A Response to General feelings around Air Ground Balance

Flying around earlier testing graphics I saw 1 guy in an MBT. Im only BR10 on that account so not particularly interested in him but hes firing his main gun at me and theres not a soul around, hes only 1/2 in the tank as i dip forward to have a look but Ive got no A2G , only extended burn tanks and default gun so not a threat.

Before I can think twice hes in seat 2 carving me up with that new skyguard on a turret Ranger thing, then not content with making me scramble for the ground (tough call, its Esamir) for a bit of cover hes out of his MBT with a lockon lighting me up across the valley as I flee. I barely escape on green.

So after all the whining about esf and liberators being unbalanced, now MBTs are single handedly a fully mobile AA counter and have become the counter/aggressor against all road vehicles too.


And empire specific launchers have yet to come, not to mention the engineers AA mana turret. Yeah nice balance going on here. I only want to fly air superiority and dogfight yet with the sudden flood of AA AND the 20xp for damaging me ive become a flying cert dispenser drawing fire from all the people trying to get their xp back on the expensive weapons theyve bought.

I don't think the "paywall" is the problem here when you consider that rocket pods and other vehicle weapons are also behind a paywall. I think the problem stemmed from the lack of xp reward involved with pulling AA units. However I think we have gotten over the "reward-wall" now with the surface to air damage xp. Also consider this, people say that stock AA (eg. single burster max) isn't effective enough, forcing people to buy upgrades (rockets, skyguard, dual burster) to be effective but how effective is a stock ESF or Liberator? Not very. Its the upgraded, skilled pilots who cause the carnage that bring out the calls for AA buffs

At the moment the only pilots who fly effectively are those who are skilled and have spent a lot of time and or money on their craft, therefore they can still be very effective in the right situation. As AA gets buffed, either through balances or ridiculous specials on all AA equipment, the skill cap for flying increases meaning that only good pilots bother to pull aircraft and they are still effective. Imagine a brand new player joining Planetside right now and wanting to try flying... it's not going to happen and most will give up.

Anyone can pull AA if they really need to and now a lot of players have at least 1 upgraded AA unit. Now with the xp reward, there is a reason to go AA so more people do. At the moment, I think the damage balance between air and ground units is ok. Perhaps the burster max could use increased spread or reduced velocity while the skyguard could be buffed in reverse. I think the problem comes from the number of people who now pull AA units and force non upgraded or less skilled pilots to give up their dreams of flying in PS2.

In the future, specials should never be used as a balancing mechanism alongside buffs/nerfs.

You stuck around FAR, FAR too long and STILL made it out in the green? Not only that, hes a piss-poor AA deterrant with the Ranger, I take them out with just my Vortex. AND he gimped himself against enemy armour for that slight "AA". The lockons still take a solid ~3 seconds[2.5 to be precise, but I hope you're able to dodge aim for atleast 0.5 seconds], which is plenty of time to AB outta there and only take 1 hit[Edit: It takes ~3 lock-on hits to kill an ESF, so 1 hit is negligible. Fly off, repair, reattack. Especially if hes an HA not an Engi, easy vehicle kill] even without flares. You have plenty of options to attack and survive. He clearly didnt have a stock tank, you had a stock ESF, Im not sure what about your scenario seemed unfair.

I agree with this. When I'm going somewhere that I know a large battle is I generally make a quick pass just blasting my afterburners first to kind of get a feeling for how much AA I will be taking. If it's too much. I find somewhere else. If I feel I can survive I start making attack runs on tanks. Also I am always doing this from behind the enemy. I see pilots charging straight at a tank column with skyguards and bursters lined up behind it then crying that AA is OP. Did they think the same wouldn't happen if they charged the tank column in a singular tank? Be smart about it and it's fine for pilots and for AA. Like you said. Pilots might get a kill. An assist. Who knows honestly. AA get their deterrence XP in addition to assist XP if a friendly plane chases them down or they die of natural/less then natural causes.

I like where the game is right now for air. I'm an excellent pilot and all this anti air rarely kills me, it just keeps me away from getting over my average of 650xp/min in my ESF. Waterson is devoid of good pilots, as most suicide once they realize I'm flying backwards and shooting them in the face. Tons of AA prevents me from dying to teamates who are god awful and ram into each other when they follow an enemy ESF. Sad part is they can't actually hit the enemy during these flights and only seem to get the kill, or ram into each other.

