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. ...
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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.
I don't find the armour OP, so I am not sure about that.
However I do agree with your idea around removing infantry focused weapons from aircraft, and focus on hardened positions and armour. This would mean the impact is more strategic, and thus people are less likely to go aa camp.
AA is a problem- again the issue sits with either its an annoyance you can ignore due to repair cycles, or its completely op. May decrease aa damage but increase over heat timing? This would mean planes have to gamble or plan rather than ignore AA, but by flying in less linear path can still escape?
I really don't know as the map sizes and design in combination with aa structure is really bad. BF 3 kinda had it right- if you flew too close to the spawn the automatic AA would open up, ensuring aircraft couldn't easily spawn camp- and that is a fundamental problem in BF v.
Currently on many of the maps- I go and set up spawn beacon in visual range of aa guns and snipe them, to give my team a chance with air. It seems to work but then it becomes very one sided as the other team doesn't attempt the same.
