[Vehicle] It's time to fix FlaK

I know many people have been complaining about ESF's and Liberators and Aircraft for a while now and it seems that the fix for this air-spam problem is obvious. We need to rebuff Vehicle mounted FlaK as well as the Aspis Phalanx AA Batteries.


The Skyguard = Crap against anything smaller than a galaxy, it does not reliably hit anything.

Aspis AA Phalanx Turret = Crap in general, doesn't do enough damage and the FlaK explosive is unreliable.

G-40F Ranger = Crap against anything over 100mm away, damage output is negligible and does not deter ESF's with Hornet missiles from continual harassment of the mechanized unit, nor does it deter or destroy liberators.

MAX Burster = Reliable, possibly overperforming

Lock-Ons = Crap, unable to put out enough damage, flight is too slow, lock on timers too long (with or without stealth to modify), flight unreliable and easily manipulated by ESF's to fly into terrain.

G-30 Walker = Okay but not great, its damage is negligible and accuracy is okay but not explosive.


FlaK are dedicated anti-aircraft batteries that cannot really affect ground based combat, by taking on FlaK you make yourself vulnerable to ground attacks, the fact that they perform so poorly against their intended targets is why Aircraft are as numerous and infuriating as they currently are.

While I do agree that dedicated AA weapons like the Skyguard and the Ranger could do with some improvement, the main problem is that so few people are willing to invest in and pull AA weaponry when the situation demands it.

I therefore believe that the XP reward for damaging aircraft (air deterrence?) should be significantly increased.

People would be more eager to use them if they weren't broken an unreliable against air-threats. It's like firing bullets that only decide to hit 1/5th of the time.

That IS the basic nature of military aircraft, they ARE hard to hit. Even if you buff AA weaponry until it is OP, the XP that you will gain from pulling it regularly will always be much less than what you could earn by using anti-ground weaponry.

more incentive => more use of AA => less aircraft-spamming

That is actually a good idea. Buff the XP, not the AA weapons. I have no problems getting kills with my Skyguard.. but considering the cert cost for a maxed out skyguard.. the XP is not that great. Granted, they made changes it so that you can actually kill infantry, finally, and do damage to other vehicles, if you are close enough, but those are rare occasions.

The fact remains that one Skyguard is a deterrent, two Skyguards are deadly, and three of them can make almost any area a NO-fly zone.. they do stack very nicely, if you can find that kind of teamplay. However, the XP gained from that exercise makes me want to pull them less and less.
Lock-ons and other launchers also stack amazingly well, none of these AA weapons need a buff. It's just that too few people use them.
AA turrets are just fine. I get plenty of kills with those, because one should only use them as a last ditch effort, when a base is seriously getting pounded by air, when the enemy comes close enough.. if they are not close, use Skyguard or Launchers. No need to buff them.

Doc is right on the money here, increase the XP for air damage and more people will pull more AA.. natural selection will thin out the air armadas... or so the wishful thinking goes. DBG should try it, maybe even just to make it a special XP weekend for AA.

Flak is so terrible in this game that the Liberator's Daltons (with a 11-14 aircraft KPH) are more effective AA than a Skyguard (6 aircraft KPH). To reiterate, an A2G weapon is about twice as good at killing aircraft than a dedicated AA weapon.



Yeah, that's how you know flak is broken.

Though the nature of military aircraft is also that they ARE extremely fragile. Your C-130 transport plane, which is pretty much our Galaxy, would be very lightly armored and vulnerable to even small arms fire. AC-130s (on which the Liberator is based) are only partially armored, and the newer AC-130Js can only withstand LMG fire (not even HMG) in some small areas.

Even the A-10, which is about as heavily armored as aircraft get, can only withstand 23mm rounds... in some places. The point is that no aircraft should be able to take more than a handful of flak rounds or one or two SAMs... but in PS2 we have the ridiculous situation where aircraft can take direct 150mm AP rounds to the cockpit and just be dandy.

AA needs to be made much more lethal to aircraft, where if aircraft fly into the engagement envelope of AA they should have a high chance of destruction.

We could say the same about bullets to the head, snipers taking down targets from 1000 meters away, AV rockets blowing up tanks with one shot and APC (Sundy) getting blown up by one tank shell.. the RL comparison does not stack in the game, as almost everything in game has a very long time to kill.. almost everything.
If you turn AA into its real life counterpart, wouldn't we have to do that with every other weapon as well..? balance and all..

