Change ESF missiles vs. liberators

The Liberator is the B-25 of Planetside 2, They should Fear for their Lives when an ESF comes around, But it's the exact opposite in our current game.

I rarely Fly ESFs(I use them as a taxi), I mostly fly in Liberators when I get the chance, But watching an ESF come up on our Libby, then it getting torn to pieces whilst inflicting negligible damage at BEST, feels very wrong.


Liberators should be buffed against Ground attacks, and weakened against Air attacks.

Nah, Liberator is the AC130 of the sky. If you fly up to any of the assortment of weapons on the side of the plane and your little Kiowa kisses the 105MM Howitzer and your entire aircraft explodes into a thousand pieces, don't come a ragin'.

I wonder if any of these ESF Pilots have ever gunned a Dalton and attempted to kill an ESF. Long story short, it's not easy unless your flight path is predictable. Reverse thrusting and other maneuvers or attacking from clip range is very frustrating for a liberator. Half the time you have to fly into the Dalton round at medium ranges. High reward for a high risk, you could go up against a pilot and miss every single shot. Can you really say the same for an ESF nose gun or A2A Locks? Nope, you can't.

Also the argument of being able to do substantial damage with A2AML is void, no skill weapons should do minimal damage for ease of use.

And compared to the DPS of the noseguns, they don't. With all the time it takes to lock on (while flying unpredictably so you can't be daltoned or shredder'd), mantain lock (while flying unpredictably) and reload, the DPS of the A2AM isn't that great. It's different for coyotes, admittedly, but at that point you need to be close enough to the lib that they can ram you. Furthermore, your comparison is invalid, as the AC-130 can't do crazy acrobatics to aim wherever it needs to aim. It doesn't matter that ESF's are faster or more maneuvrable against anything but the lowest level lib players, as the lib knows the ESF needs to close in on them to be accurate, and can just flip over to shoot its weaponry.

Hitting dalton shots against air targets isn't easy, admittedly (I've been trying, and only killed a lib and a galaxy, ESFs are good at evading those) but shredder does exactly what its name suggests, without a whole lot of skill neccessary.

I'd also like to remind you that if Liberators are supposed to be this heavy gunship that needs multiple ESFs to take it down, it should also cost that mny resources and have an appropriate cooldown time. For their durability against air, libs are too cheap.

I wouldn't say my comparison is invalid when you compare the type of weapons that are on a liberator, compared to the types of weapons that are on an AC130. They are more alike then any other aircraft in regards to armament. But thats beside the entirety of the point, I was just using that to prove a point about getting 1 shotted as an ESF with a Dalton is... working as intended.

I can pull this situation into multiple POVs, I play infantry, I drive vehicles, I fly ESF, and Fly/Gun Dalton. Dalton requires some skill and a large amount of luck to kill an ESF. I've been killed a handful of times from a dalton as an ESF. Yeah it sucks, but it was my fault. It's like hover over the ground and getting 1 shot by a ground Dalton(Vanguard).

ESF has its ups and downs but I mean... when I'm flying an ESF I don't have to worry about my gunner or pilot being competent. I can bugger out of sticky situations, if I suck at flying I don't HAVE to engage a liberator. If I'm skilled enough and know how to reverse thrust I can attempt to take one on in close prix. If I have the default nose cannon I can literally range clip them to death without fear of getting hit by the dalton. There is so many ways to engage a liberator, and until you've been solo'd by an ESF because you can't hit the sweet spot with the Dalton, you'll never understand. But to those of you who fly in a straight like... expect to get insta'd, and I can only image the rage building within.

than your skill in flying esf and lib isn't as high. the argument of competence is invalide about lib gunners/drivers. we are speaking about adaved crews, perhaps about aimboters and hackers.
i have senn many **** in the air from lib that takes out 4 esf in 5 shots, from libs thats turn faster and fly faster than you in esf.
and the new thing from the undestructianel, invulnerable libs / esf / tanks
i got yesterdy 1 lib 3 reaver and 1 prowler. absolute imune against any kind of dmg.

Lol this isn't about hacking or cheating. How does an aimbot work with a Dalton exactly? Considering you have to LEAD most of the time. The take no damage bug is invalid, why bring this information up? Basically all your points are garbage, I play with a outfit and all they do is lib... your level of stupidity and lack of knowledge and or skill is evident here. Have fun doing barrel rolls and getting 1 shot while flying directly at a liberator. roflbad

to follow your argumentation style: "du kannst mich mal da lecken, wo die sonne nie scheint" /zitat ende

Liberators need a fairly big nerf against A2A missiles. Right now one of the problems with them is that a lolpod ESF is almost as good as them as an A2AM ESF because A2AMs do so little damage against them. This is wrong, a dedicated A2A ESF should give a very hard time to a Liberator because they are the intended counter. Currently a gunship (Liberator) takes more damage from the ground (against which it should dominate instead) than from ESFs (against which is overly powerful instead), and this leads to Liberators being not effective enough against the ground, and thus to Liberator pilots insisting that it's fine to instagib ESFs with the Dalton + belly flip trick because their gunships suck so much against the ground, so in exchange they should be able to easily defend themselves from air.

