CAS not affecting gameplay.(?)

[DogACTUAL]

Plane CAS should not be successful without a spotter.

Yes it should be successful if the pilot is good. What do you think unguided bombs and rockets are for, hitting lases primarily? A spotter should make CAS even more successful though and be able to provide CAS with more effectiveness, accuracy and a more secure standoff distance to targets and AA, so yes, a spotter should always be preferred over jets looking for and attacking targets on their own.

[SWAT-]

Fuller, you made some pretty good suggestions in your initial post (increasing flares, giving lazing ability to IFV's and tanks, ...), I think you should make a new thread in the suggestion to get more visibility because nobody is discussing it right now.

Anyways I have the feeling CAS is affecting the gameplay. Yes the only problem we have right now is stationary AA being broken and locking without sight for some reason, I hope I'll be able to demonstrate this soon with some footage.

[Swaggzor]

This is not meant to insult anyone. But by now it is very obvious that pretty much all of the people here that claim (fixed wing) CAS is fine do not fly CAS at all or only flew it a few times in the past, but lecture people on it that actually use it regulary.

How can you even comment so confidently on the state of (fixed wing) CAS, when you don't even use it yourself and therefore didn't experience the AA vs CAS meta yourself? Because of some pilot you saw that did well in your eyes?

Sure, even now sometimes there is no enemy AA because their team is disorganised and for some reason everyone is lasing for CAS, then the CAS can have a pretty successful round.
But that's still not even close to what CAS used to be able to achieve under favourable circumstances as these.
And overall CAS effectiveness should be judged by what a good pilot can achieve under normal circumstances, as in, barely anyone or noone is lasing and the map is full of enemy AA.

Noone reporting enemy armour and map full of enemy AT? Armour can still get a successfull round with these circumstances if the play good. CAS with enemy AA everywhere and no spotters? Not so much.

And yes, kills don't always exactly represent success, but it is overall a very good indicator for it. Look at points instead of kills and it is the same story, CAS almost never gets to the top of the score board anymore like it used to, unlike armour. Now an average CAS round for a good pilot is: You win against the hostile CAS, then you get 2-3 lases the whole round and bomb a FOB and one tank/APC with maybe 5-10 kills after the round is over.

Why? Because you are totally reliant on spotters. Dare to even pierce the view distance barrier and have a look yourself and you got hostile AA missiles coming your way very soon. And no, not only over enemy held objectives, often enough even over friendly held objectives or over areas far away from any objectives.

That's what you get when you have six(!) AA emplacements that can be build per team, two MANPADS and AAVs on the enemy side. They can cover the whole area over all objectives and then some.

Why does so much AA per team even exist in the first place? Because it was necessary in the past when a single AA missile was quite ineffective and barely ever hit an aircraft. Back then saturation was key for effective AA that can repel or destroy hostile aircraft.

Now with recent improvements in missile code and reliability, a single MANPADS can easily take out a jet or helicopter with one shot. Which in my opinion, in of itelf is great!

Before pretty much everyone found themselves shooting at helicopters and jets that didn't even flare, only for them to dodge all the missiles. This was very annoying since it seemed like your AA missiles didn't even matter and CAS that overstepped its bounds and hovered/flew over an AA position without even preflaring, could just pop flares after launch and easily escape the missile. Same with air to air jet fights. So in that regard the new AA code is a big improvement.

But now that we have very effective AA missiles, the AA saturation is choking out the CAS.
The balance that was achieved back then (by having many AA sytems per team to counteract unreliable AA missiles) is thrown way off now. Once the missiles where made more effective, this issue was never addressed.

AA availability has to be reduced! Six AA emplacements and two MANPADS per team is just too much.
Imo, given how effective AA is now, it should be treated like AT. Only one AA kit and only 3 AA emplacements per team, if not 2. Only one AAV per team.

Very good and decent post this! I totally agree

[DogACTUAL]

Thank you. I wish concerns like these would be met with more than just 'git gud' and arguments would actually be adressed. Instead it feels like everyone is just talking past each other.

On top of that i have to add that a bug still persists. In a recent testing session i discovered that locking and shooting at a flare will sometimes still result in the missile tracking and killing the jet instead of the flare.
Even with the flare being between the jet and the missile and no the flare didn't disappear, the missile starting going towars the jet right after launch.

This happens way more with jets than with helos.

[fecht_niko]

People addressed arguments but some guys don't accept them.

A few patches ago CAS was super effective (only by skilled pilots) because AA was absolute useless and there wasn't any counterpart for CAS apart from own CAS.
CAS has to fear AA and not just pop some flares, turn and kill the AA.

The argument that tanks are now op and poor cas isn't that effective anymore is funny because the same guys liked the ATGM change that made HAT and TOW useless.

So it's basically some asset whores that want to take any counterpart INF has to protect themselves from assets. Nice try.

[PBAsydney]

People addressed arguments but some guys don't accept them.

A few patches ago CAS was super effective (only by skilled pilots) because AA was absolute useless and there wasn't any counterpart for CAS apart from own CAS.
CAS has to fear AA and not just pop some flares, turn and kill the AA.

The argument that tanks are now op and poor cas isn't that effective anymore is funny because the same guys liked the ATGM change that made HAT and TOW useless.

So it's basically some asset whores that want to take any counterpart INF has to protect themselves from assets. Nice try.

HAT and TOW are only useless if you hit the front armor of a tank. A side hit from a guided HAT will most likely track the tank, and a side hit from a TOW will put it on fire. A rear or top hit from HAT will put it on fire and a rear hit from TOW is gg rip.

[T.E.D.F4257845]

As an AA whore, I thought I'd post some of my thoughts here as well.