If you see one MAX with bursters, no big deal.. but two or three of them and suddenly ESF confetti is raining from the skies..
same for launchers or skyguards.. they work. I guess the idea is to give pilots a fighting chance, or nobody would be willing to pull an ESF, if they were to become even more vulnerable to AA.

The exception being the Liberator.. but again, two players with launchers, two good skyguards and the liberator is toast before they can turn tail.

AA is fine, if not OP right now.

Aircraft are fine, if not OP right now.

See what I did there?

Sure you can extend TTKs... but TTKs must be extended proportionally. If you want players to stay alive longer for gameplay reasons that's fine... but it still must make sense where the TTKs are still appropriate relative to each other.

The problem is that we have an exceptionally low (or some might say realistically low) TTK for a Liberator attacking ground vehicles, but an exceptionally long TTK for AA to destroy a Liberator. That's the problem with PS2 balance and why it is so horribly broken. I have no problem at all with Liberators having such a quick TTK against tanks... my problem is that the reverse is not true.

I think that if they made the aircrafts more difficult to fly when damaged and near uncontrollable when under 10% health this would not even be a discussion, and it would be more realistic.

I'm pretty sure when vehicles are on fire which is around 5% they are harder to control. I think it would be nice for vehicles to be damaged gradually like wings getting damaged and things like that, so that when a Liberator goes head on towards a skyward it will come out of the battle struggling to fly if damaged in the correct spots.

I love how people who have no idea about the flight game make suggestions on how to balance air.

Go fly a plane.

Come back here with a video of how awesome you did.

I want to see some amazing kill streaks and some really good piloting.

Otherwise, stop talking.

Flak in this game is so overpowered and overused its crazy.

Go fly around in a plane.

You think its so easy and flak is so weak.

A silly turret from 1km away can get you to half health in a second in your ESF.

Every turret in the game is manned 24/7 near any battle and often far from any battle because flak is the easiest weapon in the game to use.

Sounds like you are just playing the wrong game.

This is a game that has airplanes, and it already has so much flak and g2a locks that i spend considerably more time on the ground now than i do in the air.

I can't even imagine how bad you have to be to be angry about air these days.

Air is a nonfactor in any major fight.

I probly had 200 deaths today and only 2 of them were from ESF while i was in a ground vehicle or as infantry.

These posts filled with nothing but ignorance really should stop.

Go fly. Come back with videos of you pwning.

Then ill listen to what you have to say.

Take jiangqing (aka colonelchingles) for example. 5 hours 27 mins in a lib 42 kills. 13 hours 30 mins in a reaver with 8 kills.

This is not enough experience to speak intelligently about balance or performance of any weapon system.

The grass is always greener on the other side.

Skyguard actually makes a2g worse because it prevents pilots like me, who mostly fly a2a from getting close to those ground pounders half the time.

I fly in to kill the a2g podders and im getting locked onto and splattered by flak and i have to fly away.

So in reality skyguard creates a safe zone for their friends to pound the ground unopposed.

What would really help the game would be for flak to only detonate in the presence of a2g weapons.

Lets say that a2g weapons require some element which isnt present in a2a weapons that allows them to be locked onto by ground weapons and which cause flak to detonate.

ESF then flying with AB or a2a missiles would be immune to flak detonation and unlockable by ground forces.

In order to kill ground with a nosegun you really have to be so close and hovering that its easy to get shot down by small arms and dumbfires so i dont think this would cause a problem, especially since the nerf to noseguns vs infantry.

Coyotes should still cause flak and locks to work because they are nearly as good against ground as rocket pods. In fact I find it easier to kill ground with yotes due to their higher rate of fire.

I've said it before, I'm not a military man or very knowledgeable about modern weapon systems.
But wouldn't tanks get destroyed almost instantly whenever a bomber or a attackhelicopter throws some anti tank their way?

A friend of mine also told me of a demonstration he witnessed, I still don't know if he was making fun of me since I have no real way checking it. A helicopter shot at a tank that was already damaged beyond repair, with some high-caliber chaingun that shot special bullets. Something with uranium I think? According to him the tank was riddled with holes 30cm wide after that.....

