and how their explosions look from like 10 meters away)
Say S-8 rocket, it has something like 0,5-1s rocket burn. It spins for improved accuracy, but the rest of the rocket flight is unpowered. In Vietnam Mi-8 rockets flew straight. Those had to be S-5 ones. Rockets burn and then they are invisible and they fall almost like bricks, so you can and should lob them over distance or come closer to target. As a salvo weapon if they are unguided/cheap, they are not even fired 1 rocket by one.but a quick emptying of the pods, return to base, rearm, repair, Being all the time around the battlefield is unrealistic, because their payload, fuel, is not sufficient. Once emptying munitions, return to base. No endless rearming. Thing like I saw in bf 5 some air racing thing point, well, not a bad attempt, but the problem is complex and requires a complex solution. Adding too many difficulties .- it may discourage some - however, you should have bots offline so as long as flight system makes sense in physics, planes flying to the moon right after the start, you will be able to make air gameplay much more difficult, kills much more rewarding, not just point-click that Jdam without you making the shot manually.
I saw so-called pros say that bf 4 system is perfect - they get 100:0 ratio because, apparently of skill. They make money off of it. But the rest of players play as the cannon fodder for this guys ego. I do not consider ego of a single person superior to the rest as long as it is not too strange/weird/destructive. In bf 42 you often had many aircraft available, so teamplay, two wingmen, plus bomber protecting sortie was quite possible. Newer jets were too simple to fly once you understood the illogical behavior of aircraft - I did not. They are too op thus they are usually limited to 1 per type. If they are not as strong, harder to fly with RL-like physics preventing them from flying to space, to repair in mid-flight and what not, you could have more aircraft, more than 1 attack helo. (bf2 repaired overflying airfield, 42 had hangars for repair, landing) You have multiple tanks on maps - they are not untouchable like say bf 3/4 jets. I could say, oh well, too slow projectiles, weak AA zoom, inability to see bullet drop, estimate bullet velocity makes air targets very hard to touch at all. Add to that exploits like jumping out of vehicle to unspot it. Newer games have very long range sight radius, are not limited by oldschool fog, so flying high, no physics all that stuff adds to how overpowered those systems are. Add all the bullet drops, rockets gravity falling, all sorts of things, so that to take anything out at extreme ranges starts taking skill, much more of it - you will reduce 100:0 problem in no time. Inevitably, so-caled pros will freak out because the yare addicted to have their ego blown out of proportion. Tanks should require resupplying for munitions as well. At least have ammo crate in base. All OP gimmicks can be made harder, require more skill or cooperation.
I wrote a long text, I hope you will see that aircraft really do need a redesign - flight model, things like gravity, let aircraft that lose speed/lift on wings, drop like rocks, rotate even. Their weapons require the smae drawbacks like others, bulolet drop, rocket spread, etc.
Not sure what your damage model is, but I would appreciate aircraft to have damageable propellers, engines, wings, with the ability to destroy/shoot them off without explicitly destroying the vehicle+player. Destroyed propeller on ww2 plane ? Well, you now free float, you can dive and go up or steadily lose altitude, if you had it and try to get to base or somewhere where you repair said damage. El alamein had great flats so after running from tanks and you got the occasional MG shot, you landed not near flags, repaired it and back to action. Long ago I played a lot of FH mod, all the different models of aircraft, IS-2s, Tiger 2s, all those were so much immersive than the base game. Shot bouncing in tank fights ... RL-like gunsights. 20 mm guns of Me-109 with AoE effect that the base game didnt have. It was really great, but newer games seem to have not taken into consideration how much certain aspects of the old engine were superior to newer ones.
Whether you take any advice/criticism from my post is up to you, but I do believe that there is much worth in my post. It seems most people who played games like 42 dont play or remember well the high quality features of the very first game, that for most people is an enigma, clothed in ancient graphics.
