Poor AA Mechanics, and why they make me rage.

What bugs me is the fact that Galaxies are now effectively prevented from going within sight of any enemy ground units. Which pretty much means they are relegated to flanking ghost cap assistance, or ferrying troops from one friendly territory to another.

I'm not saying that Galaxies should be able to fly through AA with impunity at all, I would just like some balancing tweaks to actually go in the favour of Galaxies. I'd rather not get stripped down to <50% airframe without warning by a single AA Max hiding behind a rock I just happen to fly past.

Right now you've got a relatively under-powered unit getting worse patch by patch. If a Galaxy pilot is going to fly directly into a heavily contested area, then fine, he deserves to get swatted from the sky. But if a pilot is trying to make a normal drop, he shouldn't fear for his life from a single AA unit.

I hate to bring this up but your KD kinda gives you away. You are not very good I think. You don't get that its not like its 1-1 where a lone infantry is in an open field with his missile launcher.

Imagine a zerg of infantry (easy enough, they are all over) now imagine 4 of those guys playing a heavy (easy enough most played class based on my kills anyways) now imagine those 4 heavies had annihilators (lets just assume).

Now imagine you are a pilot. What are your odds of survival? And then you go on to day flares are not required? Dear god man, you don't fly, you have no idea what you are talking about, why are you posting in a thread like this? Are you the voice of the common man? Is this your first FPS?

I feel bad posting this because of your KD, but really for good players, even mediocre ones, air is now just a numbers game where skill doesn't matter at all. If you have no skill things didn't change. If you did, you are doing something else.

Wrong air now requires skill. before was just GoDmode. And keep whinning joerlnoob, i like to see you whinning.

A single AA getting a Galaxy to under 50% health?
Father, forgive him, he has no idea of what he says.

so there is no game like planetside?
and the battles i had were more around 200 people per side.

you dont fight only tanks. you fight transports, aircrafts, base defences with infantry, infantry that is running around (despite knowing that they are at a disadvantage).

nobody seperates them. they have roles which they can fill. at some they are at a advantage, at some they are at a disadvantage. you could still sneak around using your C4, if you want to. to a degree, playing as an engineer, running around with your C4 would be the feeling you get with all classes. no more easy lock-ons as HA, you would have to work hard for a vehicle kill in the open.

a driver is someone that drives a vehicle, thats all. there are skilled players and there are a lot of casuals.
casuals are a lot bigger part of this game than skilled players. getting rid of casuals would mean that a lot of servers would be dead and you could limit the playerbase to 100 per server.
why do you think the gaming industry is after the casuals? they are the reason games are developed. do you really think games are still made for the hardcore faction?
why do you think indie games are getting a lot of help from gamers these days? because they still are willing to make games for the hardcore players.
go to a big publisher and tell him "i will make a game that sorts out all the bad players.", he will kick you out of his office before he even asks how much money he can make with the game.

Actually, you did not need to keep that crosshair on your target for the lock on. I should know, I played all factions and AA in Planetside 1. The Starfire, which is what you are thinking of, required you to point so the target is near the reticule, but that was defeated by outrunning or outranging the weapon which was 350m at most. The Striker is the only other one and its range is 250m, which again, was not tracking because you aimed it, it would only lock onto the target you locked onto and will not redirect to another target.

What most of you are also forgetting, is while you are arguing 'invisible' and 'unstoppable' G2As, mind you, I fly too as well as AA. I have yet to fully die to Flak I couldn't see and I came close a few times mostly due to flying straight lines and the one time I died to a G2A... Was after I was seriously damaged and he pulled off the final shot. However, the AA in here is NOTHING like the TR Burster was like in PS1 for ESFs. The G2As are also nothing like the Striker or the Phoenix. Strikers fire off weak rockets, but numerous, but again mostly a 'nibble' in comparison to an AA MAX. In PS2, short of more than one person pointing a G2A missile or an A2A missile, you survive those hits.

While I agree there are some design mechanic failures, some of what is said is not exactly true.

While I agree it should not be necessary to put on flak armor to deal with Rocketpod spammers or Lib Spammers or Vehicle spammers as well, or should be necessary to have Flares, the problem is, there will always be people stating that there needs to be something mentioned in RL... SAMs, but air jockeys don't want that. Missile interceptors, which then ground pounders will complain about. Gun ports, but then the tankers and air complain about how it makes infantry too powerful.

And as for the the G2A being unstoppable, I'm sorry, but I have seen ESFs evade them, and same with Vehicles. While my only gripe is when I see 'hits' and not knowing where they are coming from or where they came from other than just a hit indication... That is annoying, because you can't tell what exactly is causing it.

What I rather see is more fixing of the situation of people abusing some of the Client side hit detection, as lately, I have seen hits that should not be scored, but are or someone is hacking the system to enable hitting people in locations they should not be hit from.

Well they aren't going to bring casuals for this game. Why? because the casuals will go play CoD if they want infantry and WoT if they want vehicles, this game isn't for casuals even more with continent lock and friendly fire.
And even then, i have to say that casuals=/= dumb, if a casual see their tanks getting destroyed instantly and open the respawn winsdows and see a good 30 minutes before gettint another vehicle they will think twice before doind anything stupid again.

If Infantry have no chance against Vehicles in open and vehicles can't enter base, you are separating the game in 2.

