flak op VS esf's

Ok so i have a friend who think's flak itself is op toward esf's.

My point of view is that it all boils down to said player playing solo pretty much as he is a player who wants to be a useful esf pilot, he definitely 100% wants to be an effective and useful esf pilot and is not just doing it to rack up kills. The problem is he is mostly flying alone with no actual backup of any kind or any boots on the gorund for intel or anything, pretty much nothing beyond maybe 1 or 2 pilots here or there who might help (as they do).

We had a talk about it and neither of us agreed with eachother which is fine as there is nothing really concrete to even agree on. I am almost 100% positive his experience is down to only just getting round to finding the kind of outfit but naturally i have doubts so i'd like to see what pro players on either siide or anyone who has a lot of experience in this has to say in the most objective manner possible.

I have flown the esf a fair bit myself, im good at flying but not good at getting kills. I also have the dual bursters max and skyguard. I personally think they are all ok when considering the nature of the game but not ok when thinking in 1v1's but then a lot of the game is not ok in 1v1's but sht happens, it is what it is. The game is not based around 1v1's.

I'd rather not hear about x situation makes it op or up because of x as we can apply that logic to everything in the game so it's not valid in my opinion.

Can anyone provide statements as to why esf's are up vs flak or why flak is op vs esf's?, i would really like to hear it as i do have slight doubts that i could be wrong somewhere but what he is experiencing is pretty much exactly what i was experiencing before i joined the fine outfit i am in.

Theres a whole AA op / up debate going on here.
Not totally related to ESFs but theres some info there.
https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2...r-partisans-a-global-invitation.216620/unread

Ok cheers i'll check that out.

This has nothing to do with me wanting to go chucking anything in his face to be right, i really don't care abouut trying to be right. I would just like to see some kind of concrete discussion that is for or against as most of it is just plain bs with people resorting to calling people newbs in about 100 or more words.

I really do think that most issues are down to solo play with esf's. With no team mates to tell you where exactly enemies are and if or how much flak they have, wtf can a pilot do but and i quote "recon runs". To me a recon run is nothing but a symptom of solo play.

With team mates on comms he will have intel so he can approach from the right angle and close to the floor as he'll know exactly where the enemy are and will not have to go looking for anything, just strafe and run without any kind of searching at all.

He is a good pilot as well with esf's, better than i am for sure.

As a solo mossie pilot, I have to say that flak can range from a minor annoyance to an unstoppable mincinator, depending on volume of fire. Your friend needs to learn how to approach covertly using terrain and how to fire accurately without hovering. But before that, he has to learn which fights have potential for a pilot, and which ones are pointless.

Dedicated AA... Is killing ESFs. That is broken?

-_-

"esf's op VS flak".

Uhm, the entire point of AA is to kill air...

it'd be pretty ridiculous if an ESF could 1v1 a hard counter.

Unless the AA user is smart and waits for the pilot to enter the "kill zone" which is actually relatively close, you can almost always escape if you immediately begin evasive maneuvers.


Also, and no offense, but what is there to be good at in an ESF that isn't directly getting kills?

That's like playing support as LA.

Yeah, it's fairly simple actually.

ESF's have needed a rework since launch. They're UP against flak because, for a fighter craft, they behave more like a helicopter. This encourages people to use them as attack craft, instead of fighter craft, and then those people complain when they can't retreat like a fighter craft would be able to.

AA became OP to ESF when players both sooner opted to farm ground assets with rocket pods with near impunity and actual fighter vs fighter duels often came down to an ace pummeling a newb. In other words, AA got buffed because relying on fighters to take out fighters as was intended wasn't really working out. High skill floor, super high skill ceiling, powerful weapons platform... needed an easy to use counter or the game was toast. We saw A LOT of players leave in PS2's early days during this period of ESF dominance.

Today, aircraft can participate in small skirmishes and lopsided battles where their side has already won. Large fights? Forget it.

The way the AA/aircraft balance is now, aircraft could be removed from the game entirely and nothing would really change. If DGC removed the reverse maneuver and stuck with it (instead of caving like they did before) or, I don't know... allowing for actual reverse movement with the press of the key, then maybe the skill floor would be lowered considerably enough to make flying much more approachable,. Another step would be a toggleable hover mode which would have ESF enter a control state similar to that of PS1's VTOLs, alleviating some of the control and aiming issues many newbs have.

Until getting into the air is much more new flyer friendly, ground AA has to remain brokenly powerful. New forms of lock-on missiles ain't the answer, considering there's a cert cost.

I have more problems with Ground lockons than flak, you know flak comes from either a turret, MAx or skyguard, but lock-ons can come from anywhere.

And the whole issue about flak, aircraft, or vehicles in general for that matter is impossible to fix because the core issue are the actual bases, there are too many bases on the continents all in spitting distance of each other.
Bases offer no real protection from vehicles which leads to vehicles easily spawncamping in the base in small fights.
Yet on the other hand its impossible to even get close to a big fight as aircraft because the lockons and flak will be too great, not to mention there are always some tanks in those big fights where the infamous NC vanguard can just instagib you easily.

Everything worked great in Planetdie 1 because of balance and good base design, between bases you had lots of open fields where actual vehicle combat would happen, but once you reached the base it was time to dump the vehicles and go forth with infantry fighting.
Planetside 2 does not have this balance, the bases suck and it is more like Call of Duty with some vehicles thrown in it.

