Aircraftside 2

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by TripleMeows, Mar 28, 2014.

  1. TripleMeows

    Why exactly do I have to spend all day trying to shoot down aircraft? Buster Max = I do no damage they kill me (Dalton/Rocket pods) or they fly away. AA Turret = I scary away a ESF and a Lib blows me away. Air lockon = I get hit by daltons or rocket pods and my rocket either flies into a wall or does no damage (Lib) or is sent flying by flares (ESF).

    No I do not own a Skyguard I can not afford to pay for it nor do I have time earn one through certs and on top of that It can't stand up to anything in the air or on the ground.

    I can't spawn any ground vehicle anymore they just die. 80% of the time to Aircrafts or they contribute to taking half of my health. Please explain why I have to organize an air force just to be able to live in a ground vehicle. Yeah I am aware of the Ranger and Walker but what's the point? They only work on moron ESF pilots and NEVER work on Libs. Tank buster takes half my health and the Shredder or Dalton takes the rest and if by some miracle I live that I get to have a bulldog or walker eat away at the rest of my health.

    Aircrafts can go anywhere on the map in a matter of minutes, are basically immune to anti-vehicle weapons because they have no capabilities to look up, have weapons to beat all forms of vehicle/infantry, and can escape from very dangerous situation in a matter of moments. I have tried to kill them but Aircrafts hard counter everything. I'm not saying they should be nerfed because I don't really know a lot about flying. But It feels like I have no chance every time I see one but I don't feel that way when I see a Tank/MAX/Infantry (When I'm in a Tank or on foot).

    So please enlighten me. How can I use a ground vehicle as intended and have fun/live with the current state of this game?
    • Up x 11
  2. Coffee Hound


    Save your SC/Certs - the SkyGuard turret is underwhelming as well.
    • Up x 10
  3. Hosp

    Follow the zerg and hope it doesn't get overwhelmed.
    • Up x 1
  4. leo4444

    esf are fine but too many libs right now, before a lib nerf i think they should, increase lib resource cost by 50, add one minute to acquisition timer, and give a little more xp for a lib take down. 100xp assist for 4 rockets on lib is pretty bad, its no wonder people don't team up to take them down.
    • Up x 1
  5. Riddlley

    Step 1: Join an outfit.
    Step 2: ???
    Step 3: Profit.

    Morale of the story, teamwork is OP.
    • Up x 6
  6. z1967

    Sadly, the only real counter to air is air. Which I think is a pretty poor excuse for balance. But, we are gonna have to wait for the Resource Revamp in order to better balance Air v. Ground.
    • Up x 5
  7. Goden


    For the 23857429847293472897234th time:

    Why does AA need to work as a team while aircraft can solo AI, AT, and AA?
    • Up x 14
  8. Aractain

    It is quite frustrating to watch all your friendly tanks get blown up without being able to do anything to help them. Theres not enough gameplay for air to ground and what little we have is of the lowest quality (and because its so easy its balanced around that which makes it ineffective unless used in large groups).

    Skill based weapons scale far better (like tank shells and rockets) but are design around hitting slow moving ground vehicles.

    We need some fun, interesting AA weapons to replace the junk lower quality gameplay options.

    Such as engineers getting something like this to deploy in a AA/light AT role.
    • Up x 1
  9. Axehilt


    Unless something's changed it's the best ground-based AA available. Yet you discourage him from using Skyguard without mentioning Burster and Phalanx Flak are even worse?

    In the end, ESFs are the best counter to air, and if you're not using one to help your side maintain air superiority, you will lose air superiority and be farmed by air.

    ...which logically leads to a conversation about how ESFs are too versatile currently (I'm able to simultaneously take both the best AA weapon (nosegun) and the best A2G weapon (rocketpods) without feeling like that flexibility cost me anything in terms of effectiveness.)

    Versatility needs to come at the cost of not being as good against any given target (sort of like how the Basilisk isn't the best AA or AV weapon, but the fact that it's able to do well against both types of targets is its strength.)