TL;DR: Liberators can defend too easily against ESFs (due to belly flip trick) and are not as effective against the ground as they should be. This is broken. There also needs to be a clearer advantage to taking A2A missiles against a Liberator rather than just sticking with lolpods.

ALSO:

"You clearly have no idea how hard it is to hit ESFs with a Dalton, L2P *** noob etc etc..."

The problem with the current Dalton is not the Dalton itself but the fact that just flipping a Lib's belly towards an ESF is enough to force it to start evasive maneuvers. This causes the ESF to be unable to engage the Liberator, because the Dalton can shoot every 2.5 seconds, which leaves no time to do any serious damage before having to evade again. In short, just pointing your belly at an ESF is enough to deter it from attacking because no sane ESF pilot will risk your gunner being one of the good ones (or even just getting a lucky shot). This is clearly broken and not the right way to deter ESFs from attacking a Liberator.

I suppose, but AC130's can't fly sideways to keep their armament trained on a pursuing aircraft the entire time. Also depending on the builds of the two opponents, the Liberator can potentially do that while outrunning the pursuing aircraft. The AC-130 can be compared to the Liberator in terms of armament, not application. No sane person would take one up to fill an A2A role.

imo a2am missile is fine against lib hell even fighting back an esf is a 50:50 chance for lib, worse for pilot like me who dont know how to tankbust, beside its fair for one manned vehicle to be beaten by 2 man vehicle, btw im starting to think this is a nerf dalton thread *put anti flame suit on*

I have to disagree strongly.

With the A2A current mechanic it forces you to sit and take a round in the face. The old fire and forget was a good Liberator weapon. Using them now will get you killed fast. Best anti Lib weapon is the std Esf nose gun.

that's a ttk the same against an esf, so you're saying a weapon that already is op against esf's needs a ttk increase libs? they have more armor, libs shouldn't be free certs

A 12/12 Sunderer should be able to beat a 2/2 MBT, it's only fair, it has six times as many people!. A 12 man vehicle should be able to beat a 2 man vehicle. A 12/12 Galaxy should be able to beat a 3/3 Liberator, after all, it's a 12 man vehicle. What's that? A vehicle has a given role on the battlefield? Nonsense, numbers are all that matter!

Really this ^ is the problem, it's not the Dalton round instagibbing ESFs, that kind've makes sense, its an anti tank round hitting a light(ish) aircraft, it's the fact the lib can orientate said gun for prolonged periods to engage esfs above it, IMO the Lib should only maintain altitude if not banked past 45 degrees off level flight with the exception of full foward flight in the direction of travel (so it can climb). If the lib starts falling out of the air if rolled to 90 degrees sideways then the Daltons AA effectiveness becomes moot bar a quick and risky roll for a snapshot and the tailgun becomes the principle defensive weapon again.

/facepalm

Only a good lib pilot can OHK a ESF, while it does not hit you can kill it easily, if you do not shame on you.
The Dalton is a High Skill weapon (drop and speed)
While lockons are basically weapons of fire and forget because you will forget.

One is a lock-on that is a guaranteed hit @ 400m+, unless the Liberator deploys Flairs. The other requires an incredible amount of skill not only from the gunner taking the shot, but also from the pilot and a high level of situational awareness and coordination.

It may take only 1 hit to kill the ESF, the question is how many shots does it take to get that one hit? It takes a lot, with the exception of a handful of players on each server that can do it consistently.

If it is so easy please post a video of you doing it. You act like all one needs to do is get in a Dalton Lib and just face the belly towards an ESF and the ESF dies. Your boogey man is not as scary or prevalent as you think.

No they're not.
They're awful infact ever since their nerfing for the sake of "Dogfighting" ESF puirists last year.

There's too many upgrades required for a decent lockon time for starters and the Cert price is too damned high.
It also costs too too many upgrades to make their Range effective against Lib and this is the bigger one because the effective range that a decent Lib crew can tear you apart in the air (especially tail coyotes & shredder or crack Dalton gunner) is atleast 300m and sometimes up to 500m in my experiences. The Lib velocity increase further complicates the matter and has allowed many Libs to go pure Stealth/Racer which ironically also makes them harder to attack as a Burster Max.

In a nutshell.... SOE didn't actually think this whole Lib update through one bit. Multiple Skyguards set up in a Trap sector is basically the only way to ever kill any of them now, or a really good Counter-Lib which is the only indicator you'd ever need that something is too good -- when the best thing that counters it, is even more of the same exact thing. (just like the MAX update that almost killed the game as badly as BFR's would have)

Pure Garbage.

Edit : I wonder if any of these ESF pilots have learned to reverse thrust.

Sunderer pops 9 Heavies on a MBT? Dead MBT.

Galaxy drops 7 Lock-on Heavies or Burster MAX's on a Liberator? Dead Liberator.


It's not the number of available slots, it's the number of people now required to coordinate with each other to maximize the vehicle's efficiency. Most of the time in that 12/12 Sunderer, only 3 people are actually doing anything.