I’m going to start off by saying that I’m more than up for both joining and leading the air squad if it should be needed, but I also think there are a few problems with the air squad that needs to be addressed and maybe fixed before the squad can be truly effective.
First off:
Soloing/Farming:
It was the main problem that the air squad got canceled in the first place, due to lib pilots dicking off from the main objective to go somewhere else to sit and farm kills instead of helping the reaper.
I still think that this can become a major problem for the air wing without some sort of control from the SL and sadly I think the only way to counter it, is being having hard discipline. The leader will be forced to running the squad on a tight leash, making sure that people stay on the objective and don’t get distracted, maybe even going as far as banning people from the air wing if a person does it too many times (but it should only be used as a final solution of cause).
However it does happen that the pilots get tunnel vision when they are engaged in a dogfight, I know this because it happens a lot to myself, where you are so focused on the guy you are trying to shoot down that you don’t realize that you have been dragged over a kilometer away from the current objective. Therefor I think that all the pilots should be able and learn when to disengage from a fight, going “Okay I chased the guy 400 meters away from the base that should buy us some time before he comes back”, and then immediately join up with the rest of the squad.
I think the best way to counter the whole problem is just by setting up the right attitude and mindset for the air wing that you don’t join it to farm kills, but to support the reapers on the ground, taking out key targets (sundys, incoming gal drops and armor columns), an air squad that can both work as a sledgehammer, but also as a surgeon’s scalpel.
If that mindset is encouraged from the get go, then I think the will be a lot better than it were pervious.
Grounded:
A major risk to the effectiveness of the air squad is when a pilot is being grounded, grounded in this sense means that the pilot is not able to pull a mossy or a lib due to either the timer or a lack of resources.
If this were to happen, then I would say the first step would be that the next time the air squad returns to a base to refuel, restock and repair that the grounded pilot swaps with a lib gunner, so the previous lib gunner pulls a mossy or a lib and the grounded pilot gets into the gunner seat of the lib.
This way you turn the lib gunner seats into cooldown spots, where the pilots who have been shot down can still contribute to the squad while you overall also are reducing the amount of time a pilot is forced being on the ground.
Should it happen that a pilot is grounded and the lib gunner spots are also on “cooldown”. Then I think the next step would be for the pilot to pull an ammo sundy bus from a base close to the objective and set up a repair station around 200 meters behind the front line, where the squad is able to pull back to get repaired, without forcing them to fly all the way back to the nearest tower or major amp, bio or tech station.
It means that you can easily cut off 30 seconds of each repair and restock trip, something that will and can cause a lot of dead time for the air squad where they are not able to help at the objective.
Having a sundy with a flak turret equipped also means that the pilot on the ground is able to scare off enemy aircraft that might be following one of our pilots back to the forward repair station.
If a 2nd or 3rd pilot is being grounded while the repair station is active, these could also fall back to the repair station and pull flak guns (skyguards or bursters). This way you turn the repair station into a repair fortress, giving the pilots a safe haven to fall back to if they got an esf on their tail they can’t get rid of. Leading that enemy esf into a deathtrap is a good way to keep the air dominance with the limited resources the air squad will be facing with 3 pilots on the ground.
An alternative would be that the pilot joins the fight on the ground at the objective, but since he isn’t going to be in coms contact with the reaper on the ground his effectiveness could be reduced and he might end up just going on farming killings instead of helping towards the objective.
In the worst case scenario that the whole air squad is grounded and I mean that everybody got their lib and mossies on cooldown and that everbody have swapped around pulled everything that is worth pulling.
This “can” happen if the squad gets caught off-guard by a lot of burster-Maxes or if the objective we are trying to take down is heavily defended.
If this should happen then I think it would be best if the air squad for the next 15-20 minutes (until the cooldowns are off) turns into a spec-ops team that operates off gals.
Their goal will still be to help at the objective were a reaper has called upon them to help, but instead of dropping onto the base (in this case we are defending it from a huge infantry zerg. They instead try to flank it from behind and hit them in the rear taking out the enemy sundy.
They’ll operate more as a rogue spec-ops team than a force-ops team, if that makes any sence.
Should it fail, then they’ll return to the base and help with the defense until the cooldowns on their aircrafts are gone.
