Air Vehicles.

[RazY70]

There were, but the side people got switched to to balance to was the side with the better pilots. LoA and Sturdywings, among others.

That must've been one messed up campaign. Too bad I've missed it

[dan1mall]

There were, but the side people got switched to to balance to was the side with the better pilots. LoA and Sturdywings, among others.

That must've been one messed up campaign. Too bad I've missed it

Up untill the end of the campaign where the Hit high command kind of dissolved, it was actually a really good campaign imo. Only one to rival the epic STAR v GLD campaign.
But that mightve been because it was my first ^^

[Necromancer]

Doesn't matter.
looks like the decisive majority here in GC thinks jets are cool, so we shouldn't cry next time we get our assess handed to us because of air.

[Cheesy]

I like air and I think it wouldn't be battlefield without all three pieces: air, armor, infantry. Combined arms is what makes this game, and GC's organized style on it, so much fun.

My problem with jets now is they don't feel like part of combined arms. In BF42 and BF2, the role of planes in GC was ground support. Yes they had to dogfight, but they also had bombs and dropped them frequently. That made for a dynamic where ground guys asked for help, and air came to provide it. It felt like a team working closely together across all 32 people. Jets had to choose which flag to turn the tide on, and while they did infantry could make a difference elsewhere.

In BF3, it feels like the reverse. The jets mostly do their own thing in the sky, and most people on the ground really can't tell what's going on. Within a team, more of the communication is air asking infantry for support than vice versa. Now we have decicated infantry to take down air rather than dedicated air to take down infantry. And now jets don't usually make the difference on a single flag. Instead it's very all-or-nothng: either one side dominates and then gets armor superiority and all the flags, or neither side does and the air is kind of irrelevant to turning flags.

BF3 really feels like two games in one. There's a ground game where infantry and armor organized by an FC and SLs fight over flags to achieve ticket bleed. Then there's an air game where jets, choppers, AAVs, and stingers try to blow each other up. The games are completely separate, except that if the air game gets imbalanced then the ground one gets ruined. It's like there's this war going down on earth and then the gods are fighting in the sky, and whenever something bad happens on mount olympus there's just crazy volcanoes and lightning on the ground and one side's army just burns to a crisp.

So to keep the ground game that 75%+ of the people are playing reasonable, we try to heavily regulate the air game, and we force good pilots to play air at the time. This leads to stressed pilots and stressed TAs and frustrated ground players who feel like air is useless half the time and unbearable the other half.

Do you guys agree with that description?

[elchino7]

It's like there's this war going down on earth and then the gods are fighting in the sky, and whenever something bad happens on mount olympus there's just crazy volcanoes and lightning on the ground and one side's army just burns to a crisp.

[LoA]

There were, but the side people got switched to to balance to was the side with the better pilots. LoA and Sturdywings, among others.

That must've been one messed up campaign. Too bad I've missed it

Sturdywings played for one battleday as far as I can remember. I never flew with him, that's for sure.

[Jokerle]

Do you guys agree with that description?

I tend to agree with most observations. Air game is a bit apart from the rest. The map strat used to say quite often: "air force do your thing". I see that as a clear indication for somewhat separated games.
it is not necessarily a bad thing, though, it adds another tactical layer, which is a good thing. However, If the FC does not know a thing about how the air force plays the rounds, it may not be ideal...

What are solutions to take away stress from everyone? Play certain maps without jets using a BO card? Make a general agreement to use just 1 jet per army (less damage if air is unbalanced)? Play campaigns without jets? What for BF4 and hope the best?

(I just mentioned jets, because chopper balance seems not that big of an issue, right?)

[KoffeinFlummi]

I don't necessarily agree with all of those observations. The air game is certainly less connected to the infantry than the armour is, but it's not true that they don't affect each other at all.

The fact that many strategies don't plan out the airforce in-depth is not because it's seperate from the ground game, but because the air game tends to be very similar on most maps. You have your AA killing everything, the jets fighting each other and then trying to strafe helis and tanks, and the helis TV eachother and then shoot tanks. On maps where things are different, like Alborz, strategies do advise the airforce to do certain things, like for the attack chopper to camp behind the mountain on Alborz and guard the backflags.

The fact that you rarely see strafes on certain maps is mostly due to the AA. Even if you kill all enemy air, there still is that unkillable thing that prevents your jets from any successfull ground strafes. The helicopter can, on certain maps and if properly played, engage tanks regardless if there is cover and effective use of TVs and guided rockets.