My perspective with AA is this. Skyguard is laughably bad compared to AA max. They take less hits to kill, I can keep track of the tank even after leaving the area for a minute or two, they can't hide in small buildings, they don't repair as fast as a max, they can't be revived like a max, they are less accurate, and they feel like their clip is smaller. The only thing they are better at is very close range damage TTK. In reality they need to switch the AA max weapons with the skyguard. I should not be terrified of 2 max units and not of 2 skyguards.

Happy to hear that

My thought is that the reach that AA maxes + turrets have is too far now. This is what is causing the huge "NO FLY" zones that is ruining dogfighting. Perhaps if they buffed the AA maxes to do increased damage, but reduce the projectile speed so that you could still fly around and dogfight high in the sky, but if you went after ground targets, you would take just as much punishment as now. The main thing I am arguing against is what the OP wanted: BUFF AA AGAIN. I don't think they need a buff/nerf, just a rearranging of ranges to allow dogfighting again. When they increased the projectile speed of the AA Flak, it really hampered dogfighting in the middle between the 2 large armies.

I wish I could update the OP for the new people who come in and only reply to that.
I've come to the conclusion that there is A balanced amount of AA at the moment but it was implemented in a way that to be effective you need to use a lot of it. What I would of wished was that instead of having the AA we have now we should of had a more clear consolidated AA defence. This would be good for aircraft as then they knew if that defence is destroyed the sky was clear.

You must work in a company and feel that you need to add that redundant term to the end of everything you say, going forward

I don't, I find this a complete joke. 20 xp is nowhere near enough - it's not even a tenth of a cert. SG's get very little kills and you can be in one for 2 hours and gain practically no certs for a hugely important role. no one is going to miss one extra foot soldier but when enemy Air show up and u have a SG with you, that makes a huge difference except SOE likes to give the middle finger to a few things that it picks on, SG's, Infi's...

Fortunately, team obligation and insatiable hatred fuel my Burster MAX.

That's what Ground originally wanted; I would have been fine it it relied on a deployment system similar to S-AMS units, as long as it was effective and not made of glass.

There seems to be a large rift in perspective between what pilots call "hard counter" and what ground units call it. On the ground instant death (or close to it) is a hard counter. Tanks require mine guard to remove one hard counter but still have a few more. Infantry is obvious but when im in a fighter the only hard counter I have is other aircraft or large groups of AA. (My tank blows up very quickly against 10 infantry HAs as well - and there is no flares if you want to acctually use your special ability).

Air was OP for the first two months of the game, then rendered ineffective in large scale battles due to changes to G2A tracking & effectiveness. Since some rollbacks,namely the annihilator was nerfed to being a waste of 700 certs, air is slightly better off but still suffers in large scale battles, similar to armor as mass infantry is the strongest thing in the game, given how game mechanics work, aka rendering.

The fundamental problem with trying to balance air vs ground, is that SOE in its wisdom has gone down the road of air being a generalist unit, by creating weapons platforms that do damage to everything. To counter this, they then give ground units , namely HA, weapons platforms that damage anything, with minimal downsides. Without removing specific weapons or restricting how capable they are against various air or ground units, balancing air is not going to really happen.

If we make ATG viable in large scale battles again, they will dominate in medium and small battles, as they are already good there, due to lack of critical mass of infantry. The only realistic way to balance, is to make the ESF an air to air platform only, remove G2A launchers from the game, and make libs a ATG unit, that can only attack armor or infantry effectively, not both. Problem with this is , you will force players to choose roles they do not want, as well as having to deal with the issue of people already having spend US dollars on items that would need to be removed.

For the record, i have no real issue in being force to make a choice that restricts my ability to damage everything, just in general i doubt PS2s current playerbase will accept that, as most gamers these days, frankly feel the only choice is to be able to be the one guy who can kill anything, without any downsides.

The problem with aircraft is that they can't stay near a big fight without being lit up by lots of AA, but a single AA user often feels like they have minimal effectiveness at a quiet base because a single rocket pod user can often lock down a base with up to 5 enemy combatants, podding a burster MAX in less time than the burster can flak the pilot.
Which is why balancing air versus ground is so difficult.

Oh, and some empire's seem to be much worse at pulling sufficient AA than other empires, or at least I sometimes get that impression.

When you see a couple of enemy air in the distance, like, say, 2 2/3 libs and 4 mosquitos, that can be something that drives AA users to despair, unless they can call in a few other AA users which for some reason seems to be problematic, especially in small to medium engagements... But then, if AA was as effective in PS2 as it is in PS1 then a lot of people would be pulling AA and the pilots would be creating a poostorm on the forums.

