[Suggestion] New NS-500 SAM for Sunderers

This would be good as rocket artillery.

2 problems

It seems kind of boring, but I also find camping boring. For exp possibly add a deterrent bonus for attempting lock and then forcing air to leave your range (maybe make it so it only gives them exp if they do no/minimal damage to ground forces)
I'm afraid of how it scales in large engagements.

On the other hand it seems well thought out and balanced by creating a specialized unit that is vulnerable in all areas except the one that it excels at-longe range deterence- which is really needed in the meta right now.

I think the problem is that AA is inherently boring to play as. If you're a HA with a MANPADS, it's not that bad because you can switch out to something that's more effective against ground. But if you're a Skyguard, you can expect to see some action, followed by a long lull. That's just the nature of fighting against something that can so easily run away from you.

Perhaps an alternative cert would be to automate the NS-500 SAM? So you don't have to be in the vehicle anymore... it will autonomously lock on to the nearest target and fire at it. The disadvantage to this would be that it might choose to lock onto an ESF instead of a Galaxy full of 12 soldiers, but at least it would free up the driver to go around and shoot people.

Nothing really scales well in large engagements, but at least the high cost (Sunderers are more expensive than Liberators) and long cooldown timers should somewhat minimize their presence, at least as much as they minimize the presence of Liberators!

Think you can design a sunderer model with most of the back removed and replaced with a large Dalton looking artillery cannon?

Since the Liberator threat has been somewhat reduced, I've now shifted to artillery! Not up to cannon artillery yet, but who knows?

I like all the effort put into this idea. It might be a giant pain in the *** to fine-tune for balance, but I think it could be worth it in the end. I agree that the "boring" factor is one of the major issues with the fundamentals of AA, especially if you're only as mobile as a SAM. It might be interesting to add some other small utility to the vehicle, like extended radar or advanced spotting.

You might be interested in Minngarm's thread about Command Sunderers, which are the communication/radar Sunderer.

For my part no.

Shutting down vast areas of map to air isnt fun for anyone. Not for the guys being shot at, nor for the gunner who has to sit there bored as hell to make the thing worth it.

Dont get me wrong, Im a bit more forgiving of lockons than most people are (and I like to fly!). But this is too extreme.

Strategic weapons such as this are questionable for a game of this nature.

Escalation leads to escalation

the fact you get shut out of areas for prolong times will lead to a new mission directive for you fly-boys, destruction of enemy utilities (aka) destroying their radar and SAM sites in order to allow air domination. (done in Vietnam)

As well who knows, you may have a ******* good reason to start getting heavy impact 500 kilogram bombs to 1 tonners

This is so blatantly OP, I'm not even going to bother arguing. Horrible idea. Your ideas are all geared towards farming one thing or another infallibly and are incredibly OP. Yes, that is the point of real warfare, but this is a VIDEO GAME, it is supposed to be balanced.

Huh... that's the first time I've seen a post about farming and aircraft where the aircraft aren't the ones doing the farming.

I mean if you think that you can "farm" ESFs and Liberators at 2-4 kills per minute... I think you need to reevaluate how to use the word "farm".

If I did want to design something for farming air, I'd make something with a much higher RoF and no loud and long warnings, right?

But thanks for the free bump I guess!

Wild weasel missions could be a direct counter that air units could use against emplaced NS-500's. If you can trick it into firing off both its missiles, then it's pretty much a free lunch for any moderately organized air wing!

But I suppose that might actually require some teamwork out of the various lone wolves in the sky.

Yes

A long ranged AA defense system that can spawn unlimited burster MAXs all around it on some cliffside? I don't think that sounds like a good idea. AA nests are already really annoying.

I mean shouldn't AA nests be "annoying" or even worse? If AA isn't being annoying, then it's unlikely that AA is actually doing its job.

In other words if AA nests were totally ignorable, then that would be pretty poor AA.

Too little missiles.
Long reload time.
A suspiciously long deploy time.
VERY long lock-on time.
Nearly defenseless.
All for the ability to make a Liberator burn with two missiles?
...

What can I say? At the time Liberators were really overpowered.

Obviously that's not the case anymore, but back then I would have been totally content to have all those downsides if it meant that Liberators couldn't casually skip away from a fight.

This thread is dated.

Air's been nerfed again since it's inception.

Good job on the Necro there Cuban.

Chingles... are you STILL hating on air? lmao

I LOVE the idea of a AA system that can fight aircraft, but the downsides... OH, they scare me
If you would make velocity overwhelming, made a missile instagib an ESF (Except the Reaver, it should have a micrometer of health left), and would increase ammunition carriage to actually suffice AA duty, and would decrease reload and deployment speed by a good 15 seconds each, I'd have no problem with it. I love the idea, I just HATE how UP it is. Like us Vanu. But that's another story

It's not hate now... I'm pretty okay with air where it stands today. Any changes that I would make to air would be simple tweaks, not massive swings with the nerfbat.

But you still have pilots who want to beef up the armor/weapons on the Liberator, turn the Valkyrie into a gunship, or nerf AA even more. So there does need to be a counterpoint to them, a voice that speaks for everyone else.

Really I think the biggest problem with air right now isn't how they interact with the ground, but how they interact with other air units. Air units simply don't have much of a defined role right now... everything is rather muddled. The ESFs should be dedicated air superiority fighters, the Liberator should be the A2G frame, the Galaxy should be a heavy lift transport, and the Valkyrie should be a light transport.

But currently ESFs spend much of their time as A2G fighter-bombers, Liberators continue to be viable anti-everything platforms, Galaxies are too heavily armored so can be A2G gunships, and too many people are flying the Valkyrie as a mini-Liberator.