On 32 maps, there is no AA. Therefore there is nothing preventing air from strafing things after killing the enemy air force. This happened, for example, last week on Firestorm. We saw alot of strafes from both airforces, because air superiority fluctuated so much. (With the AA on the other hand, there basically is no such thing as air superiority.) This of course caused the same people that usually complain about lacking involvement of the air force in ground support to complain about getting strafed.

Air support is hard to organize due to the insane speed of the air play in BF3, but it's not impossible. If you find a way to kill the AA, or if there isn't one, you can organize triple-strafes and all kinds of sexy things with some organizational skill.

[Cheesy]

I guess what I'm wondering is, is air combat in GC actually fun for you guys who are pilots/gunners? I know keeping track of all the fairplay rules and getting lots of warnings about them is annoying, but besides that.

Some things I've heard before are...

- People who don't want to fly get forced into it because they're good
- People who would otherwise want to fly don't, because they're not good enough
- The mobile AA is so uber powerful that you spend all your time dodging it
- When air is imbalanced it's no fun to fly because you just get your ass kicked
- Ground players always expect too much and don't give enough support
- ...

I just wonder if there are ways we could shake up AF gameplay here that would make pilots less frustrated, TAs less stressed out, ground guys less owned, and everybody more cooperative. Like, what would it take to have air guys spend 75% of their time pounding ground targets instead of chasing each other? I know I would be way more eager to fly if I wasn't just signing up to get gangbanged by the pro pilots and the MAA on the other side

Are there settings we could change (eg vehicle health)? Perks we could change (eg no reactive on the MAA)? Anyone in the BF4 alpha want to wink wink on whether it's going to get better or worse?

[KoffeinFlummi]

I guess what I'm wondering is, is air combat in GC actually fun for you guys who are pilots/gunners? I know keeping track of all the fairplay rules and getting lots of warnings about them is annoying, but besides that.

Yes, I still find it fun, otherwise I wouldn't still do it after 5 campaigns.
However, the things you pointed out aren't helping...

Are there settings we could change (eg vehicle health)? Perks we could change (eg no reactive on the MAA)?

Here's something for starters:

• Removal of reactive armour for the AA
  Would make it possible to buy yourself some time to provide ground support. Since the respawn time is only ~20s on most maps, it won't allow constant "air rape". Not only is reactive armour on the MAA OP enough for it to kill tanks, it's also so glitchy that it almost beggars belief. Try TVing it. It won't even take the panels off, like it should.
• Noone should be forced to fly, or not to fly, anything.
  This is pretty self explanatory...
• Keep the current model of air force cooperation
  Right now Call and I are trying to set it up so we always have balanced air forces flying, so if you're a noob, we'll find a place for you.
• Removal of the "you have to use it"-rule for stolen air vehicles
  (Potentially ground vehicles too, but that's another matter)
  It's impossible to follow without outright killing the chopper/jet you stole on some maps and on the others, you can kill it anyways. This avoids drama and stress.
• No more overreactions to rams
  They happen, no need to yell at people. The air force captains will inform you if it becomes suspicious, don't worry.
• Unbiased pursuit of rule violations
  I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but (-> C4 Sharqui) no more "air force gets punished, infantry is fine".
• No more rules (or generals agreement) restricting air vehicles
  Your intents might be good, but there's enough rules already. Jet drops are something else, since that's a strategy thing, not an air force thing. I am in favour of keeping the no-jetdrops thing.

For a full list other air force people would have to chip in.

[Necromancer]

if we already talking about rules, then i think the fair play rule

If you have stolen an enemy vehicle, you must put it to use in a way that allows the enemy a fair chance to destroy it or steal it back.

is equivocal for both air and armor.

what is "fair chance" ? is that mathematical 50% chance? or just a slight chance? who is to determine if its fair chance or not? when the TAs do so i guess its already too late (for everyone).

plus, its not viable. nobody will nor has been using a stolen vehicle in a way that provide "fair chance" to destroy it. its against human nature.

for example what happens when a chopper gets stolen on Sharqi?
there is no AA. to give somekind of a "chance" to the other team to reclaim it, you have to fly it straight into their stingers.

i think it needs to be rephrased simply to "stolen vehicle must be used in combat".
back to sharqi, that means flying it above RU base and artillerying the TV/Hotel areas is a viable tactic, even if its outside stinger range and doesn't give a "fair chance" to reclaim it.

what am i to do with a stolen artillery track? firing from spawn would be considered unfair chance, am i supposed to run over enemy flags with it in order to provide fair chance to retake it?