    For ESFs that means if I take a strong A2G loadout I should be weak against air, and especially weak against someone who takes an A2A loadout (who will be terrible against ground targets because of that specialization.)
  10. Robes

    Why should a single AA be able to kill 2-3 people by themselves?
    • Up x 3
  11. Goden


    Well for starters: AA (especially the Skyguard) is the most single-use dedicated unit in the entire game. It literally cannot do ANYTHING else. Hell, it cannot even change its loadout to fight something else.

    If it can't kill the one thing it's made to counter then what the hell is the point of it?

    And when it comes to Libs, AA does need to work as a team currently.

    If you want AA to be ineffective against aircraft then give it something else to use. AA is hardly used as it is because it's so specialized. (And murderously expensive)
    • Up x 5
  12. Bortasz

    For the same reason my 3 AT mines can kill 12 morons in Sunderer, ore 2 C4 kill 3 people in harasser.

    If there are in one vehicle and can kill me I want be able to kill them.
    • Up x 4
  13. Dante02

    In infantry, you have a lot of bullets. They're really good against any number of other infantry.
  14. Cinnamon

    Skyguard is boring to use and is not really that effective. Pilots hold skyguards in contempt in part because they can give them a bit of a surprise and restrict their movement but mostly because skyguard is such a low status boring poop shovelling job in this game. So don't really feel bad if you don't have it unlocked.
    • Up x 3
  15. CrashB111

    Typically when you pull something to be a Hard Counter to something else you expect it to own that unit. You don't expect it to be useless unless there are 3+ of them shooting one target.
    • Up x 6
  16. Titan6

    You're going to get a lot of people who want the game to be balanced in terms of crew sizes, which is silly.

    At the moment, the Skyguard is the best AA in the game, but that's not really saying much. It's in desperate need of a velocity buff. A charging max runs faster than a skyguards rounds.

    They also need to bring down the Liberators effectiveness against ESF's. At the moment, you don't really need ESF's. Liberators do every role an ESF does, better.

    I wouldn't even mind if they kept ground AA where it's at. As long as the buff ESF's enough so that 1 ESF can defeat one liberator.
    • Up x 4
  17. AnnPerkins

    It is kind of funny that it takes 5 lock-on hits to equal the xp a lib pilot gets for ganking 1 infantryman. It's also funny that they can literally fly up to an AA turret that has been shooting it since it was in render range and destroy it without even going into critical damage.
    • Up x 3
  18. TomaHawk


    Or a couple buddies running burster Max + 1 or more Skyguards. We were against a much larger NC force (typical now on Connery) and I pulled a Skyguard to complement the other 2 in the base courtyard.

    We cleared the air of every lib and reaver. Really. Air reached a point it wasn't worth flying in the vicinity any longer.
  19. Axehilt


    Apart from the CoF being too random, flak weapons are fun to use (and linking a video of a flak turret as an "alternative" is rather strange.)

    Air can never really be strongly countered by ground-based AA. It can kill reckless pilots, and zone-out skilled ones, but if a handful of AA users are able to consistently kill aircraft, that renders all air pretty useless (it already gets close to this if you get ~3 skyguards together.) So the balance of ground-based AA can't really shift too much from where it is.

    But the decision-making of ground-based players can shift from where it is. If these players start flying A2A ESFs, they'll at least enjoy dramatically more success than they experience as ground fodder.

    And again it all eventually ends up with the fact that ESFs are too flexible right now -- an ESF which is kitted out to be great against ground sacrifices almost none of its A2A capabilities in order to gain that strength.
  20. AnnPerkins


    AA in large fights isn't a problem. It's the smaller scale skirmishes where a squad or two is facing off against similar forces that quickly goes from fun to frustrating at best when someone pulls a lib. It's a lot harder to convince half a squad of people to go AA to deter libs when that can be half your population in the zone.
    • Up x 3