The pain and suffering of 10.7 stock jets

[2ndhess¿Frames¿]

The biggest downside of top tier jets these days is the grind from stock to spaded. No stock jet comes with missiles, countermeasures, boosters, or G-suits. At 10.7, this means you are basicly useless in any air superiority capacity, since your supposed main weaponry is locked behind up to 100k RP of grinding, and you plane is performing extremely poorly, compared a spaded counterpart.

Weapons: bringing guns to a missile fight
Guns are, at 10.7, almost obsolete as a primary weapon. To get gun kills you will usually have to put yourself in comparably disadvantageous situations (or go for risky head-ons), where enemies with missiles will kill you without hesitation. The lack of your plane's intended main weaponry handicaps it insanely, and makes you free RP fodder for missile equipped enemies. Its like trying to fight a man at range, yourself only being equipped with a knife, while he has an assault rifle with added bayonet and optics.

Upgrades: Improvements became necessities
The problem goes even deeper than just weapons, and applies to many upgrades.
In props, not having all the upgrades for your plane makes it less efficient, sure, but its still somewhat capable, even at stock. Spading a prop gives it somewhat better performance, additional ammo types and ground-strike options. I will argue that these are not critical for the plane to function in a air superiority role, but should be seen as optional improvements, rather than necessary ones.

For top tier jets, not having the control surface boosters makes the plane feel sluggish at lower speeds, and close to impossible to maneuver at high speeds. (E.g the Mirage IIIE without boosters have the roll rate like a twin engine heavy fighter, but is extremely agile with them) Not having a G-suit, means you can't pull any high G-turns in more than 2-3 secs, even with a max level pilot, without blackout. The engine upgrade on most 10.7 jets add around 10-15 m/s climb rate and somewhere between 150-200 kgf to engine thrust. Fuselage repair, wing repair, and cover upgrades all add 5-10 m/s climb rate each, and can cut 0.4s to 0.8s off the turn time pr upgrade. This means that the difference between a spaded and non-spaded plane is so great, they practically aren't comparable.

In props, getting avionic and engine upgrades was all about getting that slight edge. 0.2s less turn time here, 0.4 m/s more climb rate there, getting HE-I belts instead of the standard one for a better chance to set a fire. All the small numbers added up, and made a difference, but not enough to make the plane completely waxx on its stock counterpart. This is very different for top tier. The upgrades have become necessities, for you to have even a fighting chance.

Participation Score: Stuck in WW2
At 10.7, there is no mercy, and stock planes are NOT COMPETITIVE with their spaded counterparts, not even close. RP and SL costs for upgrades are also a lot higher, and because Gaijjin haven't figured out that a planes generally don't stay within 1 km of each other for long, you don't get a lot of "participation score", unless you make kills. Hell, you don't even get anything for dodging missiles. In prop games, you can spend an entire match dog-fighting, not get any kills, assists or hits, and still walk away with 500-600 score, which contributes to your match earnings. At 10.7, the sphere of combat is a lot large, and a plane withing 5 km is within striking distance. Missiles, relatively short matches and the insane speeds of the jets, makes most matches without kills a 50-200 score adventure. Because you spend so little time in close proximity to an enemy, you simply earn less score, and therefore less RP and SL, making the grind longer.

Suffering: how to avoid it, and how it could be lessened
To spade a plane means you have to fly it, so how can you earn RP when you can't compete with anyone? There are a few options. The first is to ground-strike and kill AI planes. This grants easy access to score, but you most likely wont be left alone by the missile capable enemies. The second that comes to mind, is baiting stupid head-ons, and hope your enemy is dumb enough to risk it. This has a high chance of leading to death, but if you get a kill, you secure some score. Another option is just buying GE and get the upgrades you need to be a capable fighter, this is probably the option Gaijin wants you to take. But considering an upgrade costs between 300-600 GE, it quickly gets expensive.

It is possible to lessen the suffering of a stock top tier, but it requires the devs to start recognizing how different combat is at top tier, compared to props. A good place to start would be stock missiles. I am not the first to propose this idea, many have been arguing for them over the last year or so. I'm not talking about instant access to 30g missiles, but by giving basic missiles like the AIM-9b and R-3s as stock, and then moving the top end missiles down to tier 3 in the upgrades, you could make the playing field slightly more even.

Sorry for the wall of text
If you made it this far, I'd like to thank you for reading it all. I would also like to apologize for any grammatical errors, English is not my first language, and I am slightly sleep deprived. Any input to the discussion, and ideas as to how the top tier stock experience could be improved, is appreciated.

[↯Zindy⛦]

play air assault arcade?

[2ndhess¿Frames¿]

Originally posted by Zindai:

play air assault arcade?

I forgot that even existed lol. I do remember that the rewards weren't all that great tho

[Jaes]

Originally posted by ¿Frames¿:

Originally posted by Zindai:

play air assault arcade?

I forgot that even existed lol. I do remember that the rewards weren't all that great tho

To get any worthwhile rewards, you have to win, which takes around 30 minutes, which nets you 10K RP and around 50K SL. It's not worth it.

[ospholis]

Originally posted by Zindai:

play air assault arcade?

its basically worthless

[hsf_]

Although not as bad, it's often the same for all ground vehicles. Maps where you can get shot from spawn to spawn are the worst for a new tanks, as they seemingly catch fire all the time, plus you're unable to repair anything if you get damaged.

