We need more pilots

Current Valks can't take on ESF. And when they were able, they were the most annoying thing to fight that just soaked up all your ammo due to in-flight repair. Take away all ability to in-flight repair and I'd be fine with buffing its combat ability.

As for easier to use weapons, air desperately needs it. What we have in the air is comparable to everyone being handed a bolt action, or every vehicle getting a Halberd for a top gun. The Basalisk is a perfect example of an all around gun for players who can't reliably hit with the Halberd. Either aim assist or a weapon with low dps, high rof, and a spread to help them hit. But I'd honestly find that much more annoying, especially at render range where your auto-rep would never kick in.

Colors are being funny... idk

That new gun would make those pilots easier to hit than currently, and with hopefully so many players in the air those hits would accumulate. Not only that, but the chances of a great pilot beating two decent pilots goes down pretty far in a 2:1, as it's rare that anyone can land consistent hits in a reverse maneuver while not making themselves an easy target for the other guy. More pilots in the air would make farming air comparable to infantry farming infantry. Lots of kills, but lots of chances to get hit as well. Also the damage would halve to be adjust for cost as well as health, so ttk would remain the same in A2A situations. That aside, I do disagree with a low ttk favoring skilled players, quite the opposite actually. A higher ttk starts to negate the effectiveness of those chance hits that armatures get on pros, and favors accurate and consistent damage. As for Skyguards being in a worse place, I just don't see how. With less damage from ESF and your targets having half health, you should be swatting air superiority fighters out of the sky if they mingle too much with the ground.

First of all, **** all those skyknights.


If friendly air is outnumbered then I'll always be happy to group up. The reason I didn't join you on VS was because I wanted to find some challenging fights, not fly around in a zerg instantly killing anything we saw. Which, be honest, that's all that happens 99% of the time. It's no different than a 96+ camping 12 in a spawnroom.

I get that you're a product. And I like the way VS does air, if there was ever any challenge when flying that faction then I'd be in heaven over there. Not with Don though, he never took any chances or any fights that weren't heavily stacked in his favor. That's why I liked you and Grisha, you'd take hard fights where you could make a difference. I know air was **** way before you guys came around, that's why I'm proposing some changes that I think could make it better across the board. But look at that basketball example I wrote as you were typing. Connery air is like 10 kids being given a basketball. 8 group up on one team, and the other 2 make two other teams. This community is just too small for a counter to emerge when everyone who works together stacks on one faction. If you want epic air battles then start building something up on NC when they're under-pop, they need all the help they can get. Bring over a single friend from VS, add me, then there's 3 players vs probably 10 Scythes or 10 mosquitos, whichever faction asia zergs that night. That's where cheaper air would come in to play. We'd probably trade 1 for one all night but it would be some good fighting. I'd even settle for 3:1 odds in the air for a change. I'm considering paying for a Teamspeak and doing a 4th faction thing to help out whatever faction is the underdog for that continent. I really think that's what the game needs at this point, there's only so much the devs can do when players insist on over-popping every fight possible.

At the end of the day, having only 1 faction where group flying happens is a problem for the game. The skykights have thankfully mostly left the game to ***** on reddit, but you should see that there isn't really a stigma for grouping up as you put it, but there's rightfully a stigma towards zerging. Two different things.

With the reduced health, no they will die faster & possibly before they even have time to react let alone aim at the target even with an assist.
The same enemy you expect a mob to kill since ESF prices would be barely noticeable would have the skill to evade them even seeing them due to Stealth, and can easily mow them down with any tool better.
You expect decent pilots.
These are the very same pilots like the Aces that already do not have issues with replacing their ESFs.
All you do is double down on the problem of being AA, while also putting the limited durability of ESFs down so newer pilots have less to work with.

TTK unless AA is reduced to a worse state, would give these new pilots less to work with.
Unless ESF AA is reduced even worse than their health, they'd still have a shorter period of time to react.
Which the reduced cost will not help; They will die more, making it void.

