"air the counter to air" was the correct balance for EVERYTHING

Vehicles to get them there, infantry to manage the last mile. They serve their own purposes. You can use more than boxes too, like harsh terrain but given how everyone including infantry slides off all things, that won't quite work. Or swamps/bogs, where tanks get stuck... but in general in the open, warfare is about vehicles for the most part. Infantry just ride along now, and their role is always that final push that armor/air can't make.

Base design simply leaves infantry serving the wrong role most times... which is why we've ended up with infantry being the counter to armor/air which is totally ridiculous and destroying all forms of vehicle gameplay in this game.

Such a good point by the OP.
Instead of buffing the hell out of G2A, they should have nerfed the hell out of A2G.

It's easy to fix honestly that air and ground vehicles are only capable of being spawned from warpgates exception to that is the flash which can be spawned only from certain bases. This forces support to keep tanks alive because losing them to quickly will give you a disadvantage in the battle. This also makes front lines where holding and defending area's becomes important and forces people to spread out to defend area's to prevent themselves from being surrounded and having to strong of a concave happening to a very important base. Also give XP for defending bases as that will give more incentive to defend and hold area's.

To fix air remove rocket pods but keep A2A but have it where the person has to be inside a certain target box area for the lock on to work. Remove the Annihilator from the game all together as having a weapon that can target both ground and air is not fair and is pretty broken. It also forces people to choose wisely between g2a or g2g

Infantry can still spawn at locations but an interesting idea for the resupply would be to have a certain fixed amount of ammo for that location that does replenish with a timer but only gives a certain amount of ammo to that location. Add supply lines that can be cut off when taking certain bases making it more difficult to supply the front lines or delay as to having a longer route to take to reach bases on the front lines. If bases get surrounded then the supply timer stops and does resupply the ammo for that base. This makes holding supply base locations very important as losing them increases timers to front line bases.

I believe this could make the game more interesting and fun. It also adds a depth to tactics and combat to the game that I believe many will enjoy and especially outfits will like this idea.

Seems like a pretty minor role in a game proclaiming to be an MMOFPS. Arena games are nothing new. PS2 needs something grander.

Well last time i tryed that face to face a mossy killed me with the rotary in 3-4 seconds. Was rarher funny. He didnt wanted to destroy the sunderer..or couldnt. He just killed everybody spawning there befor they loaded or if they happen to load on the other side then the moment they showed its face. No idea how he could have such an aiming though.

Yes, much of the issue steeming here is that instead of nerfing A2G, they sold people the overpowered annihilator to make $$$.
Sacrificed the balance and fun of their game to make money...

But I digress. Yes, they needed to have nerfed A2G. Air was so strong that it was a necessity to keep them out of the skies completely or you'd be screwed. They should have reduced their anti-ground effectiveness so it wasn't a massive deal if they did exist.
They kept it as a requirement to clear the skies, and made the ground-to-air even more broken than air-to-ground was previously. One terrible thing to counter another terrible thing, when the game would have been made so much better by nerfing a2g.

I have the same sentiment of usually preferring buffs over nerfs. I think most people who get this issue also have this same sentiment, but understand that did not work at ALL in this case. Now nerfs are needed even more.

No. Stop saying this. It's not true.

it's only true in the current state where rocket pods and zephyr are massively OP.

G2A and G2A are BOTH overpowered. I don't know what was unclear in any of my posts and many others posts on how they both need to be nerfed. No one is saying to only nerf the annihilator or flak.
It needs to be possible to fly ESFs and Libs again, but they don't need to completely dominant the ground just from being able to exist over the battlefield.

The problem with the balance now is it's too binary. It's win or lose. You have a certain hard counter, you win 95%. Otherwise you lose. Skill isn't much of a factor as the most powerful weapons are all the easiest to use and designed to auto-win against something else.

Air-to-air is skill.
Infantry-vs-infantry is skill.
Tank-vs-tank is skill.
These 3 things are also a lot more fun too.
Flak and lock ons are win buttons. Zephyr/HEAT farming infantry are just win buttons.

If the enemy has 50 aircraft and you don't stop them, well sure they're going to be able to kill your tanks with just their rotaries, but that's a lot different than a bunch of rocket and zephyr spam instantly wiping them out. On top of that, you don't have to worry about skyguards or MAX dying quite so easily.