Loadout/setup:
Seeing as the squad will start with a 12 guys, I think it’s needed to have balanced setup of libs and mossies, else to risk getting shot out of the sky in 3 minutes by an enemy esf, if you choose to run with 6 2-maned libs. In my opinion I believe the best setup, in the view of the limited effectiveness of the lib these days due to flak, would be something along like this:
3 2-maned libs:
3-4 A2G mossies:
2-3: A2A mossies:
Keeping a setup like this means you have the libs that can, if they are allowed, punch a big hole in the enemy defense, while you have the A2G mossies can follow in after them and clean out anything that should still be crawling, while they are still able to do some dogfighting should the squad run into a lot of enemy esf.
All while you have A2A mossies, keeping the libs and Mossies 6 clear of any enemy esf that should be stupid, or brave enough to engage upon them during their bombing run.
However with the idea of the all the pilot being able to pull everything, both mossies and libs, it means that all the pilots will be required to at least make sure of that they have aircraft that is flyable, so you don’t have 3 pilots that got stock libs. Because stock libs are pretty weak against ground targets compared to zepher libs.
The pilots needs to be prepared to being able to spend a decent amount of certs on upgrading their aircraft, something I guess won’t be much of a problem seeing as a lot of the pilots in BRTD already got some pretty pimped planes, but for a newcomer it might be a bit intimidating.
Pilots:
It brings me to the next point, of our pilots.
I could be good to see how many pilots are up for going “fulltime” on the air squad.
At the moment we have 5(6):
Pointy
Placid
Yami
(Raiche? Sorry not sure if you are up for joining the air squad or just want to see it becoming active. : ) )
Willhellm
Wolfman
I can still think of 3-5 other people that I believe will join, but it might still be a bit too few, but 10 pilots are still better than nothing.
I also think that the air squad should be open to everybody, even to the “not so good” pilots. In the end the time you can spend in the air comes down to how good of a pilot you are yourself, so you are not hurting anyone other than yourself by joining, but with that said the people in the air squad should be decent pilots, since you are being forced to fly, so joining with the attitude of “I’m only going to be a lib gunner and farm kills” is not going to cut it. In the air squad we fly, because we love to fly.
The squad should be open to everybody, but you need to be a decent pilot, or at least be willing to learn to become a decent pilot.
I’m sure that everybody is up for giving a helping hand to a new rookie pilot. Even our officers who claim they can’t stay in the air for more than 2 minutes, yes, even you Sharpe.
Delta Squad:
Building off the idea that Pointy have presented.
There are some complication with how it has to be setup and how much micromanagement that is being forced upon the PL and SL. Disbanding the wing, after an objective is complete, only to assemble it again before you can move on to a new location and help out a new reaper.
I don’t know if you can kick a whole squad as PL and having the that squad still be connected as a squad, or if it counts as you just kicking 12 people out, to the status of squad-less, because if that is the case it will increase the response timer between the move outs for the squad.
The PL of the two reapers also need to keep in mind that they at all-time have to keep delta clear so the squad can move in and be able to move out in seconds.
Also should the air squad being in the same coms channel as the reaper they are helping or should they be in a room for themselves, because the times I’ve been in the air squad there was a lot of coordination coms going on, making sure that everybody moved in together as one unit, and bringing all of this coms noise in on another reaper might not be a good idea, but if they are not linked it might be a lot harder for air squad to get the exact coordination of where to strike. And missing a sundy location with 50 meters on the first go is quite a huge flaw since, now the enemy knows there is an air squad above them.
Maybe an idea would be to make an open oneway whisper channel from the PL leader of the reaper that needs help, to the entire air wing, so when the PL leader speaks it’s everybody in the air wing that can hear it, instead of only the air squad leader. It however gives the problem of how the air squad leader is able to reply to the PL, should that happen through the officer channel in very short terms, in order to keep as much noise out of that channel.
I think the mumble/coms problem is maybe the biggest threat to the air wing, figuring out an effective way to give commands to the air wing, so they know their location while having as little coms noise to the rest reapers and the officers so don’t get random chatter that is irrelevant to them.
But overall I think an air wing would be a great asset to BRTD!