If you want a higher TTK, you do not reduce the health of aircraft.
You reduce the weaponry, or increase the health.

Less Damage from the ESF, which has had the highest output.
An equal reduction to weaponry as to health sets it still above.
As well, with the reduced costs, the speed of the ESF will allow it engage the same target before repairs.
The price also means suicide'ing your ESF is not a costly act but cheaper for you, than your target.
You'll be back for 3 grenades, they'll be down more than double the nanites, and you can do this repeatedly.
If you aren't abusing agility of the aircraft, the speed, and range of it.
Not to mention, AA units retaining their price, while ESF are reduced to nothing means those AA units have more aircraft to deal with, that have less care about retaining their fighters so they'll be back faster, and easier for a longer period if not for ever.

Recall when Hossin gave a discount for aircraft.
That problem again.
If you reduce the weaponry & health, you just make it HARDER to get into the air-game.
Which is counter-productive.

Hence the idea about Radar, and Stealth.
That helps new pilots, and AA. Not cheaper prices for a more fragile ESF.

All ESF would have less to work with against ground, true, but that's almost universally what people are arguing for. If ESF are going to be the ultimate A2A unit, then they shouldn't pull double duty by being as effective as they are against ground. Let them get swatted out of the sky if they fly too low, that's the price they pay for being the ultimate A2A unit.

If you check my OP, I called for reduced damage in relation to health and cost, so A2A ttk would remain the same, they'd only be weaker against ground-based AA.

It was Indar, and it was only a problem because only one faction had that bonus, and combat effectiveness/cost was completely thrown out the window with half off anything, c-4 and tanks included.

ESF need to be cheaper, otherwise we see the same thing we see now, one faction dominating the air with others unable to afford to fight back. I hate spam, but I'm willing to put up with it if air has to be pulled from the warpgate so nanites keeping a player down is replaced by travel time keeping him out of the fight. And I really don't see how the ability to constantly be flying makes anything harder for new pilots. The more flying, shooting, and dying you do the better you'll get. My K/D is proably 1/5 in the air, and after a year and hundreds of hours I'm only now able to start holding my own. If I didn't have to spend 10 minutes on the ground every time I got shot down I'm sure I'd be a much better pilot at this point.

I do agree that Radar and Stealth need a re-work. Not much is worse than being killed on some laggy player's client right as shots start to register on your own. Maybe let Stealth only block you from the ground and increase lock time, not disappear from enemy air radar. That would make composite and NAR an actual choice, unlike now. Then there's fire suppression that needs to be halved to match everything else in the game.

Yeah, and only the pilots already having a field day would benefit.
For needing more Pilots, making it harder than hell to actually compete in that air-game, means the few that manage today would likely die more over less, discouraging A2A hard due to the ease of death to the nearly undetectable ace.
Whom can die every single time, and not even notice a drop in nanites; That's far more problematic for new pilots.
Even if they win, that Ace can chain-pull till bored to death.

Lets' start with your entire thread's statement: We need more pilots.
We do not need more easily replaced aircraft.
You want pilots?
Making it harder to fly, and even harder to compete in A2A with less risk for the Aces does not encourage more pilots.

Cheaper ESFs do not help, they only cause issues.
Let alone paired with reduced health & damage; This means Aces can get the full use, Rookies die faster, and AA can't make a dent in the air population.

You wanted reduced Health, and reduced damage: Aircraft weapons are high-powered to hell.
As well, with stealth, clientside, reverse-manuver ********, the Ace will strike first.
The Ace will hit more.
The Ace will have the near perfect TTK.
The Rookies will not be able to have enough time to learn how to handle AA... which has to be swarmed to kill the aces.
They will be utterally ****** in the air-game, so they go to farm everything else that lacks the needed AA.
Which unlike their aircraft, which can ram those AA to death, is the same nanite price, the same issues, and needs more time.


