I'll Finally Admit it: AA is out of control.

Just as a note WW2 sky battles were won by AA, you need to look at the military reports, not the newspaper propaganda of the period. As an example the most "victories" achieved in the battle of britain were achieved by the AA of the royal navy not the RAF. Ground effectiveness of the airforce in the normandy campaign (where total air dominance was achieved) found the a2g effectiveness was 10% of that claimed by the airforce (see falaise pocket). Vietnam and Desert Storm examples are misleading at the best because of the massive technological differences between the two forces. Afghanistan just look at the difference in the effectiveness of ground forces against air from before and after the CIA provided the afghans with g2a launchers in the period the afghans were resisting the russians. Just my 2 cents.

Problem is that there is to much AA, it's everywhere...

Can you avoid it? Yes
However that's not the problem, yes.. I can fly around not dying... The only xp you'll get is by repairing your ESF every 2nd minute or so.

Flying over any base with a squad/platoon that aren't complete trash at this game will result in you being forced away by lock-on messages and AA Max, giving you no time to even find anyone to kill.

You can still get kills with ESFs, however most of them comes from sniping people in the middle of nowhere or bringing down other air. You can rarely help your platoon from the air to secure a base or similar because if it's not the TR's striker it will sure be an instantgib from a pheonix.

Air should be feared by infantary and hard to kill. It seems like 50% of the infantary has some sort of AA weapon and if not, can run to a turret or spawn a tank or why not a MAX in no time.

And people coming with "well, what do you expect, you fly solo" or w/e, no I can have a whole platoon under me and still get killed by some spawnroom pheonix or be forced away by just 1 striker.

I'm not the best pilot, but I'm not the worst either... Lately I've just stayed away from the air unless it's in the middle of the night and low population on the servers though. Don't missunderstand me here either, flying shouldn't be easy... But a few lock-on launchers or 2-3 MAX:s with AA shouldn't be able to completely secure the whole air space in a region either.

MBTs and ESF are nearly the same, look at the Score / hour / rank. Both have the same progression. NC and VS MBT fall a bit off on the top. But Vanguard is not made to have a high spm, but a higher survivability the VS one i have no idea why.

Yet the ESF out scores it and out kills it quite comfortably. It also puts out massively more damage - ~75% more. The only thing that the MBT appears to win is deaths/hour but that can be easily accounted for by the fact that MBT's are easier to bail from on the verge of destruction. The only time I'm ever killed in a tank is when I'm lolpodded by an ESF.

The dominant craft/class on the battlefield is the ESF - going by the 'no one class should dominate' completely invalidates the person I replied to's point.

You know what also outscores an MBT? Everything. Just look at the Infantry charts. And the highest score / h goes to the MAX.
Compare the highest ESF Score / h to the highest MAX score / h - difference of 30%

so the MAX is dominating not the ESF
The ESF and the infantry make ca. the same SPH

I guess the tank just needs a buff -> GU08

Then compare the vehicle kills between the two respective weapons.

~4.5 vehicle kills/hour with Bursters.

~16.5 vehicle kills/hour with Photon Pods.

I grab an AA MAX, get 6 hits on a Liberator, wait a few minutes and chaching - 1200XP. All I had to do was scratch the paint and I'm rolling in XP. Argue all you want about assist XP for MAX being too high, that's fine. Using it to show how effective the MAX is at anything but accumulating XP, we've got a problem.

still nothing lolll

This thread needs to stay on first page

page 33 and counting

Literally all they need to do is reduce the accuracy of the burster so it's less effective at range

The DPS on the burster is a bit insane but it totally makes sense up close. It doesn't make sense that a burster pretty much locks down an entire hex from ESF's by himself.

If the accuracy was seriously reduced and everything kept the same:

1. ESF's that trail you or fly right within your range still get wrecked (this is bad piloting
2. Multiple bursters being used at the same time no longer becomes more important than having ESF superiority, but at the same time the sheer amount of fire into the sky will seriously deter aircraft from flying in the zone (this is what bursters should be good at - in numbers very lethal, alone a decent deterrent but still very lethal in close range. Right now they are very lethal all by themselves and in numbers nothing survives for more than a couple of seconds).
3. ESF's that aren't directly engaging you and aren't in the immediate area still get hit by bursters, but now it isn't nearly as easy to instant-gib them at any range (only at close range.

This makes sense becuase you can pretty much field bursters anywhere for super cheap. They are the best AA in the game yet they can be literally anywhere and spawn anywhere for hardly any resources. If their accuracy was signifigantly reduced but all else remain the same, they would remain as a very cost-effective "cheapo" anti-air solution, that is best at encouraging air from being a constant bother in your zone, and really good at killing air that is trying to directly engage you or fly over your position.

