Upcoming adjustments to Air vs Ground balance

Which would be super easy using the existing damage fall-off mechanics. If a burster or skyguard catches a hovering ESF at short range, it SHOULD tear it to bits.

I know they are all about the constant tug-of-war balance "issues". It just blows my mind that THIS is what they're prioritizing. PS1 wasn't perfect on launch, but I sure as hell had a lot more fun playing it. I mean they can't even give us unique weapon models/sounds on launch, and they add dumb **** like skull helmets instead of bad *** "Master Chief style" helmets, or ****, ANYTHING but plastic looking skull masks that I wore for Halloween when I was 8.

Sorry for the rant, just extremely disappointed...Then hearing the rabble from the "NC4LYFE!" fanboys just makes it worse (not to mention it makes the game worse as well), "Ohhh this game is sooo AWESUMMM"..... ..... ......... Don't get me wrong, it has huge potential but, classes, base design, and no sanctuaries really have ruined this game for me.You used to be able to fit in some EMP grenades to your load-out to at least ATTEMPT to counter that tank. Now it's just that really restrictive, "No, you can't use EMP grenades because you're a Medic so go back to the terminal and spawn HA" type bull that I've just about had enough of. AV used to mean anti-vehicle, not everything. Lancer how I miss you...why must I spend 7$ to be able to lock on to tanks or aircraft in the first place? ********. Even the Phoenix was innovative and unique. THAT would be a worthy side grade that I'm sure SOE would be selling a whole lot of (instead of "Hey, you can lock on to tanks/aircraft now"..."Cool, don't care"...) a camera-guided missle that yes is very effective, BUT leaves you very vulnerable to cloakers/snipers.

I could see most (if not all) of these petty balance "issues" be put to rest with some decent base design. Infantry have no BUNKERS, every building inside and out is spammable by rocket pods/tanks. There is simply no fallback point for infantry, which is causing the majority of these "problems". In PS1 a great way for infantry to move around a base was a series of bunkers connected by underground tunnels. Seriously SOE, you let SIZE dominate your entire game, and in some aspects of the game it's just not important. We have these huge bloated bases in which half of isn't even fought over. Break out your shovels...seriously.

Though, the lock-on buff just put it over the top for me, there's no skill involved in this game, absolutely no tactics, and no reason to farm kills even. Farm kills so you can farm more kills...no thanks. Air needs challenges other than flak and missile locks, practically no one dogfights, and base turrets are useless. FIX - Make the turrets as they were in PS1, a standard "does okay damage to everything, and let Engi's cert into Fortification Engineering to upgrade them into either AV or AA turrets. Boom, two birds with one stone, a slight improvement on base design AND the engineering class.

Another Issue is that there is way too much flak period. It's everyone's answer to aircraft. Which from the start I knew would cause problems. AV needs to be in it's own category with all AV weapons damaging ALL vehicles air or ground, and AA/AV also needs to be empire specific as in PS1 so that it isn't so predictable. As it is right now; I log in, spawn my scythe, kill till I die, MAYBE spawn a lightning, and then I proceed to log off. The purpose just isn't there, and in my eyes has caused a real failure to launch.

In short, start thinking outside the box please. A wise man once said, "If you build it they will come". So please, take some risk so we can all enjoy juicier rewards. Right now though, just another game I'll be checking into here and there to see if anything has changed. Thanks for reading!

All this balancing stuff is well beyond me I fully admit, plus I don't care and just try to adapt, the challenge is fun. I can see being angry if I had spent money on something and then it got nerfed though. In any case if I had to find something to complain about, its how when flying fighter craft all I can do is pew pew some weak tea, whereby it seems 50% of the enemy fighter craft I come up against are somehow lvl 40 and also have some weapons that make mine look mere fascia.

I wouldn't change it though, after having finally accepted the limited joystick support, and played for a few hours, I've learned to evade their junk somewhat already, and also a few other tricks, accomplishments that only can come from being underpowered.

Basically I'm trying to say adapt or die. The SOE staff are the only ones that can see things from the omniscient perspective. I see alot of people posting stuff that seems to be baggage carried from a game called planetside 1, just sayin'

Yeah, well it's not so much the inability to hit tanks that is at issue. It's the inability to dumb fire lock-on capable rockets (both AA and AV) at anything! No shooting from the hip in close combat with tanks. No shooting at infantry! If you have to pay to acquire lock-on capability, you shouldn't have to surrender the ability to dumb fire. Lock-on should be additional capability, not a limitation.

Please don't make the rockets require a lockon to fire. They will be essentially useless. In a game where everything instantly spawns, the more situational only equipment you put in, the more dependent it is on what we bring rather then the battle we are fighting. It's not like we can scout what they are going to change into. If you pop an anti air, and there is no air, you essentially lost your 2ndary weapon, Can you atleast give it a delay before firing, or nerf the damage vs tanks?

