Burster data and the state of the air

Well Oracle of Deaths stats are useless because they don't contain variances, only averages. This discussion only makes sense if we assume differences in averages are statistically significant.

But anyways... your hypothesis is that NC is much more harassed from air than other factions. Here is list of total play time(number of uniques * average play time) for A2G ESFs:

Rocket pods
Reaver:107,070
Scythe:101,908
Mosquito:170,865

Default nosegun + Fast ROF nosegun (and with A2G primaries because Banshee and Reaver shotgun can be effective at A2A)
Reaver:501,356 (595,634 with shotgun)
Scythe:666,592 (849,422 with PPA)
Mosquito:608,998 (914,620 with Banshee)

So it seems both NC and VS are rather similarly harassed by TR air except VS tends to use A2A more than NC. In any case these stats also support your "Reaver is inferior hypothesis".

Exactly. I think the simple reason for more kills by TR and VS bursters is that their big tanks don't kill in one shot...so bursters can(and actually have to) finish the aircrafts and rake in the kill. And the reason for less bursters on TR is simply due to the fact that TR got strikers which make burster MAXes less appealing than for VS and NC.

Has nothing at all to do with how strong or weak aircrafts are.

right! my bad, unfortunately I can't change the first post anymore

My favorite argument - "numbers mean nothing, NC is just a collective of idiots!"


Right. Balance is ok, the reason why air dominance is rarely in the hands of NC is because they feel inferior. For that very reason they also decide to suicide when playing as burster max, which leads to the 20-50% decrease in KDs. All is fine, its not the game its the stupid NC. The thousands of players playing as NC just happen to be statistically worse.

Forumside, you will never stop to amaze me.

Banshee and, to a lesser extent, LPPA are both far more popular than Air Hammer.

This means more TR and VS ESF's doing nothing but hunting Infantry

This means NC needs more Bursters because whoever they're fighting, there will be ESF's trying to farm the infantry.

Reaver's you'll see some Breaker rocket pods and the rare Unicorn AH reaver... but nowhere near as many in my experience between playing all 3 factions on the ground.

Though... lately I have been hoin' it up in a Reaver with AH and A2AM's..... hate me (and git rekt nub)

One could say that the MAX ability could have some part in the number of NC Burster deaths, the TR and VS both have a hit-and-run type of ability that forces them to seek cover when taking damage whereas the NC, from what I've seen, are usually (over)confident in their ability to block damage with the shield which results in their death more often than not.

It would of course be ridiculous to assume that all the deaths are from the above but I'm certain that a fair number of them are caused by it.

Well the topic is spot on, that is Burster data.

But trying to draw anything meaningful from it…

Without also looking at the hours racked up by pilots of both the opposing factions, an Empires other options for G2A weapons, number of Air-to-Air kills and excluding random spikes in some of the stats (Valk release date springs to mind) you’re only looking at a ery small paryt of a much larger picture. Even then a full break down of everything air and anti-air related would still not tell us everything about what’s going on. In short X empire may have less kills because Y+Zs pilot hours total less than X+Y or X+Z and so there’s just less for them to shoot at.

Not to say the original interpretation is wrong just that it’s looking at a small % of the relative information and filling in the rest with supposition.

My guess is that the VS and TR make up for a lack of bursters with other AA weapons like Skyguards. NC probably have more bursters because of the frequent use of Ravens and scat MAXes. Even so, this is a very small window you are looking through and a very indirect path that you are using to get to your conclusion. There are most certainly better ways to prove that the Reaver is UP/OP/Balanced than through burster pulls (as it is also only one of many types of AA you can use).

snipped and fixed.

I have seen MAX with dual Burster hunting Infantry. Still a terrible choice but over distance better than shotgun everything.

The NS fooled the NC, giving them faulty Bursters which in turn the NC doesn't even bother to test, maintain or train with; Increased Dmg comes from Bursters exploding and excessive TKing(Which is also a TR trait). The NS has fooled us all, for instance they told TR they would favour them by selling to them unique improved NS weapons schematics... Which is why we ended up with the Marauder, which is nothing compared to the Fury. Then, the VS and TR have some ways to improve Bursters; Lock-Down or ZOE(If it works with Bursters, I do not know, if I'm wrong scratch "VS" out of the previous sentence). And we both probably take good care of our Burster stock.

*Kunavi uses Propaganda! It is super effective!*

CONGLOMERATE SOLDIERS! THE REAL ENEMY ARE THE NS! WOLOLOLOLO, WOLOLOLO WOLOLOOOOOO!!!!

with Bursters i feel like VS MAX

If you've ever gunned a Lib for the NC, you see 2 enemy bursters in the same Hex together very frequently.
If you've ever Bursted for NC, you rarely see any other allied Burster max working with you.

Most NC are completely oblivious to what the guy next to them is doing infact. It's why they end up TK'ing eachother so often too. As someone who snipes way too often also (when there's no A.A. duty to do), I can't tell you have many times I've walked up a hill just to see 5 other NC snipers standing on it, not even moving around after shooting.... not even CARING that another sniper right next to them is giving away their position. The few times I do see another Burst Max or Skyguards to work with, they're usually firing way too early and giving their position away. Some of them aren't even making accurate contact with their Flak which leads me to believe they don't understand that there's a "sweet spot" in proximity to the hitbox where you CAN take down an ESF before having to reload or it getting away. They don't understand that specific tactics and positioning can turn area denial "Deterrents" into "Kills".

