Flying has become pure garbage.

You are missing several very important factors. Most important of all that skyguard is nothing like a grenade. You are using one part of my argument and then twisting it out of context as much as you can.

Just for you: Grenades are one-shot weapons that can be used as tactical weapons to cause enemies to move out of the way. Skyguards are completely different, as already mentioned in 200 other posts.

"Only top weapon worth using for AA"
Well, we don't have something similar for primary weapons. and we need it. So what the hell are you trying to say here? "Skyguards are good because there's Walkers about"? That's the same as saying "pre-nerf ZOE is OK because VS got a beamer"

That's all I'm saying: We need new G2A options with different mechanics. Flak has too many ways it's either UP or OP. Burst fire options sound great as new alternatives.

The benefit of teamwork is not "automatically win battle X". Teamwork should be a power increase because you pull something off. Teamwork needs to cost effort to pull off, not "we banded together so we stand strong", but an actual tactic that improves your game.

Theoretically it is teamwork, but it's not the kind I want to promote, especially because it directly destroys other attempts of teamwork. Having a twice as large group of combined arms classes together would be worse than having half that of infiltrators in this case, assuming the infiltrators have the threshold to kill players in one salvo.
And that's bad teamwork. Teamwork that protects against a larger variation of tougher to pull off teamwork is a bad form of balance and needs to be fixed. So why would we add it?

Lashers have too slow a muzzle velocity, too little damage and too large a bullet to pull off a one-salvo kill with any accuracy. You would need too many Heavies facing the same player and need too much leading to pull it off.

5 people force multiplying is good, but giving any 5 people coming together a 200% damage boost "just cos teamwork" would be almost the exact same! There's no reason to reward teamwork simply because people came together! There's reason to reward teamwork because they worked as a team. Doing one thing, IE "we shot at the same guy together", should not automatically be rewarded! Teamwork is also about skill, and the skill pulling stuff off together!

Otherwise, are you really saying that all the Zergs and Zergfits should simply be rewarded?

Yes, but it should be balanced. If a similar group of people uses a similar amount of choices and teamwork, they should be able to gain similar power. And that's just not happening, not with Skyguards, not with my infiltrator example.[/quote]

A traditional flight model would be more intuitive to new players. But every time it's broached it gets shot down by pilots because the current flight model is unique.
I don't know either.

Just out of curiosity because I see the idea being repeatedly thrown around that the flight model is hard to learn, what's actually hard about it?

I came from games that had mouse X and Y mapped to yaw and pitch respectively, but it only took me a day or so to get used to it being roll and pitch instead. I guess adding the option for using yaw-pitch would be reasonable, but any players using it would be at a fundamental disadvantage because the aircrafts turn rates vary on each rotary axis with yaw being weakest. I have seen the roll-pitch system used before as well so I don't think it's too odd.

There is the hover mode but that seems pretty simple to understand, go slow enough and you hover, the engines are visibly shown to point down (with the exception of the scythe). There are techniques like the reverse manoeuvre, but that's where the depth kicks in and isn't part of the 'easy to learn' bit, that's the mastering bit.

Is it not more that it simply does have a lot of depth to it combined with the fact that you are forced into relatively tiny arenas against people of high skill level. So flying is actually not that hard, but the problem is that you are forced to face people who have mastered it constantly, so it appears difficult. None of my friends who tried it had much difficulty adapting to the controls, but had a lot of difficulty surviving in the air against other esf's.

Maybe the simplest way to help resolve the issue would be to make a 'battle isle' just for aircraft, so basically a small sky continent where pilots can go expecting to get higher level opponents and some challenge. That would bleed a lot of the higher skill players away from the rest of the continents allowing newbie pilots more room and simultaneously letting high level pilots have a place to practice and fly against each other without ground fire being an issue. Probably wouldn't take very long to implement either if it was just a handful of bases set over an ocean or something.

the problem isn't realy the flight model per se ... but it's effect on your aim.

The combination of mouse roll and keyboard pitch
with them beeing out of sync ... and thanks to short increase in pitch over time never realy in sync nor very predictable (for new pilots) is just a bad idea.

It alone tough wouldn't be that bad ... it's the fact that somewhere down the road the devs decided that unintuitive and unpredicable movements and high dps precision guns (main noseguns) are the way to go ... that combination is what screws new pilots over.

