[Suggestion] Aerial Bombers

Unless I'm badly mistaken, those 3 are the lock-ons (anni being NS). Small arms fire is probably what killed the rest.

Well those three SAMs alone have more kills than ESFs destroyed by infantry... so I'm not quite sure what's going on. I do recall that you could dumbfire the SAM launchers so maybe they're getting kills that way?

Or maybe if you throw in Liberators and Galaxies the numbers might rise. ESFs though seem to be the most common aircraft during Server Smashes.

Well, there was multiple reasons for that. The first is that liberators are harder to control and require a crew (2-3 players) to be really effective unless ungodly good, and even then...

The second is that everybody uses lock ons (OP) in server smash, making liberators effectively pointless since it just removes 2 more esfs that could be running lock ons.

Off the top of my head, those are the two main reasons.


Yes, you can dumbfire the lock-ons. Though they are not as effective as a regular dumb-fire.

Yes, it is making an influence. And I am highly unimpressed by a feat that could have been accomplished easier and cheaper with wraith flashes. Chances are you could have killed them with the furies on your flashes, without even the need for a second man in the backseat with C4 or mines.

I don't think the ServerSmash is a good way to quantify the power of aircraft on its own..
Basically whenever aircraft starts attacking ground in the SS they have already dispatched the enemy airforce and are supporting a ground platoon. If you don't immediately pull your AA at the first hint of enemy ESFs approaching, chances are you will never get to use it, since the enemy groundplayers will shoot you in the *** as soon as you look somewhere else (the sky).
Which is exactly the same problem you have when you stand between two enemies on the ground, or any other situation where you are suddenly outnumbered, so I don't really see what thats supposed to prove.
Can we somehow organize a little match with a platoon of aircraft vs a platoon of groundpounders? With equal numbers?
Or 24 infantery + 24 aircraft vs 48 infantery?
I think the aircraft would still get more kills, but they would get dispatched and be running out of nanites pretty soon.


And no, the ASPIS should be stronger, but it doesn't suck. And neither does the skyguard.
That there are so few kills for them has other reasons - actually I think 48 skyguard kills is surprisingly high.
Intact baseturrets are about as rare as duster liberators. They are the first thing that gets hacked or taken down.
And skyguards... well, they are tanks. The SS is RedeploySide XTREME. And you can't redeploy tanks. Bursters you can load at least in a gal, and they can switch their loadout. Tanks are only used in emergencies, or when you are REALLY sure that you won't need to redeploy in the next couple minutes.

Fury flash! That's one of the cheesiest things in the game. Huh. Yes, I see how it makes a valid comparison with ESFs

You're right! More than that, we could probably do any organized effort with the same result. 12 Sunderers anyone?
Which only proves the point: air is fine.

Well... no it doesn't prove that air is fine either.
It only proves that any kind of concerted effort will simply overpower the kind of unorganised and unaware opponents that make up the biggest part of any enemy force. So, yes - you could have done that with pretty much anything.

To prove anything you need to have some kind of fixed testsetting where you can conduct experiments and gather data.
But the problem already starts when somebody tries to define what an aircraft is supposed to be capable of.
Should an ESF equipped with hornets be capable of destroying an MBT by hovering above it?
Should it be capable of destroying it in 4 seconds by hovering above it?
Should it be able to destroy it in 4 seconds by approaching very low - well in range of the MBTs main gun - from the rear and shooting all rockets in the rear armor?
Should it be able to do that when there are two skyguards around?

Ugh... PS2 is a game about size, and numbers are exceedingly important.
I have sait it time and again, and I have yet to see proof that I am wrong: The problem why air seems to dominate everything (which it doesn't seem to me, but whatever) is because nobody shoots back at it.
Every single one of the 20 heavy assaults in a 48+ fight seems to think "I'm just gonna shoot a rocket, he's gonna fly away and repair and so on..., let someone else take care of it"
And then nobody pulls his G2A launcher, they get killed over and over and everybody rages "Air OP, pls nerf"

Problem is that players don't want want their aircraft to be as fragile as it should be.
I mean, what kind of ammo does Aspis flak shoot ? Something like 20mm flak ?
Excuse me sir but any REAL plane would be in REAL trouble if it took just a couple of these in his ***...

