[Suggestion] Oshur the air-continent needs and air-overhaul first

Ever since PS2's release, the airgame has gotten a lot of attention from players. But because of a lobsided mechanic in the form of hover fighting (HF) and reverse maneuver (RM) the airgame has been the least played part of the game by a large margin.

If Oshur is going to be an air-centric map as discussed on the livestream the air-game needs a serious overhaul first. ESF being the only real aircraft with successful dedicated AA capabilities means that all other aircraft see even less use. A good air overhaul would allow all aircraft to be used for air-superiority, preferably with each aircraft doing so in a unique way (ESF as fighters, Valkyries as helicopters, Liberators using different munitions and gun placements to form an AA gunship etc). The system would be perfect if no single aircraft dominates.

Considering its unlikely they will want to make ESF anything other than dominate the skies, make sure that the gap between the average player and dedicated ESF pilots is smaller. Currently any intuitive air-maneuver you would use in other games doesnt work in PS2 while HF and RM dominate. This gives new and average players virtually zero options to combat the veterans.
An option would be to introduce an omnidirectional afterburnerafter. It would lower the skillfloor for the average player to perform maneuvers, open up intuitive maneuvers based on direct input by your keyboard and where previously the average player had no answer to HF and RM they would now be able to attempt to counter opponents. It would also mean you can have masters at different maneuvers. This would by no means increase the gap between veteran and experienced players like the auto-granted engagement radar did as the average player would actually be able to perform different maneuvers and be able to surprise the veterans with less predictable movement.

After that some serious thought needs to be put into skillful G2A weapons.

I would like to see a2a lockons vs libs nerfed, and Dalton to lib damage buffed. 6-8 shots on a lib is crazy when u can just sit back and vector a lib to death in less then 25 sec.

A compromise, libs take more damage on the top from nose guns, nerf locks into the ground.

That seems to leave ESFs, gals and valks with a massive buff vs infantry lockons.
Is that part of your rebalance idea?

Aircraft have never been anything in this game but an after thought. An air map will fail miserably if, as it is now, that most people cannot pilot because the mechanics are so screwed up. This will not encourage me to buy a membership as is DBG's hope with all this. It will become just another part of the game I will choose to ignore like building has become. If they want this new map to work, they should redo aircraft mechanics and force everyone to learn to fly from scratch. Without this it's just another Hossin fail.

Been playing PS2 on and off since beta. Chunk hit the nail on the head.

Without a from the ground up new system, nothing they ever do will work. The physics of all the aircraft are just so far removed from real life that most people just ignore air gameplay because it's wonky as hell.

You want air to be more popular, base the flight physics off of real aircraft. Not what SoE thought that future aircraft might do.

1. This means no hovering for ESF, period, VTOL for take off and landing only like in real life.
2. The Valk, aka "Future helicopter", should be the only thing that can hover as a combat mechanic, and for the love of god give it gyrostabilized passenger aim already to make them actually useful at all.
3. In a brawl, an aircraft needs to be balanced around the number of players needed to fully man the aircraft. That means liberators need to be able to 1v3 ESF when full. Galaxies need to be 1v5. That is if in an AA configuration obviously.
4. All aircraft need an AA configuration. All aircraft gunner positions need to be gyrostabilized.
5. No 1-to-1 keyboard and mouse controls, they are horrible, no KBM flight combat game uses them anymore, use an elastic pointer system like virtually all successful games these days. If you don't know what I am talking about go play War Thunder.

Those five changes would take PS2 air gameplay from a well known joke in the gaming community to something that might be fun for everyone, not just the 1% that currently play air.

Adding more complexity to the flying system will simply deter newbies.
If a better heavy can outheadshot you, that's simply it, he's a better heavy, you lose. If it's a better flyer, you're 1v1ing him, you lose, simple.The best way for skill to be countered is with numbers until you're at or a better skill leave than the vet in question. It's also rather easy to learn the reverse maneuver if you just seek practice/help from pilots.

As for vehicle balance, things should've always been in a rock paper scissors style of play, galaxies SHOULD beat ESFs since they have far more armor and should have the option to equip anti-ESF weapons like a better hyena or even flak cannons (or just make the walker viable against them) liberators with tougher armor and anti-armor slow weapons should be able to easily pop galaxies given time and ESFs with swarm tactics and easily maneuverability should be the ones eating libs alive.

Hm. My serious thought: We already have viable AA weapons, what "skillful" generally asks for is something with the ability to reach out, burst an aircraft before it has time to react.

Let's not make the air focused map have more skyguards than we already know it will.

I'm curious how you defaulted to ground to air when I was talking about esf locks.... do you fly?