[dan1mall]

I appreciate you trying to figure this out cheesy.
All of flummis points would indeed go miles towards making the actual gameplay itself more fun, but I personally dont really have an issue with the gameplay. The thing I have an issue with, is the hostility between the AF and the TA's.
Who causes this, and who's to blame doesnt really matter here, what matters is that its causing people like Loa, divine-sneaker, and myself to want to leave GC for other organisations like level.

There's a few points that I think both sides can improve on.

• Whenever a new rule is instated, or wants to be instated, that regards airforce. Prominent airforce members should be involved in the discussion for making said rule. I remember last campaign, I was high command, and my airforce all of a sudden got yelled at for killing some infantry in the enemy uncap, with the transport chopper on firestorm infantry. I yelled back, saying that there was no rule that told us not to. Turns out, I was wrong, apperantly somewhere between c3 and c4 a rule got added that I was unaware of, and so was the rest of my airforce.
  I have no real problem with the essence of the rule, getting spawnraped by anything isnt fun, what annoyed me was the fact that we werent told there was a new rule, and consequently get yelled at for breaking it.
  On top of that, continueing with the same example, I think the rule isnt well defined, what if an enemy is sitting in their base with a stinger, am I allowed to kill him then? or do I just run for the hills and hope I dont die, what about the MAA on maps like Kharg, where it is entirely likely that it wont leave the uncap? Which brings me to my next point:
• Rules are sometimes too ambigious. I think the reason for this is not so that the TA's can bend the rules to be a douche to the airforce, I simply think the reason for this is that when these rules were made, the TA's, Senates, and High commands werent as experienced in air as the current pilots. Same goes for the people that are currently upholding the rules, they simply arent air vets like some of our airforce players are, meaning they might not understand the airgame completely.
  
  A great example is the "use vehicle with fair chance for it to die rule". Again, I do not have an issue with the essence rule itself, I too think its cowardly and unsportsmanlike to steal a vehicle and then hide it. As a result of certain TA's not fully understanding the air-game-play, they have different ideas about what is "a fair chance".
  Duke for example, has often told us that we are being too passive with stolen assets, eventhough as we were getting yelled at last time, we actually died to a stinger missile. In my book that is a completely fair chance to die, since we did die. In his book, having to cross the map to fire a stinger at us, is not a fair chance.
  
  I dont actually blame Duke, or any other air-inexperienced TA for that matter, for not understanding the air-gameplay to the same extent that we do though, and please dont take this as a dig at any of you. It is only expected for you not to understand it as well as for example IcallIDtheft. ICallIDtheft probably has more hours in jets and choppers alone than most of the TA's have spent in the game itself, so its only natural that he understands the situation better.
  
  As ID and I realize that the afforementioned rule is a big part of the reason for the animosity between the TA's and the AF, we have officially decided to not steal any enemy air assets anymore, so as to avoid the debate all-together. However that doesnt mean I wouldnt like to see it resolved for future campaigns/players
• Finally, the airforce feels like we are being "picked on". Now I know we are all sensible people, and I understand that although there might be hostility, the TA's dont go out of their way to piss us off. The thing is that sometimes, it does feel like that.
  An example is once again the no killing things in uncap rule for airforce. It literally states:

  You [Airforce vehicles] are never allowed to engage ground targets in the enemy UCB, regardless of how many flags either side has.

  However, for any division other than airforce, it is completely fine to spawnrape us. I understand us spawnraping tanks and infantry makes it unfun for those players, but then why are they fully allowed to do it to us?
  Another example is that LoA wasnt allowed to fly for most of C3, as a result of him signing up for infantry. Him switching to the Airforce would imballance things.
  The issues that arose here was that if a player as good as daskro signed up as inf, and wanted to play tanks, he would not be told that it wasnt allowed. Whereas LoA and I had to deal with a lot of drama just because he wanted to give infantry play a shot, instead of sitting in an airvehicle all day.
  Now I understand that if we flew expandas and LoA, and the enemy had CallID and some T2-3 pilot, it would imballance the air. But those were never our intentions, and eventhough both airforces and high-commands agreed to letting LoA fly, but never at the same time as expandas. The TA's still insisted on grounding LoA. Then when LoA and I practiced choppering a lot, and he got extremely good at gunning, he was threatened with being banned from gunning aswell.
  I understand the TA's concern with ballance, however to us it just feels like a giant middle finger, stopping us from having fun.

TL;DR: The Airforce has fun, and has no problem with the rules. The reason we are getting annoyed and are planning on leaving, is because of hostility with TA's

To answer your points cheesy:

- People who don't want to fly get forced into it because they're good

This happens every now and then, but really isnt too much of an issue. The reason they're good at the vehicle is because they enjoy flying so much. Sometimes 6 hours of flying gets a bit too much, but theres usually 1 or two inf maps inbetween to ease the brain.

