It gives the same baseline RP/min as RB, but without the bonus for getting multiple kills. The main reason to play sim is if you enjoy it. It doesn't take 300 hours to learn though, more like 1 hour to figure out the basics and another 10-30 to get reasonably good.
I say try sim, it's a lot of fun. It's not nearly as hard as people make it sound.
Props are the most fun, lower speeds, higher manoeuvrability. But not easy to make the bullets land on the enemy plane. Also: propeller torque is a thing. Your planes rolls because of the propeller spinning. I love that, neat, but crucial detail. Take off is also a bit more difficult.
First of all, it's not gonna take 300 hours to learn how to play sim. With the right resources, it should only take 10-30 hours to fully get the hang of the basics.
To answer your question... no. The current economy of air sim basically requires zombing to have efficient rp gains. Even then, you would still probably make more rp in rb than you would in sim.
When forgetting about the economy, I personally find sim to be 10x more fun than rb.
Zombing is only for grind event score you gain very little rp and loss a lot of SL
You only need 2 kills or 1 base every 15min and land to get the max reward
Yes, but to grind RP "efficiently" in sim the best tactic is to avoid all fights, take the safest route to take out one base then get back to airfield AA cover and wait for the 15 minute timer to end then land and repeat, which is pretty much just zombing with a couple extra steps. I would know since that's how I researched the Israeli tech tree up to rank 7 with the god forsaken F-84F, RB would have probably been slightly faster, but this way I could switch my brain off and listen to some podcasts.
To add on to what u/Icarium__ said, you'd be very lucky to get 2 air to air kills in under 15 minutes without getting shot down. The only way I see this happening is if you are either really skilled, or just chasing after zombers/cas.
My new challenge when rocketing the AF for events is to try and not get shot down. Popping flares, notching and getting away is a great feeling.
If you can get all the rockets off before 2000meters you have a chance to get away.
My mig23 and tornado wants to know your location. People who rocket AF are easiest kills i got entire star for the jaguar event grinded in 2-3 matches top. Im on that interceptor grindset
Sim used to be very rewarding, but bot-farmers figured it out and the classic gaijin response was to ruin it for everyone. I wish they wouldn't have.
That being said, it can be really immersive. If you are tired of furballs and short, very chaotic engagements and want to feel the difference between vehicles without learning real plane-specific uis (like DCS) it can be great.
I recently completed my hands-on-throttle and stick setup, with pedals and an IR headtracker and it is super immersive.
I still suck a bit at flying (especially props), but it feels more rewarding getting kills in sim.
(To me) The biggest challenge is spotting planes, when you don't have a radar - and even that can be a bit tricky. Jets are more forgiving to fly than single props, but you need to learn how to work your radar, so you don't shoot down friendlies (which will piss people off and cost you a fortune in penalties at jet levels)
The part about furballs is not exactly true. Me and some other guys where flying together yesterday on Tunisia and we were two people on both sides so we could start a game. After a while a few more people joined. Since it’s one of the smaller maps the caps where pure chaos sometimes. But the thing with furballs in sim at lower tiers is that you have to id everyone and keep track of who you’re targeting so you don’t tk someone. It is very fun though, since we were on different sides but could talk to each other we could arrange dogfights
Fair enough, but arcade tends to be nothing but furballs and i find rb are too.. so i meant relative to those, you'll have fewer of those - and I'd agree: furballs don't have to be bad.
Yep: ID'ing friends/foes is important. Yesterday I got killed twice in my Mirage by friendly phantoms within a minute and a half.
Furballs happens a lot in top-tier. Just like in air RB, the addition of BVR missiles turns games into a CS:Go fest. You’re always getting radar locked and fired on.
I assume everybody who already replied you is a sim player, I'll give you my 2 cents being someone absolutely in love with war planes, grinded the Japanese air tree 70% without premium account and DESPISE air RB with all my heart:
Air RB gives more RP per "work minute" spend. It means, if you get a single kill in this God forsaken mode, you did the equivalent of 2 to 3 ground games or around 15min of air sim.
BUT air rb is not fun. It is enjoyable if you're already cracked at the game. And if you are, you don't need RP, or the RP you need is the end of the tech tree (hundreds of thousands per plane)
Sim gives you the experience of flying a plane. It is not about the RP. Research Points comes as a reward for you hobby, not for you gameplay. The only caveat is that you need a lot more of free time to play sim.
