[Suggestion] Does AIR need to be reworked a bit? Or does AA?

I am battlerank 37, which I agree is not an amazing level but it has at the very least given me more than a few hundred hours of playing.
Got a Kill : Death ratio of 1:2, mind you I got more defends than captures so I often fight losing battles because I choose to play this game the way I have the most fun, which is a honorable death.

A problem I have come to observe is the huge amount of ways to counter/kill tanks, Aircraft, Infantry, Mines, C4, Turrets, AV-Turrets, AV-Grenades, Ramming etc. there is a huge lack of things that effectively kill air.
Now I know I know, you CAN hit them with tanks or rocketlaunchers but a good airplayer will just fly up high and shoot at you from your dead-zone (when in tanks/turrets).
I know, MAX double AA can be effective, but my point here is that if the enemy has 2-5 "good" fliers, I have yet to see any way to counter them.
On that, it seems impossible to counter a flier on your own unless you have like 2+ AA turrets at your disposal but even when if the flier is any good he'll just fly off and repair within 30 seconds and return.

My point is this: No matter how many tanks a enemy has, you CAN counter them, heck I defended a point killing over 5 Vangaurds simply by switching to engineer and throwing mines and then heavy and continuously berate them with rockets.
Sure I died once or twice, but mind you the tanks die in due time and even when they can flee they do not have the time if they are hit by either mines or me C4'ing their **** and then rocketing it (instant kills heavy tanks).
Air suffers naught from this unless you either time double MAX AA from nowhere or they get sloppy letting multiple people lock on to them.
There is no valid way of 1:1 countering a flier that uses Rockets + Shotgun/Explosive Machinegun. As a tank it's pathetic and all you can hope is for them to make a stupid mistake where you have the time to hit them with your shot 2 times (which I admit is possible with Sunderer but unless you see them coming and they fly straight at you instead of going for your backside it's very very VERY hard. Mind you I die within 1-2 seconds of rockets in the back.)
Air just excels at both defense, harass and pure fighting when outside of blobs, I admit they are more susceptible to blob AA than say a tank is to blob AV (but mostly barely, once again no tank/c4 lightinfantry for air to worry about). But in every other situation they're a nightmare possible of killing 1-10 infantry on their own, yes you can spend 1000 on Airlocking rocketlaunchers but even then you have to hit 3 rockets to effectively kill them leaving them with ample time to flee.

What I suggest is giving infantry/tanks some VALID 1:1 air defense, what I mean by this is the following:
Max AA is not really a valid choice, you're slow as heck, you have a cooldown and not enough burst to effectively kill a plane before it flees. Most fliers I fight just fly away, turn around, circle and then barrage me with rockets. Yes I can flee and all that but in due time they kill me much more effectively than I can kill them.
Tanks is even worse, the default gun does more damage to air than the flak (which I understand is a deterrent, which is laughable for good fliers since they're never really deterred after the initial shock)
When I see a tank on the map I get overjoyed since 90% of the time it's a easy/moderate kill, even if they kill me once I'll get them if they stay near a point or try to cap it.
When I see a good flier that never gets the hubris of hovering or flying straight at me within 50 meters, I'm ******. Not only that, me and my whole squad is ******. Even with a MAX and rockets that is not enough to effectively keep away a flier and mind you if you go THAT heavy AA (Max, Lightening with AA etc) you're totally **** versus other troops. AV do not have this problem, I mean hell I get tons of kills with my C4 (easy max kills) not to mention my multiple ribbons in tank mines. My rocketlauncher is great in infantry battles as well whilst flak/AA Max etc. is useless at anything other than SCARING air, not killing them.


TLDR:
I speak with 50-90 lvl fliers, the ones with any spine admit that they can get 100-200+ killstreaks, something that is quite literally impossible for any other way of playing the game. Many of them even admit they consider it more or less overpowered. I don't think that, I just think our ways of effectively countering air are underpowered.

The only good anti-air right now is going flier yourself OR investing in a AA gun which is then much worse in other situations whereas a AV investment is not ; C4/AV-Turret are great against infantry as well.

Fighting fire with fire should not be the only solution, I am not saying nerf air or their damage, I'm saying give us a way to counter it other than going heads over heels AA with 0 combat ability for other situations.

Staying in blobs should not be the only way to counter something. A good player can kill multiple tanks when defending a base, something that is almost impossible when facing multiple air.

If you cannot use the current AA effectively, you will never be able to use AA effectively.

I'm not the 'best' pilot but it is really hard to stay in the air when competent AA is around. People think just because the roll AA it gives them rights to blow every aircraft out of the sky, plus the best counter for air is AIR. I die very infrequently to AA, because i avoid/deal with it, i probably die more to what i call 'epic maneuvers' crashing into trees and such.

