"The role of MAX AA should not be region-wide denial, instead, it should be point defense ..."

Once again, rocketpods are the root of evil, they should never have been introduced...

Very, very debatable opinion you have there.
I believe that they should do very slightly more than tickle tanks and that's what they do now.
They also offer the pilot the ability to affect the combat on the ground to a certain degree.
But ESFs have no staying power, so rocketpods are really nearly out of the question nowadays.
And that being said, most pilots will be running rotary/tanks in the days to come

And the biggest threat to tanks should be tanks and the biggest threat to infantry should be infantry...

We've been there, multiple times in Beta and from release. It was originally designed that way and it simply doesn't work. When the biggest threat to air is air, the biggest threat to everything else is also air. Suddenly, the skies are full of planes and most of them are firmly pointed at the ground because that's where all the easy points are.

The simplest way to do that would be to remove the noob friendly hover (aka farming) mode.

One of the things that strikes me for the Skyguard is how small the clip is for such an inaccurate weapon. I think there should be upgrades for magazine size maybe 10 per upgrade. Then we would go from there and see if it really needs an accuracy buff.

Now I understand your point about the difficulty for air to take out a AA nest and I agree, but it honestly seems biased. You can say the same thing for ground vehicles about how they require teamwork from the infantry to advance as they can't do much against HAs pocking shots at them from behind cover hundreds of meters away. This is a team based game and you do need ground troops to push and kill AV or AA nests if you want to make use of vehicles that can change a battle so much.
Besides, I remember full well how much the flyboys repeated the word teamwork back when the AA was horrible and the air overpowered. Back then we apparently needed teamwork and many players to take out a single airplane, so how come you can't rely on your ground team to take out an AA nest now ?

Now about the Max AA, I hate to bring it but only the trash pilots are scared of bursters. I spent a lot of time as a burster Max, shot 165 000 times with 30% accuracy, dealt 2.6 million damage and I only got 267 vehicle kills. From my experience, the truth is, those kills were all from the 10% most inexperienced, impatient and unskilled pilots. Hell, I don't think I got a single kill on the best pilots of Mattherson with my bursters.

Despite that, I have to say the change you suggest is fair. I always thought it was stupid how easily I can hit stuff until they stop rendering which is often a very very long distance.

I'm more of going for a proj. velocity buff actually. Together with a hard limit on how fast the turret can pitch and yaw. This'll make them handicapped when it comes to close-in combat

Comparing one problem to another problem that already exists does not invalidate either problems.
Both are issues with teamplay that need to be solved.
As for vehicles, they've increased the resistance to rocket launchers. Now, one of the most effective counters to armour is AP cannons and turrets. HAs are only really that effective close-in when the enemy armour starts rolling into the base itself. In the open, infantry is often easily sniped by any tank-mounted kobalt gunner with a 1.5x zoom function and a driver smart enough to cooperate with the gunner.

Again, relying on the ground team to take out AA nests is not a solution because the only way to kill a bunch of maxes hiding right next to or often inside the main building practically requires overwhelming infantry presence and that means the base is won. AKA, in order to take part in the battle, air has to wait until the battle is already over.

And as for the comparison to armour, look above for my comments.

I'm not afraid of bursters, they just don't allow me to actually do anything productive in the battle itself.
Also, I eat burster MAXes that try to solo me with silly dual bursters. Rotary cannon kills them in 1 clip and very very quickly too as long as you aim well. I fly straight at them when I know they're operating alone, they never have the logic to move away and I just unload my entire rotary clip as they start to fill my reticle up. I have 100% confidence in this method and it works nearly every time I try it. The issue is when multiple AA maxes are present and spread around.
Why this is a problem is evident in the paragraphs above.

Agreed, and damage should be tweaked as well. AA MAXes should function as a temporary, "poor-man's" AA solution, with larger units such as Skyguards and turrets more powerful.

Its getting too hard to respond with your long list of replies, but you talked of the Burster MAX being point defense. You don't need a projectile velocity nerf actually.

The problem with the Burster MAX was when it was made too effective by the removal of direct damage. When they did this, they buffed indirect damage so its all AOE based damage, and despite what its stats say, the dropoff in the direct damage doesn't exist since it doesn't do direct damage anymore. What needs to be added is to add back damage falloff... starting at 200m, and by 300m it should be scratching the paint. Under 200m, it'd be just as deadly as it is today. And yes they can hit beyond 300m as easily as they do today, but it won't do much harm.