So stop looking at nanites as the god-send motivator.
They do not need it cheaper, nor more fragile; That demotivates the hell out of AA, and of learning to Fly.

We do not need the skyguard unable to See aircraft due to stealth... when having bought a radar designed for it.
That Skyguardy has to scan every height level in all directions to find the Aircraft with their weapon.
Heaven forbid the damn thing actually moves.

We do not need easier-to-replace planes.
We do not need them weaker in both damage & health to encourage flying as well.
Those three together means Aircraft will not ever stay dead, Aircraft will be harder to fly & use, Rookies will quit more.

Jesus ****.
If you want Pilots, you want to not discourage them from flying when not farming AA-less victims.
Making them near screwed if not, while ensuring anyone above Rookie has near free ESFs just ***** us all.

You've got a really weird way of looking at things from only one side. If the Ace can chain pull till bored to death, the new player can chain pull as well to keep practicing, which is exactly what new pilots need, flight hours, shooting and lots of dying. And yes, dying is inevitable, same as learning how to tank, there just isn't a way around that in PvP.

Another thing that I'm not sure you grasp is that a weapon that helps less skilled players beat skilled players just can't exist, as the skilled player could just use it on the new player. If it's some aim assist gun, then the more skilled player would still land more hits and position better and win the fight.

About those "nearly undetectable" Aces, yes I agree that stealth and engagement radar need a re-work. I'm not sure why you're still hammering me with that. Maybe you're just venting and want someone to yell at?

"They do not need it cheaper, nor more fragile; That demotivates the hell out of AA, and of learning to Fly."
This one I really don't understand. If ESF are easy to kill with AA, and AA can finally get the kills they've been begging for, how would that demotivate AA? And learning to fly would absolutely be easier if you had near limitless aircraft with the same A2A ttk, with the handicap of travel from the warpgate instead of spawning at the nearest base to the fight. It would demotivate new ESF players from doing A2G, but that's not really the role for the ESF, that's the Liberator's job.

Look at it this way. If you're a new player now, everyone is better than you, as the only ones in the air are those stubborn enough to not quit after all the deaths and a few pilots who fly for 1 minute out of 10 while they're waiting for nanites till they give up. If Air battles were packed like infantry battles, that's more similarly skilled targets for you to fight. Sure there will be better players who will farm, but it's better to be able to pull another plane and keep trying than be killed by them and have to wait 10 minutes to get back in the air. Plus, just like infantry, more players means more inevitable and random damage that pro pilots will take. Same as with the ground, a single unit wouldn't be able to carry a fight.

But really, what's your solution then? Just an easier to use gun? That would help a little, but honestly the new pilot would die anyway and just have to twiddle his thumbs while waiting for nanites. It sounds like you've tried flying and gave up. I've struggled with it for a year and came to these conclusions. What would you suggest?

My solution was listed literally each time I replied.

10 minutes from the air, means 10 minutes after repeated chain deaths, where AA finally has defeated at least one pilot.
Infantry battles do not have properly stealthed attacks from true 3-dimensional space & 3-dimensional combat.
With the screwed controls at that, any new pilot will not benefit from the reduced costs.
Any AA unit will have to deal with an opponent that can literally crash their ESF into them killing them, and respawn for less.
Every AA unit will have been greatly more nanites than the smallest aircraft...
Which not only has less motive to care, also means that in order to have AA you by default spend more than aircraft.

This is ******.
It's better to not have the best option be pull another plane, after plane.. after plane.. as if it was free.
If they are dying that much that they need such reductions, the lower health will further **** them.
The reductions just further encourage throwing aircraft after aircraft at targets, less thought.. all of whom paid more.
Then the glorious bit: If said nuts can not fly straight, Fly in VR not expect an aircraft to be half the price of the nearest AA unit.

Now if you want my suggestion..
You bloody best recall it was said, my gods.

