As a full time Liberator Pilot

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by A Crispy Taco, Jun 7, 2014.

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  1. Rhumald

    Ok, I just checked in game, no, we're both wrong.

    (note, these are horizontal speeds only)

    Reaver w/ racer: 234 to 264 (Using up thrust) +booster is 364 to 370 (again, with up thrust)

    Lib w/ Racer is 220 to 250, and 270 to 271.

    There's some weird mechanics that come into play when you fly at the right angle that can add an additional 100m/s to both of those speeds though, unique to the Lib.

    ... and now I'm out of air resources for a while. :/
  2. Gundem


    Oh, I suppose I spoke to soon... :oops:

    But either way, a Lib can never outrun a racer ESF, especially a Mossie, with it's higher average top speed. Nor the Reaver with it's huge AB speed.

    But I thought for sure the Reaver went up to like, 450kph... It's the only ESF that can outrun Lock-ons, and don't they travel at like 400m/s?
  3. Gundem


    Resist values, my friend.

    Lock-ons do Medium Ordinance, which Sunderers have a -50% resist towards. Standard Rocket Launchers deal Heavy Ordinance, which Sunderers have a +17% resist towards.
    • Up x 1
  4. Obstruction

    this is closer to accurate. the effect you're seeing is the "gravity" effect that causes liberators to descend automatically when they tip past 90 degrees roll. many pilots (especially precision and high-g pilots) use this to help the lib's poor acceleration from standstill, or to boost cruising speed a little by flying a knife edge. the thing to keep in mind is that you sacrifice altitude to gain any more than about 10 kph, and you have to keep your nose pitched up - which presents a larger hit profile to chasing attackers.

    this also synergizes well with "flying upside down" which means rolling to about 150 degrees, while pitching the nose up 20 degrees or so to maintain altitude. this presents the belly and tail gun a reasonably clear shot at chasing attackers, while using the gravity effect to increase top speed. if you don't pitch the nose in this maneuver you will fall, and consequently gain speed up to a max of about 320-325 in a racer frame, which is only sustainable for a few seconds and comes at the cost of altitude (your most important asset, and not easy to gain back in racer frame.) more often you will opt to maintain altitude and inverse-cruise at around 300 kph.

    through all of this keep in mind that afterburner post update caps at 280 kph and will not give you any increased velocity beyond that (without gravity assist,) but will hold 280kph in a flat-angle cruise for the length of the AB fuel before returning to normal cruising speed.

    also bear in mind that the top speeds listed don't account for maneuvers that are required to avoid terrain, nor velocity lost during turns, and don't apply to all areas on all maps by any means. for example, half of indar has the flight deck raised to 500m. you won't get much more than 280-300 out of that little altitude, and with so many bases crammed into that map you're asking to get shelled by ground fire. on the seabed, or along some of the longer valleys of Amerish are much more suitable for this.

    also, in order to provide angles against chasing attackers, the pilot will very often have to pitch up more, and roll more, than optimal for speed. so speed while firing will drop back below 300, as well as presenting a larger hit profile. so there is quite a bit of give and take there.

    finally i think i should mention, since i'm outlining this for all to read, that the most important thing to remember is that this gravity effect comes from people's complaints that Liberators and Galaxies should fall when inverted. an effect about which many inexperienced or totally ignorant players constantly clamor for immediate and dramatic increase. i dare say that this is a mistake on their part, as it would ironically achieve the opposite of their intention- it would lead to an increase in top speed and agility for experienced and talented Liberator pilots under certain circumstances. in fact the answer they seek is actually to make Liberators and Galaxies unaffected by gravity, more like ESFs - which are largely incapable of this type of gravity assisted velocity increase.
    • Up x 2
  5. Rhumald

    Getting a little off topic discussing ESFs solely, but I see people claiming this a lot, I've been looking for guidance in that area because I haven't been able to do it in practice. You can outrun them if you keep your distance from the fight, as they'll only follow you for so long, but then you're not engaged in the fight, and you can do that with any esf runnig racer + AB at that distance. Mostly it just gives you more time to guide them into terrain, and the higher AB brings the Reaver's overall flight performance in line with the other ESFs. The disparity isn't as large as some would claim, butyou can feel the delays your faction's ESF has when facing off with other faction's ESFs, where they perform better, and somehow that always eclipses your own's strengths in your head.

