AIRCRAFT: The small fight killers and large fight nonfactors. Let's fix it.

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by NoXousX, Aug 28, 2013.

  1. Free

    I'm going to bring up ps1.

    In ps1, killing infantry was the most important objective for taking a base or tower. Ps1 infantry were massively powerful and sustainable for all combat situations in the game with third-person camping ability, powerful ESAV, and by being able to self-heal. The weakness of infantry was the long respawn timer, upwards to 60s. Due to how well liberators and mossies could put infantry on a respawn timer, they were always valued. Mosquitoes and liberators scaled decently into the 266+ population fights because not everyone could cert into AA, most AA was single-target, the skyguard needed tech to pull, and pilots could see projectiles on their minimap.

    So the minimap. It can solve all of your AA-Aircraft interplay problems if it wasn't garbage.

    My first point is the objective importance of killing infantry. It existed in ps1 and no one ever said that aircraft were bad. Infantry in ps2 are pathetically weak and can be killed by anything, and they just pop right back up after you kill them. Killing infantry isn't important because they will just respawn instantly.

    My second point is the important of the minimap in enriching the AAxAircav relationship. AA is already potent as it is, now just give the pilots a chance to see what's coming and they will be better off in larger fights.

    There is a third point about map/base design, and roof spam due to the horrible design of the liberator and the earlier power of the rocketpods, but I'll bring that up somewhere else at some other time.
  2. GigaClutch

    How can you take it so literally, it is quite impressive. ESF's in general, rocket pods are not very effective against sundies. Of course the rotary is not for AV.
    • Up x 1
  3. GamerOS

    Sarcasm is hard to convey trough text, and of course rocket pods suck against actual vehicles these days, because untill the nerf every pilot and their mums used one combined with the rotary because you had not a single weakness unless you failed at the reverse manouvre.

    Heck, the nerf to the manourvre without the AB tanks might actually open the option the buff rocket pods again.
  4. dough


    I hope this finds traction with the devs. I suggested something similar 6 months ago but it didn't seem to go anywhere. We really need some type of standoff bomb mechanic with tools to allow infantry to designate targets. Right now Libs act basically independently and don't have any way to coordinate with ground troops without the ground guys using WPs in a wierd way. You basically want a point you can set on the map that ONLY libs/ESF see (otherwise the infantry troops just get more confusing info which a squad/platoon leader must explain.. yuk). I really like your designator suggestion.. crossing fingers..
  5. EggfaceMan

    Beautifully written post.
    • Up x 1
  6. Keiichi25

    I do want to point out that the part of 2km away part is not exactly 'right'... I've been 2km out and its never like that. Now less than 1km, you get engagement, and for sure within 500m

    Going back to one post, I am an advocate of rockets being tracked on the Minimap. This really needs to be done because in PS1, Air's major threats besides air, was Skyguards, Bursters and the NC/VS Sparrow MAX Lockons. The Strikers were nerfed to only lock onto things within 250 meters in PS1. If the Strikers were nerfed to this, along with the other launchers, I wouldn't have a problem with it persay, although at that point the TR will probably ask for an ability to Dumbfire their strikers or ask for more damage per missile in return.

    But in all in all, the missile or hard hitting rockets do need to 'show' a bit, more so for the pilots because they need more than a 'lockon' warning to react appropriately to the situation.
  7. MrMurdok

    How much impact does one Lightning have on a large scale battle? Or one MBT? Or a Harasser?

    Jet Jockies (No offense, OP, I watch your stream whenever I can and I love the way you fly) need to understand something-

    You're not special

    ESFs, much like any other vehicle in Planetside 2, work in large scale fights when they're in numbers and working in a coordinated way. A full squad of ESFs armed with lolpods and proper teamwork, much like 12 Lightings, or 12 MBTs, can change the course of a battle. You could see that with The Enclave's Talon squadron, 12 lolpod salvos can and will do serious damage to whatever is unlucky enough to be in the way.
    • Up x 4
  8. NoXousX

    Thanks for the small gripe. I kill ESFs deep behind enemy lines, and I've been jumped just outside my warpgate on several occasions. But I think you understand what I'm trying to get across: aircraft have a different set of battle lines to follow, and they aren't based on a linear front and can't be balanced like ground vehicles. :)
  9. NoXousX

    I just feel air in general lack purpose and direction. Flying around farming kills may be satisfying at first, but it gets old. Flying around being unable to contribute to your outfit/platoon/squad becomes irritating.
  10. GigaClutch

    Of course they can. But in a large enough fight by the time they have got a whole rocket salvo off at least one will be dead, and the rest forced to flee. This doesn't happen to the same degree with tanks, there is no AV skyguard, nothing compares.

    ESF's can certainly do something with enough numbers, but it is often a contrived and most likely useless contribution to the capture or defence.
  11. GigaClutch

    I completely agree. The seemingly best thing for ESF's to do is kill other ESF's who think they are being useful rocket podding but are just being a nuisance.

    I think we just need a way of doing large damage quickly with numbers, rocket pods are just too slow a way to kill things and having anything over one ESF's on one target for any period of time is risky and dangerous, emptying an entire salvo of rockets can be suicide for the pilot and they may not even achieve anything from it.

    We just need a weapon thats (within reason) got an instant effect and can be used, on the move and in numbers. But balancing such a thing is going to be a challenge.
    • Up x 1
  12. Mongychops

    The Liberator

    The LIberator can do well in large fights if it uses the right weapons (high zoom shredder or dalton), flies at the right altitude (>500m AGL, no G2A locks, harder to lead with flak & tank shells), is part of an air squad (escort ESFs ready to help, mutiple libs watching each others blind spots and focus fire Skyguards), and has self healing for endurance (Nanite Auto Repair, Fire Supression). In such circumstances libs can contribute in larger fights quite well, and as part of such an air squad, you can wipe out platoons of enemy armour and sunderers.