"
If you want a higher TTK, you do not reduce the health of aircraft.
You reduce the weaponry, or increase the health.

"
The Bloody changes to radar, & stealth interactions.
That actually helps Rookies want to keep flying, as that means they aren't as screwed by other pilots; Whom can see them but not the reverse.
This also means Rookie AA and AA in general doesn't have stealthed aircraft invaliding their ability to have a reaction time.

Like, is this so hard to see?
Why change the entire interaction between Aircraft & ground, and make aircraft as in-disposable as infantry?
Like the ****.. "we need more pilots, lets make the plane free but half it"

I don't know what time it is where you're at, but you need a beer, or 6. Calm down man.

How? They get more flight hours to get better. That's literally the most crucial thing in learning the game, practice. As far as controls, I've always supported being able to switch the mouse to pitch and yaw. I also hate the built in mouse acceleration, which is there for literally no reason but to frustrate people and raise the skill floor. But you're crazy, more time in the air is the best thing for new pilots.

Great point. I'm not sure how much damage an ESF does against a tank, but that would have to be addressed. And as far as ramming, that's about as annoying as lock-ons, but it's also something you get good at avoiding as it's incredibly common when someone knows they're going to lose the fight. I'll live with it if it means more dogfights.

.... So?.... they cost greatly more than foot soldiers too, but they wreck foot soldiers just like they'll wreck ESF...

A higher TTK is the opposite of what new players need, and I've never argued for that. A higher TTK always favors the skilled players who can consistently land accurate shots. If ttk were doubled then new pilots wouldn't stand a chance, even if two of them got the jump on a pro. I think ttk is exactly where it should be in A2A.

I've been agreeing with this from the beginning. But it's actually at the bottom of the list as to why new players get killed. You learn situational awareness very quickly. Avoiding fire also isn't that big of a problem. It's not being able to hit the enemy that wrecks new players, especially while avoiding fire.

..... to get more players flying and have bigger air battles, that's the whole point of this. I'll group up with 2 or 3 better pilots than myself and dive in to a TR or VS air zerg and we'll each get a kill before we're wrecked. Then we'll do it again, then that's it for 10 minutes, then one more go then another 10 minutes of unopposed enemy air farming away. That's not the way things are supposed to be. Air should be as heavily populated as ground vehicles, but without lessening the cost and learning curve we'll never see that. Most of this community doesn't want a good fight and is perfectly happy camping spawns. They've all switched to a single faction that's really the only faction with air any more, outside of random asian zergs if they choose another faction. It needs to be possible to continually put air pressure against those zergs even when you're outnumbered. Infantry is free, ground has the Harasser, and air needs something cheap as well for the game to work.

Lets say all night, and all day.

They get more flight hours? With the majority in the respawn screen, with the least amount of time actually engaged with the enemy with the least amount of reaction time against the enemy that matters.
While all AA gets the glory of not being able to even drain the nanites of idiots.
They don't have the time where it matters - While Aces, or those capable of flight proper reap great rewards..
Like their entire aircraft being for basically nothing, and if they ram an AA unit they just killed double the nanites.
Aircraft can't be kept down by AA is easily drained of nanites.

You won't get dogfights.. You'll get cluster-***** of aircraft trying to murder-ball.
As there is no cost to even consider not doing it.
Hell, you could ram each other to death or other aircraft for cheap kills.
Since you know, any actually skilled pilot will simply end them faster than they can react,
Dogfights would be until they get bright to need to en-mass gank squads just to live.

So.
So, the largest AA unit, to the smallest one costs more than the highly mobile aircraft that has no need to specialize, no need to care what it targets, and has the highest speed...
It picks the engagement, the AA is all reactionary.. and easily left to waste.
Not to mention easily destroyed.
All for more nanites; It's bad enough at equal price.