    I'd actually like to see how air battles would play out if everything about ESF's maneuverability and speed were doubled, and nothing else was changed... except forcibly disabling weapons fire over a certain speed limit, so they don't shoot themselves. o.o
  6. DrSpazzinator

    OP approaching the situation with such a strong statement as you "see no reason to nerf the Lib in any category", when at the same time admitting your bias in the form that you only fly libs in this game was certainly the wrong way to approach this. We need to think about the game from other peoples perspectives. I have done a lot of flying liberators for my outfit (granted not nearly as much as you) and i concede that libs require the most coordination between pilot and gunnar of any vehicle in the game. However, the A2G game for a lib requires very little effort in comparison to the A2A game for a lib. As a person who tries to enjoy all facets of the game, i think the Lib (and air in general) has two main balance concerns.
    1. The ability to bring a halt to an infantry fight and make everyone cower in fear in the spawn room.
    2. The ability to kill lone tanks with absolutely no hope for the tank in the form of fighting back. This forces armor to stay with the zergs and detracts from the strategic options open to them.

    I suggest that the only changes made to the lib should be the reduction in the amount of tank rounds a lib can take with composite armor. Composite should take a single extra vanguard/Mag AP round and perhaps two extra HEAT rounds from both of these (doubled likely for the prowler).

    All other changes should be in the form of external influences.
    in order to fix #1 i suggest a weaker variant of an AA turret placed inside the spawnroom with a decent arc that simply provides enough covering fire to keep one or two air targets from being able to hover directly over a spawn.

    In response to the second, tanks need to have higher firing angles. simply being able to feel like you have a chance would go along way. If this proved to be not enough, i think that tanks should become three seaters with the third seat specialized for a basilisk or a walker.

    Other changes i propose are simply splitting up the ESF into A2G and A2A so that esfs can get closer to libs hovering over a base.
  7. Inex

    I'm not quite sure why people keep saying that.

    Am I missing something in the changes?
    They're adding engine noise, but that's a bugfix.
    Resistances are being rolled back (which Lib pilots have kept bringing up as a sensible thing).
    Ammo reserves are being reduced (again, the first time I saw that suggested was from a Lib pilot).
    Guns are being specialized; you might not be able to use your current gun for what you do, but there should still be a gun for you.

    About the only unforeseen nerfs are the TB getting something done to it to bring it in line with the Vector and Spur, and the belly guns are losing some amount of velocity (and again, given the tanks are losing it for the same reason I'm betting on ~10m/s loss here).

    I'm sorry, I don't see "extreme" in here anywhere.
    • Up x 1
  8. FigM

    A lot of potentially great gameplay in this game is limited by the fact that it all has to be balanced against cheap spammable infantry.

    Infantry is holding this game back
    • Up x 1
  9. Blackinvictus

    The nerfs to your vehicle good Sir, as well as to ESF's and Tanks, are nothing but preparation on SOE's part to pave the way for the Valkyrie. Think and the misdirection will become very clear. Nothing to do with balance!

    Bloody brilliant how they went about it, cause nobody realizes it.
  10. Kill2This

    To A Crispy Taco.

    For playing only one aspect of the game, you risk yourself of being very frustrated when nerf bat knock at your door.
    Solution => Learn to play something else and not unbalanced for a while ;).
  11. Phrygen


    Your "team work" isn't worth while for the player. Its garbage xp and certs being on AA duty, and most players don't find it enjoyable. I used my burster plenty, but I really only did it out of spite, and its a remarkable waste of time when i could be off farming.
    • Up x 4
  12. Dreadnaut

    Of the top 5 Tank Buster killers in PS2, the average KDR is 5.3:!
    Of the top 4 Prowler users in PS2, the average KDR is 33:1

    Yes, there are a few things on the Liberator that needs to be nerfed, like ammo capacity on belly guns and reverting the tank shell changes. However, nerfing the Tank Buster is a bad call. It's one of the highest risk vs reward weapons in the game and is hard to use, much like hitting aircraft with the Dalton.