I mean the parts I can understand being an upgrade, but FPE should come standard really.

[shadain597]

Gonna slightly disagree/nitpick; on the subject of prop mods, some planes increase their total rate of climb ~50% between stock and spaded, which is pretty frickin' huge. Sure, the raw numbers may not be as big as the ones for jets, but it's all relative anyways.

But yes, I'd say that, overall, vehicle mods are bad for gameplay and balance.

Originally posted by Jaes:

Originally posted by ¿Frames¿:

I forgot that even existed lol. I do remember that the rewards weren't all that great tho

To get any worthwhile rewards, you have to win, which takes around 30 minutes, which nets you 10K RP and around 50K SL. It's not worth it.

Well, jets basically always win that bracket of Assault, so there's that. And you do get a booster from the first win of the day there. Overall, I agree it's not a terribly efficient way to grind anything, but if someone is stuck with a stock 10.7 and has been getting wrecked in RB, it may actually earn just as much RP as that losing streak, and give you a positive SL income too.

[2ndhess¿Frames¿]

Originally posted by shadain597:

Gonna slightly disagree/nitpick; on the subject of prop mods, some planes increase their total rate of climb ~50% between stock and spaded, which is pretty frickin' huge. Sure, the raw numbers may not be as big as the ones for jets, but it's all relative anyways.

But yes, I'd say that, overall, vehicle mods are bad for gameplay and balance.

Originally posted by Jaes:

To get any worthwhile rewards, you have to win, which takes around 30 minutes, which nets you 10K RP and around 50K SL. It's not worth it.

Well, jets basically always win that bracket of Assault, so there's that. And you do get a booster from the first win of the day there. Overall, I agree it's not a terribly efficient way to grind anything, but if someone is stuck with a stock 10.7 and has been getting wrecked in RB, it may actually earn just as much RP as that losing streak, and give you a positive SL income too.

I will agree that some props get a lot out of the upgrades (109 climb rates comes to mind) but it's not the norm, nor effects the gameplay as severely as in jets. My point is that you can play props without the upgrades, and still be somewhat competitive. This is not possible for 10.7 jets, the differences are simply to great.

As for air assault, it very much depends or your team. While the booster is nice, it really doesn't count for much if you don't rack up score, which is hard as a stock in realistic mode. I guess you can use it in air assault instead, and maybe get something out of it.

[2ndhess¿Frames¿]

Originally posted by hsf_:

Although not as bad, it's often the same for all ground vehicles. Maps where you can get shot from spawn to spawn are the worst for a new tanks, as they seemingly catch fire all the time, plus you're unable to repair anything if you get damaged.

I mean the parts I can understand being an upgrade, but FPE should come standard really.

I never understood why you don't have FPE in some basic form as stock. A fire is basically death for stock tanks.
That said, I don't think I can contribute too much to the discussion on ground battles, as I don't enjoy it, and therefore don't play it much. It's mostly due to the campy nature of the gameplay, which makes it very undymanic IMO.

[shadain597]

Originally posted by ¿Frames¿:

Originally posted by hsf_:

Although not as bad, it's often the same for all ground vehicles. Maps where you can get shot from spawn to spawn are the worst for a new tanks, as they seemingly catch fire all the time, plus you're unable to repair anything if you get damaged.

I mean the parts I can understand being an upgrade, but FPE should come standard really.

I never understood why you don't have FPE in some basic form as stock. A fire is basically death for stock tanks.
That said, I don't think I can contribute too much to the discussion on ground battles, as I don't enjoy it, and therefore don't play it much. It's mostly due to the campy nature of the gameplay, which makes it very undymanic IMO.

Honestly, it'd be SUPER easy to make 1 use of FPHE stock and add +1 with the mod. If that's not enough, the stock version could take 1-2 seconds longer to use. I swear, I don't think I've ever seen a developer hate/bully their playerbase quite like Gaijin seems to.

[2ndhess¿Frames¿]

Originally posted by shadain597:

Originally posted by ¿Frames¿:

I never understood why you don't have FPE in some basic form as stock. A fire is basically death for stock tanks.
That said, I don't think I can contribute too much to the discussion on ground battles, as I don't enjoy it, and therefore don't play it much. It's mostly due to the campy nature of the gameplay, which makes it very undymanic IMO.

Honestly, it'd be SUPER easy to make 1 use of FPHE stock and add +1 with the mod. If that's not enough, the stock version could take 1-2 seconds longer to use. I swear, I don't think I've ever seen a developer hate/bully their playerbase quite like Gaijin seems to.

That's what I am thinking too, though I disagree with what you say about Gaijin. They aren't bullies or hate their playerbase, they are just neglectful/don't care since it fuels GE purchases.

[shadain597]

Originally posted by ¿Frames¿:

Originally posted by shadain597:

Honestly, it'd be SUPER easy to make 1 use of FPHE stock and add +1 with the mod. If that's not enough, the stock version could take 1-2 seconds longer to use. I swear, I don't think I've ever seen a developer hate/bully their playerbase quite like Gaijin seems to.

That's what I am thinking too, though I disagree with what you say about Gaijin. They aren't bullies or hate their playerbase, they are just neglectful/don't care since it fuels GE purchases.

If they are intentionally making aspects of the game frustrating/annoying in the hopes of coercing more money out of us then, yes, I'll stick with the bully designation. Maybe not the most accurate, but they've earned some name-calling, especially given their official response to the widespread complaint about parts/FPE not being stock.