A damage nerf is sort of called for as well - a dual Burster needs only 19 rounds out of 28 per arm to shred an ESF, which makes even extended magazines totally not needed. But if we want to keep its TTK the same up close - then reducing its ammo capacity without extended magazines so that you can't afford misses would be a start, similar to ESF rotaries where you need tons of accuracy with them or 1 clip will never cut it. So basically this increases the skill of the Burster MAX by a hair, and makes a stronger case for certing Extended Magazines on them.

And go ahead with your Skyguard buff... projectile velocity buff, COF reduction and a mag/clip size cert option instead of just reload speed.

But given all that - I can't figure out why SOE decided to NERF the GD-40F Ranger... its less than a single Burster pre-nerf given it had less ammo, and now is outright worse than a single Burster.

Most of them are correct anyway, i'd think. I'd actually like it if you went back and did a 1-for-1 reply like I did with your post. It encourages discussion and will bring to light factors that either side have so far failed to recognise. Actually, please, please do so. Please. It takes MAXIMUM MAXIMUM 3 minutes to do it

Forcing a damage falloff is adding a hard cap to the ranged effectiveness.
Forcing a velocity drop is adding a soft cap to the ranged effectiveness.
Of course, in my opinion, that is.
Because a skilled player will be able to hit more effectively at slightly longer ranges than intended and this decreases the level of frustration felt by the player. On paper it might average out to the same thing, but customer satisfaction is important. Velocity nerfs are very popular with vehicle combat balancing in games because of this reason. Falloffs feel very artificial. I've very heavily been involved in the development of a "MMO" (remember, it was 2001, MMO then meant 16vs16) hack for Halo 1 PC. I was doing most of the technical work since I was very active in the modding scene then but I learnt a lot from the other members in charge of map design and balancing - those guys were studying in arts colleges as aspiring game developers, i trust their word and they make sense anyway.

Also, the good thing about velocity nerfs is that it will still retain its effectiveness against idiotic pilots who hoverspam at longer ranges, as well as be effective against liberators since they're slower.

Or both, anyway. Doesn't matter.
Velocity buff needed
most importantly, turret traversal speed cap. So you can't flick the turret around and hence close-in AA work becomes very, very slightly more difficult for the skyguard since angles change fast there. Difference on the skyguard's side will not be too noticable, but the better pilots will be able to exploit this weakness. Doesn't matter if it's "fair" from the outside perspective, all that matters is that both sides individually get reasonably rewarded for their personal effort. Don't misinterpret this as favouring fliers either, just an effort to increase the space for personal progress, an important thing in selling a game.

Even a 2/2 tank shouldn't be self-sufficient.

I can't really agree with this threads subject.

From experience as a player who also specialises in Ground attack with both NC Reaver and TR Mosquito I can say without a doubt the only times I was ever shot down by an AA Max is when I flew too close to the ground, when I did an extremely low strafe on enemy units or when I have been an idiot and didn't turn back for repairs when I should have.

Basically AA Maxes killed me when I was a Ginormous Mong.

I'am waaaaaaaaaaaay more scared of Skyguards, AA Turrets, and Enemy tanks than AA Maxes. And as someone who uses Skyguards and Tanks way more regularly, they are just far better tools than an AA Max which is a last resort to prevent allied units being hit by close strafing aerial forces.


I personally feel the current set up is fine. When I'am not flying around crashing into things, when I'am on the ground, I make it my mission to remove OPFOR AA units because that is one of the many jobs ground units are for; because if that AA is up I can't have air support readily holding down fire and suppressing/destroying the enemy in support of the rest of the assault.

Can you say that you have no issues imagining Liberators/ESFs eliminating an armour zerg surrounding a base that's being heavily fought for? Or can you imagine a liberator/ESF directly and significantly contributing an ongoing ground battle at a heavily contested base like Ti Alloys, Crown, Zurvan Amp (e.g. killing massed infantry as they swarm through a choke)?

I have gotten from BR30 to BR70 in an ESF, and I know my limits very, very well. I know that I cannot expect to affect a battle significantly with a force of ESFs or Liberators. Sure we might get away with quite a lot of kills but it's effect is far from anything close to what a, for example, deployed prowler can do.

Air is able to feebly participate by picking off scraps, but it never takes any significant role in the kill itself.

