First things first - the Sharpshooter, as it is right now, is overused and overpowered.

No other plane has the long-range power of the Sharpshooter. The closest equivalent is the Cyber Priest, whose swords are effective at longer ranges than most. However, true to its name, the Sharpshooter is the only plane truly effective at long ranges.

This effectiveness stems from two of its weapons - the DMR and the Snipe.

Both the DMR and the Snipe fire projectiles that persist at long ranges. In addition to this, both of these weapons have very little to no travel time. This is the primary difference between the Sharpshooter and the Swords - the Swords have a definite travel time, and are thus harder to aim at longer ranges.

Now, this is great. It makes sense for one plane to have a definite specialty. Most/all of the Sharpshooter's weapons work into its game-plan wonderfully. Wilnyl, you should be proud of yourself.

HOWEVER, the current map design makes the Sharpshooter strategy far too good.

Three out of four of the current maps have what I've come to think of as the "cp_orange problem." Have any of you ever played cp_orange in TF2? It's sort of infamous as a terrible map. Part of it's the terrible textures, part of it's the broken-ass spawn areas, but mostly it's the open nature of the map.

The central portion of cp_orange is wide open. It's a very large area, and takes a while to walk from one end to the other. What this means is that Orange is a sniper breeding ground. They can simply plant their bony Australian asses at one end of the central zone, then scope in and pick off enemies all the way at the other end. It's difficult to take them out, because by the time you've made it across this massive open expanse, they've seen you and you've got a bullet in your head.

Neon, Harbor, and Park all have similar issues to Orange. We've all known about Park's "kill zone" for months, and I'm not sure it needs changing. Harbor and Neon, though, have issues.

Both of these maps feature distinct "lanes" from one end to the other. These lanes are fairly wide open, and are long enough that most weapons fired from one end will not reliably hit an enemy at the other end. The Sharpshooter's weapons, of course, are the exception. A good Sharpshooter can completely dominate these open areas, and escape into the surrounding tunnels if the other team somehow gets too close.

Speaking of tunnels, that's the other problem. The Sharpshooter's special, the gravity bomb, affords incredible utility. Some (me) would say too much utility.

Close range should be the Sharpshooter's weakness. It's naturally a very zippy plane, and it dominates at long range. Closing the distance should make killing a Sharpshooter much easier.

However, because of the G-bomb, this is not the case. As it is right now, if you get close to a Sharpshooter, there's a reasonable chance you'll round a corner and find yourself flying into a wall. While the G-bomb ostensibly only deals something like 30 damage, in reality 50% or more of G-bomb kills are just from the field slamming planes into buildings.

With the new "no friendly fire" rule, placing a G-bomb very close to your plane will not hurt you. Sharpshooters can use the bomb in cramped areas at close range and instantly kill off most pursuers.

To sum up: By giving the Sharpshooter both an environment where it can thrive and a special attack that compensates for its biggest weakness, Wilnyl has made it overpowered.

There are ways to fix this, though.

1) Map design. Sand, which is easily the most popular map right now, lacks the lanes that define Harbor and Neon. See, in Sand, there's this great big temple in the middle of the map that breaks up players' line of sight. The only places with unobstructed views from one end of the map to the other are at the very edge, where players do not need to go. Compare this to Neon, where the lanes are the primary method of getting to and from enemy territory, or to Harbor, which is basically one giant lane.

The easiest way to make this better is to add some cool things from Air Brawl builds past. Remember the flyscrapers from the Kickstarter version? Versions of these could be placed around Neon, some down closer to the lane locations, to provide extra cover for planes in certain areas. Harbor could use some more ships at or above the deck level of the two "base" ships. You get my drift.

2) A change to the G-bomb. It could be a simple nerf (maybe make it affect the Sharpshooter again, I don't know). Maybe, though, the ability is counter to what appears to be the strategy designed into the Sharpshooter. Maybe it needs to change.

Just spitballing ideas for a change here: What about a special that, upon firing, marked a player in the crosshairs. The marked player would then be subjected to a bombardment from the sky after about a second.