PS2 ESFs are seriously OP. Anyone who disagrees doesn't know what a plane/chopper is...
But then again it s about the same for tanks. One point blank rocket should be a much bigger deal than it is right now...

Going back to ARMA... -> [ ]

I think AA is fine as it is. The most common complaint I see is that it is a deterrent, that aircraft will fly away to repair. GOOD!
You've done your job as an AA unit, that aircraft is out of the battle and no longer harming your allies! It doesn't matter if they come back, you're still there waiting for them! If you're playing AA in the hopes of gaining a lot of experience and kills, you're doing it for the wrong reasons.
As for aerial bombers, a big no.

And why should AA be the only role that doesn't get a rightful reward ?
Or let s just remove XP alltogether.
If you re playing this game for XP you re doing it for the wrong reasons...

I don't disagree, but that works both ways.
Any real tank would be in real trouble if a plane dropped two armorpiercing rockets on it. (The turret would be too....)

Tank armour is as riddiculously weak as their internal integrity is riddiculously high.
You can harm them with 20mm machineguns, but to really destroy them you need to put 4 or 5 120mm holes through it.
And their armaments are laughable. Yes a guy with a rocketlauncher can basically OHK a tank in RL - if he is lucky. But the tank can wipe out a platoon (and the building they are seeking cover in) with a couple shots.
In PS2 neither are the threat they should be to each other. And sadly the guy with the rocketlauncher is the more threatening one, thanks to the abundance of that type.

Same applies for helicopters/ESFs. Yes, you can definitely kill them with one rocket, or a couple FLAK bursts.
But if you don't have your weapon trained on him when he appears you would be in serious need for clean undergarments - for the last two seconds of your life and the life of everyone else in your vicinity.

And those are not the only things that are seriously UP.
Somebody (might've been ColonelChingles) explained to me how a real claymore works. If we implemented that the rage would surpass ZOE-, Striker-, Tank- and Airhate combined.

AA can give plenty of experience, especially with Air Deterrence bonuses. When playing AA you are limited to gaining XP from aircraft alone, that's your fault if you picked a bad fight.
Most people play first-person shooters to shoot people in first-person view, to have fun. XP allows you to grow, to make you feel like you've made progress. XP is an added bonus to simple playing the game.

Thread has been derailed so far its about to hit space Mexico.

I'm not wrong. You are, but you are trying to put up a strawman argument to divert attention away from the current topic to avoid admitting you're wrong.

I don't fly ESFs, Sherlock.

You mean, no experience.

Of course not Sherlock. There is no "win" with you, your bias towards air is very evident in your post history. You've already made up your mind before entering this thread. All you're trying to do is trying to create a false grass roots movement that air is somehow OP.

So all you've managed to find is an air zerg making a difference in what could only be a 48vs48 fight? Thanks for proving my point.

Again, stop trying to divert the topic. Nobody is arguing with you that air is effective/ineffective in general. You made a specific point to argue that "air is not useless in a large battle". So far, I've seen no proof, from your experience (or lack of) or any other sources.

You're just splitting hairs. "Not 100% correct." "It's situational" "Sometimes". Not going to argue semantics with you over what's technically useless and what's not. So fine, show me 20 ESFs owning in a big battle.

There was evidence that I posted from the Server Smash stats that the Mosquito kills about 13 infantry for every time it is killed by infantry (and really SS is all about the ESFs and infantry... there isn't much else going on).

We can also probably assume that most SS battles are "large battles" because ghost capping really isn't a thing in SS. Too much redeploy and too many eyes watching a map.

Therefore if Mosquitoes are getting 13:1 in large SS battles, I don't think that's being "useless".

I think that's just one of the other disadvantages with the Skyguards... their lack of mobility and transference to different battles.

For example, why doesn't redeployside negatively affect the use of ESFs? Because ESFs can fly quickly from one side of the map to another!

Maybe then the right way to buff Skyguards is to get rid of the redeployside-disability (if that is what you think is the problem instead of their terrible DPS). Just give a Skyguard-specific discount to Lightnings when they spawn with a Skyguard turret. Such Lightnings should get a 100% nanite discount, making them effectively free. In that way a redeploying force will not be discouraged in pulling Skyguards because they face no nanite loss if they have to redeploy in the next 45 seconds.