If every base had at least 1 AA turret it could fill the gap, then current G2A can be tweaked. The skygaurd really needs to switch places with the burster MAX in effectiveness charts.

I must say that I find enemy aircraft to honestly not be too effective. Now, I am part of a large outfit and our leader is a seasoned PS1 vet. Even before the flak armor buff, back when LoLpodding was causing enough tears to fill the ocean, we only saw a target rich environment. When enemt air rolled in burster MAX's came out and I would get more certs playing an engineer than you could shake a stick at resupplying and repairing. Now I fear we are the reason pilots are actually having a hard time, unless you roll on us with a lot of air you're basically just a distraction for a short period of time. Two to three bursters shred an ESF and a Lib had better not hang around too long. I honestly don't fear enemy air, I worry more about a tank column coming in, or the infantry that may be working with the air that can cap us while we worry about the air, that's the real threat. That being said moving infantry in under cover of air superiority is a good tactic, it also requires good coordination which I feel should be rewarded.

As a medic with flak armor I personally can regularly survive a rocketpod salvo via my regen and being aware of my surroundings. Ducking arounda corner or into a building has saved me more times than I can count. That's honestly a little unbalanced I think. I've tried flying a reaver a few times and I think I would lose to weather baloons if they were up there . I'm a serviceable Galaxy pilot but that's about it. If I had to honestly say do I think air is OP, balanced or UP, I would honestly say a bit UP. I feel you have to be quite skilled as a pilot to be successful, and only reasonably competent to deter air. I don't know, I may be off base but that's how I see it at least.

Wow, people actually upvoted this fallacious garbage.

Are you really expecting to be able to take on a full enemy squad by yourself? Because this the logic I see the flyboys using.

If you ran into a squad of 10 enemies as a MAX and got killed would you complain about that?

If you drove into a zerg as MBT and got blown up would you complain about that?

The self-entitlement coming from these pilots is unbelievable. They sincerely think they that deserve more power and versatilely than any other class/vehicle in the game - even more than a squad of infantry. If they don't get a kill streak from every ESF purchase, they get mad, and come here to whine until they can spawn another one.

A free-resource infantry player should not be able to solo a 200 resource aircraft. Simple as that.

Aircraft cannot capture points. They can be extremely annoying, but they cannot actually capture points. A single aircraft cannot camp a base to oblivion, nor can 20 anymore. Infantry players have the flexibility to change their classes even upon death and pull out counters to aircraft.

I think the infantry vs. aircraft balance is the best it's ever been. I

The aircraft are very easy to counter in this game as it is. Sure you can't pull any weapon out that can 1-hit kill them, but you can't do that for any vehicle expect cheaply lay landmines on top of a vehicles (which I believe needs to be removed from the game entirely, but that's a different argument).

Vehicles should always beat infantry in a 1v1 scenario. That's why they cost resources, have a cooldown timer, cannot cap points, and maneuverability is much more limited by the environment. That's balance and this game has pretty good balance at this point (even the HE aren't super game-breaking OP, even if they are a bit annoying right now).

I'm mostly an infantry player too. I have no problem fighting vehicles in this game. I also know when I'm out numbered because the enemy's zerg shows up. I know when to fall back and when to fight. That's something a lot of people here lack. They keep spawning at clearly overrun bases and then complain about balance.

An outpost or base can be lost far before the point as flipped. People need to get that through their heads.

Resonding in no particular order...

Again, take MY opinion with a grain of salt here. The section where you quoted me as getting 20XP was in a "I'm one of a significantly large AA unit", so that 20XP is given to each of the X Bursters, Y Skyguards, and Z AA HA's[Plus the 25-50 for assist, etc.]. In the solo scenarios[This is more prevalent for me, as I roll in armour columns as a Skyguard. So I'm practically a first responder to air threats], I get 60-80XP per SCARED aircraft and 200+ for the stupid ones that stick around too long. Thats what I see fair. If in my 1vAir scenario scaring off 1 plane only got me 20XP for ~75% health damage, I too would agree with you.

