Flak buff? It fixes NOTHING.

Yeah because AA batteries obviously don't have rockets. They are stuck in WW2.
And any kind of effective attack on ground troops is made by CAS type attacks which are in range of Stingers (and their counterparts) or AA vehicles (which have rockets as well.
That's why they exist. The believe that air in RL is somehow untouchable by ground based AA is laughable. If it was nobody would go through the trouble to build it since it's kind of expensive.

It's not like Libs and ESFs are going to be able to be part of underground fights, anyway.

How I see the problems:
Air to Ground does not have a balanced risk vs reward system. I can buy a reaver, spam AG rockets on poor infantry until they get a clue and get some AA MAXs and force me to return to base, repair, and go harass some other location until I die. Then purchase a liberator and bomb the snot out of a third area until chased away or killed. As long as I'm not stupid and die with both ships within minutes, I can probably repurchase a reaver by this time and repeat the whole process.

My simple solutions:
1) Increase AA and limit AG capabilities of the 'fighters'
2) Increase acquisition timer of liberators to something more along the lines of 6 hours

Expected results:
Liberators will still be extremely useful. Killing one would be quite the accomplishment. To counter these, best solution is going to warp gate and purchasing a 'fighter' aircraft, which are now mostly harmless to ground targets.

Libs are way to easy to kill to make the spawn timer that long. You just need an outfit. My outfit (consortium) cleaned the air above the place where we were fighting of more than 5 libs and several ESFs. And we're an infantry only outfit too. I'm not trying to brag here. But liberators are vulnerable to both Annihilators and Maxes.

I agree that NV is a bit OP on libs.

And you just listed off exactly how AA isn't working as you think it is... You are literally listing off what requires about 5 people to obliterate 1 lib or do denial. I was just in a fight last night, with organized AA. 3 to 4 Dual burster MAX armors. Derailed by an infiltrator picking off their engineer support, and wiped out by ground armor.

Your argument is also foolishly flawed. You assume 6 AA MAX, organized, completely renders all air useless. Again, I was in a fight where we WERE fighting with 6 AA MAX armors with multiple air up in the sky. Denial was not there and this was trying to spread out, having people trying to keep the AA MAX armors up.

You are always approaching the issue where air is going in like some Bruce Lee fight, as one person points out... Lots of air going in one at a time. I have been in fights where EVEN ORGANIZED AA does get toppled due to ORGANIZED AIR.

You are always arguing from the very thing you criticize the AA complaints about, LONEWOLFING THE ISSUE.

I've lone wolf with The air unit and NEVER, EVER found the problem with Flak. I've SEEN SMARTER pilots finding ways to F up even organized AA attempts. And more to the point, seen an organized assault on Crown SUCCEED USING AIR against ORGANIZED AA.

So the problem isn't so much of denial in the air, just denial that some of you Air jockeys are in need of AS MUCH with 'organized' efforts that you say is required for AA.

You do realize, in the Real World, while Air can devastate ground forces... The US and Russians employed the use of air strikes, repeatedly, in both Vietnam and Afghanistan. You also realize that the majority of the fighting was still carried out by infantry, still more costly against the US and Russian forces as well.

The most recent actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, US forces still have to use GROUND TROOPS to deal with people on the ground and the fact that air power is also expensive to keep up and to continue bombing the crap out of things. Also, aircraft, even our current military based ones are not the most 'sturdy' of craft to take hits from sustained flak fire or from rockets either.

We can go on and on about the whole 'Real world' bit. Just note, there are very few VTOL based jet aircraft. There are multiple Helicopter/prop based VTOLs, the Osprey being one of them, and most of them don't take too kindly to a hit from most ground fire weapons either.

Why do aircraft get such awsome long range thermal/nightvision and infantry get 50 feet versions, wtf is that.

We were talking about this last night and came to the conclusion that the IR/NV/Thermal scopes on aircraft should have a 2x zoom. Which would decrease the area that you could see at once and make it slightly more difficult to pick targets. But it probably wouldn't fix things entirely.

so to stop farming, as soon as a spawn is under siege no one should be able to spawn there because they are too stupid to know its a bad idea.

so air farming is more or less smart people farming stupid people

You do realize... This counters the whole 'Defend the base' incentive part that should be part of the game.