TL;DR: To all the air is too strong whiners, it really isn't. AA is actually a deterrent. If you want to kill air, get in an aircraft and learn to fly.

You are not supposed to be the one man army killing 10 tanks and 5 aircraft on your own. If you manage to pull that off, then you are good. But its definitely nothing to balance out the game for.

Even the current trend that a single infantryman is nearly as strong as a tank / aircraft is ridiculous. I would much rather appreciate if tanks were buffed against infantry so that they are superior to infantry, but only can spawn at AMP-Stations, Biolabs and Tech-Plants. That would limit the tankspam as well as making the single tank more valuable.

The only thing that needs to be reworked in the Air-Ground-Balance is the role of the skyguard. The burster has so many advantages - it has no weak point (aka skyguard rear), it can be revived, it is much smaller a target, it can hide in buildings/spawnrooms - that it does not make any sense to pull a skyguard. This is the one thing that needs to be tweaked.

You seem to be making two points.

Ground vehicles are very easy to kill by infantry and that is a good thing.

Ground vehicles are very easy to kill by air and that is a bad thing when they are used as AAA because air kills infantry.

Could just make tanks a bit harder to kill or something. Rear tank armour vs podders is maybe a little too easy and then there are engineer missile turrets.

And if more sunderers could use blockade instead of mine guard being mandatory for everything then they would be solid AAA platforms.

I used to be strictly a ground pounder, so I see your perspective. Then I tried flying. Air is very powerful, but so is AA. In fact if you don't know how to avoid it, it feels too powerful. 5 Dual burster AA maxes can easily take down a squad of skilled pilots if they go near them.

Here are your current options for AA:
1. Buy a second burster for your max (arguably the best option).
2. Get a skyguard (these things are very deadly if a pilot flies anywhere near it).
3. Get a sunderer with walkers or rangers on it (this works more effective then some give credit for).
4. Become a pilot. Spend 250 certs on the rotary, 100 certs on an airframe, and learn to fly on youtube. Dogfights are fun.
5. Get lock on rockets. These usually aren't as effective when you are by yourself. But if you and a couple other people go after the same target at once you can take them down, or chase them off.
6. Use your dumbfire rocket launcher. Believe it or not this is extremely effective. 1 rocket from the stalk launcher will kill an esf. If they are hovering still and trying to shoot you they become much easier targets. If you and some friends all try to dumb-fire them, you have a better chance. I'll often just leave a base if someone is good with their dumbfire. Don't want to lose my vehicle to an OHK.

AA is almost all area denial when used in numbers, now that would be fine if they'd not made ESFs so good at A2G, but they did.

At this point though I'd like to see two things:


1. A proper A2A fighter (with no real ground attack options, but deadly in air to air combat - especially vs ESFs)

2. More AA Engineers should have a AA turret and I'd like to see some way of upgrading base AA turrets.

Maybe let's get rid of rocketpods?? Then all whining about "air to strong" and "ground forces need hard counters to air" would end. Our paper planes could get a health buff then and everything would be fine. I HAVE A DREAM...

Point number 1 would never be fully viable. At any given time there's hardly enough air presences to justify being only AA. You're either severely outnumbered or wandering the map for lone pilots to take down. You could always roll with the local zerg but then you're all fighting for scraps over the newbie enemy pilot who accidentally flew into the area. Not a very lucrative option. It's always better to diversify, and have options for both air and ground (Like Rotary + Rocketpods).

The same applies to tanks. I could probably run an AP rounds on my Vanguard along with an Enforcer secondary and be a beast at killing other tanks, but I'm sacrificing the splash damage I could get from HEAT or HE rounds to help me kill infantry. I'd be driving around quite a bit to find tanks to kill, and while it may be easier to find a long-range shelling spot, you're still at risk of being outnumbered or wandering until you fine other lone drivers. Again rolling with the zerg is fine but then its still a contest to see who can put the finishing shot into that BR5 prowler who plans on stopping 20 Vanguards.


As for point 2 I don't know how I'd feel about Engineers being able to drop AA turrets anywhere they like. I find it odd that you would recognize how AA is such an effective Area Denial tool and then call for more free-to-spawn AA to be in-game.

Base turrets are already being buffed again (as they have been several times) to resist the primary weapons of ESFs, and it already takes more than a full salvo of rockets from rocketpods to kill a base turret. In addition a manned base turret will kill an ESF before it can finish its full salvo of rockets.

A nest of BurstMAX with engineer and medic support can keep the skies clear for the most part.

The problem with people trying to AA is that they always get to the highest, most exposed position they can.

To be honest, I really don't think there is a problem with AA right now, the turret could be a little better (inaccurate POS) but BurstMAX and Heavies are a pretty fair deterrent.

1. That entirely depends on your server, certainly on a full server (like I play one) it is common to have 15+ ESFs + other air on just one side attacking or defending a base.

Plenty to keep a genuine A2A fighter busy.


