Forumside Air Discussion in a nutshell.

Whomever actually said this, recognition be thine!

"Skilled ESF Pilots come to forums, tell us that ESF's can easily kill Liberators. Skilled Liberator pilots come to forums, tell us that ESF's can easily kill Liberators.

Bad players ignore the above, make 5 new threads and the cycle repeats."


I can kill Liberators, and I'm not the best ESF Pilot. Every single genuinely good ESF Pilot in the game will tell you that good ESF pilots(Not even "Great", good or average can be extremely deadly to all but the best Lib crews) will easily kill Liberators.

Yet, there continues to be this mantra that Liberators somehow excel at both A2G and A2A, better then the ESF can. For a 3-man vehicle. Where you could just pull 3 ESF's with Tomcats/Coyotes.

I'd have to agree with the statement, "I''m starting to think those who can't kill Liberators with an ESF are just poor pilots".

They also like to suggest changes to the ESF/Liberator that are so drastic and ridiculous they would revert the air game to post harasser nerf status. Oh just restrict the firing angle of the liberator so that it can only fire directly downward, also reduce overall Liberator agility, health, speed and the damage of the tankbuster. Please do all these things at once and then maybe they will counter my inability to look up and unwillingness to pull AA. If you disagree you are an air elitist who has never touched foot on the ground.

Wow imagine that, a couple pilots trying to keep their infantry ground vehicle farm going............


Wow didn't see that coming.....................

oh almost forgot......


/sarcasmoff

You do forget one thing - a Lib only costs 350 resources and most are only ever 2/3 crewed. A Harasser can also be a 3 man vehicle, a sunderer can be 12 man, but that doesn't mean they should be more powerful than a MBT. Argument about requiring 3 people for a Lib is just a lot of hot air.

Libs are no doubt like the pre-nerf Viper, some of their weapons are just too good at all things. An ESF to kill Libs has to be loaded out to do so, while a Lib doesn't have to worry - run a Shredder, kill infantry, tanks, air - you can do it all. Same with the Dalton but that does take a better gunner.

There is no doubt the Lib is definitely unbalanced at the moment... because their weapons are those in the category of performing too well against all things. If the Viper had to suffer such a harsh nerf, then the Lib should definitely see their weapons more aligned to specific roles, and not be jack of all trades.

My problem with the air game is not ESF vs Liberator. It's ESF vs ESF.

I'm not the best of pilots but I would say I'm better than average, and I've got to say that dealing with libs as an esf pilot is easy so long as it's not a shredder lib, and you keep moving. It's really easy to make yourself hard to hit with the dalton, but it takes practice to figure out how to make yourself very maneuverable while still keeping your reticule on the target.

Shredder libs will wreck esfs, so don't even try unless there are like 3 of you around, or at least another friendly lib there to tank bust the enemy lib/ take away its attention from you to him.

Also, try hitting libs from far away if you're not confident.

Taking down a lib is a team effort, just like flying it. If there aren't two of you, you're going to have a difficult time

My problem with the air vehicles in Planetside 2 is that AA is like throwing rocks into the air - I can scare them crazies off up there but I very rarely get any kills unless the pilot is terrible or just doesn't care...or there's an intense amount of AA wherever I am. As it stands, it takes at least three or four coordinated AA units all focus-firing on individual enemy air units to actually destroy any of them(especially true of liberators and galaxies).

AA missiles(annihilator specifically, haven't tried ES variants yet) are a joke and can only acquire targets that're ridiculously close to you and a patch of terrain, piece of building or a stray teammate can interrupt your lock, helping your target to get away.

But when it comes to air units themselves, my opinions are that they need more complexity. Would be nice if we had an empire-specific medium fighter/ground-attack aircraft like an IL-2, BF110 or P-47/A-10 Thunderbolt to mix up the skies. I'd also like it if Planetside 2 took a step in the direction of World of Tanks or War Thunder and implemented actual damage models for vehicles, but that's kind of an intense change to add more depth to vehicle warfare overall.

Would also be nice if we could do things like bind yaw to mouse input.

12 HA's with Lock-ons pop out of a bus. What happens to the anything in front of it?

This isn't a measure of physical seating. It's a measure of coordination and manpower, and why inherently the argument of seating requirement is fundamentally sound. A Battlegal, fully manned, can actually beat several ESF's, and even a Liberator in a head on battle(Not even including ramming). A Battlegal that suddenly poops out 11 Burster MAX's is going to pretty much vaporize every single aircraft within a 600 meter radius in about the time it takes for a "Liberator OP" or "Vanguard Shield OP" post takes to reach 9001 posts.

But, but, The Galaxy is a transport!11! Well those MAX's cost 3500 infantry resources together, so yea.


Second, according to OP, we've concluded that only bad ESF pilots die to Liberators. So, the argument that Liberators are too good A2A is likewise null. So, that effectively destroys the "Multi-role" argument as well, because suddenly, ESF's have vanished from the list of perceived targets.

Remembering that a good ESF pilot can and will defeat a Liberator, regardless of loadout, we then look at the individual weapons.