If you want new players to have a hope in hell, you usually want a longer one to give more time to react.
More time for them to recover, more time to observe & learn.
If it's less than a second, they have less than that to first realize it, then act or even understand what killed them.
"Flash dead" You learned what? Nothing.
Faster TTKs are also more easily abused by an Ace.
How so? Engage, kill, gone. Before you can react, you are dead. The ones the least likely to die are those same people.


You get them to fly, by making to harder to stay in the sky, without chain-pulling.
The difficulties of flight are still there.
The issues still alive.
And all issues with aircraft for the ground neatly amplified: Kill an aircraft? Well you've done nothing.
You'll get an air zerg, or swarm that can chain-pull till you are done with it.
No kill will be worth a damn.
They aren't infantry, they are highly mobile aircraft that requires dedicated counters...
You shouldn't achieve jack **** by killing them.

Unopposed enemy air, unless equally matched by equally skilled or higher number.. Unless
Oh wait, ground AA.
Or are we to expect reliance on people flying ESFs to kill aircraft, since those very same aircraft now cost zip.
If the enemy is skilled, you need numbers.. so you promote zerging, since they can replace their craft already at 350 nanites a pop.
With less than that, you would never stop them from ****** your forces in the rapid strikes, to the Ariel slaughter.

Fun for the Pilots, screwed-villa for the ground.
The cost isn't what demotivates people.
If it did, they wouldn't pull an MBT when an ESF is cheaper & more deadly for solo.
They'd pull a Liberator instead if they wanted to be a multi-crew.

So what's the issue? Not the much better cost-to-power ratio, it's the air-game.
The reverse maneuvers.
The Certed-in aircraft having severe advantages.
The inverted skill curve from hell.

Cheaper aircraft affects the ground, negatively very severely.
Weaker aircraft makes it easier to die, while learning nothing, and while new that means you spend less time flying.
It won't flood the air with pilots; Unless they literally are spammed to milk the hell out of the ground.
Since there is no price to an ESF at that point... and Indar's little aircraft boost didn't mystically implode the aircraft pop.
It prevented you from noticing any pilot death from a battle they wanted to be in, due to the ease of replacement.

Infantry is free to die.
Harassers are annoying, but at least suffer from tank mines, and terrain.
ESFs do not.
ESFs are already nearly free if you can fly at all.

I really don't understand the rage. Most of your rant wouldn't even apply to what I've suggested.

You mean the idea that mass amounts of ESFs with the price near dead, and the durability & weapons tweaked a bit is bright?
It isn't.

You want more pilots, you'll end with the same or less.
What encourages them to stay? Nothing.
What demotivates them? Everything.
What is the value of killing that other ESF? Nothing compared to murdering everything else.
I can't wait for a 3-grenade ESF to literally maul groups if by simply crashing into them for a triple kill, and do it again from the other side of the map.

The reason I talk about a Higher TTK being useful is simple; Not the ability to kill the target.
The fact it is more forgiving, they have a greater amount of time to learn or retreat.
After it's Air-to-Air with the most convoluted crap.

I love having a target be literally near free with all the perks of flying.
Makes the RNG AA so much more.. Not like the AA unit has to handle the Aircraft that can be back before repairs are done, has no motive to not fully-engage the AA unit, and not ram it to death.
As well, the cert farm for AA? Requires pilots to like being possibly mulched by AA.
We'd get so many restrictions on range, it wouldn't be damn funny.

Yes Libs.
Yeah lets' pretend that Cheaper ESFs with less health, Less weaponry, which presently are the premier anti-lib..
Let's have those gone, and left with AA that is being 'highlighted as great at ESFs' that are free.
You fly a Lib, and dodge the free ESFs ramming you.
Lovely Airgame, One spammable aircraft at mach 10.

Did I mention I hate the cost-to-power ratio of aircraft?
That more aircraft in the sky, means More ******** from the sky that won't even stay dead.

Stop using ESF flares noob.