And sadly it's not something you can overcome, without focusing your gameplay almost entirely on air combat.
Meaning ... the new guy gets pummeled for weeks ... and what would ve taken a few days to learn takes weeks to months, simply because a lack of airtime and training options.


While i like your idea of a dedicated air island ... it wouldn't help a bit ... the new guy would still just get shot down and has to wait for nanites.

What is needed imo are:

1. passive nanite gain in vr (give the new guy a chance to train while waiting for nanites)
2. at the very least some stationary air targets (not just placed on the ground)
3. a way to /duel someone in vr ... BUT preventing death (simply lock the guny on "death" for 10seconds or so
4. a main gun that has the same mechanics (meaning bullet drop ...) as the nose guns BUT a Flak mechanic.
Meaning the rounds should explode once close enough and therefore help the new guy with landing hits (even when the indirect ones do a lot less damage)

Yeah I guess looking at the default starting weapons it's not too easy to generate certs from the esf's. The nosegun + afterburner combination is a great dogfighting build but hard to use for a newbie. I think I certed out the rocket pods as soon as I could so I could start doing ATG work since I didn't have the aiming skills to kill much with the nosegun.

I think your suggestions about the VR make a lot of sense, maybe the easiest way to allow for people to fight is to add a dummy HP bar in yellow or something beneath the regular one for any allies you are looking at. This would simulate the damage you are taking so let you practice against another player in any vehicle, not just esfs.

A flak cannon on esf's might be a bit much though, it may eclipse all the other noseguns if you can concentrate 100% on dodging while flinging flak shells out.

I agree this has always been ****. Devs probably wonder why new players are frustrated and quit, oversimplify the gmae by adding bullet tracers, death map, koltyr (stupid waste of time and resources) but then they allow esf to fly over infantry with weapons like the Airhammmer. Being instakilled by something you have zero ways to counter is ridiculous.

AA being a deterrent really screwed the game up.

Air ends up killing ground or being much more effective against it then they should be.

Ground ends up desperately trying to counter something with something not designed to be good at countering.

Did you think for once that maybe thats how people defend by flyers that just go around with ppas and **** like that killing everybody? you complaing for people defending them selves,what exactly do you expect when you go near an army?

They piled up too much on each side trying to balance ground and air. In my opinion they need to stop with trying to balance all the ground against all the air and go for a rock-paper-scissors approach.

Liberators should be good against ground targets, having high flak resistance and faster recharging flares, with good air-to-ground weapons but low anti-air ability.

ESFs should be good against other aircraft, including liberators, but have less air-to-ground capability, relying on hit and run tactics to avoid the anti-air. In addition, ESFs should get bonus exp for kills made by liberators in the same zone or in a certain radius, and higher exp for taking down other ESFs that are attacking friendly libs.

Ground AA could be reduced with the above changes, as the number of threats against the ground would already be reduced. Whether this is done by nerfing certain weapons or completely removing them would be more up to DBG, though if there are less threats people may use them less on their own.

For those who don't want to have to team up in a lib to take on ground targets, consider making a second type of ESF for ground targets that's not quite as powerful as the liberator but not as powerful as ESFs currently are in areas with low AA. This could be done by adding other modifiers to certain ESF weapons, making you better at combating one type of target but reducing your ability against the other.

These are my ideas to help the ground-air situation, feedback appreciated.

Defense vs Air is important ... but it requires and interplay ... a give and take if you want.

Currently you have 2 very frustrated sides:

The aa user that hates not beeing able to participate in the groundfight he came for, hardly gets any certs and whne it comes to fighting experienced pilots only ever sees them flying away.

That aint fun.

BUT

From the pilots perspective it isn't better.
He gets shot at from an unidentifyable enemy (lock on) or a base turret or skyguard he has no chance to ever defeat
(talking esfs here ... i know libs are different ... but honestly we were in need of a specialised counter to them for years now)

The only thing the esf pilot can do is run ... there is no engagement here ... no test of skill, luck and determination ... no exchange ... not even a real fight.


G2A is either a frustrating deterant with in case of flak an honestly nutty range ... or instant death, once stacked.
Nowhere in this equasion is room for the esf to actually fight back.

This isn't unique to Pilots. Everyone has to run away from certain fights.
I run away from aircraft all the time because I know my chances of defeating them are inversely proportional to how good the pilot is. It's not even that bad for pilots either. I might drive 5 minutes to get to a fight only to find it's over or there's just too much air cover and then I turn around and drive to another one. For pilots it's 5 seconds.