I use my Skyguard more frequently than my AA burster MAX, largely because I get more certs that way[Surprised? I was too. Its 100% true though]. I roll as an HA, with either default or Grounder in my Skyguard, not only do I have the ability to hop out and aid the ground assault, I can lockon to the damaged aircraft trying to run and get the kill[And possibly another Skyguard kill] while my missle chases them. As an infantry, I probably get AROUND 50 certs/hour, as a free-no-boost player, in my Skyguard, I get somewhere in the ballpark of 40-45 certs/hour depending on bases assault, actual air presence, etc. And while I can swap the loadout on my MAX for AI, which is nice, I tend to play more conservatively because I dont want to lose my MAX and then have their air roll in. Plus, I prefer the Skyguard's agility to sitting in a Sundy.

Before I begin with this one: Have you actually PLAYED as a Dual Burster or Skyguard?

If no: Its understandable that you might think the reach is too far. But when I have a TTI [Time to Impact] of nearly 2 seconds for shots within lockon range, it requires a SIGNIFICANT amount of leading. Having been in my MAX and Skyguard for so long, I can comfortably lead a target at ~1000m, HOWEVER, only if they move predictably. If you're moving in a straight line, you're toast. If you're making swoops, curves, terrain dives, etc. I'll hit you maybe 5% of the time. Again, it comes down to me as a "Smart AA v. Smart Pilot" scenario that I would like to see balance determined by. Not Me vs. Stupid Pilot, or Stupid v. Stupid, because that makes the balance for those who are good[And therefore, certed highly] into it, either OP or gimped.

If yes: The range of AA is directly proportional to the amount of experience you have in it, I find. Having spent countless hours in my Dual Burster and Skyguard, individually, I can hit moving targets relatively reliably. I have difficulties with erratic movements at range, but hey, thats a smart pilot being smart, so thats fair. The amount of times I see relatively new AA players failing to lead enough, or even at all, is surprisingly high[And I always go out of my way to then hit that Proxy Chat button and try to coordinate them, give ranges to lead, etc].

As for increased damage... You've gotta be kidding me. Both my Skyguard and my Dual Burster can drop an ESF in a couple seconds, any sort of damage increase would make even strafing runs suicidal. Thats what Pilots near big battles need to be doing, strafing runs. When I'm in my Mossie, I assess the AA coverage. If its weak, I'll hover around a bit and harrass until I hit ~60% health. If its strong, I will NEVER stay still. I strafe the base, to damage tanks, repairing Engis, etc. [Prioritizing targets, of course], and then get out and repair. [NOTE: Always start a strafe from the REAR of the enemy. Going headlong where most the guns are pointled WILL get you killed]. If its too strong even for a strafing run, I'll assist another front until the ground teams have either directed AA away from being AA, or simply killed it.

Wow. Wall of text. I'm not TL;DRing. I formatted, so your eyes wont bleed.


Edit: Further responses before I have to head off to school. These may be poorly worded as I'm in a touch of a rush.

First, how is being aware of your surroundings, with Flak armour to reduce damage, and being observant enough to get into hard cover.... Unbalanced? You cant hurt the ESF, but you can hide from it. It all works. Skilled Pilot Vs. Skilled AA ends with no one dying, but a lot of damage taken on both sides, before the inevitable retreats. At least the pilot can fly off to repair. An AA MAX has to rely on someone else, though the skyguard can be "self" repaired at least.

Poor pilots will always die to AA. They simply dont know when its time to get out. As for the yellow bit. Thats 2-3 dedicated, AA ONLY units. Against 1-3 "I can blow up everything" units. I feel their ability to remove, and potentially quickly kill, is entirely fair.

They dont. An AA HA can scare off a pilot, but that pilot can drop that HA in a few shots, while that HA has to shoot 3-4 rockets, taking 2.5 seconds per lockon, plus reload, plus TTI. With Flares, the pilot can comfortably kill the HA and fly off to repair if damaged.

Air isnt easy to counter. Its easy to deter. You scare them off, or they die if they stick around. Was sticking around worth it? If its a skill pilot, that AMS probably just blew up, so yeah, it was. Vehicles DO always beat Infantry in a 1v1 scenario. So I'm unsure why this was brought up. Give the same skilled player a vehicle and its infantry deterrant, the vehicle will always win.

stayed far too long lol, how do you know you werent there, and if youd ever played Esamir you know how its long and flat, plenty of time to run up the ridges along the lake and get a huge lock on view.

i was on a friken fly past at full speed and only pulled down briefly to see why he was trying to shoot me with his tank weapon, if id have tried to shoot him id be dead, i couldnt even acquire him in that time

thats not a fair fight, i didnt even have a chance to do anything but run, but for some reason you seem to feel the need to discredit me for just flying, i take it you are an air hater, should i pull your past posts to see or is that what ill find?