<reloads his G2A Rawket Lawnchair>

From Hisoka who loves being in a gank squad and me who hates gank squads, know what we both want? What would get us spending money on this game again? Epic air battles. You clearly have an incredible disdain for aircraft and wouldn't understand. I'm actually curious why you're so interested in A2A balance with as much as you detest air.... Anyway, cheap aircraft that would flood the sky would be heaven for most pilots, and give them something else to do besides farm ground, which you clearly hate.

You couldn't be more wrong. If you flew at all you'd understand. The best way to get trigger time is duelling at the warpgate with a friendly. More important than that is reading a live situation with multiple threats, and more opportunities to do that would be infinitely more useful. And retreat is suicide 99/100 times, that just goes to show how much more you have to learn before you understand any of this.

You do realize this would greatly segregate ESF from the ground, right? They'll learn to leave deadly ground alone and when they don't they'll get wrecked by it. No more ESF farming away. How can you can possibly see the opposite from half health ESF is beyond me.

I can't imagine epic air battles, with the entire air population having free EFs.
As A2A Balance is what encourages friendly aircraft to engage & eliminate hostile aircraft rather than farm the ground.
While I despise aircraft themselves, I don't have an issue with Pilots let alone Sky Knights actually clearing the sky.
As rare as that has been, leaving me with the A2G ESFs which I kill with everything I have, including my Pistol if need be.

That was a very pissed off ESF....

I can't see allied duels as a great teaching time, when you have the VR...
As apparently free in the VR isn't good enough, needs the lose of the aircraft to be more meaningless in Live as well.

Retreat in A2A = Suicide Yes, due to reverse maneuver.
Not when dealing with the ground.
My trick, if it's a target I can't kill, and I'm in the ESF: The target is dying with me.
Very cost effective presently. Since that bugger loses whatever they have, and I respawn anyway.

Not to mention, what keeps those new pilots in the sky?
They're gonna be farmed hard, or farm hard; But only the price of death changed to zero, and they lost leeway in fights.
If that alone would make them fly & stay flying, they should've been flying already.

No actually it won't.
Aircraft will be motivated to either continue picking fights map-wide with no cost at all to their farm \ overextended visit.
Or be motivated to overextended as far as they can, to profit.
You know what is the easiest thing to kill? Infantry... and it's also the most predictable to find.
I wouldn't doubt the A2G farm game which involves near advoidance of AA anyway would be boosted hard.

IE the expensive Dedicated Skyguard AA outdone by Sunderers hard.
Which will either clear the Skies everywhere if it can due to demotivate the immortal stream of ESFs, or be useless.
As attack after attack by one pilot for less nanites, nukes everything else at a higher price.
The Price, is what annoys me: If that thing kills any vehicle, it just did so as a universal fighter for less nanites.
Presently, it at least costs the damn same as what it kills most of the time.

It should be about killing the target though. You'll NEVER beat a better duelist at his game, but if you out-play him or catch him off guard while he's engaged with something else or not being situationally aware then you should win. A lower ttk promotes different battlefield skills than moving your silly little mouse around.

It's simple. Imagine an epic infantry fight, now replace those walking things with flying things.

If you ever decide to give A2A another shot then find someone to duel with outside the warpgate. Each spawn an ESF then trade planes, that keeps you from getting friendly fire notifications. Go till one of you is on fire, then hit Fire Suppression, repair/rearm and go again. There really should be a way to do that in VR, but this little workaround is great. It's hands down the best way to get in your trigger time. The battlefield needs to be balanced and have its skill gap lessened, and a higher ttk is counterproductive to that.

I think that sucks too. I've spent plenty of time in a Skyguard, it's always been broken. Bottom line with that thing is that you need to increase required skill to increase leathality. Someone mentioned a great idea for it in another thread, give it a very small magazine that can 1-clip ESF, but give it crazy bloom after half the mag is gone, to limit its ranged effectiveness. I still think they need to remove flak and go direct fire, so they can have a standard damage model that can taper off at range, which would let it 1-clip libs up close but not be an area denial weapon. But Skyguard vs AA Sundy is another topic.