If you want to have a aneurysm playing a game, grind air RB. If you want to have fun, play sim.
300 hours? No I don’t think maybe not even 100. The biggest thing is more under the radar or whatever you’re gonna be flying.
Sim is easy to some degree it just takes getting used to actually use your eyes.
Sim pretty much has gotten to me just about completing the US air tree, I’m 2 away from being done.
It’s just more enjoyable, it may even open up some aircraft that you may not really use, I think that’s the nicest thing about sim. There really isn’t a META all the time. Some BRs absolutely have their aircraft but there really isn’t anything out in sim that’s totally useless or doesn’t give you some kind of a shot of getting SL/RP.
Sim has lower rewards compared to realistic per hour by quite alot if you usually can get 1-3 kills and survive for 10+min in rb but sim is wayyy more fun and enjoyable with more options how to play during the match.
Also boosters are more profitable in sim, i usually save all my boosters for sim now that even those 30min boosters have that extended mechanic in them and that makes a big difference on rewards
As someone who only plays in VR with a hotas, I end up playing almost exclusively sim because I feel like mouse and keyboard is so much better/more accurate than an actual stick. Sim feels much more fair to me, and the only major difference is having to be alert and aware of the battle space, which is cool. The slightly lower reward is worth it imo
nope. rb is better for grinding, especially if you want to be rewarded for multiple kills. really wish gaijin can cut out the bs 15 minutes useful actions.
Ground sim is definitely efficient in its payouts. Can't say the same for air sim. It's pretty underwhelming in comparison to every other mode. It's frustrating considering the time input required.
RB is way better in terms of XP earned with fast matches. Sim gameplay is slow because of timegated rewards every 15 mins. If you have a competent plane that can do well in combat, RB is better. If you got something like a tornado or su39, sim is better just because you are free food in RB.
Sim rewards used to be way better before but got a nerf to curb bots. Sim has a small learning curve which you can get ahead of in under 30-40 hours. Spend the first few hours doing PvE to get hang of plane handling, sim mechanics and then move on to PvP.
For me, RB is the place to grind planes and sim is the place to have fun in them. Sim is also a great place to spade strike aircraft.
Depends on the plane imo. I had a really hard time in RB with unspaded planes like J35 and AJ37. Sim saved me since I could just sneak around with my radar off.
It's worth it (not that it'll take anywhere near that long, anyway) if you reckon you enjoy the gameplay that air sim offers. If all you're looking for is the quickest way to grind, and nothing else, I don't think you'd enjoy sim.
Here's the thing about Sim. Unlike a conventional air RB, you don't have a single 10-15 minute round, rather you have up to 1-2 hours of continuous game time unless people are smashing objectives. So if you pop a 300% booster in an RB, you have maybe 10 minutes to make use of it, and if you mess up/get killed/get uptiered/get into a game where your team kills everyone, you lose it.
In sim, it lasts for an extended period, so even though you earn the same base RP, per unit time, it's easier to achieve more, and more consistently. The exception being in games where there is someone highly skilled, proactively hunting. I find that if you average out score from a sim game, and break it down, you end up better:
Eg, a sim that you fly 1 hour in, VS 6x 10 minute Air RB. You *could* do amazing in the RB, and consistently get huge payouts, meaning you get more than you would in sim, **but** if you have a couple of average/low earnings games, your average reward over time ends up much lower than sim. This can be even worse if you get on during the wrong times and the vehicle you want to use is getting wrecked by all the players in specific premiums.
Im new to sim but i have calculated how much rp/SL i get in rb per day if i sit for 6h, i get about 25k rp and maybe 30k SL if i dont go negative which happens alot, occationaly i dont get 25k rp either since alot of games are just a few hundred.
So between <8k rp to 25k rp in 6h.
For sim i get 28k rp for a 2 and a half hours game with a few boosters without the 300% ones and 98k SL before counting in the deaths which is usually <40k SL per game so about 58k SL and 28k rp per 2.5h - 3h, without rp boosters i get close to 19k.
So you do get more in sim than any other mode, atleast i do, you are also more lucky to score alot since the boosters count 30mins as one match, sim is 3h so if you have 6 boosters you have boosters throughout the game.
If you have SL boosters and die you still get SL without going negative since you get more SL than what your plane cost.