    The only problem is, circling at maximum vehicle render range dodging stray flak and scanning the horizon for enemy air gets monotonous, even while your gunner is wiping out the dozen prowlers and AMS sunderers besieging your base.

    In my opinion, an exciting bomber playstyle (Racer Airframe + Stealth/Comoposite Armour + Flares/Afterburner + hit&run weapon) for the Liberator could be introduced with some easy to implement changes:
    1. Implement the proposed lock-on changes, most significantly the reduction in missile range cap to 500m and the requirement of lock maintenance. Currently, the flare immunity duration is not enough to make even a top-speed Racer Airframe bombing run in most terrain.
    2. Composite Armour should be slightly buffed (from 10% to 12-15%) and should affect more sources of ground fire (in addition to flak), specifically tank shells, MBT AV secondaries (and their respective AV harasser weapons), and AV phalanx base turrets, which are probably the most dangerous part of low altitude flying.
    3. The Vehicle Stealth lock on time increase should be increased (from 1.0 seconds to 1.2) and should not be affected by the lock on time reduction at short range (in the proposed lock on changes).
    4. Racer airframe for the liberator should have a bigger acceleration increase, and should have an even higher top speed with afterburners, than currently on live.
    5. The A30 Walker air variant should have a slightly higher minimum damage (75 now, increased to 85). It should also have a spin up mechanic (to go with its new cosmetic), this is to punish an ESF that sits directly behind you holding down the fire button, rather than using effort.
    6. NEW BOMBER WEAPON: The current hit-and-run weapon is the Zepher, which has been (justifiably) nerfed hard. Most bomber liberator suggestions call for entirely new weapon mechanics to introduce bombs. My thoughts are to introduce a new weapon (link at the bottom), which can be achieved with mostly simple stat modifiers to the Zepher. The key is, I believe that a weapon similar to the one I propose can be relevant in large fights but not OP in small fights. The vastly superior firepower to the Zepher are offset by; its slow, highly visible/audible projectile, its insanely long (20 second) reload time & low ammunition reserve, its highly limited left/right firing arc making it unsuitable for "gunship" play, and the fact that once you start firing, you can't stop until either the magazine is empty or you trigger a long (20 second) reload.
    https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2...-bomber-weapon-details-gryphon-cannon.148746/
  13. LT_Latency

    The problem with AiR craft is, There are WAY WAY more ground troops. So there are lots of people shooting at 3 or 4 targets in the sky and fighting them from the ground is not fun so no one likes them.

    With the fight them from the ground not being fun being one of the biggest
  14. Keiichi25

    I only make this gripe because I hate improper exaggerations that make a possible discussion turn into basically "I want my nummies and f the rest of you who disagree with me."

    In all seriousness though, the fairness on the air, Missiles should be tracked like they were in Planetside 1. Pilots trying to shake lockons have a hard enough time trying to identify whether or not it is an Ground base or Air based one and how they should be dealing with it, it's worse when you are blindly trying to evade it and actually making it easier.

    The other issue though in big fights is rendering... Rendering makes it difficult for air in general to determine a threat level because there is no real good indicators and for ground they are able to see sooner than air if they are not engaged on the ground. Flak tracers are also a bit difficult to see and with the rendering issue, there is no real 'indication' of issues until hits are scored which is another problem.
  15. NoXousX

    Don't libs naturally get locked faster than ESFs? Seems interesting as they are already more vulnerable to lockons.
  16. Herby20

    Extended afterburners are NOT useless. Most of the good pilots run them for a reason- They give you more engagement and disengagement potential as well as more fuel for maneuvers. They also let you have the handy ability to outrun a lock-on missile with full fuel. The pilots who run extended afterburners are the ones who hunt down the lolpodders right now. The problem is, lolpodding is only effective in smaller battles or ones where the enemy is too dumb to pull AA. When those two factors are not present, the lolpodder, and by extension the afterburner pilots, become useless to a fight.

    I am not going to pretend to know how to fix it, because I don't. I think part of the issue may be people unwilling to be pull anti-air, or are complaining that it doesn't work as effectively against pilots who have put hundreds of hours into their respective aircraft. Aircraft take advantage of 3D space more than anything else, and that is part of what makes them so hard to balance.
  17. Mongychops

    Yes they do, and having messed around in VR, the reason that they suffer so badly from strikers, is because this is a flat time reduction, so benefits launchers with faster lock ons more. The annihilator locks an ESF just before the 11th "beep" (3 seconds), and a lib just after the 7th (2 seconds). The striker locks an ESF just after the 8th "beep" (2.25 seconds), and a lib just after the 4th (1.25 seconds). While imprecise, it does seem to indicate that this is a flat reduction of 4 "beeps" duration, (one beep is probably about 0.25 seconds, so 1 second), rather than a proportional reduction.
  18. NoXousX

    bumpity for more input
  19. Xae

    I don't run into many problem being useful in an ESF in a large fight.

    My ESF certainly becomes less useful as the fight gets larger, but there are still tactics you can use to bypass most AA.
  20. Accuser

    I was with you till right here.
    ESFs shouldn't be highly effective at attacking both tanks and aircrafts with the same loadout. A lightning goes AP for anti-tank (but can still do ok against aircraft) or Skygaurd for anti-air (but can still damage tanks/infantry/etc).
    The current "rotary/rocketpods lets me kill everything" setup makes individual ESFs too versatile. What we should see in Planetside is a number of A2A ESFs escorting A2G ESFs and Liberators... not A2Everything ESFs killing anything they see.