Do you think AA also needs a buff? Or do you think its fine as it is there just isn't enough? Or do you think the liberator is overpowered or its counters are underpowered?
The problem with AA is that it lacks in rewards for the player. This is one of my preferred play styles, and my scores show it. I get a zillion "assists" but I rarely get a kill, because air just moves so fast, and AA rockets/bursters do so little damage in the time the air is around (kinda a duh statement, as any player with a brain doesn't stand around to take damage). The point being, that few humans (you know, the guys behind the keys) want to inhibit their score/cert gain in order to clear the skies. Adjust the reward for assists, and I bet you'd see more AA around, and air would be balanced. It's the game mechanic of reward, not the rocket pods or AA power that is the real problem. Granted, reducing the number of rockets fired before a reload would help as well. Give armour and infantry a chance to run for cover, and you might see the kill farmers finding another method to pad their scores. (While dedicated and tactical pilots would still be rewarded for good play).
I'm wondering if reducing rocket damage but expanding the clip could help. Just requiring one more shot to deal out the same amount of damage as you could before would require air to hang about a little bit longer to finish the kill, meaning they'll be more vulnerable to AA and make passes a bit harder.
In my personal opinion: Ha AA rocket launchers should have a farther lock on range vs liberators but the same vs ESF. AA max is perfect as is Skyguard needs a damage buff and a range buff, it can only do one thing and that's kill planes. Top armor cert should also be buffed for lightnings, skyguards atm are easily killed by Dalton, Zephers, and rocket pods. ESF have too much armor for that type of aircraft( Light Aircraft), they should either have, fire power and low health or vice versa. They could potential put in a cert in which it increases a ESF firepower while giving up armor and vice versa. This will give pro pilots the power to do damage but also take advantage of their skills while giving novice pilots a chance to learn to fly. A2A rocket should be reverted to the old tracking system where you can actually evade and dodge rockets. Liberators are perfectly balance by themselves. There are two problems from a gameplay perspective, liberators flying at high altitudes and being able to still do damage. This can either be remedies by requiring liberators to be X distance from air to ground to actually do damage or make it so that damage degrades over large distances. The other problem stems from the first one in which Flak damage is nonexistent vs liberators who are at high altitudes, and HA AA rockets can't lock on. A very effective fixed like i said is to release an AA SC pack, this will help find the balance between AA and Air. At the moment maybe a handful of people have AA on the entire server. Kriga: They can hit infantry, I done it.
Your making some excellent points, my only other question is do you think that assists on air are high enough, I see a lot of people saying they dont use AA max because the rewards arent there (same with HA launchers etc). Do you think AA needs a reward increase? A rocket fire-rate decrease has been thought about, similar principle.
What if merely wounding an aircraft gave XP? Maybe 20~25 for a G2A Missile. I feel the on-kill rewards are good enough, but not for the 3 or 4 fellow teammates you needed to down it.
Actually a really good idea, the only problem is the amount of people who will scream HA op haha, but no this is an excellent idea.
I definitely think the system should be reworked to reward AA players. As it stands now, ALL players bail out when the plane is about to die. For one, they should double the xp reward at least for kills/assists on aircrafts. They need to implement a system where after X amount of hits on an aircraft you get X xp, not a lot but enough to keep you motivated, kinda like how you get xp when you repair, you get motivated because you get xp for doing it.
Except pilots aren't specializing where as Skyguards and Dual burster Max are. ESF have 2 weapons, their nose gun and their rockets. They could specialize and get AI nose and rocket pods but most don't because the default nose is good enough for both A2A and A2G engagements (and in fact I saw video showing that the AA rotary gun has a longer TTK against other ESF compared to the default gun, it's just easier to hit with). This has been the main complaint about ESF, they get to be better at A2G than Libs and still are better AA than anything else in the game right now, with one setup, no sacrifices necessary. A big problem with G2A right now is that only the 2 weakest forms of AA are working at a level they should be, Dual burster MAX and G2A missiles. Skyguards and walkers and AA base defense turrets projectiles move too slow and the projectile disappears making long range leading impossible and med range probable if you can guess the speed and drop of the projectile. Order of effectiveness of AA should be 1. Skyguard 2. Walker 3. Dual Burster Max 4. HA G2A missile Currently it's like this. 1. Dual Burster Max 2. HA G2A missile 3. Skyguard 4. Walker
I think Libs should be the ground pounders. Fighter/Scout/Pursuit craft should be air to air only. I say lose the Air to ground rockets all together and give the fighters a new gun option instead. Once a Lib has my Sunderer under it's gun, its game over. I need the fighters over my head giving me air cover. I'll have my Lib pilots handle the armor rolling on us. Not a fighter.
This thread has a ton of good information and ideas but it gets buried compared to the ones where people cry op and cry nerf.