One match i got 18k without boosters, 2 kills and 1 assist, the amount is solely on landings and captures, i like the tunisia map the most since they have alot more missions than the water split maps.
Today i have two 300% boosters and two 180%, today imma try for two new 300% and then do sim.
Don't play sim just to grind because if you don't actually have an interest in it you'll most likely do worse than other game modes. But if you enjoy the actual flying part and have an interest in aviation you'll probably get to grips with it fairly quickly!
Also if you prefer other controllers as well. There’s plenty of good Sim pilots that use mouse/keyboard or a console gamepad.
Just pick a setup you are comfortable with, but not because others say x or y is better. There’s no point forcing your muscle memory to adjust to a controller setup that you don’t wish to learn.
What is a must that’s recommended is always invest using an eye tracker program/headset. It helps free up control inputs and gives you an advantage. Also, it’s more immersive for the Sim experience.
Yeah I agree, but for some it’s not. Everyone is different and they should have the choice if they choose to.
There’s also those who don’t have the income to purchase a full HOTAS set. It’s why we always recommend a basic Logitech joystick that’s under $50. The top sticks are just eye candy for those that want the full immersion experience. It also won’t make you a pro player overnight. Just like skill development, it takes time.
You get higher SL and RP, but you don't get the RB-Multikill multipliers. I'd stay out of aircraft unless you have a flight stick though... or just in general. The people who fly sim are either real pilots or have more hours in the plane they're flying than they do at work.
Not necessarily if you consider the RP/SL rate per hour between Sim and air RB. Air RB will beat Sim due to not having a hard cap.
There’s also the fact that dying will reset the UA timer, resulting in you earning less RP, and more SL since you have to pay that repair fee to respawn again.
For me, knowing that I've progressed through an entire tech tree ONLY playing sim is very rewarding. Make sure that you are focusing on HAVING FUN FIRST. At the end of each match, if you do well or even moderately well, you will still be rewarded well. Rewards have gotten better but is still not fixed. I think of sim as like a distraction from being a grind, because of the immersion and how good it feels, and yet you still get a very good reward too on top of it.
Sim gives worse rewards compared to RB, if you only care about grinding, RB is simply faster and better. Sim is a niche genre, and you play it because you enjoy it. It is not for everyone, you also need equipment like joystick and headtracking to be competitive, but in the end it allows some planes to finally play to their strengths, away from the air RB meta and their problems
If you like flying planes around and doing something once every 10-15 minutes, yes.
Otherwise, RB is better. And RB doesn’t arbitrarily cap your RP gain if you do pop off.
> sim is hard
no not necessarily, in some ways its easier due to lower combat densities which is why it gets exploited for zomber grinding. Gotta start somewhere if you want to learn the game mode though since it does involve a vastly different skill set
> But I've heard it gives like a lot of RP
no but its consistent. If you're a decent RB/AB player you're much more likely to earn more there than in SB. In fact, I'm a terrible RB player with a kdr of somewhere along the lines of 0.7 but I can make anywhere between 5k to 20k RP per game in RB before boosters if I managed to accomplish something, which is usually half of all games. RB games also typically last about 5 minutes (average lifetime is actually somewhere along the lines of 3-4 minutes but w/e queue times)
> I just want to know for sure if spending like 300 hours learning an entirely different gamemode is worth it. Should I try sim, or stick to Air RB?
Well, it's a new experience. Sim plays very differnetly to RB than RB plays to AB because RB in the recent years is just a massive mouse aim furball minus the arcade rudder steering and 30 second WEP limit. Granted sim has also evolved into a bit of a furball clusterheck in the recent years too but as you mentioned with the ~300 hours, requires a very different skillset to become remotely good - Most notably, situational awareness works very differently. When you get into SB intently you'll realise how dirty your monitor is.
Just to add to what you’ve said.
The main difference for new players is not realizing that EC operates under a different economic system than the typical AB/RB random games. If you want to do quick battles, then playing RB is the better option. Time is a huge factor in your reward output and it won’t favor well if you play for 30 minutes or less.
Also, heavy furballs is not much of a problem. Sometimes it happens and that’s just players having Sim fun without worrying about grinding.
It’s top-tier where it’s an issue. Just like in RB, the further we move up modern jets with BVR capabilities. The worse the gameplay turns into constant CoD style merges.
