Can something be done with Air to Ground combat!

Air to ground combat is very annoying and bad for the game.
The Air to Ground gameplay is basically just hunting for lone targets because air can't get involved in a fair battle, or farming over populated areas. That's it!

Hunting lone targets is not even helping the team. The core game is redeploying and deploying. And most Sunderers have anti air weapons. So aircraft's cannot get involved in the objective.

All this is doing is ruining the game for people who just want to have fun.. You got ppl just flying across the whole map in seconds, just searching for ppl like these, and there is absolutely nothing the ground units can do, no escape because it's a some hover aircraft and not a jet, which circles around and moves up and down to make it impossible to hit unless you have the flak sleeper gun which no one want's on their tank.

Aircraft's need a rework.

AA doesn't much hurt a properly setup Liberator. Get an alert gunner and fly with someone. The word on the ground is don't engage the Liberator.

If you go online during prime time in a large battle and look at the sky you'll be almost guaranteed to see some ESF and rocket Valkyrie hanging around the fight, often joining in directly.

Also if you have half a brain it isnt impossible to fight at large fights with lots of AA. Will you get hit a lot and need to repair after each attack? Ofcourse! But is that any different from infantry that needs to regenerate their shield after most fights or tanks needing to repair up after attacking? Nope. And while there is a risk that you'll die, that risk is still smaller than using infantry or tanks.

Just try this: fly either extremely low or at the flight ceiling and attack from a different direction than your ground units approach from. Dont attack more than twice from the same direction. This allows you to avoid attention of G2A until you are basically on your way out after hurting or killing something. It also allows you to pick damaged vehicles to pick off rather than trying to kill a 100% health vehicles.

The bigger problems from the air are the lack of many aircraft at any one time, meaning that if there is AA it can concenteate fire on one target. And the fact that aircraft get a choice: attack a base with AA that has a risk or go and look for another fight without (Enough) AA? With that choice its no wonder no one ever took the time to develop the most basic of A2G approaches.

The solution is ofcourse to make AA more omniversally available. You should never have the choice to pick a fight based on AA presence. Tanks and infantry dont get to choose fights based on AI or AV presence and that they meet something that can damage and kill them is par of the course. It should also be par of the course for aircraft.

Because G2A is a deterrent it scales too good. So having enough AA everywhere to deal with aircraft would be a big problem. Therefore we need more skillful G2A weapons. Think basic stuff like the AA noseguns on Lightnings, autocanons like the Viper/Saron/Enforcer designed to take on aircraft etc.

mad cuz bad, learn how to fly pesky casual, mustang needs nerf, infilside2 because play stalker or be farmed by another flying ******

I'm sure you are mad because you are bad. But what's that got to do with the topic at hand?

Be nice if they did something like max and you swap weapons at a terminal but on your vehicles. Make it only weapons and not load outs or something of the sort. Of course we could also go the route of adding more diverse weapons for ground.

This is almost certainly my bias talking but I am absolutely and totally against any buffs for A2G gameplay, I believe it to currently be the most lopsided exchange in the game where any given A2G weapon is considered to be "Anti-" and any given G2A weapon is considered to be a "deterrent", irrespective of NTU costs or number of players involved. How does that exchange make sense?

I want A2A to be the absolute best it can be for you fly guys, I want you all to have an incredible fun time playing in your aircraft but I can't allow it to be at the expense of us "Ground plebs" having a fun time, that just isn't right.

Fix this problem in 3 easy steps!!

1. Make small arms damage all air, and especially wreck ESF. This fixes the problem of small fights not being ablef to fight back, and having to pull dedicated AA just for the ESF to bug off to the next small fight.

2. Replace flak with a direct hit weapon. This scales so much better, and allows ESF to fly evasively to dodge fire, at the expense of not being able to shoot back themselves.

3. Somewhat normalize top guns. Let them all inch towards a specialty, but let them all work in a pinch against anything. Give all guns better elevation. This means any vehicle can fight back against air to some extent, and an anti-air vehicle is a little more useful and fun when air isn't around.

Do you do anything except whine about each aspect of this game one by one saying it needs a rework? Maybe your choice of games needs a rework.

just no

don´t replace, ADD! ...
cover the difficulty risk for reward levels on weapons .. the game should not force a "only this way or no way" situation for playstyles ...

THIS i fully agree with ...

I agree but in the eyes of the devs aircraft must only be vulnerable to other aircraft, otherwise the learning curve for new players is too steep.
Who cares if infantry gets pounded without any chance to retaliate but respawning one base back (new redeploy, OUCH!) and spawn ESFs themselves.