Obviously it should still be possible for these all to fight each other, but it shouldn't be their forte. It shouldn't be an automatic victory just because you have such and such weapon.

Its an FPS vehicle shooter too, not just infantry. Which is the point a ton of people who insist on playing infantry only are missing.

Me as ground player really like the balance of AIR/GROUND now. Sure thing I get killed by air, but now I finally can also kill air. It is nice.

I got killed by air as infantry less than once every 4 hours back when everyone was screaming for ground to air buffs. :/

I didn't run around in the middle of no where, and I shot at ESFs. I killed far more ESFs on foot with small arms and unguided rockets than they killed me.
I'm not saying air-to-ground was balanced, it wasn't, but now ground-to-air is even more stupid. And liking it, just because you hated aircraft before and basically wanted them removed from the game, isn't really fair.

Bump

Dont fly alone where everyone can lock onto you. Have wingmen or work with ground troops. I dont think G2A is OP. It is very plentiful though. If you are the only target in the sky you will get plastered...more targets =fewer lockons for you as an individual.

I do support making rocket launchers either ground or air and not both.

EXACTLY!

This is what air has become, Liberators waiting for the odd sunderer or ghost capping squad to fall into their target zone. ESF spending more time travelling to and from targets, than on target.

If SOE wish to keep these changes, air MUST be burst DPS. Zephyr needs splash back to 4.5m - with 1 hit kill in all splash range. Dalton - 1.5 hit kill with splash damage worth .5. ESF rocket pods (which in each should be equal to the underslung grenade launcher or annihlator) - 2 hit kill with 2m splash damage full effect (no more 6 rockets for 1 kill). ESF primary infantry weapon splash damage increase for strafing runs.

Do this, and you will see more air and strafing runs. As it stands, air cannot engage targets because of anti-air power.

We might as well just have 3 seperate games then.

An infantry only game.

An aircraft only game.

A tank vs tank battle game.

Right now, air is fine. People who complain about air being nerfed too much are just bad.

You don't roll a tank into the field without air cover, and you don't fly an aircraft into the field with a tank to take out that pesky skyguard.

Its called "combined arms".

you hit the nail on the head. this is correct.

Good idea, fly with 5 other people that can all systematically be locked onto and destroyed one after another---or heck, maybe you'll all 6 die at the same time from 3 rockets each out of the 18 HAs.

The only thing you can do is have a wall of galaxies to block locks in front of liberators, and that's a lot of resources spent for the HA to just respawn and kill them.

Why not just give them nuclear howitzers then?...

Then you'd get the unhappy air people who think ESFs have a role in ground-attack raids and don't exist solely to dogfight. Ground attack ESFs are interesting, but only in moderation.
Forcing ESF to an exclusively air to air role brings us back to Planetside1's Libs and Wasps and nothing in between.

^ This, this, so much this!

Seriously, All air ever said during one of their skilled pod trainings was "learn to play". Well, it's time to practise what you preach.
Don't expect to go solo & dominate everything. Time to use actual teamwork, like us infantry have to.

Tjeezes, I can't believe they're actually QQing about this

People didn't think they "had a role in ground-attack". They thought infantry were just there for them to farm for certs like NPCs and nothing else.

There is a happy median somewhere, though

Air being the counter to Air works for us flyboys, but not for everyone.
Dedicated AA should mop the floor with those less lucky/ skilled and it should create no-fly zones.

Giving everything the ability to take down Air sucks because it completely shuts out a whole theater of operations but you can still kinda work through it, hold on and hopefully it'll balance out soon. Hopefully. ;[

If you get killed by 18 rockets and there are three of you then you guys suck. I see one pilot beat three or more guys with lockons all the time. They keep moving and use the flares and terrain to make you waste your rockets all the while picking you off.

your whole argument is based on one scenario... inf on a hill unseen by you with lockon and you in the middle of open dessert in an ESF hovering. Any other situation and you are moving behind terrain and buildings and breaking the lockon and if they do get lock you would circle a mountain or tower until the missile hits something or flare them all away. 18 rockets my butt...