The point was to see what happened, why it happened etc.
Screwed to die either way.

An Epic infantry battle is a near-2d battle, with everyone on equal footing with the rare max coming in.
None has the killing potential, speed, radar, or the weapon-switch speed of an ESF - only the max even has a cost.
These fights are also dependent on them being away from everything else, given a single vehicle murders the entire lot.

Aircraft however do not need to care about the ground, and ESFs as annoying as they are, one of the few things capable of engaging a Lib without spending 2x-3x the amount of nanites, people, & time to scratch.
Infantry has well, all have weaponry without AoA Effects for the most part, lack 3rd-person views, and have limited healing ability.
In addition, those ESFs are generalized, and capable of engaging any target;
Every infantryman in such a fight, actually has to pick their fights, their range, are all equal in speed.

Aircraft are not equal in speed, and the first-strike advantage is amplified by the sheer number of places they can be in a sphere alone in the sky which is further amplified by their speed.

IE an "epic" infantry fight is between the squishiest most under-equipped slowest combatants lacking anything but a single tool.
These infantry if wielding the same Gun, are wielding the same gun.
Reload is also needed to be done while equipped, resulting in near defensive exposure.

A battle between Aircraft is between aircraft with massively different capabilities under 1 single craft with direct improvements to reload speed & ammo count, something only vehicles can do.
So an ESF with the same weapon as another can be completely inferior to it on the weapon alone.
A vast difference between the two fights.

Add in Pilots complaining about death to Infantry weapons hitting them, while they spent 3 grenades on a fighter-from-hell.

The sad bit is, if the Skyguard becomes a skill weapon, while I will love it, the issue is then if the ESFs also become near free.
You have 350 nanites, gods knows how many certs, and hours spent to hit the ****, who can ignore every loss & still make bank.
AA is reactive in the End, Air gets to pick the fights - So any continued battle is getting further to the aircraft whom unlike the vehicle can change their entire direction & position by entire hexes before the tank even exits the nearest base.
Cheaper aircraft means you can find every slow AA's position, ram it, or simply engage & disengage rather than hover...
whittling it down, with either sheer number of replacements or by less, equal or greater Skill... against the Literal hard-counter.
Which has to work nearly twice as hard to kill the cheapest aircraft.

Don't forget, if ESFs take a hit, what the **** is to engage Libs?
Pilots say ESFs.
What is your plan there.
As I prefer to at least have something Kills libs.

Nanoweave increases damage resistance.
However, it's limited; A Vehicle has multiple slots, with vastly more potent options.
This is in addition to armor resistances by default.
The Weapons are the same for every one of them, with slight improvements with downsides.
As well, they actually can't make a weapon fire faster, it only registers in bursts.

Infantry die faster, and need less damage to kill.
An ESF's bullet is far more dangerous than that of Infantry rounds - Add in the usual AOE effect, and it gets comic.

Air is above everything else, with the ability to engage from outside their range, with massive viewing ranges & distances.
Infantry must hide inside very contained positions, with fixed routes, Every place they can stand is built into the terrain itself.
Infantry as well can not properly maintain an specific angle above or below, nor be angled sideways.
Air can.

ESF Speed also comes in, when it gets to time to react.
And time to escape.
Infantry do not have boosters, nor slots to improve that capacity.
ESFs can, making for literal differences in speed.

Dogfights are basically Hover-&-shoot fests so sadly not.
Well not for the Aces, mine revolves around usually using speed to confuse the hell out of poor pilots.

That's the point.
There is a stock non-upgraded weapon, and one upgraded in the direct combat capabilities from ammo to reloading speed.
That's a severe difference compared to having a laser-sight or not.


