[Suggestion] Does AIR need to be reworked a bit? Or does AA?

Also the AA Max is much to powerful when compared to the Skyguard.
In real life, when firing his gun, a Max gunner would always get back on his a.ss ten meters behind !!!!
While the Skyguard would stay much much more firm when firing.

It's not that AA got overbuffed, it's just that people finally got around to unlock it.
As it stands, the AA/esf balance seems to be about right (liberators are in a pretty sad spot though).

That said, I would gladly give up my A2G power (read: rocketpods) if air was given the chance to actually participate in any of the bigger engagements.
Imo, Liberators should be the A2G unit, very powerful against all ground but easily hunted down by esf if left unprotected. ESF should be the air superiority unit, used mainly to kill enemy liberators or enemy esf to keep your own liberators alive. Esf equipped with the dedicated AI gun would be effective against infantry aswell. AA would be point defense (not massive area denial), it can defend one base from air but only if air is atacking that base in particular.

To summarise:
Nerf/Remove rocketpods
Reduce effective range of AA

Skyguard need a tighter cone of fire
The problem is that there is no different between shooting 1 bullet, a short spread or full auto
The bullets will ALWAYS go in a random wide direction

Its the same old same old. IF one plane is in the sky Air is overpowering. LOL

Rocket pods are not all that awesome. Its prefered by most. But thay really are not that great.

Ground has so much AA its not even funny. Again, one plane flying around and Air is too strong.

Why does everyone still get tanks if air wipes them out? Because air does not wipe them out. Ground does. Tank mines, c4 and rockets kill more tanks and sundies than air even did.

Air is now the little fish. And yet people still whine when they drive a tank solo with no AA and get killed.

I guess no one likes to get killed eh?

Why do air pull more air? Cause they like to fly...

Why does ground pull more ground? Cause they like to drive

What would be the point of air superiority if you didn't have a way to control the ground too?

What a BS!
If you want to kill ground forces, get in a tank and learn to drive - same BS...
But somehow - and only the devs know why - you don't need that. ESFs and bombers do the job very well, while ground AA can't do their job very well, due to it's underpowered nature.

The one thing I truly despise with air is the amount of 1/3 seat switching libs flying around. Instead of having a single lib with a crew flying round we now get 3 libs with seat switching pilots putting 3x the amount of damage on the ground. SOE needs to make it so the lib has to have a pilot, no seat switching and at least 1 gunner in order to use the ordnance

Air is still the best way to counter air... but in the current way of things the best way to counter tanks is infantry and best way to counter infantry is more infantry. AA works well at killing air if the air is stupid enough to stick around, most good pilots won't. We don't want to get to the point where infantry is the only viable option as vehicles are too easily dealt with...

That is my point. If you have to tuck tail and run then there is no battle. So you heal up and fly back in only to be pummeled before you get a shot off. So basis ally aa says air you can't come here. This battle is for ground only. L o L

When I first started playing it was much easier to fly. Now I am much better at flying but I get killed a lot quicker because everyone has caught on to AA.

Pretty soon it will be just a ground game.

Balance - simple as that.

As things stand Air is very unbalanced, and the only way things can go is more and more AA (which neither fixes the balance nor is very satifsying in gameplay terms).

But in some genuine balance and A2G might even be rebuffed a bit.

The important bit though is that the supreme A2A option should not have genuine A2G abilities (obviously they'd have some ability like a burster MAX being used for AV or AI not AA).

AA in sufficient quantity is more than enough to deal with any amount of air. One max shouldn't be enough to deal with numerous air. Its pretty balanced imo. The BEST way to counter air is air, as it should be. Having air superiority should mean something. The A2G options of air don't need any buffs, neither does AA.

I was referring to the point that was made about an a2a fighter, we have this option already. Air can deal with air much better than ground based AA who are only capable of punishing the noobs and scaring away the rest. I would really hate for what i believe to be one the most finely balanced aspects of the game ruined by more buffs/nerfs. I don't want to have my mosquito as useless as my prowler, which would probably make me leave the game, unless they sort the mess that is infantry combat out.