I feel that the AAVs are perfect atm. The CAS should fear them, not the other way around. I seem to remember pre 1.0 times, where using an AAV was a taunting task as the CAS was 99% able to evade AA rockets by just flaring couple of times/doing loops and drop a bomb/gun run the AAV without any issues. I have noticed, that most of the times the CAS gets shot down is because they fly way too low over the area where there's 99% chance that enemy has AA around (Flags, FOBs etc.). If you fly over at 700-800m altitute on a map that has lock distance of over 1300m, then I'm sorry, but you do deserve to get shot down, which brings me to the next point

I feel that maybe the lazer lock distances for the CAS should be increased a little bit, so if we would take khami for example, where lock distances are 1300m for all the assets, maybe increase it a little bit for the CAS, so if the AA gets lazed, it wouldn't be able to effectively shoot back at the jet, take it down and run away before bomb/rocket hits? Or maybe increase the view distances a tiny bit?

Also, maybe the armor values of some of the jets should be reworked?
For example, the tankiness of A-10/frogfoot should be more present during the battles. Atm it goes down to 1 rocket and can barely take any damage from AAA/autocannon guns, which in my opinion is a bit dumb, concidering how well armored that thing is compared to the other jets out there. Maybe increase their armor values a little bit so they would be able to survive say a rocket and be able to RTB? They are already slow and easy target for enemy CAS/Ground auto-cannons, so in my opinion making them a bit more tanky wouldn't screw with the balance that much.

I agree that the manpads (igla) are a bit too strong against jets atm. The manpad should be able to take down a helo without much issues, but against jets, not so much
I like how the stinger has been reworked, so the lock width on the sights is just a couple of pixels, so you have to have steady hand and keep constant sight on the target in order to establish a lock, not like with the igla, where you need to just look roughly where the CAS might be, lock and fire.
Maybe remake the igla the same way Stinger is?

[Jack_Howitzer]

People addressed arguments but some guys don't accept them.

A few patches ago CAS was super effective (only by skilled pilots) because AA was absolute useless and there wasn't any counterpart for CAS apart from own CAS.
CAS has to fear AA and not just pop some flares, turn and kill the AA.

The argument that tanks are now op and poor cas isn't that effective anymore is funny because the same guys liked the ATGM change that made HAT and TOW useless.

So it's basically some asset whores that want to take any counterpart INF has to protect themselves from assets. Nice try.

In the older version AA was indeed useless as you couldn't even kill hovering chopper, let alone enemy jet. But as DEVs often do, they overdo things, like this time with AA. Now AA is completely overpowered. It seems to be very hard for them to get things right, and when theu do, they still mess it up in next patch. This is because none of the DEVs actually play the game so they don't understand how it works.

Personally I don't remember anyone calling the TOW update good, it was a complete shower of shit with retarded reasoning behind it.

[Fuller]

I think increased survivabilty would have the biggest (positive) impact on CAS gameplay and there are several ways to achive this.

1.)Reduce amount of AA on a map
2.)Reduce AA effectivness (splash radius, explosion damage, tracking delay, max. yaw/pitch)
3.)Improve flares (number of flares, spread, number of ejected flares)
4.)Improve jets/helis (max. speed, hitpoints, acceleration, armor)

Personally i'd like to see even more AA on some maps to improve teamwork.
Tank/APC squad without proper AA protection should be a really bad idea.
Ground attack jets like the A-10/Su-25 which are already really bad in air-to-air combat should shine in
the air-to-ground role.
Fighter bomber like F15-E should be some kind of fast in/fast out jet.
Fighter jets like Eurofighter should be mostly restricted to air-to-air combat.

To illustrate that in numbers:

Ground attack vs. air-to-air

A-10: 80% 20%
F-15E: 60% 40%
SU-27: 10% 90%

[Filamu]

AA needs to be either able to stop CAS from taking out friendly armor or making sure you get the return kill. If it can't do one of them, then why should you bother manning it?

[FFG]

I mean if you play maps like Bijar/Kashan where currently no team has AAVs. Unless the teams have Max FOB AA + Manpads, CAS is pretty free to just bomb everything. AAVs add that extra sp00k factor which keeps CAS pilots at bay. Which IMO is good.

[Murphy]

I wonder if its that you cannot coordinate with ground forces to clear the AA coverage or that CAS is simply unable to make runs due to over saturation. If it's the latter simply cutting back on overall AA assets available could be a quick solution, but the former is indeed a "git gud" scenario.

[DogACTUAL]

Over saturation and broken AA (lock and shoot flares and missile goes for jet).

[Fuller]

Thank you DEVs for the (quite elegant) AA nerf!
It made CAS (air-to-ground) gameplay a lot better

There are still a few things to consider:
-Increase survivabilty of A-10 and Su-25 series.*
-The Igla/Strela MANPAD seems to be a lot stronger than the Stinger(overall better hit probability).

*
Increase hitpoints or armor overall.
A-10/Su-25 series are very sturdy planes and should not go down with one missile hit or a short burst of AAA.

[PatrickLA_CA]

What kind of AA nerf? Have I missed something?

[Fuller]

They changed the sights for all ground AA.
You have to visually identify the enemy jet/heli now (there is no green box on your target anymore).

[DogACTUAL]

Which will only last so long. This change only helps a bit right now because people are still confused about the lack of the HUD and think they have to avoid locking flares. Eventually most people will learn that all they need to do is get a lock on anything in the general direction of the jet and fire for the missile to hit successfully.

[schakal811]

What is the best way to shoot AA atm?

[FFG]

they act the same as their AA kit counter parts.

[PatrickLA_CA]

They changed the sights for all ground AA.
You have to visually identify the enemy jet/heli now (there is no green box on your target anymore).

That's good. It gets rid of the out of visual range spotting.