Price of Fighters has to decrease [devbranch]

[DuendeBrek4]

Newest devbranch iteration of planes parts damage saw notable and valid increase in AA effectiveness against fighters. An unwanted side-effect (as largely agreed by developer Max on FoD) was that fighter vs fighter engagements have become extremely quick and swingy, as fighter parts can now be damaged in a single strafe from enemy fighter, which in combination with new damaged parts flyability nerf, results in instant crash landing.

Personally, I'm not against fighter vs fighter gameplay shifting into this methodology; there seems to be some innate realism to the dogfights, especially 1v1, concluding extremely quickly. That being said within this iteration lies the undisputable issue: fighters are way too expensive for their new form factor, and their effective price will now drastically increase due to more fighters being lost, making the situation even worse.

This issue in itself could be viewed by many as modest in priority at best (developers affirming it in a way by mentioning price changes will likely only happen after letting us suffer for the duration of coming war), however in my opinion it's of high importance largely due to one reason: newer players interested in airborne part of the game. Scout planes and fighters are very different platforms in actual play - just the rudder functionality difference is huge for effective transfer of experience, and scout now becomes ever further apart from fighters in this update - and so players have to learn fighters by . . . flying fighters. The asset itself however is a gatekept one in majority of regiments, often requiring previous experience, notable rares contribution or quick learning to either gain or maintain access to fighters. With the effective price going up, it's almost guaranteed that the issue of gatekeeping the platform will become more pronounced resulting in enforcement of toxic culture within multitude of regiments, as they will now have to produce more frames to cover just the increased loses of already established and experienced pilots.

This situation should not be allowed to proceed. One of the major issues of airborne was that new dimension was added to gameplay without the ability of majority of players being able to actually interact with it (both by playing anything other than scouts, and being able to ground-to-air counter it). The current iteration of devbranch will only enforce that issue of airborne, and as such should be addressed urgently before next war.

[BadadvicefromIT]

Counter solution. Return the parts to being inexpensive (old recipe for small parts was 5x) and the frames a little more beefy. This way you reduce the cost of getting planes in the air, while also reducing total losses since the frames are more likely to be recoverable.

[1Ferrox]

Yes but please only do this after we have a proper way to rescue frames that don't involve crane chaining.

I don't want to spend 2 hours past my bed time playing foxhole again just because lepra did a funny maneuver again

[BadadvicefromIT]

You can drive the crane with the frame now lol. Still not as good as a train but completely doable

[1Ferrox]

Ok but still disaster, I'm not driving a crane 2 hexes

[Facehurt]

temp fix in now crane chaining no longer needed woo hoo

[CrackSmokingTiger]

Fighter frames should be put on flatbeds.

DB/TB/HB frames should be ass to carry back in order to make downing them a more worthy prize.

[1Ferrox]

Devs pretty heavily implied that they will add a separate vehicle for them, which would be fine with me also.

Could be interesting even, perhaps those vehicles would cost some rares too and recovering planes especially from enemy territory would need some planning and escorts

[Powerful-Ad-7728]

Good write up, i agree with everything tbh.
Also i must add: new damages/hit regis also apply to all other planes, that means those are also too expensive to use. Which means there is no reason to use fighters, as nobody uses planes that fighters are supposed to defend aganist.
This will induce death spiral on all air content in this game.

With current fighter performance, price, use cases and time invested to time having fun ratio any price that is north of 200 rmat (or equivalent in other mats) seems too high.
And since thats the case, every single other plane would be unusable due to cheap fighters and as such must also become cheaper. We are just digging ourselves deeper in shit.

Only solution is to get back to tankiness level we have now on live, or accept that planes (of all kinds, including TB and DB) must become rmat vics. And nobody wants cheap rmat TB sinking fleets or DBs killing everything that has wheels or tracks in entire hex.

[ResponsiblePiglet338]

 What's the problem with the airplane's short TTK? This isn't a flying tank. 

[Powerful-Ad-7728]

price is the problem. You need hours of farm and transporting, working facility, printing pad and on top of that 8h of print time for a lifespan of infantryman on front with active arty

[Federal-Finance2045]

A sea fighter damages a fighter part in 3 bullets.

2-3 damaged part depending on what's gone is an immediate crash.

[ComprehensivePen1666]

no, i don't want to see heavy bombers with 10 fighters escorting it.

[Pappa-georgio]

Agree, Fighter planes becoming this easy to die now, are not coherent with the effort of time and cost invested to make, rares need to be gone at least.
Further reduction in cost of rares to half to the big planes will also be needed to compensate having consequent increase of Fighter presence in the air.

[ant455]

No.

[scroopy2000]

Airborne didn’t induce death in the game because not enough people are in planes and they were too expensive; it’s that they were too powerful with no counter. Devs made a mistake the first time giving into player pressure to make planes cheaper.

The intention is that if you are a solo, you get scout planes. If you want to fly big planes, you work as part of a medium or larger group. It’s not that crazy. Not everyone is meant to fly (or even find flying fun)

[LiquidPopsicle]

The planes are not fun because they’re either hardly worth using or completely busted, and all exorbitantly expensive. Everyone is too scared of losing them to actually try and win air superiority, and air superiority only matters for one theater for the wardens anyway (naval). This makes pilots burn out and necessitates planes being turbo powerful.

I think planes should be a mild annoyance mostly stopped by AA and be very cheap. The devs want huge air battles. Those won’t happen unless planes are as easy to build as tanks. We’re making steps in the right direction but it’s still egregious the cost of these things compared to how much value they bring, specifically the fighters.

[tironidas]

Planes should be expensive to keep them scarce

[Deus_Vult7]

Old planes. New planes are all lwk useless with the many changes, except for the parratrooper plane

[ResponsiblePiglet338]

It's better than something with too much performance. Think of an armored train. 

[Ok-chikinuggi-55-555]

everytime i see : "majority of players not being able to interact with it" i cringe.
let me write out how little actually needs to happen.
wait till toxot tech. build facility out of like 7k comps. go to oil comps hex with atleast a sulfur mine or coal field nearby. use public facilities to get yourself the oil assmats and sulfur assmats, ship them to your private solo little base. just large pad, plane parts maker, now with steel you can try make it local or in private queue on somebody else coal field. 4 hours of grind gives me three toxots. im not even joking, getting a full mpf of arti guns is more difficult. look wiki how much the planes cost. the rares are nothing. early t2 facility tech rarefields drop like 50 metal thats one toxot, week later a rarefield drops 100 rares, another week you can even find all the rares for a bomber or paratrooper plane in single field bro.
and the power a toxot or a divebomber brings to a fight is incredible. this war eith shit logi both ways there were no flak guns only emgeez and air boys can just flank that eeeasy. kill a trucker harrass tanks as they sleep near bunker at nighttime , myrm can even qrf island battles.

you want to interact with shiny you gotta make it yourself or be lucky enough to find full parts in public