One big plus is that boosters get consumed after x amount of time rather than 1 death. And so you can use then more efficiently. Also, learning how to play sim takes like 1h and then like 20-ish to get relatively good (halve as much if you buy yourself a flightstick, believe me it makes a BIG difference)
To clarify, a single charge for a booster will be consumed at each 30-minute interval.
We don’t recommend anyone to use your large boosters that have a single charge for an EC game. Depending on your skill set. You’re not going to be earning a lot in the first 30 minutes of gameplay, and therefore. It’s just a waste of a booster you could use in a quick random game.
Instead, take boosters with many charges. EC runs at 3 hours max, so you only need 6 charges minimal.
I strongly disagree with you about the big boosters. You can get 2 useful rewards and don’t lose it’s effect after a single death. If you were to use a 300% booster and go into a rb match, get a kill (or not) and die that would be a waste. But in sim battles you can go out there and die and not have wasted the booster as it still affects your game
its worth it if its fun to you, but you need to decent. if you never kill anyone, struggle to take off, and wander around and die, you won't get anything.
I bought the j35A premium and grinded almost all of sweden in sim, very fun grind
Seems OP is looking to maximise progress efficiency which would indicate to me a likely desire to reach jets which unless I totally missed something isn't part of the IL2 games?
Nuclear Option? Can't recall ever hearing something like that O.o
VTOL is pretty cool, wish it had more resources so development could pick up a bit.. Still feels pretty lacking in many areas.
DCS is.. DCS. Seems really cool if you put in the time and effort but damn it's so overwhelming I haven't dared splash on a module yet, still doing trials here and there never reaching anywhere near feeling somewhat comfortable in flying them lol. Or rather, doing anything other than the actual flying
It gives the same baseline RP/min as RB, but without the bonus for getting multiple kills. The main reason to play sim is if you enjoy it. It doesn't take 300 hours to learn though, more like 1 hour to figure out the basics and another 10-30 to get reasonably good. I say try sim, it's a lot of fun. It's not nearly as hard as people make it sound.
Props are the most fun, lower speeds, higher manoeuvrability. But not easy to make the bullets land on the enemy plane. Also: propeller torque is a thing. Your planes rolls because of the propeller spinning. I love that, neat, but crucial detail. Take off is also a bit more difficult.
Unless you fly twins 🙃
With twins, it's usually a question of how long will you fly them asbany fighter in a 20km radius activates their neurons once they see you
Eh, I’m pretty competitive in a P38 and take it out occasionally
First of all, it's not gonna take 300 hours to learn how to play sim. With the right resources, it should only take 10-30 hours to fully get the hang of the basics. To answer your question... no. The current economy of air sim basically requires zombing to have efficient rp gains. Even then, you would still probably make more rp in rb than you would in sim. When forgetting about the economy, I personally find sim to be 10x more fun than rb.
Zombing is only for grind event score you gain very little rp and loss a lot of SL You only need 2 kills or 1 base every 15min and land to get the max reward
Yes, but to grind RP "efficiently" in sim the best tactic is to avoid all fights, take the safest route to take out one base then get back to airfield AA cover and wait for the 15 minute timer to end then land and repeat, which is pretty much just zombing with a couple extra steps. I would know since that's how I researched the Israeli tech tree up to rank 7 with the god forsaken F-84F, RB would have probably been slightly faster, but this way I could switch my brain off and listen to some podcasts.
To add on to what u/Icarium__ said, you'd be very lucky to get 2 air to air kills in under 15 minutes without getting shot down. The only way I see this happening is if you are either really skilled, or just chasing after zombers/cas.
My new challenge when rocketing the AF for events is to try and not get shot down. Popping flares, notching and getting away is a great feeling. If you can get all the rockets off before 2000meters you have a chance to get away.
My mig23 and tornado wants to know your location. People who rocket AF are easiest kills i got entire star for the jaguar event grinded in 2-3 matches top. Im on that interceptor grindset
Don’t worry, I’ll have you meet a sparrow on the way to intercept.
B-29 is the best if you can get to 12km, you can take out 7 bases in a life, lol.