MAX is now over powered. They're range and accuracy is immense. A single MAX with dual AA can hold off and destroy the entire air domain (as long as they have a steady amo flow). They're projectile speed for AA is too fast. MAX AA needs to be nerfed.

Hello all,

I am fairly new into the game, been playing like a week now, currently rank 18. I tried all classes and i really do like the game alot, but with flowing time few things really irritates me. 1. More and more cheaters, 2. Air vs ground baance, 3. griefing.

I am very happy to hear that new patch is comming with exact changes i wanted. I am still bit worried that noob-tubers will not get affected much as rocket/photon pod will still do massive damage and when aiming decently still one burstshot heavy tank. I just do not understand why light fighter has everthing, superior air to air abilities, superior air to ground abilities, superior defence. I thought rocket pod should be domain of bombers not fighters. I just think there is no real need for tanks, just go ground team with air support all the way.
Anyway i am glad for these changes and hopefuly i will stop being annoyed when seeing rank 60 easy going rocket podders.

I just hope they will soon address griefers in style of mass teamkilling, or stucking ppl in vehicle .

I am sorry but that is simply not true. I tried it myself and at least decent pilot will one burst rocket pod your max into oblivion before you bring the fighter to half of hitpoints. Well, if you face only bad pilots... you can gun them even with machinegun...

I approve of all changes except for the 'must have lock on to fire'... thats a real bummer. It limits us to surrenderers and such to switch back and forward in order to repel the enemies. Being able to lock on one and having to aim on the other is fair enough. But not being able to fire it at all seems a bit to much. Its not like our current and future shots are guaranteed hits anyways :S
I hope this is something that will be corrected soon. It is not like we have loads of rockets with us and engineers always seem nowhere around when handling a rocketlauncher :S

Remove auto hover from ESF's. Maybe little adjustment to ground-to-air damage. And most problems solved. Only problem what i see this point is those hovering rocket spamming ESF's. Steady hover gives them too good and safe spot to shoot powerful rockets. You cant shoot them down, you cant out run and you cant evade. Because hover is too perfect and they only need to turn.

By removing auto hover pilots would need actually to learn fly and plan their strikes. Not just fly into area, hover and spam everyting what moves below. Because they know they cant be shot down and they know they can out run you if damaged.
What makes that rocket attacking no risk to pilots and that is wrong.

No really, at this stage of the game balance getting a clear sky only takes one MAX with dual bursters and an ammo supply, without air support the game turned into World of Tanks those last days.

This exactly.

They've balanced air around the ability to hover over a large battle and still be fine. Air needs to be balanced around being constantly moving and manuvering. It's that simple. I know that the dev team thinks hovering aircraft is "cool", but it's horribly game-breaking.

In real life, it does seem that way. Between WWI and WWII there was some disagreement over whether naval air power was worth investing in, versus, say, more and bigger battleships. Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Midway answered that question. Yet, it is not so straightforward I think. The nation with superior air power tends to have superiority in other areas as well, better infantry weapons, better tanks, better missiles, and better ships. So you end up comparing apples and oranges. When first rate air power goes up against first rate AA defenses, what do they do? Two things: first send in stealth aircraft and others loaded with electronic countermeasures to take out the defenses, before sending in the normal air superiority and ground attack aircraft. That should tell you that the air defenses are definitely to be feared by the regular pilots. If possible, even before that, they send in elite ground units to sneak up on the key enemy long-range air defense warning systems and take them out, to make a hole in the air defense system. So it takes elite troops on the ground to save the lives of many pilots. If you are old enough to remember the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and what their helicopter gunships did, you may also remember how things turned around when the U.S. started covertly supplying the militias with Stinger missiles. In the Falklands, the runways were protected by close range AA cannons which were considered dangerous enough, that the aircraft avoided the area, and the British sent in commandos to destroy them. When NATO started bombing Serbia, back during the break-up of former Yugoslavia, the pilots had to fly at about 10'000 feet to avoid being shot down by shoulder-launched missiles. As a result, they could not see their targets very well and blew up many false targets, such as inflatable rubber tanks. You can't win a war without having air superiority. Unless of course it is a guerrilla war and the attacker doesn't have boots on the ground and you can exhaust the patience and/or budget of the attacker. Viet Nam? Afghanistan part 2? Massive air power cannot be countered, except... by equally massive and technologically equivalent AA systems. But we don't see that in wars anymore, they tend to be asymetrical now.

For me the lack of TWO factors make AIR horrible broken.

1. The Flares also make you immun to immediate lock on WHILE still going all out. In essence they give you 5 seconds immunity of unloading everything and then fly away unharmed. The lock on delay is artifical and there for an understandable reason, but it should not give you easy free 5 seconds of godhood while still unloading everything.

Change one: If you keep firing your rocket / guns, lockon immunity instandly vanishes. Flares are there for defence not offence!
Especially if you are making lockon the only way to actually fire a shot at all with the SPECIFICAL DESIGNED rocket launcher.


