I am greatly more enjoying the game as an infantry since the aircraft balancing.

game is MUCH better now!

I play NC, and getting killed a couple of times in a week by air is still not much. I have been killed by a lock on when Im riding my flash more often than Ive been killed by a lib or mossie/scythe.

Air is too strong against enemies with no AA and too weak against enemies with lots of AA.
New pilots have zero chance of playing the game, which is kinda sad.
Experienced pilots farm small groups of infantry that haven't paid $medbux for AA, while the same experienced pilots are 100% locked out of big battles no matter what they do because of the massive amount of AA involved (particularly anti-everything Annihilators).

The obvious solution is to make ESFs and (to a lesser extent) Liberators tougher while increasing their cooldown and nerfing their A2G weapons by 20-40%. Then everyone would get to participate in big battles, small squads wouldn't get farmed as hard when without AA cover, and new pilots would have some leeway to escape and keep flying.

So you are enjoying the game more when threats are easily and thoughtlessly dispatch with a beyond render range lock-on everything toddler mode launcher instead of just pulling an AA MAX if you absolutely must have infantry level AA protection?

Nice to know you are happy with the game watered down to "We have HA so we don't have to worry about anything now."

I'm sure that will promote daring stratagems such as "Spam HA" or the risky but rewarding "Spam more HA" and make this title a paragon of Combined Arms with a deep and interesting cross counter lattice.

You are everything wrong with this game and this kind of behavior and endorsement of weapons that require no skill or thought to use is going to kill the very thing that makes it fun.

Please take me serious and read properly what I wrote.I havent been killed once or by a single reaver, but I was multiple times sieged by Reaver squads of organized outfits. This experience is the perfect counter-evidence to what you wrote.

Fly close as ESF
wait til last second
pop flares
take out heavies with launchers
???
profit
It works even better when a liberator does it.

Well given the fact that I have no idea what the situation was, if it was air outnumbering the people on the ground it proves nothing. Air can still kill ground units fast.

Fly close as ESF
get into render distance
instant death by burster maxes
???
sadness

Atm its:
Fly into hex
maybe get a lock-on warning for 1sec
pop flares if you did get one, just explode if not
Now you have 5secs to to find the HA and get into render distance
Probably wont find them, since the rockets didnt leave a smoke trail -> no idea where they are
retreat before you get locked again

and repeat
______________________________

Air can hardly take part in any major battle, and is still OP against small groups of infantry that try to take the small bases

90% of the time its just annihilators now, in that case. Liberator.

It is mostly annihilators now but there are some burster maxes still in fights. And lib is pretty miserable against annihilators.

I get it, but a liberator isnt meant to be flown alone. at least 2, or have some ESFs following, Everone thinks that one liberator is all we need! and if it fails, games broken =[, But 2 liberators can lock down any position, get flares on them both and you only need one over their position.

Air was not outnumbering the infantry. You said infantry now would be farming air, and if this was true, even on equal numbers infantry should be farming air. But the contrary is the fact. I just told you that I experienced multiple times in the last week where reavers were farming infantry and tanks. So I proved you wrong.

Infantry will kill equal numbers of air with a mix of burster maxes / lock ons because the render distance is so horrible. I said that I have not seen air have any actual effect on a reasonably sized fight in a long time. You telling me about some experience of yours w/o video or atleast pictures proves absolutely nothing. I have seen more infantry farming tank zergs than I have seen air farming infantry.

You realize the lock on indicator is broken right? I can't begin to describe how game breaking this is.

You have no clue what balance is if you think this is it. Give me a break.

The lock-on bug needs to be resolved ASAP and lock-on ranges need to be reduced to match render limitations. I imagine things will approach balance afterwards.

Really, though, this game is unforgiving for newer pilots.

http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/...-missiles-appear-on-radar.83195/#post-1080038

All they really did was FIX the rocket launchers so that the hits actually register again.
Before patch 02 my a2g launcher was useless and I actually used the dumbfire instead of it because of the bugs.

Vehicle users are getting ******** about the launchers but really what right do they have?
Infantry has exactly two weapons that work against aircraft and one weapon for tanks, they are angry because infantry can actually defend themselves now.

The infamous line - 'anti air should just be a deterrent to aircraft, not a hard counter' is still true.
It takes 1000 certs to get the launcher and only 30 to get flares, if you get locked on to then you have more then enough time to use your flares and escape the battle, waiting for flares to regen before retrying.

Organized squads of HA can only take down aircraft if the aircraft does not run away, an organized squad of ESF and liberators are still much more powerful then infantry of the same number so maybe they should just learn to use teamwork.

I have been having a blast since the change since I am primarily a ground pounder. We are actually seeing some great fights on Connery. I wouldn't say there is a lack of air presence there either. What we are starting to see now is a better quality pilot. The (ACE) pilots that know what they are doing on Connery. As for the Armor we are still seeing plenty of armor showing up faster than we can kill it sometimes.

I just wanted to comment though and say the infantry combat has been a HUGE improvement over what it was and I know everybody that I have talked to loves it.

Infantry is more fun, but it's not because aircraft were nerfed. It's largely due to the spawn room changes. The bulk of the aircraft balancing changes came before GU02. Most of the people stopped playing aircraft at that point, but we still didn't have these epic battles. Not until the spawn room changes.

Air was already ineffective in large battles. Now it's ineffective in almost any battle. This has led to other problems that the community hasn't quite noticed yet. There's no way to strike behind enemy lines or break stalemates. I'm not entirely sure what needs to happen for liberators to be used again. They changed so many things so quickly, it's hard to know what is really the problem. Lock on everything launchers clearly need to go. Perhaps then we can take another look at their effectiveness. I still believe air interceptors should be the counter to air, and ground should only be able to deter aircraft to prevent libs from hovering in the area.

I agree also, but I still feel that we need to work on those damn annihilators. Its making flying during peak just unfun and useless. Nerf or remove them, you should have to choose between ground or air imho.


Render distance would help, but just get rid of them.