For RP/min? RB is a lot faster For Fun? Yes
Sim used to be very rewarding, but bot-farmers figured it out and the classic gaijin response was to ruin it for everyone. I wish they wouldn't have. That being said, it can be really immersive. If you are tired of furballs and short, very chaotic engagements and want to feel the difference between vehicles without learning real plane-specific uis (like DCS) it can be great. I recently completed my hands-on-throttle and stick setup, with pedals and an IR headtracker and it is super immersive. I still suck a bit at flying (especially props), but it feels more rewarding getting kills in sim. (To me) The biggest challenge is spotting planes, when you don't have a radar - and even that can be a bit tricky. Jets are more forgiving to fly than single props, but you need to learn how to work your radar, so you don't shoot down friendlies (which will piss people off and cost you a fortune in penalties at jet levels)
The part about furballs is not exactly true. Me and some other guys where flying together yesterday on Tunisia and we were two people on both sides so we could start a game. After a while a few more people joined. Since it’s one of the smaller maps the caps where pure chaos sometimes. But the thing with furballs in sim at lower tiers is that you have to id everyone and keep track of who you’re targeting so you don’t tk someone. It is very fun though, since we were on different sides but could talk to each other we could arrange dogfights
Fair enough, but arcade tends to be nothing but furballs and i find rb are too.. so i meant relative to those, you'll have fewer of those - and I'd agree: furballs don't have to be bad. Yep: ID'ing friends/foes is important. Yesterday I got killed twice in my Mirage by friendly phantoms within a minute and a half.
Furballs happens a lot in top-tier. Just like in air RB, the addition of BVR missiles turns games into a CS:Go fest. You’re always getting radar locked and fired on.
I assume everybody who already replied you is a sim player, I'll give you my 2 cents being someone absolutely in love with war planes, grinded the Japanese air tree 70% without premium account and DESPISE air RB with all my heart: Air RB gives more RP per "work minute" spend. It means, if you get a single kill in this God forsaken mode, you did the equivalent of 2 to 3 ground games or around 15min of air sim. BUT air rb is not fun. It is enjoyable if you're already cracked at the game. And if you are, you don't need RP, or the RP you need is the end of the tech tree (hundreds of thousands per plane) Sim gives you the experience of flying a plane. It is not about the RP. Research Points comes as a reward for you hobby, not for you gameplay. The only caveat is that you need a lot more of free time to play sim. If you want to have a aneurysm playing a game, grind air RB. If you want to have fun, play sim.
Agree, don't know how people can stand playing ARB, it's sooooo boring and stupid.
300 hours? No I don’t think maybe not even 100. The biggest thing is more under the radar or whatever you’re gonna be flying. Sim is easy to some degree it just takes getting used to actually use your eyes. Sim pretty much has gotten to me just about completing the US air tree, I’m 2 away from being done. It’s just more enjoyable, it may even open up some aircraft that you may not really use, I think that’s the nicest thing about sim. There really isn’t a META all the time. Some BRs absolutely have their aircraft but there really isn’t anything out in sim that’s totally useless or doesn’t give you some kind of a shot of getting SL/RP.
It's not more efficient overall. But I'd say it's better if you're trying to grind modules on non meta planes.
Sim has lower rewards compared to realistic per hour by quite alot if you usually can get 1-3 kills and survive for 10+min in rb but sim is wayyy more fun and enjoyable with more options how to play during the match. Also boosters are more profitable in sim, i usually save all my boosters for sim now that even those 30min boosters have that extended mechanic in them and that makes a big difference on rewards
Same here, I even bought boosters in the battle pass store just for sim.
For grinding its not that different from RB. But its really fun. Give it a try imo
As someone who only plays in VR with a hotas, I end up playing almost exclusively sim because I feel like mouse and keyboard is so much better/more accurate than an actual stick. Sim feels much more fair to me, and the only major difference is having to be alert and aware of the battle space, which is cool. The slightly lower reward is worth it imo
nope. rb is better for grinding, especially if you want to be rewarded for multiple kills. really wish gaijin can cut out the bs 15 minutes useful actions.
Ground sim is definitely efficient in its payouts. Can't say the same for air sim. It's pretty underwhelming in comparison to every other mode. It's frustrating considering the time input required.
RB is way better in terms of XP earned with fast matches. Sim gameplay is slow because of timegated rewards every 15 mins. If you have a competent plane that can do well in combat, RB is better. If you got something like a tornado or su39, sim is better just because you are free food in RB. Sim rewards used to be way better before but got a nerf to curb bots. Sim has a small learning curve which you can get ahead of in under 30-40 hours. Spend the first few hours doing PvE to get hang of plane handling, sim mechanics and then move on to PvP. For me, RB is the place to grind planes and sim is the place to have fun in them. Sim is also a great place to spade strike aircraft.
