[Vehicle] It's time to fix FlaK

I disagree with everything the OP said. I think AA is in a good place right now. I don't AA that much but each time I do, I never feel underpowered. Appart from the dual burster MAX, each solution requires team work in order to be effective. One lock-on is often not enough to deal with air, but slap one more and you'll start to teach ESFs and even Libs a lesson. Also, to those who are unable to adjust to the "new" way lock-on works, you need to figure that **** out, you have to really anticipate what the ESF will do before shooting if you don't want your missile to go in the ground.
I'd be in favour of a XP boost to give a motive for player to play AA. But honestly, when playing Skyguard, I don't give a f- about XP, I just want to help the battle.
Also, the title is wrong because most weapons you mentionned are actually not Flak, but hey, I'm just cherry picking.

That's because you can chase aircraft in a lib. Aircraft that stay over skyguards for any length of time tend to catch fire, so typically they leave before then.

I don't think G2A is bad aside from the Ranger, but it's a heavy investment with little return. The Skyguard is costly to cert and pull for what is pretty much stuck in the area it pulled... Once air goes away, there's a lot of dead time doing nothing; not exactly 350 resources well spent. A2G lock-ons are 250 and can dumb fire, and even the burster can be swapped out. Also, a lot these AA secondary weapons can't attack ground targets so they remove offensive capability against the most abundant source of opposition.

>The Skyguard = Crap against anything smaller than a galaxy, it does not reliably hit anything.

Haha, oh wow. You just have aiming problems or performance. Skyguard is a beast.

>Lock-Ons = Crap, unable to put out enough damage, flight is too slow, lock on timers too long (with or without stealth to modify), flight unreliable and easily manipulated by ESF's to fly into terrain.

Haha! Do you even fly? Even now lockons can ruin your air gameplay, you get locked almost near every fight you fly by. Lockons need even LONGER lock time.

So the this thread is about: you hate air for some reason (performanse or just not enough skill\will to fly) and get killed by it what makes you mad. Sorry for that, but right now AA is working ok. Even a 3\3 lib can suffer from a GOOD skyguard user.

Buffing AA any more than it is now would be death for ESF's.

A slower firing Flak AA for Libs/Gals might work.

Wow i never even thought of adding bullet drop. That's brilliant.

Aspis phalanx turret could get a buff. It does more damage than the Ranger, true, and has a slighty higher muzzle velocity (50m/s); but its accuracy is awful, is a static target, easy to hit from air (when not for ground units). With a magazine of 70, you can shoot for longer with the Ranger before overheating the Aspis.

Listen, everyone can pull AA from literally every goddamn terminal in the game including AMSs and AA turrets, to have immediate idiot proof response to enemy air that routinely reaches out across multiple hexes (each of which potentially containing AA by itself). This gives AA a crapton of potential to kill enemy air which means that there have to be certain limitations. AA always and at the very least scares air away which at that point means that it's doing a considerable job at anti-air (given how much more difficult it is to fly by comparison) and you're either satisfied with helping your team out in that way or you team up/bring your own plane to become the air killer. There's just no logical reason to repeatedly resort to something (in this case solo AA) that is neither designed to achieve what you're looking forward to achive nor brings you a decent amount of satisfaction. I mean why would you do that to yourself? Are you some kind of anti-social masochist? Why don't you explore the game, learn to fly and see for yourself how G2A balance actually works?

You flyboys just don't get it, do you? Instead of constantly moaning about how annoying AA is, try to get your head around the following: Aircraft are so mobile that no ground vehicle can hunt them down, aircraft can run and hide. Ground units can just about never run from aircraft. We can't avoid you pests. To compensate for this, we need viable AA (even if it's just for deterrence) which isn't simply an expensive dead weight when we're fighting other ground units. The LEAST that AA weapons need is a better reward for damaging aircraft or much cheaper certification options or both. Current AA is too expensive and unrewarding.

You never met squad of three Harassers with Walkers, didn't you?

So the few times when the terrain caters to such a situation is hardly representative of the majority of instances when air flees to lick their wounds.

The only weapon in need of buffing is the Ranger.

It's grossly underperforming. It's like a single burster arm. It's just bad.

Otherwise, just improve incentive to use AA. More people will use AA, and that's all you really need.

Equal numbers of AA to Air makes Air pretty much useless in an area.

A single G2A HA can force an ESF to get no more than 1 quick rocket run between repairs.

gets real fun when it's 3 v 3, as the 3 HA's can take out one of the ESF's every 6 seconds if they lock on the same target.

26xp for 25% damage is mediocre reward since that's all you often get. MAYBE a vehicle kill assist if a friendly ESF finished them off for you.

Most of the time, AA deters air... LIKE IT'S SUPPOSED TO.

Ground forces think "Oh, I have AA so I should just kill them, like, automatically. Hard counter brah"

yeah, no... that's not how balance works. AA actually has a fast TTK against aircraft. Faster than AV does against tanks. You don't get kills because the moment air gets hit or locked, they bug the hell out because they have no choice.

Ergo, the proper adjustment is to proplery reward that with enough XP. Multiply Air Deterrence XP by a magnitude of 4 (100xp per tick) and lets see how player behavior changes.

Another option is to simply give "Air Defense" ticks every minute like "Objective Defense" ticks work now...

they'd have to have a system that somehow properly rewarded AA vehicles (Sorry, G2A... but no air defense ticks for you) for being in a combat zone near friendlies.