TL;DR: If you want to kill aircraft, learn to fly...

These guys are lying to you, have them come to mattherson and I'll give them whatever aircraft they want and whatever configuration they choose.

Except the A2A option is also an A2G option with a quick change, which completely throws game balance off.

They should never have made ESFs such good A2G options (or basically added lolpods), but that genie is out of the bottle and can't be put back in.

So the Devs are left with two choices really continually add more and more AA to counter such strong solo (nevermind organised group) A2G power, or put in a check that balances A2G, such as a genuinely superiour A2A fighter that has no real A2G capability.

It is similar to the tanks now that you mention it, in that MBT can never been as powerful as they were in PS1 because in PS1 they required 2 players to actually work, bad game design has resulted in bad balance issues there too.

This thread is going to make me log in a rocket pod some infantry and tanks.
ta ta

ESF only does well against ground forces when there is no AA and even then you require a positional requirement to take tanks out quickly or to unload a lot of ammo to kill a sunderer. You can roll with a2a missiles, but seeing as they are seen as lame and often not as effective as just dogfighting, people would rather the versatility to do both.

I personally would prefer if the liberator has more potency in bombing and maybe the ESF less so. Seeing as Liberators have become far less used and so easy to take out with AA, they aren't used. ESF uses its agility to evade AA. But denying ESF the ability to effect the battle on the ground altogether would seriously shift the power balance towards the ground, which i don't think should be the case.

This is exactly the problem though, a superior A2A fighter that cannot have the versitility brings Air back into balance.

The idea that the only predator to a predator is itself is one of pure nonsense and doomed to failure.

This is only going to get worse with the versatility and solo power of the ESF, the only answer SOE has currently is more and more AA to try and balance that.

The skyguard needs a buff.

Also, base turrets should have rudimentary automation like in PS1. They used to light up targets within a short range at a reduced rate of fire on their own.

Beyond that, things are pretty good.

Air and anit-air are working as intended.

Except there is no 'balance' when you can't limit or control how people pull what they pull or where.

The traditional argument of every damn Air Jockey with regards to Air to Ground spam was to 'Bring AA'. And when Ground brings AA, the argument switches from "Bring AA" to "AA is over powered."

When AA complained about not being 'good enough', the air jockey just tells people to 'use' more' and when the ground USES more... Again, the argument switches to "Too much AA."

Same with tank zergs and such... Then we devolve into the resource costs of how Infantry RLs and Engineer AV turrets don't cost resources for them to spam it... But let's look at something here for a moment.

Should an ESF or Tank get a successful kill, it is about 200-300 XP per person, and about 100-150 for static turrets. Add to that, damage that the Tank or ESF can repair on a successful getaway is about 7-10 XP per 'tick'.

For the non-resource infantry - Only 1 person gets XP for the 'kill', about 4-7 times of what they get for the person, maybe the XP for person or persons in the vehicle who didn't get out in time, but only 1 or 2 people get 'assist' kills, depending on the vehicle, this may not be a lot... But that is also on a successful kill. Failure to kill, for ground vehicles - 0 XP. No partial XP for no kill, For Air, you need to do a certain amount of damage to get about 20-30 XP, but again, a certain amount of damage to be done, which can only be successfully pulled off with the use of G2A weapons, or a decent skill shot with the lancer. And just so you know, the Striker has to hit with at least 3 missiles to qualify for Surface to Air Damage XP, the Burster has to score about 6-10 hits on a target.

Now looking at it from the Air vs Ground situation...Air gets more XP bugging out and repairing than the Ground units spamming air. If you are not 'repairing' your craft yourself, then you aren't getting much. I also know that engaging air units, you aren't getting XP unless you did significant damage to cause the aircraft to go down. Same with blowing up vehicles, you get nothing unless it dies.

In every ground fight I have been in, I have seen air, both single and in large groups just put the smack down on small groups and even in large battle areas still. The current AA is not the 'denial' zone in fights as it is being made.