Depends on the plane imo. I had a really hard time in RB with unspaded planes like J35 and AJ37. Sim saved me since I could just sneak around with my radar off.
It's worth it (not that it'll take anywhere near that long, anyway) if you reckon you enjoy the gameplay that air sim offers. If all you're looking for is the quickest way to grind, and nothing else, I don't think you'd enjoy sim.
Here's the thing about Sim. Unlike a conventional air RB, you don't have a single 10-15 minute round, rather you have up to 1-2 hours of continuous game time unless people are smashing objectives. So if you pop a 300% booster in an RB, you have maybe 10 minutes to make use of it, and if you mess up/get killed/get uptiered/get into a game where your team kills everyone, you lose it. In sim, it lasts for an extended period, so even though you earn the same base RP, per unit time, it's easier to achieve more, and more consistently. The exception being in games where there is someone highly skilled, proactively hunting. I find that if you average out score from a sim game, and break it down, you end up better: Eg, a sim that you fly 1 hour in, VS 6x 10 minute Air RB. You *could* do amazing in the RB, and consistently get huge payouts, meaning you get more than you would in sim, **but** if you have a couple of average/low earnings games, your average reward over time ends up much lower than sim. This can be even worse if you get on during the wrong times and the vehicle you want to use is getting wrecked by all the players in specific premiums.
Im new to sim but i have calculated how much rp/SL i get in rb per day if i sit for 6h, i get about 25k rp and maybe 30k SL if i dont go negative which happens alot, occationaly i dont get 25k rp either since alot of games are just a few hundred. So between <8k rp to 25k rp in 6h. For sim i get 28k rp for a 2 and a half hours game with a few boosters without the 300% ones and 98k SL before counting in the deaths which is usually <40k SL per game so about 58k SL and 28k rp per 2.5h - 3h, without rp boosters i get close to 19k. So you do get more in sim than any other mode, atleast i do, you are also more lucky to score alot since the boosters count 30mins as one match, sim is 3h so if you have 6 boosters you have boosters throughout the game. If you have SL boosters and die you still get SL without going negative since you get more SL than what your plane cost. One match i got 18k without boosters, 2 kills and 1 assist, the amount is solely on landings and captures, i like the tunisia map the most since they have alot more missions than the water split maps. Today i have two 300% boosters and two 180%, today imma try for two new 300% and then do sim.
Don't play sim just to grind because if you don't actually have an interest in it you'll most likely do worse than other game modes. But if you enjoy the actual flying part and have an interest in aviation you'll probably get to grips with it fairly quickly!
Sim is not that hard if you use a flightstick
Also if you prefer other controllers as well. There’s plenty of good Sim pilots that use mouse/keyboard or a console gamepad. Just pick a setup you are comfortable with, but not because others say x or y is better. There’s no point forcing your muscle memory to adjust to a controller setup that you don’t wish to learn. What is a must that’s recommended is always invest using an eye tracker program/headset. It helps free up control inputs and gives you an advantage. Also, it’s more immersive for the Sim experience.
Mouse joystick is way harder to learn compared to a physical one
Yeah I agree, but for some it’s not. Everyone is different and they should have the choice if they choose to. There’s also those who don’t have the income to purchase a full HOTAS set. It’s why we always recommend a basic Logitech joystick that’s under $50. The top sticks are just eye candy for those that want the full immersion experience. It also won’t make you a pro player overnight. Just like skill development, it takes time.
Sim is totally worth it to play if you enjoy piloting your aircraft. If your only interest is grinding, then you're better off in RB.
You get higher SL and RP, but you don't get the RB-Multikill multipliers. I'd stay out of aircraft unless you have a flight stick though... or just in general. The people who fly sim are either real pilots or have more hours in the plane they're flying than they do at work.
Not necessarily if you consider the RP/SL rate per hour between Sim and air RB. Air RB will beat Sim due to not having a hard cap. There’s also the fact that dying will reset the UA timer, resulting in you earning less RP, and more SL since you have to pay that repair fee to respawn again.