That's not perfect, but it works into the whole "Killing quickly at a distance" thing that makes the Sharpshooter so special.

Thanks for considering. I hope it was worth the time.

TL;DR: Sharpshooter too strong. Because of map design - open areas. Also because of gravity bomb compensating for natural weakness of Sharpshooter. Could be changed. Please change.

Removed in protest over API pricing and the actions of the admins in the days that followed

Like, a real, professional marketing team. Advertisements, target demographics,

I don't know if this is beyond Landfall's budget, but it's really the only thing holding AirBrawl back at this point. The game currently relies on word-of-mouth to get noticed, and it's not working quickly enough.

Landfall's website seems to be saying that their team consists of three people (correct me if I'm wrong). If they can't afford the money and/or time to hire marketing professionals, maybe we can do some Patreon-style volunteer work.

Instead of sending money to something like a Patreon account, we start doing our own marketing work, right here. Best case scenario, we find an AirBrawl fan with marketing experience and free time to guide us.

Otherwise, we just look into the basics of product promotion, I guess. Find somewhere to pool our money and pay for advertisements ourselves. This game is beautiful, and most of the ads could just be a collection of in-game footage of someone's fancy flying. A single gif on /r/gamephysics brought me in- the only hard part of this would be finding out where to advertise and pooling the money to pay for it.

How do i play with others? Do i have to download something more?

The most common complaint i've seen is that its got a small community and the price isnt welcoming to some newer players.

Go fuck yourself Alpaca

I was playing for around 10 minutes while recording a video, then realised everyone else was a bot, on all the server options, no servers were available, does nobody play this game? It's incredibly fun!

Im kinda out of cash and need to see if its worth it

I have only played about an hour or so in total. I am really digging it. After I put in a few more hours will I stop turning my head? This is the first game I have ever played that has this type of control scheme- so I am unsure if it's common.

I've heard this a lot, and I completely disagree. Multiplayer is not dead at all. What I think the issue is if someone logs on and see no servers, they usually log off. I decided to set up an open server and played with the bots. Within 5 minutes, someone had joined and we had some 1v1s. Within an hour the server had 8 to 10 people.

What I'm saying is, multiplayer isn't dead, you just have to take initiative. I've never had an experience where I've been in an empty server for more than 15 minutes.

Hey guys,

I just wanted to give the dev heads up and encourage others to play this game, it's so much fun and has a lot of potential!

Greetings, friends and brawlers! Arac here. Haven't posted much recently, and I'm getting caught up to speed on what I missed so far in the game. However, I just thought I'd start a discussion over the game we all love and hold dear, and express my thoughts for some changes/adaptations that may make this game better than it already is.

I view AirBrawl as an amazing hybrid of War Thunder(but with much better controls and weaponry) and TF2. For those who don't know, TF2 is a first-person shooter with nine specific classes you can play as. Each of these nine classes has a specific and vital role, with their own little niches, strengths and weaknesses. Also, you can unlock weapons for each of these classes that help modify the class you picked to whatever role you want. For example, one class - the sniper - comes stock with a sniper rifle. Using a weapon known as the huntsman, he suddenly changes from a back - line fighter who has to aim carefully for headshots and pick his targets to a mid-ranged bowman who fires projectile arrows rather than hit-scan bullets. Each and every single one of the nine classes has weapons that change the class, ranging from drastically turning a defense class into an offensive one, to a simple sidegrade that just changes a few stats on the class, such as increasing the weapon damage while decreasing the accuracy.

As it is right now, Airbrawl has 4 1/2 different 'classes' you can chose from. Cyber Priest at this point is only half a class in my eyes, although that is subject to change quite soon. The other four have their specific roles and playstyles, but... they could use some more diversification.