The current problem with bursters is that I can kill (and get killed as an ESF pilot) in less than 3-5 seconds without me being able to stop it if I happen to get within the rather large engagement range of a burster. This is a big balance issue considering rocketpods aren't even that great anymore anyways. The only way to survive a burster attack as an ESF is to IMMEDIATELY turn the other way and get out of the area/get behind a mountain/etc otherwise you are guaranteed to die within 4 seconds... and I'm not even that close to the burster at this point. If there is more than one, say 3-4 bursters being used? You are literally insta-gibbed the moment you fly within 400m of the bursters, even if you aren't even flying twoards the bursters or engaging them.

A significant reduction in accuracy will completely fix this, make it so multiple bursters work well as an AA system (especially since it's almost impossible to actually kill multiple bursters and take care of the threat), rather than work as an instant-win against all air in a large range, and solo bursters will do well at taking care of immediate air threats and deterring/preventing future direct air threats.

So how do you deal with air in the distance then if bursters can no longer effectively hit them? That's the brilliant part. This is where we buff the skyguard so it's actually very accurate, but does less DPS than a burster does. So you have bursters which are lethal in close range and work good as a deterrent in medium range, and then you have the new and improved skyguard which is effective (but not totally lethal) in close, meduim and long ranges. In other words, the skyguard becomes the "lancer", in that it does less damage but works really well at long ranges.

All of this combined makes the skyguard useful, it still keeps bursters useful but no longer king of all air, and aircraft generally can no longer be nuked in less than 3-4 seconds the moment they come within 300m of a burster.

Not to beat a dead horse, but I told you so... The problem with AA completely revolves around the MAX and its ease of access, minimal size (making it virtually invisible from Air) and the ability to revive, repair and re-arm them indefinitely.

I think the current solution is much like I proposed months ago. Bursters should have a range of < 300m, which is more then enough to deal with hover spammers and low fliers, yet not far enough to make skyguards and A2A ESF irrelevant, which is exactly what happened, specifically in the case of the A2A ESF. This also forces players to make tactical decisions in how they want to deal with enemy Air.

MAX - 0 < 300m Range
Skyguard - 0 < 500m Range
Turrets - 0 > 750m range
A2A ESF - 0 > 1000m range

I'm still going to C-4 your scythe mid-flight....

But in all honesty, Bombers do need a bit of a buff.. ESF's are light armor light weight aircraft and should take damage to AA as they do now. What I would recommend is giving 2 defense slots to ESF's instead of buffing their armor.

I know its hurting ESF pilots, I have some in my outfit that are hurting daily but, AA are ground based defense, and operate correctly, imo. Need to get your boys moving on ground targets man.

All you have to do is check the player stats and see how biased some opinions are.
Same way some tank driver whines about air, you check his stats and most of his kills are from his tank.

This is a great thread to popcorn with.

You mean so it's really hard to hit air at 1000m? I'm sure there's a video in here of someone showing us how OP Bursters are by shooting at his Liberator *parked* at ~950m.. and missing most of those shots. The shots that did hit did no noticeable damage - but we'll blame the sun for being the reason for him missing!

I Burster MAX but probably not as much any more since I'll be sporting Ravens or Fractures on my MAXes now. Only time I waste ammo shooting at ESF 500m+ is when one's burning or it's sniffing the rear end of a friendly tank and I try to scare them away - since that's been tamed down, I'll leave them to their own devices. Make the flak explode at 500m for all I care. If you're getting hit consistently at that range by MAX, take a look at the mirror first.

AA MAX may be one of the most boring but necessary roles in the game. The ESRL's were a welcome relief to me as I reverted back to heavy for awhile and started targeting those out of the way Sundies.. other people in the platoon had specced up DB's and I got to take a break from the tedium.

Very few people enjoy DB MAX, many enjoy ESF. DB's are there because they have to be.

yeah, people are just scared of aircraft when they cant fly themselves

Haha. Hopefully you'll live long enough to pull the trigger next time


As far as ESF vs Libs go with respect to AA balance, I would say ESFs are the closest to being balanced. The question is how can we buff liberators or adjust flak without making libs the undisputed kings in small fights?

A great first step would be to give either flares or afterburners to libs baseline. But more importantly libs needs a method of shaking flak damage (particularly at range) and lock-on missiles. Lockons are just absurd because libs can't do anything to prevent the incoming damage. A big part of the problem in my opinion is the fire/forget system we have because it's just dumb. Why not force lock-on users to track their target?

I disagree. DB MAX is there because its easy. Sky guards and turrets are more than effective against air. Not to mention the hoards of HA's out there.

Because a certain group of players that might make up the majority of the player base have a strong uncontrollable urge to lick windows. This condition impedes them from having basic FPS skills so SOE must implement weapons that are breathe air and click friendly. As we don't want to intrude upon the simpletons train of thought to much.

It's effective, it's boring, it's necessary. If I never spent another second as a DB MAX I wouldn't miss it.

Can't magically pull a Skyguard from your nether regions. Plenty of bases where they're not available.

When people try to use historical "real life" data to justify video game choices ...

Did you also know in WW2, 100% of those who died DID NOT spawn back at the next friendly HQ 10 sec later.