That's oddly the point. The main power of Air, for ESFs, at least, is their mobility. Point-defense Anti-Air needs to pressure Air to back off because, as oft mentioned, it often does not offer the ability to tank Air damage or outmaneuver Air's mobility advantage. Perhaps a Sunderer with Blockade Armor gets more mileage than other things in this category. A Harasser with an AA gun up top too; but, the Harasser is always more of a "chase" platform than it is suitable for point defense.

If Air had the time to turn around when engaged by anti-air, while being engaged by anti-air, and spot the source, with most certainty that source will quickly and easily be killed by it.

Go ahead ... pull an esf ... heck take hornets even and try defeating a skyguard or a base turret ... lockon heavies are vulnerable but since you usually only spot them once the first missile is in the air (meaning almost 1/2 of your hp gone) that doesn't bode well either.

AA harassers actually are the only thing that realy can be defeated by an esf ... but if it has a gunner and a driver then ... well you have to be quite ontop of your game ... and the harasser gunner has to miss quite a bit or engage from to far away.


The issue is ... that while a lonesome g2a unit isn't usually deadly by itself vs an experienced esf pilot ... for the pilot there is nothing else to do than to run ... which ofc means that both sides end up with a bitter aftertaste in the mouth^^

So AA doing what pilots said they should do is bad now.

Actually, if i were going to fly against them, I'd favor using a crewed Liberator over an ESF.

The bitterness comes from people who play anti-air for points or trophies. As altruistic as it might be to dispose of it myself rather than let it become someone else's problem, no matter how pragmatic it might be to juggle the same target for ribbons, I would rather the plane puts its tail between its legs and get out of my airspace and not come back.

If we're going forward with the complaint "there is nothing else to do than to run," we can come to terms with all those things that can't run or retaliate against flying opponents while we're at it.

You won me over a long time ago, but even so it still bears saying: Very nice analysis of his post.

Well done!

For Indar and Esamir, fly low. It takes people a lot longer to realize you're near them when you're flying so close to the ground, and you can get away from enemy flyers pretty fast on Indar if stick to canyons.

You say it yourself, the mastering is the depth and that's hard. The problem is that once you start learning those maneuvers you start becoming much more powerful than other aircraft players. And thats the problem: The two best maneuvers in the game that you can reliably pull off are bugs and bad hitbox mechanics: RM and Hover fighting. These combat maneuver dominate over all others, and the person who's best with them will almost automatically win.

In other games the combat has multiple things you can do at any time. In PS2 it's highly limited, almost every 'normal' maneuver you can pull off, such as swerving, tight turns etc, gives your enemy an advantage by allowing them to get closer and a better shot at you. This further limits the amount of things you can do and gives more power to RM and hover fighting.

This can easily be expanded, causing more people to enjoy flying (win), more people to fly (win), aircraft to be busy with more A2A fighting than G2A farming (win) and overall making the game a better place.

"automatically" after 40 hours of intense practice, learning a specific skillset, and only if the other fighter isn't equal or better, and only if the engagement starts with full HP and fresh cooldowns, and if neither pilot is being targeted by other units. but totally automatic. once again you post pages and pages of garbage to excuse the fact that you can't play the game and want DBG to remake it so you can. honestly even if they have you the game you want, I bet you'd be garbage at that too and STILL spend hours a day whining here.

Im honestly suprised when thees threads come up complaining that every heavy is carrying a lock on launcher. When in reality they switched to it because they are tired of the A2G esf obliterating their forward advance i mean what do you expect? people to just sit there and get farmed like good little certs? Is it because it requires little skill and just a little time to lock on and fire and if several people are doing it your going to die? the funny part is alot of thees ESF pilots get pissy and ***** at the ground troops for doing it and i dont get why nobody expects people to just sit there and get farmed and it isnt like they have any other options to deal with air other than lock ons. Plus alot of the good pilots kill people while they are locking on anyways and when they get shot down and they cry about it im just sitting there like oh no 4 people decided to try and take out just you and you only killed 2 of the 4 of us before the lock ons finished and you died is that really something to cry about.

Alot of pilots come into threads and go "if air is so OP and easy why dont you do it" and i dont believe its easy but i also would like them to sit and do the opposite if AA is so OP why dont you sit around for a day and fight air without using air see how fun that is.