I know... Damn my logic and expecting to provide defense and trying to counter-attack, I mean... Who would have thought to do such things...

• Viet-Cong in the numerous engagements with the US
• Muhadim against the Russians.
• The Chinese against the Japanese
• The 101st in Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge.

Denial is not the same as killing people in a situation where they don't have the slightest chance to avoid getting hit without just abandoning the area altogether.

Ground units have counterplay to air attacks, air units don't have any valid counterplay to mass AA. It's a broken system, completely regardless of how many excuses people make.

when they are spamming your spawn you have failed to defend already (your AA defenses were crewed before they entered your air space right?), i mean good god who would ever think to counter attack from another base?

and yes im sure the viet-cong, muhadim, chinese, and the 101 had the ability to respawn less than 100m from where they died... oh wait RL has no respawning.

so your trying to use RL to argue this, okay so where would the reinforcements for these counter attacks normally come from, oh wait another base hmm i don't know if you can even try to call that logic to be honest

Wait, so you want 3 burster maxes to completely shut down a air zerg with +3 libs?
You don't want balance, you just want air gone

Who cares ? Fly to another hex to farm there
Also what can even hit you 700 meters above earth.

Ruin the game, orly ? 180 degrees turn and AB fly 350km. Good luck hitting me .

*Almost obliterated Soviet Union destroying fascism.

I got into a decent multi-role defense last night with my dual burster MAX, enough support for a while, and about 4 or 5 other MAXes on a couple towers on a wall. It was on one of the more western bases on Indar. This was the first time I'd found this kind of fight since the hotfix.

There was infantry, tanks, and air involved on both sides. It really seemed to go well for about 45 minutes or so. The MAXes were killing I would say roughly 50-60% of the aircraft coming at us, the armor and infantry were both killing each other with losses being about equal.

Eventually our ground forces got overwhelmed, it looked to me like the MAXes were the last thing standing at the end. It was one of the few times I've felt that playing AA was decently contributing to a fight. The aircraft couldn't get over us for long enough to do much, and the infantry and armor were able for the most part to do their thing.

XP gain was still asstastic, but if we'd had xp for damage, it could have been decent. As far as gameplay experience, it definitely felt a lot better than AA fights I'd had prior to the hotfix. Maybe it was just the right opponents being dumb, but they were doing pretty much the same things I've seen air do before, we were just hurting them a little bit quicker which made a big difference.

And yet... I still see air get INTO AREAS, BLASTING AWAY AGAINST ORGANIZED, MASS AA TOO. You make it sound like it is impossible to get into an area where there is Massed organized AA, which I know is patently not true.

Hey, obviously, you fail at understanding something called a clue. Yes, those people could not respawn at all, but they could ENGAGED the enemy at the location spammed by air because *gasp* they were there, you know... the people who were FIGHTING IN THAT AREA BEFORE THE AIR SPAM WAS ATTEMPTED. They also had the ability to deal with VTOLs, you know, those hovering vehicles of death known as Choppers and Hinds because those aircraft were not exactly built to take a hit, even from small arms fire.

I know, it is hard for someone, such as yourself to grasp the concept that there were *gasp* other defensive measures to deal with it. In this game, a lot of them are lacking for the ground people. At the same time, anyone with half a clue for defensive measures prepares more than just a few turrets to cover defenses for various threats as well as provide means to get to those defenses based on knowing what is there. Some of which, WERE in Alpha/Beta, but taken out.

No, getting tired of you air jockeys making it sound like AA getting buffed prevents Air from doing anything anywhere when you guys just want to preserve your lone wolfing ability against any sort of AA. Most of you make it sound like AA, massed or organized destroys the air fight and you know for a fact it doesn't.

I don't get threads like this. The character of the game has changed radically, for the better, since the patch. And I am not just talking about my personal experience piloting or using AA, I mean the whole game. I have been in open-field battles between bases lasting hours that simply did not happen before the patch. I am actually pretty amazed how much the patch did to the way the game plays. Infantry is more fun. Even flying is more fun (!) because you know when you retreat behind friendly lines you can often count on friendly AA to deter pursuers.

I like the game a ton better post patch. There are still some wrinkles to be sure, mostly arising from render distance, but all this business about air being OP because they can go looking until they find a place with no AA? I don't get it. Is infantry OP because they can go looking until they find a base to cap with no defense?