2. As an infantryman or a vehicle user you are never just area denied, you are outright killed. For whatever reason SoE decided against that for Air in PS2, so given that it would seem sensible for weak area denial AA to be more widely availible.

Neither. Tanks are clearly underpowered, that's the only reason you can solo them even if they are somewhat competent. Air is so powerful because it is object in the game with the highest skill ceiling.

Infantry having a one on one AA defense is an awful idea, considering infantry don't have a cooldown, resource cost, and are easy to use. Tanks already can mount AA.

AA is a deterrent, if you want to kill air, go fly a plane yourself.

I think ground to AA balance is in a good position right now. Stupid pilots die. Good pilots get deterred or die, depending on numerous variables. Numbers matter, as always. 1 AA against several air, or 1 air against several AA doesn't work very well.

The only real "problem" with dedicated AA is that it is a rather boring role, which is a natural limiter of available numbers, meaning it's not always there when you need it.

Good pilots will never die unless they get chased by good friendly pilots.

Ground AA can kill a good pilot only with good luck. But yet things could be and have been worse. Atleast now we can defend ourselfs even if we cant kill them.

The G2A lock-on launcher is the answer to your problem. Even solo its an effective deterrent, you wont get a lot of kills, but you will chase the flybois away.

I would love that, but it would remove aircrafts from the game. Right now the balance between aircrafts, tanks and infantry is pretty good. Yes its not perfect and one really good pilot cant be killed by 1 or 2 guys, the only thing you can do is play "pick-a-bue" with the rocklauncher and hope the guy will get bored of spamming rockpods at buildings/shields.

Air is fine, you want to counter it, get more air. You want to scare it away with the occasional kill, get within your AA protected zone.
You want to be able to drive around outside of air protection and or AA then get ready to die and rightfully so.

A MBT does not have the right to travel outside of friendly AA or Air power without getting molested.

Air vs. AA balance will always be particularly tricky for two reasons:

1. ESFs have very high skill caps.
2. Being killed by air when on the ground feels horrible, helpless, and miserable. Air isn't overpowered at all- but the counters to air are binary. Either you have your AA max, rocket launcher etc, or you don't. So when you do get killed by air, it's typically because you have absolutely no way to fight back. This creates the "feeling" of ESFs being like bullies. They'll come after you- but only if you can't defend yourself.

So it's not a question of balance as much as it is a question of fun.

personally i believe that the air dumbfire rocket payloads are way too abundant atm for air units. i just see people patroling around unloading volleys of rockets at infantry with no regards as to efficiency. Land units also resupply fairly easy in most cases but requires a defense slot for even the vehicles to be resupplied easily. Land units also have a extremely low ROF for most of the explosive projectiles as well making this not such an issue where as the volleys of rockets are near like instant volleys unless slow bursted. The scout/Interceptors should be more AIR-AIR combative where as gunships should be the ones usually wrecking havoc on the ground units.

TLDL- basically the intent of the lighter weight aerial fighters should be intended to combat other air more so then ground units being the most agile of things in the game with easier access to payload resupply and a abundance of a payload. or at least force them to re-supply which would create a vulnerable opportunity for people to go out and snipe off mech or something creative.

Are you ******* serious OP? did you just come here and say that AA needs a buff right now? Maybe 3-4 months back fliers could get 100+ kill streaks, back when all spawn rooms were easily "campable" and AA wasn't as strong. Now everyone has lock on rockets, AA Maxes tear you to pieces, AA turrets aren't bugged, Skyguards, etc. You should try flying in a big battle, try your hand at flying against a TR platoon specifically then come back and tell us how you liked getting lit up by multiple Striker lock on rockets in no time flat.

I like flying but I don't come here asking to revert the clock back to the infantry/armor farming days of PS2 launch. You just chucked AA Maxes as "too slow" what exactly do you want Maxes to do? be able to run at 70 mph and OHK aircraft? It's a deterrent, a good Max with engineer support can lock down the air space around a base, I know 'cause I've spent a ton of certs on my AA Max just for this purpose. You need multiple aircraft coordinating to take one out. Skyguard Lightnings can tear you up from a long distance. Finally, you have a variety of lock on rocket launchers if all of the above aren't enough to keep fliers away. You say that a "good" flier will just fly away and come back, well ok... hit him again and again, while you're doing this your infantry should be pushing attackers out or capping the base.

If anything the game favors AA too much right now. Just because you were driving your flash somewhere and got killed by a rocket barrage doesn't mean air is too OP.

As a former real life AA gunner, I can say that the AA defence is much too powerful in this game.
But the problem was born when it became a necessity to counter the lolpoders.
Best thing would have been not to nerf the rockets, but to increase the strongness of the tanks from the up rear, and let the AA defence as it was at the beginning of the game.
Now the game is almost unplayable for aircrafts,