Buff Walkers, nerf lock-ons and nerf /rework flak is what generally comes to mind when asking for more skillful G2A.

All the more reason to add omnidirectional afterburners! Compare the two: an afterburner that bases it's direction on the way your thrusters stand based on the velocity you are going, or an afterburner that simply enhances the directional input. You press up, with afterburner you go up faster. You press down, with afterburner you go down faster. You press two directions, you afterburn in the resultant direction. This is no different than normal flying but all you do is hold shift to accelerate your direction. If that's already too complex then the newbies can't even take off in the first place.

If a Heavy can outheadshot you, you can change your engagement. You dont try to be a Heavy and outheadshot a superior player but you change the engagement. You pick a range his weapon isnt good at and use a weapon that is effective. Or you pick an LA to flank him, or an Infil, or you snipe him, or lure him into an ambush. There's options, but such options are absent in the air-game.

With infantry for example you have masters at different skills. Doing pure headshots wont get you far if you dont pick the right weapom, dont use trigger discipline, dont know how to find the optimum range, dont use cover properly or how to check your flanks for enemies.

You can modify the skill floor and skill ceiling as well, especially if it'll make sure that that particular part of the game is actually played.

Blanket statement! Your taxes are also easy to learn if you just seek practice/help from professionals. See it works with anything, but like with taxes it might be enjoyable to be able to get fast results but getting there isnt enjoyable.

Also any part of the game that cannot be learned by simple playing the game has already failed. All classes of infantry can be learned by simply playing. All ground vehicle's can be learned by simply playing. And even for all aircraft you can learn to play them down to A2G gameplay, but in the entire game only ESF A2A gameplay requires you to go out of the game and train, or be masogistic and learn during the gameplay.

Rock paper scissers type of gameplay is a terrible idea. You are better off with soft-medium-heavy counters so you never automatically lose just because you met your counter.

Then you havent been paying attention. A simple example would be skillful guided missiles: laser guided with a short-range flak warhead or coyote style missile. Advantages are the speed with which you can fire them without having to wait for a lock, disadvantage is that they arent fire-and-forget and have shorter effective ranges than lock-ons unless the target is hovering. Boom a skillful alternative to current lock-ons right there. And most skillful AA can function like that.

Exactly why we need alternatives to Skyguards in the form of skillful weapons.

All I really want from the "airgame" is Authenticity

The ONLY problem I see with the AirGame is that there's STILL NO WAY TO SPECTATE OTHER PLAYERS from their own reticles to record and report the much higher percentage of Prediction Aimbot cheaters who always use ESF's & Daltons (b/c those are the only guns in the game that are completely reliable at longer ranges while toggling lagswitch and at the same time not being Blatant like Infantry are when they use the same cheats)

I'm not even suggesting this game has a lot of cheaters, it's actually surprisingly few of them I've encountered ever since I came back b/c wow 2 years ago atleast 2.5% of connery VS I fought back then were using sublte Scripts and maybe 1% of TR and NC were too


Yeah, I get where the OP is coming from on the messed up Flight mechanics in this game. NO I dont know how to do reverse manuever and I never intend to learn it out of pure principle that I strongly believe that the Dogfighter airframe should be the Cert that enables actual Dogfighting, not Hovering that should only be useful for 1v1ing a hard Ground Target. So until the Certs themselves are addressed instead ... and maybe the mouse/Yaw controls too... I'm not in favor of any major overhauls to REMOVE OPTIONS for real "Ace" Pilots yet

There is this persitent rumor that early after launch the devs debated adding alternative controlschemes for people to pick from, but decided against it because they hoped to attract players to the airgame with a unique system. They should have done it, and I really hope they still do.

If you're already having trouble hitting moving targets as a newbie, what makes you think that making them move faster up and down will do? If anything this actually buffs skyknights more because they already know the ins and outs of leading.

Or he just forces you into a bad engagement by holding a room that requires you to step in. Comparing infantry to air was only a comparison on the skill level, the complexity level of the two different fields of play are, well, completely different. You can't easily pick and choose good engagements because it's the open air. Plinking at someone only gets their attention and isn't a viable way of fighting A2A.

There's also the issue that air has far less weaponry diversity when it comes to the noseguns, there is the closer range but not really dps gun, the default and the worse default with almost same bullet velocity and less dps. And there's also the fact that it takes more time to kill an aircraft to another aircraft than it takes a heavy to kill another heavy. While infantry only require .3-5 seconds to beam a headshot congaline of bullets into someones skull, aircraft require several seconds to kill depending on the aim of the user. This prolonged engagement style is what newbies have trouble with, not moving faster.