Hahahaha! Oh wait... You're serious.. Sir and/or Madam, you amuse me greatly.

Even a skyguard, The most powerful AA platform has no kill zone, only a "Minor Annoyance Zone" If the pilot is not ignorant, They will ALWAYS escape.

depends on continent really.... Esamir and much of Indar there's nothing to save you. If the Skyguard is good and lets you get close enough, you're toast. Amerish there's almost always something to break LoS, and Hossin just forget it. Dumbfire is the only AA that works there... but it actually works more reliably there too.

In any case, I've NEVER done AA solo. I generaly don't like it unless we can get 3-4 of us together, at which point it becomes rather laughable.

There's no single AV unit that can completely deny an area for all armor. AA does that.

If it instagibbed air it'd be beyond ridiculous and flying would be meaningless.

Really?.

A bad pilot would be one who flies around in low pop combat areas and farms newbs pretty much with no intention of being any kind of force multiplier.

Easiest way to learn or practice is when your faction is practically warpgated. You know where enemies are, quite often first base out of the warpgate....and you know where friendlies are. Good way to practice w/a safe haven not far away.

Even then, you are still supporting your factions efforts at a base in contention.

Follow another esf or aircraft from the warpgate to the fight they are going to, also not bad to try.

This holds what relevance to what i have said or even me for that matter mate?.

Noone ever gets wargated on miller really either. It's a pretty balanced server where most people do actually play ftw even if they are zerglings. I've played for just shy of a year and never seen anyone get warpgated myself.

Still not seen anything anywhere but 'x situation makes either op or up because x'. Nothing definitive but people spouting subjective crap to back up their situation where it is op or up either way.

So i am still convinced that it all boils down to solo play which the game is not based around as such. That and bad pilots coupled with the usual 2 or 3 bursters i find at most bases.

The best way to figure out if something is OP or UP is to look at performance statistics.

In this case, you should look at the flak weapons (Skyguard, Burster arms, Ranger) and see how often they kill aircraft. Fortunately the Oracle of Death site has access to a lot of data from PS2 and is publicly available.

Aircraft KPH
Burster (both arms, averaged across 3 factions)- 6.21
Skyguard (averaged across 3 factions)- 6.21 (which is exactly the same as the Bursters... kinda statistically spooky )
Phalanx AA (averaged across 3 factions)- 7.63
Ranger (includes Harasser, Sunderer, MBT versions, averaged across 3 factions)- 8.40
Harasser- 10.38
MBT- 9.55
Sunderer- 5.26

So what does that mean? Well for example the Burster and Skyguard kill 6.21 aircraft every hour. You can imagine this as sitting around for 10 minutes and getting to kill one aircraft in that 10 minutes, followed by sitting around for another 10 minutes and only killing one aircraft. Sounds kinda boring... and that's because it is. Most of the time aircraft will get away (if not kill you), so you only nail that one poor pilot every 10 minutes.

Now you might look at the Harasser and MBT stats and think to yourself, "Holy cow! I always thought the Ranger sucked! Why does it have better stats than the Skyguard?!?" Well don't go spending your certs on Rangers just yet... because Rangers really do suck. The reason why the AKPH is high is due to the way the weapon is used... you drive around as a 1/3 Harasser or 1/2 MBT most of the time and only switch to the Ranger when you are engaging aircraft. Because most of the time the Ranger is empty, that doesn't count towards its actual usage time and AKPH. You can see this because on average Harasser Rangers only have about an hour of usage per day... across all servers and all players. Whereas Skyguards get about 160 hours of usage per day, just that most of that time is spent being completely unable to counter enemy aircraft.

So all in all flak weapons (even taking into account inflated Harasser/MBT stats) get on average an Aircraft KPH of 7.11. So how does that stack up against other weapons in PS2?

ESF Tomcat- 34.29
ESF Coyote- 14.47
Liberator Dalton- 12.30
Harasser Walker- 8.23
MBT Walker- 7.17
Flak- 7.11
MANA AV Turret- 7.04

So yea. Flak is... pretty UP. Most aircraft have an easier time killing aircraft than flak. I mean I guess it's understandable that ESF A2A does very well (and yes I'm aware of the switch-weapon thing, but the same applied to Harasser and MBT Rangers)... but that the Dalton kills more aircraft than flak weapons is crazy simply because the Dalton is an A2G weapon. It'd be as if the MBT AP cannon had a better AKPH than the ESF A2A weapons!

So flak definitely needs a buff. At least have it kill more aircraft per hour than the bleedin' Dalton. If it killed as many aircraft as the Tomcat does, then that would be a balanced weapon!

Something like this would be an excellently balanced adjustment to flak weapons in PS2:

Thank you colonel chingles, that was much appreciated.

Thank you for the effort and providing a very clear and concise break down.

10/10

I would love the flak to be that good in the video hahaha.

Personally I like high pop fights as there's tons of infantry swarming around to plow away with PPA or Plasma Pods (depending on my mood)

lmfao you KNOW that'd be broken as hell.

Lets also make a MAX AV weapon that kills Lightnings (ground equiv to ESF) in 1-2 seconds and 1/8th of a magazine from a full auto weapon