It's complete idiocy.

it would be less of a problem if esf flying would be accessible in the first place and controls to be configured so one does not suffer literal wristpain ..

- Why no? From an ESF's perspective, I think this is fair. And from infantry's perspective, this would be incredible, especially in small fights. I think this is the single greatest suction to air being OP in small fights but useless in big fights.

- Flak is a problem that can't be fixed. Its damage can't scale with range, and it's detonation range apparently can't be less than 15 meters. The weapon simply can't be dialed in to be balanced. I normally hold the opinion that more options is better, but this particular mechanic is a big reason as to why air and ground can't be balanced.

I get what you're saying but.... just about any A2G ESF loadout you can try to run is by NO MEANS a hard counter to a Vulcan Harasser, and the Burster MAX inside a spawn room is an Absolute hard counter to nearly all Air unless you have a smoke grenade LA or Smoke Bolt stalker spamming that ShieldRoom. ....I guess that just means they're the exceptions that prove the rule...

It's also funny how Striker Valks are probably the best A2A counter in the game further cementing the TR's already impressive Air viability. It's no wonder that VS and NC aircraft statistically have a shorter expected lifespan in the air than TR do.

I would keep flak, but reduce it's flak detonation range. 8m is too much. Try out a 4m version with a tighter COF and like the old days the shots won't explode the moment it comes close to the aircraft, but when the aircraft starts gaining distance on the shell. This allowed the flak shells to deal increased damage the closer you got the projectile to the aircraft (and a direct hit would deal both direct and maximum flak damage).

from a esf perspective they already get damaged as well as valkeries ..
it makes no sense to aply that damage to galaxies they are already big and slow, easy to hit targets ...

and realy instead of allowing everything to damage libs (even as disgustingly strong as they are) i rather have more weaponoptions
meant for antiheavyarmorduty (both vehicles and infantry) than EVERY SOURCE on the map capable to damage libs ..

damageoutput is not the only way to ballance weapons ... the ranger and skyguards damage output on range is dialed in by a worse cone of fire ..

a different solution has been mentioned to turn flakexplosions into multiprojectile scrapnelltype explosions - think unreal tournament flak gun ...
you could very well set the weapon so it detonates at a certain range, before that it does a set damage ... after that it detonates with a number of projectiles (like 8 to 12?) going into all directions doing each less dmg than the single projectile but more if multiple of them hit?

even then i would still have a coyotestyle or rockletrifle default ammo style weapon for easy to use AAduty on vehicles and more infantry classes ....

like you could add the rockletrifle (at least) to the medic as primary option forfitting AI capabilty for AV support
infils cooooooould get the same option imo ..
rockletrifles are still not strong unless in close range for magdumping ..

No you can't because that is a REAL physics simulation where as PS only has simulated projectile physics. I also know for a Fact thanks to the HiRez devs that Unreal3 had a literal SPEED LIMIT on its projectile physics as well.... they mentioned several times when making excuses for why they couldn't do so many things.

To do this in real time projectile math with the engine's own limitations... the Flak couldn't physically travel fast enough to catch any aircraft at a functional range. If it were me coding this... I would instead just place a diminishing return on damage dealt from multiple sources so that 2 and 1/2 skyguards or 1.5 Bursters/Rangers would be the DPS soft cap to anything that isn't a Galaxy

Years ago I brought up a similar idea and someone told me they tried a smaller burst range but hit detection wasn't reliable with anything less than what we have. Who knows of that guy was right. I can't even remember who it was anymore.

More weapon options could work, especially with ASP players. But the solution should be available for everyone, especially new players. And I imagine these AV guns would suck against infantry, and you'd basically be punished for taking them, like how the Archer was before ASP. And if you have to go back to a terminal, you might as well just grab a HA. I'm all for new guns, but I just don't think it's a solution to air. And the biggest place air is a problem is small fights. Infantry need something on them that can deal with ESF, even if small arms are just enough to deter a farmer. I know current small arms can hurt them, but in thousands of flight hours I've never once died to just small arms fire. And this is all assuming flak is removed, as aircraft are already locked out of most big fights, especially on the attack.

Since we had flak that could determine when the distance started increasing from the target after entering detonation range and since we've had things like project OMFG and DX11 and most importantly have weapons designed for direct hits on aircraft (noseguns, Walkers, Coyotes that have a smaller detection range than flak) I would say that you were told some bullcrap.