The same should be done for other ground vehicles, because as SS clearly shows they aren't used nearly enough. Reduce nanite costs until the penalty for driving a ground vehicle that you'll lose 30 seconds later to redeploy is negligble.

The game had a "deconstruct" ability in the vehicle management once. I still don't know why they removed it...
There was talk about implementing a resource return when doing that, which would pretty much do what you want (a 100% discount for skyguards is a bit extreme, don't you think?)
That was back when we had 3 different resources and we got them at 5 min ticks of course.

EDIT: Putting all that redeploy nonsense in the trash bin would be a neat solution too. Or implementing that aircraft that could carry tanks.

I meant "I don't fly a lot". Certainly not gonna fly just to prove something to someone with head in sand.

You have no right to say that. In this thread I had not shown my bias in any way.

What I was trying to do is to discuss a point in civil manner, and maybe find a compromise. You've clearly shown that's not gonna happen with you. I'm outta here.

Good points as usual, Colonel. Although I think your points might highlight a (small) advantage air has that ground simply doesn't: mobility.

Assuming a group of aircraft is well led, after they destroy whatever ground target(s) they were after, they can be at the next promising fight in a minute or two later. And while you can do some SERIOUS damage in a tank as long as you're not alone and you're not reckless about it, once you've annoyed enough enemies, you have to travel a lot longer than an aircraft would to find greener pastures.

Obviously this doesn't make aircraft inherently "better" than ground vehicles. But it does tend to give them more opportunities to catch the enemy unprepared (because nobody wants to sit in a Skyguard with nothing to shoot at). Maybe what's needed is more AA weapons that have a little AI or AV capability, just enough that gunners won't resent gunning when the skies are clear. The Walker is pretty good where it is in that regard, but maybe it's time to give the Ranger a little AV effectiveness. At least then people will actually USE the damn thing.

Haquim, I seem to recall that MAX Bursters were more powerful an accurate during the time that video was taken. This would mean that in a recent video the Liberators would only curbstomb them even more, as the resistances against shells and rockets might have gone down since that video but I can't recall any Flak resistance lowering patches for Liberators.
So the evidence would point to Liberators having become even more powerful against MAX groups on account of MAX Flak having become less accurate. Also things like ZOE have been changed since, which could have accounted for a lot of extra (unseen) damage in the video, but that's not certain.

Here's an interesting thing, most classes can get some form of AV, even if it is in C4 that needs to be delivered right on top of the tank. So most infantry can fire back at ground vehicles or ignore them altogether by staying between walls and buildings.
But when aircraft approach, nowhere is safe but inside buildings. And at some point you'll need to pass open ground to reach them, also, the guys inside the building usually set up position to keep the other faction out. These people are all vulnerable, and only the HA can equip a weapon to enage them. And even then, a single Lock-On won't scare them away.
Tanks also can fight infantry with almost every weapon they can equip, if not every weapon. Some of them might be tough to handle against infantry, but it's still possible. And again, to handle aircraft you need to specifically select a loadout for it, and the loadouts specifically designed against aircraft aren't that much.
I'll try to come up with a few video's of Skyguard action, as that's what I got the most experience with. Maybe I got a few video's of two days ago, where a single Solo Liberator was pestering me, and even when I could get a complete magazine into it he had ample time to either kill me or flee, even if he approached from long range there was ample he could do to kill me before I killed him regardless of what I did.

You are not wrong - burster accuracy has since been reduced. And it wouldn't matter one tiny bit. It is flak explosions at an airfleet of huge targets, you'd have to miss on purpose to not hit.
The liberator armor and their cannons on the other hand have been nerfed heavily, and that would certainly matter.

It might have escaped your attention, but ESFs and Valkyries are highly vulnerable to concentrated small arms fire.
Also the guy with the ESF equipped himself with an ESF so I don't think it is unreasonable to demand that the guy who wants to get rid of him equips himself accordingly instead of magically being effective against him because infantery masterrace.
Regarding the AV for all classes - go kill a harasser with your AV and tell me how it worked.
Or a tank, running at him over an open field - there is no cover in the air for the aircraft either after all.

Regarding that sololib....
It is hardly believable that you didnt manage to dump 100rounds into him, but that a solo liberator that you can see coming is supposedly a threat is beyond me.