AA MAXes might not be as deadly as a skyguard (very arguable indeed, I have no fear of skyguards at all because I know they have to reload after 40, and can't sit in a high spot because they'll just get podded or AP'd in no time) but they have the ability to blend in with infantry. For example, remain on the airpads of an air tower. In order to eliminate such a force, you'll basically need to overwhelm the tower with infantry, and when that happens, it means that the tower has already fallen into enemy hands. So, Air has to face a hard counter that does not fall until the base is secure. So, what role does Air play in a base cap? A very, very limited one. Which is good, air should be attacking mobile forces as they move from one place to the other.
But we are well aware that any parked sunderer assaulting a base has a good AA MAX presence right beside it. You can't really kill the MAXes without eliminating the bigger target - the sunderer - first.
It's basically the distributed nature of the AA MAX's firepower that makes it too difficult to defeat to be justifiably this powerful.

CoD is bad for health, and good luck ridding a base or convoy of AA MAXes. It's like trying to use chopsticks to kill a swarm of ants that are after your blood. And I'm asian, I can pick up f*cking soapy marbles or whatever with my damn sticks lol.

Very interesting. You get shot down by AA MAX only when you fly too close to the ground but you are more afraid of tanks, skyguards and AA turrets which are far easier to spot?

I've put a fair amount of hours into both AA MAX and my Reaver.

AA as it stands now is a deterrent. The kills I get with Bursters are pilots who over-commit and come way too close, even when there's three of us from my outfit. I don't run Flak Armor on my Reaver, but even so I get killed more by rotaries than flak. When there is flak fire, you change your tactics. You hit and run, you come in from unusual vectors, if worse comes to worse, you intercept enemy reinforcements coming from outside the facility while the ground pounders do what they do.

The thing I see on these forums are almost always wanting it to go back to where it was at launch. Where it was a "deterrent." Where a stock ESF with no flak armor could loiter under fire, finish killing whatever it wanted, then waltz off to repair.

The problem is, a lot of folks seem to have internalized that a deterrent is an inconvenience. Not something that forces you to weigh the risk and reward.

Skyguard and AA Maxes have both roles to play and up's and down's to what they can do.

And they are both fine, the only problems with the Skyguard is that it should it's Ammo mag increased and the ******** turret recoil fixed.

Ahhh, another pilots versus everyone else thread.

So once they nerf the AA MAX everyone will switch back to there lock-on weapons? Is that really what you'd prefer?

Entitled pilots want to go back to soloing everything without fear of reprisal. More shocking news later!

Okay OP... you wanna talk about Range of effectiveness? Terrific!!

Then in that case... all Rocket Pods need to have the same "Drop" added to them that the Shrike and Grenade Launcher currently have

You're not intimidated by that, right? I'm sure you'd just have Ooodles of skill to still pull off whatever it is you do with them at longer ranges regardless, right?

The problem is in small bases its not difficult to take out the AA but impossible. You can have platoons knocking at the front door and still have some DB MAXes in the spawnroom shooting down ESFs. I used the MAX a lot, you just dont get a lot of kills when you are alone, as every Pilot who can fly straight knows the sound of FLAK fire on your plain and will burst the hell out. The moment you multiply the Burster you take away the reaction time for the Pilot. 3 Maxes will take down an ESF in under 1,4 seconds.
If they are in a good position (have a good FOV) and dont shoot you in maximal render range but wait till you are close enough your toast.

The day you don't simply dip down below cover when a lock on is attempted, kill the lightning driver that's trying to down you with a skygaurd, drift left or right when you see a rocket coming your way or simply flip over end and lolpod the tank trying to land shots on you while out of the turrets elevation, before killing everything else that they are trying to defend, is the day I agree with you OP.

What?! :O Never!

I mean really, how would that make sense by swapping accuracy? Mobile hand held turrets having poor accuracy while a stabilised platform is completely accurate? That just doesn't make sense!

Oh wait.

Yeah, it's ******* ******** how a guy in a suit can hold two ******* artillery cannons and have almost pin point accuracy, while a 40 ton hunk of metal flies all over the place. While logic isn't always needed in a computer game, this is just ****** up.

They really were.

It took several nerfs over 6 months to bring them "in line".
Still, they were the primary weapon against infantry, vehicles and even aircraft, over the dedicated noseguns.


While the MBT-instagib from behind was absurdly powerful, now ESFs need to hover to land all their shots and deal decents ammount of damage. "Overpowered" bursters only really exist to counter overpowered pods.
As a result, Pilots will always prefer bully lone infantry over participating in large battles.


ESFs were too potent by themselves, while not designed to be a part of team.