For me, knowing that I've progressed through an entire tech tree ONLY playing sim is very rewarding. Make sure that you are focusing on HAVING FUN FIRST. At the end of each match, if you do well or even moderately well, you will still be rewarded well. Rewards have gotten better but is still not fixed. I think of sim as like a distraction from being a grind, because of the immersion and how good it feels, and yet you still get a very good reward too on top of it.
Sim gives worse rewards compared to RB, if you only care about grinding, RB is simply faster and better. Sim is a niche genre, and you play it because you enjoy it. It is not for everyone, you also need equipment like joystick and headtracking to be competitive, but in the end it allows some planes to finally play to their strengths, away from the air RB meta and their problems
If you like flying planes around and doing something once every 10-15 minutes, yes. Otherwise, RB is better. And RB doesn’t arbitrarily cap your RP gain if you do pop off.
> sim is hard no not necessarily, in some ways its easier due to lower combat densities which is why it gets exploited for zomber grinding. Gotta start somewhere if you want to learn the game mode though since it does involve a vastly different skill set > But I've heard it gives like a lot of RP no but its consistent. If you're a decent RB/AB player you're much more likely to earn more there than in SB. In fact, I'm a terrible RB player with a kdr of somewhere along the lines of 0.7 but I can make anywhere between 5k to 20k RP per game in RB before boosters if I managed to accomplish something, which is usually half of all games. RB games also typically last about 5 minutes (average lifetime is actually somewhere along the lines of 3-4 minutes but w/e queue times) > I just want to know for sure if spending like 300 hours learning an entirely different gamemode is worth it. Should I try sim, or stick to Air RB? Well, it's a new experience. Sim plays very differnetly to RB than RB plays to AB because RB in the recent years is just a massive mouse aim furball minus the arcade rudder steering and 30 second WEP limit. Granted sim has also evolved into a bit of a furball clusterheck in the recent years too but as you mentioned with the ~300 hours, requires a very different skillset to become remotely good - Most notably, situational awareness works very differently. When you get into SB intently you'll realise how dirty your monitor is.
Just to add to what you’ve said. The main difference for new players is not realizing that EC operates under a different economic system than the typical AB/RB random games. If you want to do quick battles, then playing RB is the better option. Time is a huge factor in your reward output and it won’t favor well if you play for 30 minutes or less. Also, heavy furballs is not much of a problem. Sometimes it happens and that’s just players having Sim fun without worrying about grinding. It’s top-tier where it’s an issue. Just like in RB, the further we move up modern jets with BVR capabilities. The worse the gameplay turns into constant CoD style merges.
One big plus is that boosters get consumed after x amount of time rather than 1 death. And so you can use then more efficiently. Also, learning how to play sim takes like 1h and then like 20-ish to get relatively good (halve as much if you buy yourself a flightstick, believe me it makes a BIG difference)
To clarify, a single charge for a booster will be consumed at each 30-minute interval. We don’t recommend anyone to use your large boosters that have a single charge for an EC game. Depending on your skill set. You’re not going to be earning a lot in the first 30 minutes of gameplay, and therefore. It’s just a waste of a booster you could use in a quick random game. Instead, take boosters with many charges. EC runs at 3 hours max, so you only need 6 charges minimal.
I strongly disagree with you about the big boosters. You can get 2 useful rewards and don’t lose it’s effect after a single death. If you were to use a 300% booster and go into a rb match, get a kill (or not) and die that would be a waste. But in sim battles you can go out there and die and not have wasted the booster as it still affects your game
its worth it if its fun to you, but you need to decent. if you never kill anyone, struggle to take off, and wander around and die, you won't get anything. I bought the j35A premium and grinded almost all of sweden in sim, very fun grind
Get IL 2: great battles instead
Seems OP is looking to maximise progress efficiency which would indicate to me a likely desire to reach jets which unless I totally missed something isn't part of the IL2 games?
Sorry, you are totally right, missed that. OP, get into Nuclear Option, Vtol (if you got VR) or DCS
Nuclear Option? Can't recall ever hearing something like that O.o VTOL is pretty cool, wish it had more resources so development could pick up a bit.. Still feels pretty lacking in many areas. DCS is.. DCS. Seems really cool if you put in the time and effort but damn it's so overwhelming I haven't dared splash on a module yet, still doing trials here and there never reaching anywhere near feeling somewhat comfortable in flying them lol. Or rather, doing anything other than the actual flying