Again, air has far less of this. They do not have vast weaponry diversity. They are not super optimal range finders, they do not require trigger discipline, they do not often use cover even because it's an open airspace.

The overall problem with newbies and vets gap is that newbies are new, no amount of weapon magic will change a guy sucks at flying, it's basically like starting the entire game over when you go into a different section of play.

That's why I'm saying you simply need numbers until you're better at flying, it's also why counterplay is great for the airgame because then you can open up more strategies and coordinated play.

Oh I agree, you can definitely just add auto aim and call it a day, newbies and vets will be forced to be on the same level of skill. But I'm pretty sure that's not what you want.

The thing with changing the skill floor is even if you make the weapon easier to use, vets will still vastly out power you because the skill ceiling is high. If you change the skill ceiling you not only piss off people that took the time to master their craft, you make air far less relevant as a skill and devaluing players that took the time into that category.

So making everything easy is a far better way to go? If that's the case, why don't we simply remove all headshot modifiers and only make everyone equip one weapon, it'll be easy to get into the infantry game at that point when everyone is on the exact same footing.

That's the problem with not trying.

Blanket statement! Calling it simple playing is just as bad as me calling learning from another pilot easy.

Also I call ********. No one comes out of the box as a heavy headshotting everyone, infantry mains take vast hours getting to where they're at, why MUST it be different for aircraft if you can't always 1v1 a vet on equal footing?

It would be terrible, if this wasn't a team oriented game in which you play with literally hundreds of other players. Plus it's not 100% RPS, it's not like you don't deal damage to gals when you're an ESF, you're just far less proficient at it. The same with Libs and ESFs.

But the thing is, right now, gals do not counter ESFs, ESFs counter everything else.

However, the way you're suggesting it, is everything should be a grey puddle of mush. Why exactly should I take an ESF if the liberator and galaxies not only kill armor far more effectively and transport people, but have far more armor than me?

ESFs still ought to do the little things such as mob aircraft and provide escorts, galaxies should need protection from libs with ESFs if they need to transport infantry, libs should use galaxies to establish a flak zone after a bombing run.

It's not like with this model, everything is going to be aggressively shut out, ESFs can chase libs down and require to but if they run into a galaxy that's repairing it and is more difficult to kill it provides a means of deterring ESF spam, likewise if you just have 4 galaxies that want to remove all ESFs you can simply get a couple of libs to focus them down quickly. It's more of a punish system more than it is a removal system.

But if we stick with the grey puddle theorem, numbers are basically everything and we still have problems with that.

That's literally the masamune.

My point is, they're already in the game or you're pandering for more options that are better than what we have now.
But if you can't land hits with the deci to 1 shot an ESF, then you shouldn't be 1 shotting that ESF with an easier weapon to use against that ESF.

uh huh. v

If you want more skillful AA, what are the pros and cons? (Question is for both you and demi).
If flak is already so effective and the plan is nerfing it, why? That just makes it harder for newbies to counter.
If it's for more burst then that's oppressive to aircraft players and suddenly no one will want to play aircraft.
If it's to make the projectiles bullets and to make them faster, how exactly is that skillful by making it easier to land shots?
How can you make it skillful AA when you're aiming at targets like the galaxy and liberators? Those things are almost literally the size of a broad side of a barn.

I'm pretty sure the only things people that want this "skillful G2A" is to make them far more effective than what we have now.

The only thing I want to do is make the walker viable. That doesn't mean make it reach out to 1k meters and melt libs, that doesn't mean kill ESFs in less than 1 second, it just means make it on par with flak in terms of damage

If you are going to be deliberately annoying for the sake of it, presenting bad arguments just to hope someone falls for it, then we cant have a discussion.

I strongly agree with Demigan. The air game is in a bad spot at the moment.

ESFs are jack-of-all-trades hard to learn but with little downsides once you mastered commands. Some of their weapons are really cheese, and the idea to put Engagement Radar as default was bad.

Liberators is quite strange as bomber with Afterburner.

The Valkyrie is awful in the current iteration. The worst weaponry of the game, so fragile infantry can destroy it with firearms, it's not faster than the Galaxy. It pays the fact it has 4 repair slots but is anyone actually using them?

Can't speak for demi but for me skillful AA reduces the eye-roll-BS factor for both the aircraft and the AA vehicle/soldier as well as helps solve the aircraft-AA interaction that has plagued the game for a long time.

A single source of AA is ineffective, be it a heavy with a lock-on or a skyguard. 3-4 skyguards or half a squad of dudes with lock-ons however and nothing can fly. That is the problem with low-skill, low-reward AA. Individually it is weak because it absolutely has to be considering how autopilot lock-ons and flak are, but have a group of them in an area and they destroy all things airborne because of how easy they are to land shots with.

