Liberator Role? AA? or AG?

It seems to me the Liberator capabilities were initially designed to be AG. However with the talent in the player base has changed the role to be a AA platform. I know I will get flak(no pun intended) for saying this, but I believe this is NOT the intended use for this aircraft.
In order to return this to its intended role, in my opinion is to return it to a gravity bomber. As long as there is a tank cannon on the belly, people will mis-use it. Gravity bombs drop for the wings/bomb bay, and would be useless against air.(unless air is directly under the Lib, and not moving).
Just seems like the Liberator is increasingly being misused which is moving into the over-powered. It is a bomber, make it one.
Increase its speed a bit to compensate for the lack of Belly AA gun . TG spot could use a better AA gun but willing to see how the walker works currently.

thoughts?

The role of liberator is currently fun.

0/10

I have come to the conclusion that the Liberator can perform both the A2A and A2G roll.

The ESF is *NOT* the counter to the Liberator. When an ESF flies head on towards a Liberator, it's going to get a face full of a wide array of weapons, AV or AA.

The ESF and the Liberator are fundamentally the same. They are both VtoL attack craft that can take on the roll of AA(Rotary+A2A Pods/Coyotes, Walker/Heyenas+Shredder+TB/Vektor), or AV(AI Nosegun+Rocketpods/Hornets, Bulldog/Drake+Dalton/Zephyr+Shredder+TB).

The difference is the ESF requires less resources, less manpower, has more speed and more agility.

The Liberator has more firepower, more versatility in it's weapons, and more armor.

The ESF has lower armor and firepower, the Liberator requires better coordination and has less speed/agility.

If you want the ESF to be the "Hard Counter" to the Lib, then you give up your AI nosegun, your Rocketpods and your Hornets first. You're not a supersonic fighter jet, you are closer to an Apache. We aren't Bombers, we are big *** Apache's with bigger guns and more armor.

The thing is, both are multirole aircraft with a certain focus.
The ESF is focused towards A2A-combat, but it can be equipped and used for A2G-combat, although it's not going to be as good at it as the Lib.
The Lib is focused on A2G-combat, but it can be equipped and used for A2A-combat, although again, the ESF is going to be better at A2A combat.

And given that the ESF can reliably take out a lib while requiring less resources, less manpower and having less cooldown time, i see absolutely no issue here.

who gives a crap what the intended role was? Only crappy nerfs come out of that reason

The liberator currently is THE STAR of A2A. The new rear guns when manned, mean that a LIB is a larger threat in the air than an ESF. Airwings require Libs to currently be competitive which is great, however, I feel the role of the ESF as the premire A2A platform is now very suspect.

Yes there are many scrub Libs as there are scrub ESF, however, every GOOD or GREAT airwing is anchored on one or two STAR A2A Libs, many of whom have incredible hit percentages with their daltons (@45%ish). They function like scarier versions of the way Tom-Cats used to function, they force you to run (via thier incredible tank and damage), making you an easy target for any ESF to finish off.

The real nail in the coffin is watching your servers best pilots all funnel into Libs and begin dogfighting with them.

The sad part is that the tomcats could be flaired, or those using them could be shot down by skilled aces easily... there is no such answer for A2A Libs...

The Lib requires more certs, players and coordination, so why shouldn't it be good AA?

The Multiple ESF's can perform the A2G role just as well, if not better then a single 3/3 Liberator.

They are both fundamentally the same(VtoL Attack craft), and can perform the same functions. The ESF is not dedicated AA, the Liberator is not dedicated AV.

The ESF has arguably been forced into a more focused A2A role. The Lib is more dangerous to both air and ground. In fact, a good Lib team can easily defeat more than 3 simultaneous ESF of Good or Average ability.

The ESF however, isn't really viable ground attack in any serious fight, and it's A2A capabilities take FAR FAR longer than the libs due to DPS.

In a game of controlling airspace the ability to run away (ESF) isn't as valuable as the ability to hold ground (LIB)

Once again on my server, it's as simple to see what's going on as looking at all the ACE pilots transferring to Libs... not after the initial update... but slowly as gameplay balance becomes obvious. I'm sure SOE see's the trends in their numbers.

btw: a game balanced by this vehicle wins cause it has more people in it, would mean galaxies and sunderors were unstoppable... it's really flawed simplistic logic, and makes for horrible game design. IMHO

While I agree with the specific wording of this, I think that active crew should be a consideration of the reverse. A vehicle with two active crew should not be instant and/or guaranteed kills for a one-crew vehicle either.

This is why I was glad back when tanks got better protection against pods (especially to the rear).

The deciding factors for win chance are numbers, skill, coordination, loadouts and resource-costing force multipliers. Any factor that virtually ensures defeat, except in extreme cases (such as being outnumbered 100:1 or noob:veteran skill disparities), is a sign of poor balance somewhere.

stock nosegun, ab pods, hover frame then dodge like this= autowin

Only 3 team libs are currently a super A2A threat. I'm sorry but daltons do NOT count. I have not been killed by a dalton in a ESF in a long time.............and I'm average at ESF at best....maybe not even average considering the skill cliff seems to keep getting higher lol

Bringing the tailgun into play and it becomes too many things for 1 ESF to handle..................

Shame I couldn't do something....like bringing 3 ESF to even the odds? -_-

Everyone talks about the dalton, but seems to ignore the shredder and TB. TB and shredder have much shorter TTK against any air target than any other weapon in the game that isn't a rocket or the dalton, and they take far less skill to use than the dalton. Plus, those weapons are both highly effective against ground targets, ESFs, for all their versitility, don't have anything close to being that kind of "one size fits all" versatility. I don't care about dalton, but if you don't nerf TB/shredder against air, then the lib itself should be nerfed.

Was only a matter of time since the dalton got nerfed that people would start asking for shredder nerfs. Oh forumside, how predictable you are!

Only two things that can kill a lib quickly.

Dalton
AP vanguard (this takes great skill or luck if the lib isn't hovering still)

The role of any vehicle is whatever you make it, with the possible drawback being effectiveness.

Same could be said about the vanguard ap, AA or AG ? who knows

The role of my Liberator is to kill the enemy however it wants to. I simply sit back and let it do its work. It's very effective... I like my Liberator... don't try to pigeonhole my Liberator.

Wait.. it's not? What are you doing wrong because I have no trouble with....

... found your problem.

Fixed it since the nerf of the Dalton.