- People who would otherwise want to fly don't, because they're not good enough

This might seem like its true, but both airforce captains are trying their hardest to get new airforce players playing. The difference is that because we are fairly short-staffed we cant give them the easy transition we would like to. When ID got introduced to the airforce, he spent all of C2 stingering and being our ground-bitch. This gave him time to get familiar with the airvehicles and tactics, and to practice his skill in pubs. Then in C3 when he began flying he immediately fit in and did well.
Nowadays on the other hand, if you want to fly, you basically get a crash course from ID, followed by jet-time on the battleday, meaning it might all seem a bit overwhelming to new players. Only the real men like jokerle can whistand such a trial of fire, and end up sticking around and wanting to fly more (props to joker!)

- The mobile AA is so uber powerful that you spend all your time dodging it

While this is true, we (try) to see it as a challenge rather than a restriction. The MAA, is most certainly limiting our fun, but the 32v maps without an AA make up for it.

- When air is imbalanced it's no fun to fly because you just get your ass kicked

I dont think air has been this unballanced for a while, bar maybe some of C4. And even so, getting your ass kicked is the best way of learning

- Ground players always expect too much and don't give enough support

I dont think any of us have an issue with the ammount of interaction with air and ground assets. The fact of the matter simply is that because of how fast the air-fight is, it's very hard for us to sync up with ground pushes. If for example the FC pushes on flag X, and theres a tank on flag X, we can only really take care of the tank if both enemy jets are down, and the flag is in a position where we wont get destroyed by the MAA. So to the ground it might feel like we are doing our own thing, but that is just because we dont want to give them the upperhand in the air just to get 1 tank.

sorry for the giant wall of text, but I felt like I should contribute my thoughts

[Jokerle]

People who would otherwise want to fly don't, because they're not good enough

There is some truth to that. It is however fueled by the constant discussion about air balance issues. Thus, you feel that if you are not really good you will harm your team and then you dont even want to try it out. I tried out the airforce the hard way: joining in the mid of a BD because there was no other pilot. I was confused and excited, it was very similar to my very first BD in GC as a grunt in STAR (with starfisher as my SL)

From experience after some more rounds, I can say you dont need to be an insanely skilled pilot to be useful. I am an average pilot, loosing most of the dogfights, but proper dogfights are anyhow quite seldom. There is always a MAA/chopper/jet-bro around that will interfere, and either bail you out of a bad situations or feck you up big time.
Sure I get yelled at sometimes: "dont fly over there", "dont make such bad turns", "dont die", "what are you doing?", "kill them, KILL THEM", "dont fly into me", ...

But in the end it is not much different to any other division: "Dont peek that corner", "use cover! OMG", "res me, OMG!", "dont turn your tank's ass to the enemy", "use smoke...no not us, THEM" "REPAAAAIIIR, "you are last, dont pus....OMG"
Whenever you play a certain role (infantry, tanker, jet, chopper) you need to learn the map and the map tactics specific for that role. Positioning, just as a tank, is very important in air. Difference is the enemy tank wont sneak in a few seconds across the map to shoot your butt, while you are still admiring the view.

People in GC are usually friendly and not über-competitive. Dont be afraid to learn something new, especially if there are people that will help you whenever they can. Try to listen and do your best(, and you will do fine, I guess.)
Also, join Tea-Assault and me when we play pub-airforce, its fun! (but run for your life if CallID joins the enemy team )

[Bock]

From my point of view, a lot of the fuss made about the air, which makes air players somewhat discontent boils down to a couple of issues:
1) Balance efforts.
2) Inconsistent application of rules.
3) Opposing HC and TA approach and tone of voice.

On (1):
In our efforts to create a balanced air situation so one army's ground isn't getting pounded all the time, we've created a situation where
-Players are sometimes not allowed to play a certain role which they want to play, because they are too good.
-Opposing armies are expected to care about and accommodate to the opposing side's situation. While we are, generally, all friends here, and we try to play a gentlemanly game, this slows down the battle day, and sometimes doesn't work out at all because it's natural to want to win and to hold some edge over the opposition.
-To quote from someone else in another forum

I get the sense that people just want to show up and win. As it's obviously impossible to just show up and win unless the other guy is at or below your skill level and taking the same approach, bitching to try to "balance" things is a the only way to continue to just show up and have a chance to win.

The opposite attitude, that a loss indicates a need to improve personally, and motivation to do so, is now called being a "competi-cunt". I know that term originated with a specific target in mind, but once you loose a meme it evolves; I've heard it applied quite broadly as of late.

