I'll Finally Admit it: AA is out of control.

Only against liberators is there anything wrong with AA.

Someone can confirm or deny this but I believe the Skyguard packs a decent wallop against ground vehicles too, as such a couple in your tank column are great at putting the finishing touches on retreating armour while everyone else is reloading shells. The burster's big tradeoff is that literally EVERYTHING ELSE is a major threat to the max. Even an individual infantry is a tough job for twin bursters.

Not sure if serious.

I only wish this were the case. Number one if a lone esf kills an infantry he spawns a dual burster max. Game freaking over!

To rake out AA you have to have ground forces. Air alone can not take out AA. Here is your problem.

Air should be able to counter AA but it can't. So the imbalance is evident.

This is why warp gate camping is all over. A couple sundies with heavies and dual burster max's can easily ward off an entire warp gate until you can find enough ground forces to come in and take the out. And that is not always easy.

Air quite frankly is irritating to many but is not strong enough to do anything else but exactly that.

Flying in this game is a blast first off. But you cannot dumb it down for the sake of the casual gamer who may find it difficult. It takes practice and a lot of dieing, a stupid amount of times to silly things. But with that effort you can get an amazing pay off and be better then others. The air is by far the biggest skill deciding aspect of this game. It makes me sad to think people want to dumb it down so the people who put less effort into learning and being proficient in the ESF, are on equal footing to the guys that have hundreds of hours into their aircraft. I know it is hard to learn to fly right now because a lot of pilots now are quite seasoned and efficient killers. But rather then begging for easy mode flying and free hand outs practice more and earn your skills.

Somewhat agree, except during alerts. It's quite easy to avoid AA flak in an ESF and I rarely die from it because I've learned my lesson.

If the continent action is slow/average and I start getting flak fire, the choice is easy, don't fly there. So I find a more suitable airspace to engage over. The problem comes with the Alert system when the entire warfront brings AA with them so now you have a new set of choices. Stay and die and try to take something out to make it worth the trip, or you can retreat and fly over uncontested airspace doing flippies and rolls and other leet maneuvers while fondling yourself and wondering where rainbows are made.

Yeah it's annoying to have my anti-air loadout on and there's nothing to shoot at?

This is what happens when you have community opinion driven development.

Dude you only have 209 kills in an ESF. I can fly around and avoid any and all kinds threats to me and farm individuals to but you are not being effective. A good team mate has to dare the AA gauntlet to provide appropriate A2A or A2G support. So once you actually rack up some time in your ESF and more kills come back and tell us how easy it is to be effective with AA up.

Isn't it about time these people who solo or work with pick up groups stop trying to change anything?

You are not supposed to do well out there by yourself.

ANY competent squadron of air can clear out any and all uncoordinated ground anti-air. They may lose one or two craft, but that's how it is supposed to work. Just as any uncoordinated air units should be shredded by organized ground AA.

MAX and Aircraft are on equal footing. They are both timer and resource driven "vehicles", they both take massive amounts of certs to get to a functional state. They can kill each other, unlike how things were for months on end since launch.

Certainly if this game had a point to the fighting, these petty grievances would never arise. As it stands the only goal is to kill for xp, and that is a stupid focus for any war game. They can play around with the bases and map all they want, it will not change the fact that there is nothing to actually accomplish in this game other then levels. Territory capture means absolutely nothing, there is no point to fighting for bases. People just go for the fight itself. After a few weeks of this, it is just the same as any other death match shooter which is a style of game I detest.

Have you ever tried using a burster MAX? I didn't bother to buy a second burster because it's incredibly boring, and quite frankly, unsatisfying. A coordinated team of bursters SHOULD be able to hold off most aircraft.

I'm honestly astonished as to why you could possibly be complaining about Libs being equal to one burster MAX. That is absolutely absurd. Start certing into Composite Armor. Problem solved.

Literally nothing you said is pertinent to the conversation. Can air be effective without getting kill markers? Can AA be effective without getting kill markers? Why is number of kills the only measuring factor for how good a pilot is? A pilot can rocket pod infantry and rack up kills quickly. Skilled pilot? A very good pilot can bring only an A2A craft and engage only other ESFs and get a few kills per hour while being very much skilled kills.

Right now on your killboard you have a 20+ kill streak in an ESF (may be much longer since it's actually off the page) and a few double digit kill streaks in Liberators and ESF. Then you came to post this. I mean, really... I'd hate to see what you would achieve if AA wasn't a 'mess'.

AA can be countered, has happened countless times to me. Infantry or vehicles enter my immediate vicinity, air is no longer the priority.

I agree with him and I don't fly at all. I have tried flying a Mossie three times and all ended up in a complete disaster. I say it's time to get rid of the AA launchers. I wouldn't mind getting my money back for the Annihilator. Or maybe making it what I wished for at the very start. A much faster rocket with very little bullet drop but with less damage. So keep the damage, remove the lock in and make it fly fast and straight. Then it could be used at long range if you can aim and it could be used against aircrafts if they are too stationary or if the shooter is lucky. Remove the lock on from the Striker and just make it a magazine fed semiautomatic rocket launcher where the individual rockets do little damage but there's a potential for dealing more pain than a Decimator. You can even nerf the reload so the sustained DPS matches that of the Decimator. Then I would probably buy it. A launcher like that would fit with the TR factional trait as well.