2. Locked-on Rockets from the heavy launcher deal far to less damage. I understand the reason especially in a big battlefield, more powerfull rockets will make AIR impossible once 3 people pick them up, however the current damage ratio against liberator class type airplanes is flat out a joke and that *is* assuming every shot actually hits (see point 1).)

Which begs the introduction of a punch FORCE behind Rocket hits. For heavy armored airplanes during WW1 and WW2 there was another risk to FLAK besides their ability to rip your ship to pieces, near hits will stall you and could make you drop from the air literally.

[Hitted] Air vehicles should get a good shaking and direction / stall effect added. This will prevent just sitting there and unloading everything with zero care because you can't be bothered by the abyssmal lock-on rocket damage and ocassional flak from MAX suits. (after having your free 5 seconds from flares on top of that).



There is a reason you see all those gunships and flying rocket pots sit there without care. And it isn't a good one.



Personally concerning the Lock-On Anti Air Rocket Launcher for HEAVYS
: The lock-on rocket launcher for HEAVYS is utterly broken and useless. If it's not for the troll flares which completly invalidate them, or the afterburned which enables straight outrunning the rockets you actually need at least THREE hits for an low cert mosquito (2 for an unupgraded). and 5 for an Gun-ship (liberator for NC). Including the lock-on and reload times it's right out impossible to kill and most of the time even DAMAGE an below average pilot.

To be anywhere near a threat this rocket launcher needs at least 2 rockets in the chamber, for optional 2 rockets in succession with one lock-on, we still won't be able to take down gun-ships but at least might scare them away.

(Yes i killed already many air targets, but that was like shooting ducks in a cage > they have been almost dead anyway, no flares and propably a pilot which has been a pilot for like....2 minutes total.)

Only if there are no snipers shooting at the max, no HA machine-gunning it or shooting rockets at it, no tanks shooting at it, and an engineer hanging around to provide ammo. That is a lot of ifs. I play an AA max, and the planes I shoot down are mainly those which fly at me head-on and just keep coming. That they do, might not mean that they are bad pilots. Reading the other comments, I see that the pilots are having rendering problems and cannot tell from which direction the rounds are coming. But here is a hint. If you are getting hit by flak, change directions. I get some occasional assists on others. When not playing AA max, I am usually HA toting a shotgun. I don't get a lot of kills. My kill ratio is under 0.4. But the kills I get, I earn the hard way. I'm the guy who sits in the turret once in awhile, defending the base for not many kills and not much XP. Everybody can't have a 4.0 K/D ratio. I don't think the AA max was particularly underpowered, but I do think it's a big exaggeration to claim that one can keep the skies clear. It can drive off one, or two or three planes. When the skies are full of planes, it's a target rich environment, yes, but one still doesn't get a lot of kills, and one for sure does not drive off all the planes.

The change to the HA launchers will make the lock-on ones ridiculously unpopular. Why would I use a shell that takes 3-4 seconds to lock (and in the case of air misses 80% of the time) that I can't use for anything else?

Also, this decimator sounds like a direct upgrade to the standard HA launchers.

If you're going to **** up the balance, at least give the default VS launcher the same travel time/speed as the current Hades.

You're changing one of the few things that was really well balanced in this game -.-

I'm surprised they simply didn't nerf the damage of the G2A's in dumbfire mode against their non-intended targets (ie half damage against tanks). I'll probably still roll G2A...safer than being a dual burster MAX?

Buffing rockets, and flak weapons... nerfing rocket pods? Yeah, this is really silly. The AA MAX's are already ripping through liberators and fighters, add heavies who have buffed rockets and fighters have to stay miles away from where the battle is actually taking place.

What role do fighters have now, when ground units can almost do the same job as them, AND they have their missiles nerfed?

Hmm I don't know, maybe actually doing their job as FIGHTERS and engaging enemy aircraft while protecting friendly Liberators/Galaxies.

It says in the OP, Air is ment to be the Hard Counter to air, buy no thats too much work. So the majority of pilots just farming ground kills with rocket pods. While the majority of the few who do actually engage enemy aircraft are like idiot WW1 pilots who do nothing but dogfight other pilots.

Leaving 1% of ESF pilots who actually do their damm job.

AA is mostly crap and needs buffing, but it wouldn't be such a problem.

IF 99% of ESF pilots actually did their damm job of air superiority instead of having NC Air Zerg farming ground at Point A, Terran Air Zerg farming at Point B and Vanu Air Zerg farming at Point C. While ignoring each other.

ESF pilots should be hunting AIR kills first and Ground kills second.

Liberators are the Ground Attack Aircraft.

How about they don't super buff AA damage rockets but INSTEAD make a rocket like what was in Battlefield 2142 which fired an lock on EMP rocket and when it hits it disables the target for a few seconds, which would mean being grounded as a low flying aircraft and you'd end up dead.

http://guides.gamepressure.com/battlefield2142/guide.asp?ID=1696