Air-balance is still a problem.
It is a great news AA is enhanced. BUT the issue I mentioned is still there. On a 1080p monitor, you can't even see the plane coming when it's shooting bomb at u. And you can't even hear it coming. ...
Forum Discussion
@ElliotLH there's always 1 or 2 on every map
@Real_Noobalishus That is true but I only have a problem on Panzerstorm usually. I do play Breakthrough rather than Conquest though so I'm probably a bit luckier to only have to worry about certain locations.
- @ElliotLH Panzer can be bad but I've found Al Sundan to be an absolute nightmare when you're on the american side. Nearly every game 2 Flakpanzers (with repers) will camp around their spawn resupply station and just blitz planes on the run way, the mountain resupply behind them and all the way to echo. You can take them out but you end up spending all game just trying to get them and no one else, makes for fairly boring gameplay
- @Real_Noobalishus Sorry to hear you're having that problem on Al Sudan man. What you've described is what I experience on Panzer haha.
I am starting to wonder if gamemode is a factor here. I'll need to go back to Conquest and play around (not played it for a long time) as it's just the one map I struggle on playing Breakthrough. My thinking is that as AA will only be 'active' at set locations, for the most part, I can plan my attacks better. The issue is the planes are an all or nothing weapon. They either completely overpowered, so you create a counter and it completely nerfs them.
The aa has far too much range now, and the damage model makes it hard unless the ground team are co-ordinated and taking out aa through sniping or capture.
So either scale it back and make planes less deadly thus not impacting the flow of the game so immensely or put up with inbalanced aa.
The other issue is that the aircraft are too capable at both ground and air attack. Looking at bf4 games the jets were ok at armour but not so good at soldier killing. Helicopters on the other hand had more in common with BF V in terms of op, and were constantly being nerfed or modified. Things like double flares in the attack helicopters were a massive issue for balance, but there were sooo many methods for taking down attack choppers that it wasnt as bad as BF v bfv.
The bombers needed a counter because there was literally no way to take them down from height. So fighters are introduced. Fighters get boring if they take downall of the enemy aircraft so you give them limited ground attack, but reload timeis too fast so the fighters become op. So then you introsuce heavier aa which completwly undermines the ability of .fighters.
So end result is...bomber kills a few soldiers or tanks, good fighter pilot akes down bomberand dominates, so soldiers camp in aa.
To break the cycle you almost need to limit the attack ability of the bomber against soldiers vs say armour or improve bomber rsistance to fighters. Then aa becomes less necessary to be as powerful. And fighters wont need as much ground attack capability.
@aztec1289 I agree, it is difficult to balance things out but armor being as OP as it is, it needs a counter, and that is air force.
For it's role I would limit air capability vs infantry. Explosive rounds are just not fair.
And to not ruin completely the flying experience limit the damn range on AA, it should function as a local defense point, not like a superweapon which can deny you more than half the map.
Additionall, reduce the spawn time for planes. From 90 seconds to 0 seconds so you won't have to keep waiting and clicking like a maniac to get a seat. As soon as you die, others on the map can take the plane. If they don't, you can.
To make things more fun it, the number of planes which could be deployed during the match could be tied to the number of flag captures your team achieves. For example each capture gives you quarter of a plane.
