"air the counter to air" was the correct balance for EVERYTHING

Exactly! You get it.

Dogfighting is so much more fun. Hell, even as a Liberator it's a lot more fun surviving the ESFs and trying to kill them with your belly gun(whichever one that might be, they all work). Just the same, tank vs tank is more fun.

Farming infantry isn't fun, and that needs nerfed. But in turn infantry need to not clear air so easily.

You get more xp/min playing any sort of infantry than you do with an ESF. ESF just tend to have low deaths as long as they avoid the big fights.

I don't think we have the same definition of effortless when I see how easy a HA dies compared to how many hits it takes to take out tanks n' air.

If you mean it's effortless when a 'blob' (aka a very large group) take out a tank because they all fire on the same ones, then it was effortless for a blob air planes to do the very same and much much more.

Combined arms are a counter to a blob of HA because any other unit can kill HA.
It was never a counter to a blob of air because only air could kill air.

HA not as mobile as Tanks or ESF? What a joke... i can be in a new hex in 20sec, sometimes even 10. Faster then any MBT can move.
I'm a pilot, and i'm a HA. My suggestion: reduce rocketpod damage against ground or buff afterburner (hello cert options) Make lock on's worse (more skill to lock on - smaller tracking COF, chance to evade missiles). Balance ground-attack nosegun options. Noseguns can't just be spammed in a general direction and rake in kills. Reduce AA strength (ESF does less damage, AA does less damage).
Nobody complained about ESF when the majority didn't have pods

HA dead - respawn in 5 sec. Tank/ESF dead: wait another 20min. One dualburster ruins the day of at least 4 ESF over the same area. I certed one myself, it's awesome. They can't get near me, if they don't bug out immediately they are dead. Repairing increases their time where they are not effectively doing anything (at least 1 min, up to 2min).

It is all clear you want the infantry to be nerfed while keeping your infantry farming tools. Thus air becomes the counter to infantry. If you take your logic as depicted above, you also said that air should counter air. So obviously air farming infantry weapons also need to be toned down. It is pretty obvious that you just want to farm with little or no risk to yourself.

If you really read anything, and that's your conclusion, you're just delusional.

The only way for air being the only counter to air would've worked, is if they never gave ESF rocket pods. And if they wanted to promote dogfighting, they would've given ESF jamming machines in exchange for A2A missiles. That's how I would've designed ESF for this game anyway.

Then for liberators, they should've been air's counter to tanks. Yes liberators should've been given AP shells with no explosive radius. So a direct hit on a tank would do devastating damage.

Wait I'm not done, I know some pilots want to kill infantry. I would've designed helicopters, and make sure they can't fly too high out of infantry range, but they would've had mounted anti-infantry machine guns, NOT HE rounds, and let the infantry duke it out with helicopters.

So the balance, under my vision if I was the creative directory would've been:

-Liberator hard counter to ground vehicles
-ESF hard counter to anything that flies, including ESF, Liberators, and Helicopters
-Helicopters counters to infantry, but due to helicopter's limitations, they are equally vulnerable to infantry that knows how to shoot rockets into the sky

And I thank you, I'll take that bonus check for making this a popular FPS game.

You know what really sucks when you're trying to fight vehicles as HA? Infantry.
I can't fight both at the same time.

So, todays lesson in combined arms for vehicles drivers is: Infantry are part of a combined arms force. Bring some.

good god are we still ******** about air? Here is the deal I can kill both air and ground on either side of the fence. I can hold 3 ESF and a lib, with just me in a AA Max and a engi feeding me bullets. on the other side of the fence i can roll air and help a ground push with rocket pods or AA missles to fight inc aircraft wtf are you people ******** about?

Maybe A2G pods could just give some disadvantages, like reduced max speed and acceleration.
So it would force the ESF into a more chopper-like playstyle.

Really? Read more than just the title

As it stands it's heavy assault to counter everything, they're invisible to all vehicles, their rockets are invisible to all vehicles, they have amazing weapons against all vehicles and to top it all off they have the best ability making them the best against infantry as well.


I can't see a problem here at all, nope.