The coping mechanism at work here is obvious: if you lose to someone who tries harder, simply cast trying-hard as being a bad thing so as to not lose face. But it's poisonous in the long run.

This applies to balance in a broad sense but also to air balance.

In my opinion, we should move back to a competitive draft system and let things play out. The other army's problems are their problems and your problems are yours. If you've drafted a weaker air force, adapt your flying techniques and use ground-based means to assist in the air battle. If your ground forces are weaker, train more, and improve your tactics.

2 & 3) I'll use the vehicle stealing rule as an example, since it seems to be the popular case study as of late. It seems to me that this is really only a problem with the helicopters on Sharqi. Mobile artilleries get stolen quite frequently on armored shield maps. When this happens, it gets driven back to the stealing team's side of the map, usually near their "gimme flag" or just outside the uncap. Someone gets ordered to try and kill it so they can get it back. Nobody bitches. Tanks/tank destroyers get stolen from time to time on battle days and in the black ops tank superiority. Usually, the stolen tank is brought to the rear and shells things from a distance. Again, nobody bitches. Even when jets are stolen (has happened in the past. For example, when a jet dropper fails to properly crash the jet), nobody bitches. But when a helicopter is stolen on Sharqi, the following situation unravels.

15s after Team A steals Team B's heli, Team A is repairing the stolen helicopter and probably switching pilots.
30s after Team A steals Team B's heli, Team A is now flying the stolen helicopter, getting in to provide close air support and ECMing and bugging out when they get a stinger launched at them. From the crew's perspective, they have a fair chance of getting killed. Suddenly, the TAs pass on "just a 'friendly' reminder, that the helicopter needs to have a fair chance of getting destroyed." But there's a sense of urgency in the TA's voice and a bit of a bitter edge to it, probably because they have just received an earful from Team B's HC. So Team A's HC passes along the reminder over channel commander.
50s after Team A steals Team B's heli, Team A is flying the chopper somewhat more aggressively, facing constant lock-on tones, with rpgs flying past their windows like this is Somalia. Team A's HC hears the TAs once again, but this time, the TA's voice is raised, and they get a serious warning about not using the stolen vehicle per the fair play rules. Since the HC members are busy with the fight on ground, they don't know exactly what is being done with the stolen chopper, but they've seen it buzz by from the ground once or twice. Regardless, they duly pass down the warning to the helicopter crew, who is by now, also quite frazzled and irritated.

The forums a week later.

To me, the response to this situation is inconsistent with the response to other stolen vehicles. Granted, this campaign's TAs responded in a much calmer manner than previous TA groups. However, there is still room for improvement in the tone that they take with air players and officers when handling these situations.

[Cheesy]

Right now we have this game of telephone:
1) Some guy on team Red thinks he sees an pilot on Team Blue break a rule
2) He tells an SL
3) The SL tells the HC over channel commander
4) The Red HC complains to a TA
5) The TA didn't see anything so he says "hey blue AF, friendly warning"
...
6) The same thing happens and the TA still doesn't see anything so this time he says "hey blue AF, really cut it out this time"
...
7) "Blue AF, if I hear about you guys ramming one more time I will [vague threat]

Besides one instance in C4 that everyone is still mad about, it's never really escalated beyond that afaik. But I can see how that tone is really shitty to deal with -- the way everyone is assuming your guilty even without any evidence.

So how can we make the process better? When I was a TA in C3 I know I pissed off a bunch of pilots, but I always felt like I was stuck in an impossible position. In BF2 there was a Battlerecorder where every accusation could be checked after the fact. But in BF3 TA's have absolutely no way of knowing what happened, in the moment or after the fact. Specifically:
- They can't check who rammed who
- They can't see where a stolen vehicle actually is or what it's doing
- They can't tell if someone was firing out of an uncap when they got hit

That's why most TA messages take the form of "hey guys, make sure you do _____." All the TA's can really do is remind.

Should we just stop pretending? One thing we could do is completely stop trying to enforce air-related rules. We could put it all completely up to the two airforces to handle together. But that means any time a ground player complains to the TA's about an issue, all they'll be able to say is "sorry, bring it up with your AF captain and it might get worked out in a few weeks."

Or, we could ask every pilot to record themselves. Then we could only enforce rule violations after the fact. Any time you catch the other team breaking a rule on video, we "fine" them based on some pre-defined set of punishments.

I'm really open to ideas here. But we have to be realistic. It's not just that the TA's don't understand air, they also aren't actually up there in the sky to see what's happening and have to rely on hearsay.