What I complain about is the fact, I'd never not be constantly firing into the bastard whom is reaping more certs than I for cheaper, and isn't having to safeguard a highly-dedicated vulnerable Specialized Weapon platform that has entire expensive systems rendered void by the very thing it is built to engage.
So while I peck at the ESFs that don't stay dead, There's enough that they build up rapidly.
Rather than one dying and being gone, it's back near instantly not twice but 4 ******* times at least.
By that time, another ESF could arrive, or the repairs not even be done.
Heaven forbid it prevents the identification of the God-battleship known as a Liberator.

Now don't forget the ramming bit also means You can instantly Kill a 450 max unit for 150 nanites.
The present ESF ease of massacring the slowest target that costs the damn most, is bad enough at 350.
300 nanite difference at 150.


Only if that big *** air battle isn't what determines if the ground is allowed the ability to live.
As AA has never been allowed to properly clear the damn sky, without needing half or more of the forces be dedicated AA...
With the same sheer bulk, a damn rifle would achieve the same if not better: Hell, if we had half of that in AV, we'd nuke dozens of tanks for hours not ward-off 1-3 aircraft.

Kill that reverse-hover-maneuver (my gods, the forum-software knows this terms..), then you'll also have a Better bloody dogfight.
That isn't turret-wars in the sky.
As well, don't forget aircraft have the mobility, the weaponry, the speed, to outrun, outgun, everything on the ground.
Be careful about furthering the gap between cost efficiency of the Ground & air vehicles.

If you stop and think, most of your problems with A2G would disappear overnight if ESF were half health with half damage. They'd rightfully still be able to lend a hand i A2G, but be nowhere near as effective as they currently are. Yes, you'd have more targets, but that's a good thing for AA if AA is able to reliably kill them. Killing a plane wouldn't keep the pilot from flying, but it would keep him out of the fight for a decent amount of time if he had to fly from the warpgate, longer than a Harasser stays out of the fight and infinitely longer than infantry stays out of the fight, and it would be a very easy vehicle to kill. Try to let go of the hate and see the benefits. Yeah, you'd have to worry about Libs, but that's due to the inadequacy of the Skyguard, a different topic.

Most success I've seen outside of having someone running a "pure" air-squad is people ordering organic air support for regular operations. In my view, one of the main deficiencies is that when they're not doing A2A or A2G, a lot of ESF pilots seem to get really fidgety and want to squirrel off - this makes them hard to attach to supporting operations. I can't blame em, babysitting gals and such is boring. But it skips over what ESF can also be used for - providing good solid recon and intel on what an enemy is doing. Not as good as the Valk, mind you, but it works. Alas, I ask some ESF main pilots to do it and I get either poor intel or just blatant non-compliance. I mostly have to rely on outfit mates for that, because we've trained and worked on it.

Welcome to the Wonderful World of Valk. Where we spent several years asking for small incremental re-balances, only to get routinely talked down to by the "OH LOOK ADORABLE CERT PINATA" crowd.

Whenever a suggestion was made as to re-balancing or even touching other airframes, in my personal experience, an immediate gale force wind of tribal snowflakism appeared out of nowhere, telling me that "You don't really understand the air meta" or "You can't nerf dalton, or I'll uninstall."

Well, there were offers on the table for much more mild changes than what we got with CAI. No one ever got behind them, because they all assumed no one would touch air.

Well they did anyway.

I also stand by my assertion that the "Pull ESF" directive should be changed to "Pull Valkyrie", because it will alter the expectation of new pilots. They aren't being shoved out into the world and told that they can go toe to toe in A2A. They're being put out their in a light transport, being commanded to survive and support their team, in a more durable, lower cost aircraft, that is much more maturely designed (Read: Won't fly apart at the seams if it comes with in 5m of a tree), and requires team-work and co-ordination to work well.

But I agree with you, that the core of the problem is nestled in the community. But I would point out that most people also blame trees when they're looking for a polite means of issuing damnation upon the PS2 airgame meta.

Unless they're me. It'd be a shame if this thread devolved into a total Skub War