As some have stated and I will reinforce the fact that 99% of all vehicles is this game are equipped for killing infantry IS the problem.
And people like whining GraphicJ are part of why we are where are are today. I saw that guy doing nothing but farming bio lab satellites for two months if he had been clearing Libs instead I might give his tears some credence.

I lol at people saying it is combined arms lol bs. It is take turns farming infantry is all it was now we infantry have a LONG range answer to vehicles that requires us to have significant numbers to be effective. Up close we still get smashed.
Good pilots and good tankers have adapted very well. The Representatives we have here are baddies and greedy (GraphicJ) farmers.

You are right it is totally unfair that a HA can 6 shot a vehicle that can kill him in 1 shot and has a counter that allows it to escape or in the case of the Magrider 2 counters. Cry moar baddie.

OP getting it seriously wrong. Hate to break it to you, but you must have not been playing on the new patch...... the drop on the Zephyr is mad, frankly 9/10 of the time I've missed shots with the Zephyr. Get lower? Get owned by AA. If anything the Liberator is just a little underpowered...... but maybe since I'm not used to it it might actually be perfectly balanced.

I actually like the more now we got rid of skilless rocketpodders/Zepher gunners who were mindlessly hovering above spawns getting free kills.

No, air is the counter to would-be pilots living a long and healthy life. HA is the counter to everything, and trust me when I say it's far more lucrative. Two HAs and an Engie sat with Crows near a Warpgate? 10:1 K/D without even trying. One HA will normally manage just as well though.

As to the rest...

Eugh, because revenge is the way to balance. GJ.

That's hilarious. Is your server dead, or are your outfits just ****?

Pretty much all outfits on my server now roll exclusively in Sunderers or Galaxies. 8 HA, 2 Medics and 2 Engies in each squad and you're literally untouchable. Combined arms against that? Roflmfao. 8 HA 1 hit every tank (5 HA if they specialise), they're rezzable and have a 15 second death timer. A platoon kills 4 tanks every 3 seconds. Oh, and did I mention they're invisible?

Pick out specific instances where they are very effective insinuate that is the case ALL the time right. End of story I suppose right?
Someone like you telling great stories might hold some water except that people can clearly see that vehicles still are being zerged nightly are are clearly effective in doing so. But cool story anyway.

Cert flares and they wouldn't stand a chance of getting a single shot on you. Even without flares, just use the terrain and kill them in your first salvo before they can get a lock on or before they get there second salvo in if your unlucky. Or even take a lib without flares and they would be dead before you reach half health.

2 HA isn't enough to counter air, except for the useless pilots who mostly would die from there own evasive flying aka ditching it into the ground. Are you one of these types of pilots by any chance? Because the way you are saying it, you cant avoid and overcome 2 HA which makes you a pretty poor pilot.

Bingo, for some strange reasons, the planetside 2 devs designed this game with air destroying ground infantry in mind. They gave ESF rocket pods to spam on infantry, they gave liberators multiple HE rounds to again spam infantry with. It was just wrong all around, and seeing that majority of the FPS gamers today still prefer playing on the ground, it's no wonder there was such outcry about air superiority in this game. Air wasn't just superior to infantry, air was superior to everything. Which makes absolutely no sense.

In my example above, had they designed ESF to be hard counters to air (rather than infantry), and had they designed Liberators as hard counters to ground vehicles like tanks & sunderers (AP rounds instead of HE), and had they designed something anti-infantry but with plenty of downsides to them like a helicopter with machine guns which would take risk and skills to fly low to make kills...they would've had a working air vs ground balance, with very important roles for all aircraft, with minimum bs mass kill spam. Everybody would've gotten alone and pilots who enjoy flying get to fly with the purpose of hunting down aircraft, liberators would be out to be anti mass tank columns rather than anti infantry, and helicopters would be deployed on a limited basis to counter infantry or hotdrop soldiers.

But you're correct, the core problem is the devs designed all vehicles, ground or air, to mass kill infantry. I guess they didn't get the memo that majority of their players like playing infantry, and that catering to the minority was bound to bite them in the rear.

Actually the Galaxy with a couple bulldogs makes a pretty good AI platform with which you need to take risks of flying low. That would take your role as opposed to the helicopter idea.