The Dalton, with it's splash damage nerf, requires 2-3 hits on average to kill your standard infantryman. While a direct hit kill is still possible, anyone attempting to counter with such nonsense is clearly delusional. The very idea of hitting infantry directly from 250 meters(The ideal range of the Dalton-Far away enough to avoid MBT Guns/Dumb-fires, close enough to easily hit tanks) is absurd. With the Dalton's velocity, at that height targets have a full second to dodge incoming fire. To even have a chance for a direct hit, you would need to actually know the lead for an entire second of running. Then you have the angle of fire, you have bullet drop, you have user error, and then, you have the chance of your target actually changing direction while you lead/fire. And while a Dalton gunner will kill an infantry eventually, I assure you it's nowhere near as effective as any other weapon in the Liberator's arsenal.

The Zephyr has no where near the DPS of the Dalton against armored targets, requires six shots to hit instead of one, and has a lower velocity to make hitting all those shots harder. In exchange for this(And even less of a chance at killing air), you get far greater infantry killing potential. You can splash a single person 6 times in a row, very rapidly. It works from range, and overall does it's job pretty well. I wish they had gone with the improved direct hit damage, or at least shortened up the reload some, but overall the Zephyr is pretty much fine.

Finally, the Shredder. Great at AV, great at AI, good AA at bad pilots. While at a first glance, it may seem this weapon is grossly overpowered. But in taking a closer look, we see that it actually has one major disadvantage.

Massive. Damage. Drop-off.

The Shredder's drop-off starts at 120 meters, and ends at 300 meters. It also loses 40% of it's damage in that frame. Most weapons lose roughly 15% damage total at ranges vastly longer compared to the Shredder(167 damage at 60 meters, 143 damage at 120 meters). At max damage range, a single Engineer can out-repair any damage the Shredder can deal. At 120 meters, you deal massive damage. But, at 120 meters, you are significantly more vulnerable to any form of damage including dumbfires, tank shells, HMG's, Lock-ons, Flak of any kind, and other Liberators and ESF's who are flying high.


Duster is bad, and should feel bad.


Overall, the only thing I think is unbalanced is the new Composite Armor. It is way to strong for what it does, and I'd much rather have it's Flak resistance buffed, and Lock-on and HMG resist added as well, seeing as those are the main ground threats.

If there was one thing I would nerf, it would be adding a small bloom coefficient to the Shredder. .02 per shot, .4 maximum. Keep it's close range power while further reducing it's long range punch.

Forumside Air Discussion:
1. Peasants come to the forum to whine and demand a nerf.
2. Pilots defend air, and prove that all you need to kill air is coordination and firepower.
3. Peasants ignore them and whine more.
Repeat.

On liberators, a good ESF will solo one. It's your fault if you don't have an ESF in the air. Most of my air vehicle kills are on liberators, and I am not as good as most pilots.
The only problem here is that air is as powerful as it should be, and infantry and tanks are extremely underpowered.

Infantry are more overpowered then Tanks though

It goes deeper.

The modern gamer is not here to deal with adversity. They are here to "pwn". Anything that detracts from their right to pwn is bad. Anything scary, anything challenging, anything that may beat them is bad.

I think it came from the single player scripted win games, and all of the horrible things it ingrained upon gamers about their entitlement to be successful no matter what. Hey, its profitable! Make what people will pay for...even at the expense of our gaming souls.

The future gamer will overcome this, and learn that real gaming is overcoming difficulty. We unlucky gamers are experiencing the dark ages of gaming. Technology gives us amazing spectacles and experiences. Our egos are far to immature to handle it.

Even good Shredder Liberators can be taken out solo. There's a video about in on Wycliffslim's channel.

And then there's Dark Souls.

*Hides in the closet in the fetal position*

1. New infantry player comes to forums to admit that they made the mistake of going to a fight that was less than 48+ v 48+ and he was dominated by air and wants to know what to do to counter it.

2. Pilots come on and spam "**** noob only air should counter air."

That is forumside air discussion in a nutshell.

The Shredder is a multi purpose weapon, it shouldn't be performing so well at all things. If you look at the ground based equivalent, the Shredder far outperforms the Basilisk. Remember as you said, the Lib is a 3 man vehicles, and it has 3 guns, so there's no reason why any one of its guns should be so powerful. Also a much more respected BR100 Lib pilot/gunner that frequently posts Lib videos has already stated the Shredder is too good.

The Shredder should see an AOE damage decrease and a projectile speed decrease. That should tone it down so it will still remain an all rounder, but not at this current level of effectiveness which is simply too much. Especially when you have 2 other weapon choices on the Lib too.

Composite Armor needs to be toned down a little.

The Duster needs to be fixed, its too weak.

That's all. Learn to deal with this... or you'll find that what SOE comes up with, could be far far worse (*cough* Viper).

7 out of 9 ESF noseguns are deadly to ESF. It doesnt need a A2A setup to fight Libs. But i have to agree Lib is unbalanced. It needs a buff against ESF.

^Obviously did not read post^


I explained why the Shredder is not as overpowered as you make it out to be, and I also explained how we could balance it further because I actually agree that it is somewhat overpowered, but I actually like the role it plays. If you don't even read the post, how can you expect to have a discussion?

Oh, and one thing I forgot, I also agree that Liberators should cost more. 450 air resources, maybe 400.

Deadly? Not so much - they can kill Libs, but they have nowhere near the TTK of a Tankbuster.

The Lib has a lot of scrubs using it as a crutch though, just like how everyone was pulling a Viper Lightning before it got nerfed. Its a sure sign that the Lib needs toning down, and what I'm suggesting is pretty tame compared to the typical SOE nerf cycles. You should read my topic posted sometime back on the psychology of forumside with regards to balance nerfs... simply put, the denials are part of the process.