That's been the curse of AA for a while now. Nobody pulls AA because they know 1 source will not make a difference or everyone pulls AA, shuts down the airspace and then are left twiddling their thumbs as no pilot in their right mind will return to an area swarmed with lock-ons and flak which they can't dodge.

Walker-esque AA can be played around and is not frustrating for either side. If a walker gunner kills an aircraft it's gg because that gunner was skillful enough to lead his target and compensate for CoF. Alternatively if a pilot pulls some sleek maneuvers, dodges walker fire and kills the AA operator it's gg as that pilot was obviously skilled. Neither side got screwed by proximity lock on or a big *** rng cone of fire.

Also, good thing about walker like machine gun type AA is that you can add damage drop off to it. Is the AA too good against target at range? How about it only deals 30% of it's maximum damage beyond 250m?

How exactly can you fall for a bad argument? There is no great deception here, you can simply point out the fallacies and disregard them, choosing not to respond to them at all make them seem like they're pretty valid.

If I get shot at by a tank and instantly die, should I applaud the tank? Everyones going to be salty from dying, let's not pretend this isn't the case. But I'll continue.

Yea, no, I call bull. a skyguard can take out an ESF in 3.8 seconds from a fair distance away while cone of fires can moderate this TTK at further distances, it's a far better balance than simply having bullets nick you to death from someone that can laser beam you from 800 meters.

Multiple people dedicating to their roles SHOULD be effective with that role, it's also why we have flares in the first place.
Let me lay it flat for you:
Infantry are easy to move around, easy to replace, killing a squad nowadays means nothing if the beacon is not destroyed, it's like fleas. Lockons are a pest, but this is why we have things like flares in order to perform a safe bombing run in places in which air should be the best help but is heavily guarded by infantry.
Skyguards on the other hand are much more potent but harder to move around, less maneuverable and less defendable. They're vulnerable to almost everything in the game except air. In which it is quite lethal. A pair of skyguards is possibly the most common and yet effective means of securing an area for friendly aircraft to occupy, however this doesn't come without the drawback that other vehicles can kill said skyguards. Instead of pooling it into something like an MBT or just really big AA gun making it increadibly harder to kill, simply doing a drive by with harassers to pick off one makes the effort to secure the area much less dreadful for a combined arms force, after all you have only two tanks able to heavily lock out aircraft that are using flares verses a variety of aircraft. Sort of like the glass cannon mantra, you have this devastating unit but it's incredibly fragile against other units.

This is the kind of balance that goes on with the game, as it should, the game should be more team oriented, which is why I hate how ESFs are a bit too well versed, why heavies shouldn't be the goto for almost everything that needs to die, why infils shouldn't be able to highlight an entire base easily, why engineers shouldn't be able to resupply an entire platoon or a medic revive everyone without limits, why a sunderer shouldn't have infinite spawning either.

It's the sort of balance I like, 2 skyguards can keep aircraft out but then they have to rely on other forces to defend them and an over saturation of skyguards is pointless and punished because you spent nanites on something the team didn't need, but when it comes to the examples I listed above it only takes one player to supply the entire platoons needs without any sort of limiting factor that makes everything devolve to platoons of 2 medics, 1 engie, 1 infil and 44 heavies. That's a bit of a stretch sure but it's basically that ratio we have now.

You stock and prepare counters, if you are getting mobbed by lockons, you should pull a new ESF or be able to counter said lockons, we have counters for them.

The thing however is that everyone generally looks down on air in general, to the point of peer pressure on never using A2G weaponry, but suddenly everyone thinks they're an expert on all things air because that's just how it looks, let me tell you sonny boy jim the air game is complex, as it should be. If there is far less aircraft in the area, that isn't a problem with the skyguard, it's that there's no reason for air to be there, anymore, you won't have continuous wave after wave of aircraft to kill because that's how aircraft are punished. Granted, I think the skyguard should be able to do other things, like kill infantry, because then you present a vehicle threat for infantry to support the aircraft by killing the skyguard. We have this obnoxious "It's not my problem" mentality with the entire game. Not enough medics? Engies? Maxes? Heavies? Eh, not my problem, and then everyone who doesn't blames the thing that is killing them.

It's kind of like complaining about how water is wet but you aren't wearing a coat even though you have one.
I understand everyone wants to play their own thing but just because that's the case, doesn't mean we should include more singleton weaponry that locks other people out of the game.