    The proposed changes just make it harder for skilled players to do things that are already incredibly hard (when talking about the Liberator)
    • Up x 1
  13. PastalavistaBB

    I hate Libs. I totally gave up pulling any Ground Vehicle after the Lib update. But after getting to gun Libs full time last weekend, I can say that it's not impossible to kill Libs from the Ground for sure. And even one good ESF pilot can kill a Lib by himself.

    That said, the amount of kills/XP I get from gunning a Lib is insane. The comments from the Recursion Stats Tracker makes it even more so. Getting the Bombardier Achievement with a Shredder + Bulldog Lib in less than 30 seconds? Seems legit.
  14. a-koo-chee-moya

    The question is not Libs being OP, its rewarding teamwork, pulling AA being an example. Currently, you get 20ish xp for hitting air for a couple of seconds, which is quite a while. You might as well be off in a AP Lightning, farming.
    95% of Lib kills are on 25-48 men pushes with only A sunderer or 2 and a tank or 2. A single Lib can wreck those because they weren't prepared so they have no AA. If the 2 useless tanks went skyguard(assuming they are already in the base.), they would've capped the base easy.
    To refrain, all it takes to take down a lib is a little teamwork. 2 ESFs, a pair of Skyguards or Bursters.
    Farming infantry in a tank is even more xp and the teamwork required is 0.01, essentially needing some air and some anti-tank armor, all of which will be pulled without a finger needing to be lifted off the left mouse button. Farming infantry in spawn requires -1000000000 teamwork as you pretty much give up the base by doing it.
  15. Rift23

    Rock is fine, nerf scissors.

    --Paper.
    • Up x 2
  16. Flag

    Every time I see this I'm reminded of an .. interesting take on it.
    • Up x 3
  17. Danath

    • Up x 1
  18. a-koo-chee-moya

    You hit exactly on my point. You get almost nothing for making a lib pull back with AA, while gaining much more for 0 resource cost as infantry.
  19. PWGuy93

    For better and worse, much worse... infantry are the cornerstone of the game.
    The underlying issues aren't that infantry are holding back the game, but the lack of game for vehicles to participate in.
    • What roles to vehicles have in this game?
    • What targets do vehicles have?
    The issue isn't vehicles farming infantry, the underlying issue is that vehicles have little else to focus on, e.g. I remember being able to shoot shield generators way back when, today infiltrators run up press E and run off and wait for other infantry victims to come along that they can shoot.

    What role do vehicles play? They can't capture a point, they can't kill a shield generator, they don't have hard targets other than other vehicles and a few easily targeted base turrets which doesn't move any of the pieces on the map. The game is about infantry and vehicles are just accessories that farm infantry and other vehicles trying to farm infantry.

    It's not the fault of Liberator or ESF pilots or any of the variety of tank drivers that infantry get farmed, they are the soft target and the only ones that move the map.

    If we want engaging vehicle play, then SOE needs to give vehicles their own objectives that don't require farming infantry.

    What role does the Liberator have today, the same one that tanks do, kill a few base turrets, then we all twiddle our thumbs waiting or picking off anything that comes along which leaves all vehicles players with one real objective - farming infantry... because they are the only ones that effect the map - which currently is the only meta game.

    Right now everything seems to get balanced around infantry but from my perspective this is the underlying issue.
    I don't use a vehicle to farm infantry but SOE doesn't give vehicles much else to do. When SOE can understand that vehicles need their own set of objectives that don't place vehicles in the vicinity of infantry then all these base updates, all the "balance" changes wouldn't need to happen as often because vehicles would have hard targets and be busy elsewhere. The few that lolpod or pump tank rounds into spawn rooms wouldn't have the support of dozens of other vehicles because they would be off doing their thing on the hard targets and infantry could counter those few cheesy spawn shield pounders that would in reality be trying to grief infantry. Today it's not really griefing infantry as vehicles do not have their own objectives. This isn't any players fault, it's a game limitation which could be overcome by giving vehicles objectives away from infantry.
    • Up x 2
  20. repinSniper


    And when we take into account this issue that already exists, we can see the interactions of gravity and speed when swapped out of the pilot seat, something as you said, ESFs cannot do: LINK
    • Up x 1
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