Easiest fix I feel would be:
- Remove AutoRepair for Planes
- Planes can only repair over dedicated area (where they restock)
- These areas have Auto AA against enemies.
- Increase respawn time when a plane shot down.
That will most likely never happen. With this, you effectively kill planes as a total. You wouldn’t be even able to do one attack run.
Also people should be happy how it is now. In BF3 and 4 planes auto healed up to 100% again, as long as they didn’t take any damage and weren’t in the disabled state. That was way more overpowered.
I do fly, I just find it boring and repetitive so I don’t do it much.
That being said, I don’t need to fly. All I need to do is be in an AA and shoot STRAIGHT AT A PLANE NOSE DIVING AT ME who is OUT OF MY RANGE OF FIRE while his bombs drop on me.
This happens to me DAILY.
I don’t need to be a pilot to know its broken.
AAs have to have limited range because planes usually have no cover. If AAs had unlimited range you’d see AAs being spammed crossmap and pilots wouldn’t be able to leave their spawns
You can’t completely rely on AAs in-game just like how you can’t irl. The main counter to hostile planes is friendly planes and if dice would just make dogfighting less boring and unrewarding planes would have a lot more trouble staying alive
This debate is like when people talk of gun play TTK being faster is better, but it is always a one sided issue. Planes want quick kills on ground targets but never want to be quickly killed.
There will never be enough SAA to require 2 to destroy a plane, that would be like 2 on every flag. That is overkill even with reduce range which would then make ground more vulnerable to planes.
Planes have to many splash weapons for any range and 3PV firing makes it too easy to use.
There are to many perks or specializations in BF to ignore their impact on the game. A simple increase in speed helps planes avoid AA or bomb/resupply more frequently.
These will never be rolled back or removed. So balancing can not be skill v skill(1v1) when SAA has no perks to adjust their weapon.
AA needs sufficient damage to destroy planes, not damage only. The current duration and DPS is to small.
- Self-repair needs to take longer.
- Remove 3PV firing. You can still fly and look in 3PV.
- Team only resupply point. The cool down either gets increased or goes requiring two flyby to get full ammo.
- the respawn rate of planes needs looking at.
- FF small increase in ammo max 8 instead of 6.
- SAA over heat needs to occur later.
The principle is if planes are to remain strong and variable then they should be out of combat longer.
I did the same then had an assault guy near me with his FF trying to keep them away from A bit then we got bombed by fighter after fighter so had to retreat.
Also doesn’t help when your pilots don’t chase the enemy planes they just all do bombing runs And seem to ignore the other team haha
Oh I am sorry that would be a drag for you
They should force lanes t land and repair, as tanks have to do back at a base
If shot down the time between spawns should be much longer
Good pilots are now droping bombs at such altitudes it doesn’t matter if you increase the power of the AA, you are lucky to get 1 or 2 hits
Just slow down there repair and spawn so it is worth trying to shoot them down
Why dog fight when you can reap kills
Planes don’t even bother to fight most of the time anymore
So planes can high altitude bomb but AAs are useless
You don’t fly mate so you have no idea what it’s like being a pilot
The first thing games need to sort this out is team balancing that takes the skill of the team’s best pilots and tankers into account. You can’t buff an AA so it can reach the canopy without simultaneously making it so that planes, which can almost never hide, can be cross mapped by AAs.
Extending the respawn time would just lead to pilots playing more conservatively and make it so that so one team had the numerical advantage in the skies it’d be harder for the team with fewer pilots in the sky to turn things around, which will lead to more pilots on the losing team quitting and ultimately leave the winning team without any opposition and free to focus on infantry and tanks.
Forcing pilots to land to repair will do the same thing as above. In this game where shaking a hostile off your tail is pretty difficult due to the planes’ poor manoeuvrability it’ll also often be a death sentence if you get tailed which is terrible for gameplay and will lead to more spawn trapping
A lot more pilots have been dogfighting recently and in the dozen or so games I’ve played as a pilot since 5.2.2 dropped you can’t just completely focus on infantry because hostile planes will attack you. This is probably due to the FF nerf because pre-patch often when you were chasing an enemy plane FF rockets would appear out of nowhere and cripple your plane or destroy you. It just made dogfighting even less worthwhile.
Sure hostile pilots often start trying to avoid you and target the other two planes on your team if you pummel them into submission but most pilots can’t do that
And FYI, I always prioritise hostile tanks over hostile infantry unless we’re being overrun somewhere and there aren’t any hostile tanks in sight because
- Taking out their armour benefits your team more
- Empathy. I’m not down with planes focussing on infantry just to boost their KD and that stuff just takes something out of the immersion
So no, not everyone’s that obsessed about their KD and the KDs of other people
Again, you have no idea what it’s like being a pilot
AAs can destroy planes. The plane just needs to be distracted and flying kinda nearby and when they’re in the middle of a dogfight they’re easy to take out
- I’d be fine with them removing the 3rd person crosshair if a 1st person aiming scope was added. Planes should still be able to use their weapons in 3rd pov
- Team only resupply like in the Pacific, totally fine. Requiring 2 flybys to fully restock wouldn’t delay the planes much and the main impact would be that planes that get tailed will have a significantly increased fatality rate which would be bad for gameplay. If the resupply had its cool down halved and the auto repair restocked on the first flyby that’d be ok too so long as they buff the manouvrability of fighters and fighter bombers
- Increasing the respawn delay will just make numerical advantages harder to overturn and lead to more heavily one sided rounds where one team has no planes in the sky and the other team’s just free to focus on infantry.
- The FF would be better off with a 10% velocity increase and AAs should take longer to overheat. Also they should double the damage firearms do to planes
They could extend AA’s vertical range, but not its horizontal range. It would be a completely impossible scenario to justify using real life physics modeling, but it might help with balance.
Aa are easy kills… should 2 shot fighters, 3 on bombers. Would be much better.
Oh, btw, I can dive bomb aa for the memes and fly away at half health, even if they land their shots.
I can’t do that 
Confuse the AA by flying straight ahead to him and then dive under his first couple shots. You can easily tank the following hits you will suffer. It’s easier than you think.
Did that successfully all the time when 3rd person marker weren’t a thing for fighter planes. 
That’s a really bad take. AA’s would just never fire until the plane is in range, and planes would never have a chance to escape or react. The balance isn’t great now, but players should have opportunities to react to an attack in most situations. Not just instant death to planes.
I just had a horrible night with the type 10, again. 4 out of 5 hits to a plane did no damage, not even head on hits to the cockpit. That is jut messed up no matter how you look at it. The Type 10 should check planes up but now it take 5 or more shots just to get 2 that do damage.
Another issue is that planes can see the ground assets on the map and can use it to tell when AA is manned and rain down death. It takes fewer hits to kill the AA gunner. I watch the map to check for when the AA gets rebuilt.
and finally, my beef is the damage. Tonight I was killed in a 100% health Sherman by a single bomb yet a 120mm round to a cockpit did 0 damage.
How does any of that justify the person I quoted saying AA should be a 2 hit kill? The Type10 is not general AA, I think it is fine doing 45 damage. They just need to fix the hitreg on planes they broke with 5.2, and I thick it will solve the screams of underpowered AA and FF’s.
I also agree that a Sherman shouldn’t be able to be OHK’d by planes, but none if that statement involves AA, which is the thread topic.