Except when it was and libs couldn't actually deal with good galaxy pilots because of it. Plus, there is a cone of fire, there was always a cone of fire, that's how most of the damage is regulated.

Well 1, that's way too short, even for the walker, 2, I want the walker to be viable.
Now what I mean by that is that it should have it's own niche in which to do work with. Rounding the guns is exactly what people hated with hesh weapons and we're still recoiling from that now (because quite frankly, heat is a better hesh, don't even try to contend that) it's what the pretense of nerfing the fury was, this doesn't mean I want the walker to murder everything, far from it, I just want it to contend in it's niche of being an AA minigun and all the traditional subsets that go with it.

It should not reach out and kill aircraft with even laser beam aim, it needs a cone of fire, it does need drop off distances, but for the most part it just really needs tweaking.


Now I want you to define to me, what exactly IS effective AA if we are to continue. Effective can have different meanings in different contexts mind you, so specifically, what would be your ideal AA unit, how fast could it kill X, and why it should kill X this quickly and from what range.

I said it back in Beta and i will continue to say it now.
If they raise the sky ceiling and do some smaller changes to make the vehicles more traditional with more specialised upgrades Air will become easier to balance.

Yes. If I'm hunting tanks with a heavy assault or an AV turret and the tank I was shooting lands a shot on me I absolutely do applaud that tank. He managed to either dodge or tank my missiles, identify where I was shooting from and lob a round into my turret. He skillfully countered me and we both learned from the exchange.

I'm sorry but wtf does that have to do with the point I was making?

My point was that low skill-floor weapons like flak or lock-ons are individually weak because they have to be due to ease of use and in groups they are oppressive to the point of removing air from the hex, again, due to ease of use.

How did skyguard vs infantry balance and skyguard vs other ground vehicles balance come into this?

Yeah, air has no reason to be there because it'll get murked by dumb autopilot AA as soon as it enters the hex. Armor can survive in an AV filled environment. Nothing flies in a hex with even a half squad of dedicated AA. Be it vehicular or infantry.

Reason being AV weapons are generally speaking not auto targeted and don't have proximity detonation, and those that are, like the swarm or ESAV launchers, are not very good for AV and terrible against air and MAX threats.

That's what I'm looking for in 'skillful AA', anti-air that is strong but doesn't automatically lock aircraft out of the fight due to numbers.

The part about the "not my problem" mindset is about the only thing I agree with you from your post.

ESF could. What's your point?

Besides, Lib resistance to anti-air machine guns can always be tweaked.

Also no **** there is cone of fire, much less of it on a Walker than a Ranger though.

Pre CAI Walkers is a good bench mark. Dealt respectable damage at range if the gunners could lead shots and absolutely punished pilots who got too greedy, over extended and flew close to the ground.

Another example could be turning the Viper into a 'heavy' flak cannon. Give it Fury level rate of fire, halve the flak detonation radius, keep the 6 round magazine and make it shave 15% off of an ESF per hit. Alternatively there's the idea Demigan frequently proposes of lower proximity det radius-higher damage flak.

Numbers can be tweaked but that's the general idea. With such AA, pilots will still be able to contribute to fights where it is present. Not as effectively of course, but then tanks aren't as effective as they could be in an environment filled with AV.

Much better combined arms interaction than being locked out of a fight because enough people pulled their look-at-the-sky-for-3-seconds or shoot-in-the-general-direction sky blasters.

I believe, based on what was said during the livestream, that Oshur isn't just an air-centered continent, but Vehicle and Logistics centered in general. Meaning more focus will be put on PMBs, vehicle capture points, and where assets are deployed on the map. Remember: the continent is locked by destroying the enemy Bastion fleet carriers with Skylance batteries.

That being said, G2A, A2G and A2A definitely need reworking. The controls are incredibly unintuitive; that combined with how wonky aircraft physics are means it's prohibitively difficult for average joe to pick up and play, especially since enough time has passed for ace pilots to develop their skills to the point where only another ace pilot or some "no-skill" weapon is required to put a check on their power.

As far as A2G and G2A goes, either you're getting pummeled into nonexistence by rockets, belly-guns, and AI noseguns, or all the air has vacated the hex because flak and G2A lock-ons were pulled en-masse. Neither is optimal. Ground needs to be able to deter air from farming the everloving Higby out of it while not completely driving air away, since air superiority should still provide it's respective function.

I would go so far as to rework ESFs to have the worst anti-ground options, and become dedicated air superiority, while the Valk retains it's hybrid transport/ground assault role, the Liberator gains additional AA capabilities to fulfill a multipurpose gunship role, and the Galaxy gains additional options for specialization and defense outside of just being tanky.