Lets do a little experiment with some weapon data. All stats are taken from The Oracle of Death.

Weapon 1:
VS - KPU: 3.24 KPH: 27.79
NC - KPU: 3.42 KPH: 29.36
TR - KPU: 3.36 KPH: 29.71

Here we see that VS is underperforming. So their version of weapon 1 needs a slight buff right?

Weapon 2:
VS - KPU: 3.57 KPH: 45.32
NC - KPU: 3.17 KPH: 40.6
TR - KPU: 3.22 KPH: 43.13

Here, poor NC needs a buff because they are clearly getting the inferior version and VS needs a slight nerf.

Weapon 3:
VS - KPU: 2.43 KPH: 96.98
NC - KPU: 2.36 KPH: 91.7
TR - KPU: 2.47 KPH: 98.09

Once again, NC gets the short end of the stick while VS and TR are roughly equivalent.

Weapon 4:
VS - KPU: 2.45 KPH: 4.07
NC - KPU: 1.53 KPH: 2.13
TR - KPU: 1.47 KPH: 2.03

Wow, they should really nerf VS here. That's almost twice the kills of the other factions.

So which weapons are hiding behind the secret name?
Weapon 1 is the AV Phalanx turret, weapon 2 is the MANA AI turret, weapon 3 is the tank mine and weapon 4 is the Galaxy right Drake.

So the same galaxy gun can give twice the kills for a certain faction. Turns out these averages are not all that useful to determine balance or effectiveness on their own. What you really need is something called standard deviation. Without it, all statistics are completely and utterly useless. Without an indication on how accurate and representative your average actually is, it's impossible to compare two values. If the people making these nice cites would have spent five minutes reading up on statistics, they would add the extra column to give us the standard deviation because then they should know how utterly pointless the statistics is without it. It's even trivial to calculate. If we were given the variance/standard deviation, we could do a simple Student's T-test to find out if there in face was a statistical difference between the numbers OP is looking at. First after that is there a point in discussing potential underlying mechanics for the difference.

Funny thing is that if the TR MAX has a safe location to shoot from (i.e. just inside a doorway, spawn shield, or a hiding spot), the lockdown feature makes it the premier AA MAX due to the increased DPS. Toss extended magazines into the mix and you have something that can mess up aircraft faster then the other two MAX units.

SOE really needs to revisit empire-specific MAX abilities, adding +damage, +range and +defense options to all of the MAX units. The only MAX abilities that seem to be working out as planned are the NC shield and the TR lockdown.

Don't get aggressive man, I just pointed out MY personal experience. I never said that numbers mean nothing, or that the NC are idiots.

There are plenty of other reasons why NC could have less air dominance overall besides balance. Perhaps the NC has less skilled pilots (and somehow I keep encountering the good ones). Perhaps, as it happens in my experience, the good NC pilots instead of fighting on NC frontlines spend literally all their ESF time ganking and harassing on VS-TR frontlines instead of helping their faction (I'm not even joking - on Ceres there are a few NC pilots whom I never saw ONCE on NC frontlines, but that I saw plenty of times on TR-VS ones).

Perhaps you're underestimating the psychological effect of mass whining on Forumside - if everyone says it's crap, it must be crap, better not play it. There is also a design component in this - the Reaver's design looks clunky and unmaneuverable, while all fighter jets actually have the same turn ratios (and even if they didn't, "turn ratios" are just multipliers for mouse sensitivity - just tone it up or down as needed).

I'll tell you again, in MY experience fighting AGAINST NC pilots, they are perfectly good and their fighters are just as scary as any other aircraft, but there are not many of them, and the good ones rarely fight for their faction and and instead prefer to harrass over frontlines that do not belong to them.

Also TR using less Bursters is normal because Striker. The VS may just have a better preference for lockons, while the NC may prefer MAXes because NC MAXes are more powerful than anything else in CQC, which makes them a more popular choice even when fighting air.

I was making a serious point lol

You seem to kind of understand it yourself - there's no clear point to be made with the data given... hence the suggestion that people learn stats earlier, for a number of reasons, including the investigation of evaluating data for correlative study, and then significance - setting a confidence integral to determine whether your hypothesis is consistent with the data.

Then of course there's logic, one aspect of which is logical validity - by classical definition an argument is logically valid if and only if it is not possible for the premises to all be true and the conclusion false... if your argument does not follow this, it's a nonsensical argument - it's nonsense.


The lack of understanding on both these subjects is rampantly obvious given your post, and it would be extremely wise for yourself and anyone evaluating the post to pursue some level of study in these subjects. Clearly your conclusions are causing you some distress and I would expect are detracting from your ability to enjoy the game, and I'm sure you're not alone in this mode of thought, plenty of other people here also seem to be under the impression that there's reason in your reasoning.

Learning that the interpretation of the data and subsequent reasoning are entirely nonsensical is a good step towards a more humble, skeptical and inquisitive attitude, demanded of those who wish to hold accurate views of reality.

That's giving the NC a bit too much credit. I doubt the majority even know how high the tank cannon can go. Granted with the number of Scythes and Mossies in the air. Someone's bound to accidentally hit something.

Think about that for a moment.. everytime you get nailed by a Titan-AP, its probably because some dude was aiming at a Flash....

...and missed.

...Badly

LOL.....

:'( ....

true.

TL;DR : nerf Reaver Afterburner because it is too fast to hit.