If you really want another infantry AA class apart from the MAX, give the Engineer a flak MANA turret. Make it weaker than a single burster arm. The balance here would be it's reduced damage output with the overheat mechanism plus the very long render range of turrets. I would also be fine with it having no shield. But first the AV MANA needs a nerf in range and the hitbox bug needs to be fixed. I think somewhere between 200 and 300 meters is a reasonable maximum range for it.

BTW, before you start crying. I play HA and Engineer. The only vehicles I drive are the Sunderer and the Flash. I own both the AV MANA turret and the Annihilator as well as the Decimator. I know first hand what the AV MANA can do. I can easily take down Phalanx turrets from 500 meters with it. I also like to use the Phalanx turrets so I know how much of a pain in the *** they are from the other side as well.

You don't need to dumb down the flying mechanics to make it easier to learn. The problem is tdhe cooldown timers and resource costs. If a new player wants to learn to fly an esf, he's just going to die, and have to wait several minutes to pull another. The cooldown timer and resource cost should be lowered significantly for a2a esfs, and then maybe less people will just give up and play easymode burster max instead.

You're a moron and should be silenced.

Don't dismiss a claim about AA just because it is from a pilot. Nox is one of the best pilots in the game, check out his twitch stream.

ote="Iksniljiksul, post: 1641317, member: 97307"]Isn't it about time these people who solo or work with pick up groups stop trying to change anything?

You are not supposed to do well out there by yourself.

ANY competent squadron of air can clear out any and all uncoordinated ground anti-air. They may lose one or two craft, but that's how it is supposed to work. Just as any uncoordinated air units should be shredded by organized ground AA.

MAX and Aircraft are on equal footing. They are both timer and resource driven "vehicles", they both take massive amounts of certs to get to a functional state. They can kill each other, unlike how things were for months on end since launch.

Certainly if this game had a point to the fighting, these petty grievances would never arise. As it stands the only goal is to kill for xp, and that is a stupid focus for any war game. They can play around with the bases and map all they want, it will not change the fact that there is nothing to actually accomplish in this game other then levels. Territory capture means absolutely nothing, there is no point to fighting for bases. People just go for the fight itself. After a few weeks of this, it is just the same as any other death match shooter which is a style of game I detest.[/quote]


You are talking dreamland. Coordinated air? Last group of 20 I was in I got killed twice by crashes. Then no one wanted to get out of the plane to take over the base. Ended up getting destroyed. The only thing "coordinated air" was good at is taking over small bases. That's it.

Like it or not this game is as much lone wolf as it is team.




No

I'd love to, but I don't want to wait 12 minutes per aircraft just to die hopelessly to each pilot I run into (if AA/lock-ons don't get me first) until I find another newb actually worse at the stick than I am. And wait just a ****ing minute... since when is making the speed and agility modules actually worthwhile and introducing another secondary weapon system that isn't junk "dumbing down" piloting? I thought lock on A2A missiles and their counter in flares were as easy mode as it gets in terms of usage. Dumbing down would involve following War Thunder's mouse based flight control model, and I imagine Joe Casual would love such a control model, because it doesn't require memorizing 42 keys (exaggeration) just to properly maneuver the craft.

So no, DIE IN A FIRE OF FLAK or accept some form of a "dumbing down." Those are your options. The PS2 community is much happier with the current balance. There aren't nearly enough anti-AA threads in comparison to the number of lolpod threads that were going on before the switch in hierarchy. Either that means AA isn't really THAT bad, or there aren't many pilots, for whatever number of reasons.

It is slowly getting out of hand. For one half the damn time I am getting shot at and I just see the tracers. The little ants below shooting at me are out of my render distance. Oh well it's AAA what do you expect for them to shoot skittles at you? NO I expect being on a level bucking playing ground when it comes to something that can kill me a hell of a lot faster than I can kill them. You little snots crying about rocket pod spammers, try flying an ESF when everything including the kitchen sink and your mother being thrown at you when you are trying to support your team.

It is getting to a breaking point, AA Maxes sitting in their spawn room they can't be killed, AA Maxes all grouped in a single cluster of ESF Hell with a few Engis and Medics.

What I want is for the ones shooting at me to freaking render so I can do something about it. ESF back up is just becoming a dieing breed, due to the fact everything is out to get you and everyone is crying NERF NERF NERF NERF NERF.

Why the hell should the rocket pods be nerfed? Infantry have 50% RESISTANCE TO EXPLOSIONS WITH FLAK MAXED. I use my rotery more than anything with picking them off because LOLPODS are infective against a soft target.

Yeah a little boost to tank health would be great that is the only thing that I have to agree with, but for you bastards crying NERF THE PODS, REMOVE THE PODS. FFS Most of the time we spam them BECAUSE WE CAN NOT SEE WHAT IS SHOOTING US.

A2G ESF are measured more on their ability to kill or at least assist on one. And the A2A can be valued based off kills or simply deterring enemy air. He is not one of the respected pilots on Connery as is my home server. So I can say from actual experience he is not an effective ESF pilot. His stats only reinforce my already standing opinion on the matter. But I agree kills are not everything, and there are many aspects of this game that don't require it to be good. But other then a radar speced scout ESF, kills or assist will be a deciding factor of self worth among many people. You may not value it so much and that is perfectly fine but me and many others feel it's a dam big deal when your job is to kill **** and you don't do it well.