If RL looks like this, and you want to get closer to it I'm all for it. Air and Ground killing each other almost instantly is fine by me.
But it will do the exact opposite of what you want it to do.
Galaxies will almost vanish from the air. Liberators will wreak untold destruction for a couple minutes before finally someone gets the right idea and shoots it down. A2G ESFs will zoom in on strafing runs, destroying vehicles and infantery with ease. A2A ESFs will rejoice, for once again they can kill other ESFs before they even notice they got hit.

The difference between RL and the game is simple:
In RL the general (or whoever is in charge) will tell his soldiers to man he AA tanks at his disposal and watch the damned sky while his force advances - or digs in or whatever he wants to do. And they will do it. All day long.
Now try that in the Game. "AA is boring - find someone else to do it." IF you actually find someone, good luck making him guard your sundy and armor for the 15 minutes your infantery fights to capture the base. Even if he is willing to do it, he will want to rotate for someone else so he can have some fun and you're stuck at step one, finding another one to do the "boring" stuff.
Real soldiers don't want to get shot at and will do everything they can to prevent it happening.
Game soldiers get bored if they don't get shot at, and are outraged when the shots are coming from the sky...

Buff AA closer to RL all you want if you buff the opposite side with it - it won't fix the problem.
I have said it time and again: The problem is the players, not the arsenal.

Fun story from yesterday: 3 NC heavies on a mountain. They killed every TR ESF in the area - with the exception of me, because I was the only one running flares.

I read the title thinking this was going to be a MUCH different type of thread.

The only thing that needs to be fixed with flak, is it needs bullet drop so you can't hit someone on a rope at 1000m horizontally.

/the end.

Wow you flyboys have short fuses.

(On a rope?)
Can you even see someone 1Km out? Last I heard, the Vehicle draw distance was either 600m or 700m max.

I guess you're talking about me..
Well, you gotta see it from my side.
First of all, to save you the trouble of looking the stuff up yourself, my data regarding those matter:

My total playing time is

53d 8h

As a "flyboy" I got 139h 1m in my Mosquito. I have two alts, but I only ever use them to test my enemies' weapons, so that is my flytime as ESF. In that time I killed 4,552 enemies and 2,119vehicles.

On the Ground, I shot my Grounder 1238 times, 786 of which hit their target. Since I only ever use it if there is air to scare off those are propably 95+% shots at and hits on airtargets. At the same time I only made 57 kills with it. But that is caused by the ******* "bailassault" *meta*, which I personally hate with a passion.
My bursters shot about 57500 shots, 20000 of which found their mark. Combined they have only 110 kills. For the same reason as the grounders mainly... and wittling away on those ******edly tanky skywhales.
In my skyguard I have 9.5h (which is actually over 50% my time in Lightnings), killing 121 people in that time with a 35% accuracy.
(those are from stats.dasanfall since PS2 players won't tell me those, thats why they look different)

I know both sides, and really, Liberators are more of a threat to me in an ESF. If I don't see them they evaporate me out of nothing, if I see them and can do evasive maneuvers they still only need one lucky hit. Even if they kill me on the ground I just respawn and carry on...

Groundforces have an abundance of tools to get rid of air, and they are absolutely sufficient.
But they do not use them. They do not want to use them.
So yes - when I see complaints how 50 players claim to be unable to get rid of a couple aircrafts I get angry. Really angry.
Especially with the current *meta* of running firesuppression all it takes is three guys out of that platoon to equip a G2A RL and use it when they spot an aircraft. It is too much of an effort apparently.

What most of them want is not "balance". What they want is a comfortable way to get rid of air without any effort. STRG+ALT+DEL style. Spot aircraft, equip gun, point at aircraft, shout PEW, watch aircraft blow up and go on.
Which is, aside from the equip at terminal stuff, propably not that far from reality. And if I can carpet bomb the ground peasants RL style too I would even be fine with it.

The only things of OP that I can agree to is that the Ranger is horribly underwhelming, and that the ASPIS is bad. The latter is basically a burster MAX with a worse CoF.
IMO all the fixed turrets are far too weak. It should be a dual walker on steroids, something that can kill a Lib in 10 seconds.

I'm pretty sure he's exaggerating for dramatic effect. Occassionally you CAN annoy libs flying 1km in the distance with your walker though. While that in itself is not a problem since the damage will be negligible, it also means that the lib has to fly at you for 900m before he can shoot back....
Of course that only works in regions without many mountains.