And about games that brings the same thing, just search for MMOFPS and you will see planetside isn't the only one who brings what you said.

this game is already full of casuals. a casual player wont play that much to develop that kind of skill and wont care that he has to, if he wants to play a tank. THEN they would leave the game for world of tanks or whatever.
if infantry can take vehicles just as easily as vehicles can take them, whats the point of vehicles? it makes no sense.
as i said earlier (you are repeating yourself and i have to give the same answers over and over), vehicles can go into bases, but would be at a disadvantage.
i didnt find a game on the scale of planetside (hundreds of players in one spot), with this variety and graphics. can you link one?

Depends what you mean by guide-by-crosshair. A simple tweak which would leave the existing lock-on launchers friendly to use, instead of being fiendishly difficult would be:

- Have to keep the target in the center 1/2 of the sight to maintain lock (launch phase)
- But only until the missile is within 200m (150?) of the target (terminal guidance phase)

So lock-on is still useful. Having to maintain the target within the sight means that you need a bit of skill to maintain lock, plus it keeps you from being situational aware for longer. By changing the "terminal guidance" distance, you control how difficult it is to use. Plus you could cert up for faster rockets instead of stronger lock times or increased damage options.

Having to guide the munition all the way into zero-distance is too iffy for a game like PS2 with the lag. Especially on fast movers like ESFs, which HAs need the ability to fight back against rather then rely solely on AA MAX units.

And definitely give us a few different audio tones and visual warnings.
- Slow beep and "ACQUIRING", louder or higher pitch for locks where you kept it closer to the crosshair
- Solid tone on "LOCK"
- Tone that goes fuzzy / warbles / softens if the target strays towards the edge of the ring, closer to edge, more fuzz/warble
- A beep once the munition enters terminal guidance mode ("final", "terminal", "missile lock")

Again infantry should not be able to take out tanks with ease, it should be actually harder, but once the tank is gone, its gone.
And not for 1 minute until the same guy get back with a shiny new tank.

The player who wants to play tanks they will learn how to make it live.

since you keep repeating yourself, i just quote what i said a few times.

I'm beginning to see you as a brick. Is so hard to understand? Vehicles are tougher,k , ppl would learn to deal with then, and again this game was never for casuals. Not when everyone says, join a outfit is another game, not when you see a outfit armour column steamrolling everything in it's path.

The "casuals" you talk about were there when the game launched and already gone. What you see now is the actual community. not the CoD/BF3 who wanted to try out the new game.

you dont see the problem.
we HAD stronger vehicles that didnt suffer from lock-ons and such.
what happened then? they put in a lot of lock-ons to make vehicles weaker, because infantry complained about getting farmed and did not learn to deal with it.
that already happened. it happened.
now you suggest to just do it again, with even stronger vehicles. infantry doesnt care about resource costs for vehicles, as long as they get farmed.
you suggest something that happened and went bad.

Sure fine, the starfire was the exception. However you are incorrect in that the striker was the only one that you did not have to aim. The sparrow had a long lock on distance, but if you LOSd the sparrow it would break the lock instantly. Similarly Wasp A2A missiles also required that you kept the reticule on the target in order to score the hit.

Given the volume that G2A missiles can be fielded it is perfectly acceptable to increase the range slightly and require that you keep the crosshair over your target. This makes ground troops more vulnerable to other threats since they have to devote their full attention to taking down or otherwise dissuading the air target while not shattering their ability to be effective against air.

For the most part your if you know your only option is bail the **** out of there it's what you have to do.

currently the only option is flares it's a mandatory cert. I'd love to take other things in the same slot but it's not feasible. Adding this requirement gives a more consistent way to avoid getting smoked with no recorse. Yes i know you can use terrain, but its pretty goddamn scarce in northern Indar & It's been so long that I don't even remember what esamir looks like.

The OP is spot on, i hope they listen to this!

Stronger and Spammable vehicles, that was the point. If a vehicle is hard to get destroied. it's destruction should mean something.

but where is the difference between a vehicle with low resource costs and a strong vehicle with high resource costs? the first might be killing 20 infantry before it goes down and comes back, the second might kill 40 infantry but doesnt come back as soon as the first.
point is:
both FARM infantry, which is not wanted in this game. see changes SOE made / is making.

But ppl would be actually rewarded for taking it down, you would see more times 6 ppl shooting rockets at the same time to deal with the imminent danger. While now, Ok you killed a tank, he will be back soon.

Right now, organized infantry / ground is too strong while unorganized infantry / ground is a bit too weak. Dual lock on from HA is able to stop ground / air HARD due to rendering distance / squishiness for air, and aiming difficulties / rendering from ground. A single comparable skill AA max is able to stop an ESF flat out and deter a 2 person lib (longer than the respawn timer for infantry).

Forcing HA / AA missiles / Anti tank guided to keep a lock on for the majority of AA missile flight, but reducing the time it takes to be able to fire the missile would even things out. If you can fire the missile faster, but if you don't keep pointing at your target it loses focus would require more effort for the anti-air / armor, but still allow the air / armor to get a chance to dodge the lock-on without requiring flares (Which are currently REQUIRED). It would make lock-ons require more than just fire and forget to win while still offering the "oh crap" moments to armor and air. I think it should be more lenient towards ground (easier to dodge since they move slower).

AA maxes are absurd right now, could you imagine if they were able to repel armor as easily as they repel air? They are pretty much a walking turret that is much more mobile, smaller, harder to see in IR, and doesn't overheat. If snipers were able to deal with them more effectively this probably wouldn't be as much as an issue (except for the air resupply pads where they can defend with almost immunity).

think that would stop the complaining about OP tanks / OP ESF / OP vehicles?
i dont.

Starfires required constant lock. So did strikers, and so did wasps. And we thought the wasp was lame. The wasp is a joke compared to current A2A.

The only thing that didn't require constant locks was the sparrow max, but it also did the least damage because of this.