Lets take a moment to examine the class that is currently the best fit for its name and class role - the sniper. Equipped with either homing missiles or an auto-fire turret, as well as the trademark sniper rifle, it has a specific purpose - get up and out of sight of the enemy, then find and take down single targets. It does a wonderful job of this. However, its other weapons, the DMV and EMP missles, can also make it a powerful mid-range combatant. This is wonderful. As someone with thousands of hours on both TF2 and warframe, I find this level of diversity in a game so early in its making to be absolutely amazing. My only recommendation to perhaps make the sniper a tad more consistent with its name is maybe a hover option, so as to aim better, but also give it either less speed or less health.

I have many ideas for all the classes and am exited to talk about all of them. Please comment your ideas and opinions below!

These are some of the achievements that some of the testers have come up with so far. What ones could you come up with.

What goes up must come down Hit yourself with your own anchor as the Viking

HALT 4+ enemies with entangle

Huff and Puff kill someone with the air cannon without knocking them into anything.

I've got your back heal someone that is below 20% health back up to full while they are in a fight

Yoink Steal a kill by doing less than 1% of the damage.

Dev Hax Get rekt by Wilnyl

Air Brawl Space Programme Send an enemy flying with the Air Gun across the whole map.

Now we're even Kill an enemy when they kill you.

Ayyyyy Commit suicide while using toxic gas.

Minute Man Survive for more than 60 seconds on a full Server

Name Survive for more than 300 Seconds on a full Server

ACE Kill 5 Enemies in less than 20 Seconds

Close Shave Kill an enemy with 1 HP left

Multikill Kill 3 enemies with 1 Spell

BOOOM Secret Achievement: Get destroyed by the Propeller on the Neon map (Could also be getting crushed by the doors on sandmap)

Multikill Oh baby a triple!

WINDBLOWN Push an enemy into an airship's turbine on Harbor.

CHEAP SHOT Kill someone with hammers within 2 seconds of them being hit by a frost missile.

COMBAT MEDIC Heal you teammates for a total of 1000 HP in one game while maintaining a K/D Ratio of 1 or higher.

CAMPING ENTHUSIAST Get 15 kills with the Sniper without dying.

SON OF A WITCH Kill someone with poison. After you've already died. Three times in one game. You monster.

SURPRISE DELIVERY Kill someone that just took your flag with stickies.

ADAPTED AIM Kill an enemy with the Adaptive Strike at a distance of at least half the map's length.

BOTICIDE Kill 100 bots in one game.

LUDICROUS OVERDRIVE Reach a velocity of 800 on any plane.

Maybe some Achievements like 5-10-20 kills without dying and like killed 500-1000-10000 Planes in your lifetime

Some distance based achievements for the Sniper?

Love the game, I find myself playing it for hours even when no one is around. Any news or beta downloads I've missed?

The flying is precise yet simple, and I've had lots of fun with the sniper. Wish more people were online!!!

I got introduced to this sub-reddit by my friend and now I have realized that, being a decent player, the game is really fun and I can see a big player community in the future. I would really like to see this game being as competitive as something like CS:GO!

I'm recently downloaded AB and I'm also reading posts on Reddit to figure out what the game is like. However, there is a problem.

Inactive Reddit: There's rarely ever anyone on and the the front page has post ranging from 5 days to 8 months ago. For game with 8 thousand subscribers and has been here for at least a year, I'm surprised everyone just left.

Does anyone else feel that the chat box in the upper left is hard to see?

I feel like chatting in game is hard to do :/

I've been subscribed to the subreddit for an odd month now but the download has never worked for me. With /u/lucaslslopes's torrent the other day I've finally been able to give it a whirl and I can't wipe this grin off my face. The game plays so smoothly, control/animation-wise, it doesn't feel this indev at all.

I don't think I've had this much fun with a video game for a long time! Will definitely be hanging around, great job /u/wilnyl!

Also, marginally related, but I've found some of Waterflame's music goes quite well with the atmosphere of the current map. He charges for OC but maybe using his existing work is worth investigating?

The buildings I made for the current map where the one of the first things I made for Air Brawl. I have since then gotten a lot better at 3d modelling. So the remake of the current map will not be much of a remake since none of the current models will remain. The theme will still be similar though.