AA max is ruining the game.

Well said. Just look at the overall population. Several of my friends have quit also.

SOE heading in the wrong direction with more and more air nerfs in my opinion.

Half agree, but you can't just remove the ESFs ability vs ground. What you can do is make the ESF PAY for being strong vs ground by making it weaker vs air. I have and continue to advocate:

1. Wider rocket pod cone of fire (forcing pilots to get closer to be accurate)
2. Smaller rocket payloads (forcing constant reloading)
3. Choice between AV/AI warheads. Current multipurpose warhead nerfed a bit
4. More hits from nosegun required to kill infantry (if you look at my killboard, those are mostly infantry kills with my rotary - removing rocket pods isn't going to stop ESFs from farming stupid people)
5. Increased liberator damage falloff (forcing Libs in close if they want full weapon damage)
6. Greater speed penalty for loading out rocket pods (making A2G ESFs less competitive in dogfights)

In exchange for:

1. Much reduced AA gun range or greatly increased damage falloff
2. Slightly buffed AA gun damage up close
3. Lock-on rocket times made variable based on distance to target.
4. Lock-on ranges reduced
5. A new skin slot for ESFs/Libs to give them a choice between AA/Rocket/Collision damage mitigation

The goal of all of this being to reduce the reach of Air and Anti-Air, as well as force aircraft to chose who it is going to fight and stick to that role better.

Removing rocket-pods is not "removing ESFs ability vs ground", it just removes our ability to be tank killers. We will still have:

• Armor-piercing noseguns, able to inflict minor damage against tanks. A persistent esf can bring down tanks with these alone, but realistically they would only be used to finish of heavily damaged/burning vehicles. Their TTK is a lot more realistic (from a balance standpoint) for the vehicle they are mounted on.
• The dedicated anti-infantry guns. I am aware they are all quite under performing (AH is actually quite good, but not in its role as AI) and to compensate for the removal of rocket-pods they would all need some re-balancing I believe.

This would allow esf to kill air and infantry, but only be a very minor threat to armor, which I believe would give us a much healthier game-balance then what we currently have.

AA MAX would be fine IF they were immoble and cost a ****LOAD more than they do now in resources. The problem is they're both better than an AA turret, which is stationary, and thus an easy large hit box, and second, they're better than a skyguard lightning, which is both expensive, and as someone else mentioned, innacurate as hell against ESF's (works great on libs and the huge ones i always forget the name of).

Its so easy for a sunderer to just drop 2 or 3 off on a hill somewhere and you better not fly within 1km of that **** or you will die instantly.

Honestly i think an easy fix for AA max, make them the "close quarters" equivalent of AA. So, maybe ships only render once they're within 200m for ESF's and maybe 300 or 350m for the larger ships. That way they are relegated more to a mobile base defense roll than a "**** everything up in sight" roll.

If it would shut the tank girls up from whining about everything that kills them I would be for it. Especially since I hardly ever use rocket pods.

They got their rear buffed and you still hear about it! LOL

I agree.

IT'S CALLED ANTI-AIR! It is supposed to ruin the air. Air craft in this game are so powerful (Zephyr, Dalton, and rocket pods) and can take on infantry and armor equally fine, that it has to have a counter. Stop complaining that you can't do solo ESF runs and rack up an easy 30-1 K/D ratio every day.

Its obvious you don't fly. LOL And why penalize those who choose to master a certain aspect of the game?

You spend hundreds of hours trying to get better and you don't expect reward? Sad.

Today, whole day:
I'm dogfighting over Indar at 800 m, suddenly Burster MAXes start plonking away at one of us. Naturally, the one getting shot at escapes and the other can't follow him into his territory.

Not fun.

Good thing I can still solo bomb a small base that's being ghostcapped by newbies. Great game design.

1. Rocketpods are in the game, and people paid cash for them - you can't just remove them. All you can do is adjust them.
2. Making the maingun the AV weapon completely works against any intention of making pilots chose their aircraft's role. Either an aircraft is AV or it is not AV.
3. A persistent ESF is not going to be allowed to just hover over tanks and sundies and slowly kill them over 1-3 minutes. You run out of ammo most of the time trying to take down a sundy with nosegun. One engineer can out-repair your damage.
3. The nosegun works just fine vs infantry. 90% of my killboard is rotary vs infantry. It works too well vs infantry if the developers intent is to lessen the grief of infantry when facing air.

All vehicles are given weapon options that let the player chose the vehicles role. ESFs should not be an exception. Rocket pods would be fine if they weren't so good against all three threats. Pilots just need to be given stricter roles to chose between with their ESFs, and AA needs to be tamed a bit so that aircraft not engaged in ground attacks aren't getting molested.

Who has not done this?

That said you made me realize how horrible my computer is. Thanks alot. I don't know if my ram is low or what? But its never as smooth as what you just played. I would dream of flying that smooth. And aiming!!!!!! Dang. My curser jumps all over the place. Harder than heck to get a straight shot.

Do you thing my 4gb of ram is the culprit? Thanks

that's not my video, it's just one i found.

anyway, yeah 4gb ram is a problem. PS2 on it's own needs 4gb to really do anything, not counting what your operating system and any other stuff running on your computer needs.

at 8gb it's fine, but yeah 4 is definitely too low for this game.

Easy fix = Don't fly in a straight line and don't hover.
MAX AA can't hit from a distance if you're not giving a good lead.

When there's no interesting battles going on; one of my favorite things to do is go aircraft hunting in places where I know air zergs will eventually arrive... and after putting thousands upon thousands of certs into my MAX, I think I deserve to be somewhat of a terror to the skies.

Thanks for the reply. I have 2 or 4 GB ram. I will upgrade to 8. Also I have DSL land line. Which I have heard is not very good. Will change both to see if it helps.

I can sypathize with you on that. But with an esf, you can't buy terror. You have to develop a skill just to be able to live long enough to get a kill.

LOL...I don't fly, so on the same note as this thread I guess all I can say is...Aircraft are ruining this game!!! I hate it when I am trying to capture or defend a base and all those planes come roaring in to sit way up in the air with their superior armor and blast me to bits spawn after spawn. All just to fly away out of reach, repair and come back to do it again. All the while robbing me of my kill after I make some pretty good shots at them...

What a ridulous post...

Sure, only if you reduce the range of ESF weapons and take away their 3rd person (cheat) view.

If we werent there watching the skies, you flyboys would just lolpod everything all day.

I don't log in WANTING to play AA, i'm FORCED to because every no talent ******** goes and pulls an ESF with rocket pods. You don't like AA? Stop flying.

As it stands Bursters are the best form of AA, which i'm not sure it should be given to the Max suit. I don't think they ruin the game, not even by a long shot, however I do think the Bursters need to be toned down very slightly.