Because the mere presence of AA is truly the deterrence.

AA doesn't need a buff, other then the Ranger...

What the Lightening needs as well as every other ground vehicle, the ability to change out load outs, without losing cert points. I also think a buff to the Ranger would be huge, especially on a platform like the harasser, which would be able to keep pace with Air vehicles.

The Walker on the Harraser is so fun, if the Ranger was a little stronger and closer in AA DPS to the Skyguard, it would be a fantastic combination and probably become one of the strongest AA vehicles in the game.

Throw in a velocity increase to go with it. It would stop the people annoying me in my ESP from 3 hexes away, but it would also make it harder for Gals and Libs to hover at the flight ceiling over bases.

Libs are SUPPOSED to hover up at the flight ceiling, it is the job of the empire specific fighter to prevent libs from farming.

If i get killed by a lib, which is rarer than hen's teeth, i just jump in my ESF and go try to kill him.

One ESF is all you need to keep a lib from farming your team.

When you build your platoon it would be wise to incorporate an air squad so that you can defend yourself from enemy air in the way that was intended and makes the most sense.

If skyguard can completely deny air, then who is going to kill the vehicle zergs? Nothing kills them and they farm all day. I day 10x more to tanks than i do to air, i really dont see what the outrage is.

I still contend that if more than 2% of your deaths are from a2g then you are just a terrible player.

I love the assumptions being thrown around, interesting fact though, I am indeed a pilot. I fly all the time, I think that FlaK is too inaccurate against ESF's which are the main offender, and it's too inaccurate against Liberators at a distance.

The spread on the thing is fine for what its supposed to be but the explosive fragmentation projectiles meant to be used against the aircraft is failing to do its job and often only detonates on direct impact.

Does a weapon have to kill it's target to be useful? Try making a no fly zone with a liberator and see how well that works.

The problem has always been that people try to mag dump on a dodging ESFs or very distant targets. That's not how you play Skyguard.When your target flees and makes it difficult to hit him. Switch to another target. Make them flee. Then again. And again. A single skyguard is effective at holding of several times his cost in air all by himself(if he's playing smart.)

The game isn't about 1v1 vacuum battles between sky and air. While you're lowering that ESF's hp,someone is lining him up with a G2A lock on and is about to finish him. Or one of your own air units is about to jump him. So while you don't kill the ESF and force them to spend more resources to get back in the sky,you force him to land and spend time repairing. Which isn't too different from them being destroyed,they both result in an absence of enemy air units. But in the case of deterrence the enemy is running back and forth rather than doing something useful for his side.

And as for the people saying the Skyguard needs to be more effective against Liberators and Galaxies,I ask why and how?I think a single Skyguard being more deadly against the heavier air units would be overpowered. While the resource system needs to be worked on further,why should the low cost lightning be such a severe threat against the more expensive and very easy to hit large air units? It would be like buffing G2A lockons despite their low cost.

My opinion right now, is this.
-AA is boring, nigh useless once the air leaves
-AA needs to be rewarding, higher xp for air deterence
-Give AA a directive with something like a higher dmg skyguard that has explosions use the same animation as the kraken (or one similar)
-Buff the ranger which is garbage atm (Multiply barrels by 2 increase bullet velocity and you have a decent AA weapon)
-Give skyguard slightly tighter COF and maybe a deploy ability (JUST FOR SKYGUARD, not AP or others) So as to not encroach on TR turf
-I dont use the aspis turret, because I think that base turrets are a good way to die to any tanker that actually cares about the air on their faction...

One nerf that got suggested here that could work pretty well to help compensate for massive no fly zones. created by people trying to farm aircraft, would be adding drop to AA (same could be said as well for noseguns on esfs due to how gravity believe it or not exists on auraxis as well...)

How about that Jawaris would that be satisfying?

You yourself should know that the ranger is trash.

Also you need an outfit, you're playing too much solo, its more fun to play with friends in this game.

Believe it or not I do like my aircraft too. I generally dont have a huge issue with flak however (I run stealth alot and either fly really high or vehicle level (as in I would crash into sundies kind of low)).

Also to be noted that in all of my posts while I despise the lib, I have never straight up called for its nerf, but we can discuss this monday over the fiery remains of AOD and vanu troops.

Flak is a short ranged weapon in this game, your mid-long is going to be skyguard and walker. Skyguard needs a tighter cof and velocity buff and thats probably it.
Ranger needs moar dakka and become a close range aircraft eater, being awesome at short, meh at mid range and im not hitting **** at long.

BECAUSE, if the devs offered rewards for (like a directive AA weapon) there would be a hell of alot more flak going around). which brings up the next point where there needs to be drop on the AA weapons so as to not create absurdly huge no-fly zones, aircraft need to be in this game as well, libs and esfs are almost required to kill me sometimes as much as I hate them.

As it is now, FlaK does not deter aircraft, even in a ranger or skyguard gunning at scythes and mossies I've had them float over me with hornet missiles and peg me to death, not deterred, not even remotely scared. Costs me a hell of a lot more than their ESF.

I've done it to ground vehicles as well, I am almost never afraid of FlaK save for Burster Maxes, that's it.


Fun Fact: FlaK is actually a compound word derived from the German Language for Anti-Aircraft Cannon or Fleiger-Abwehr Kannone, similar to the German words for Anti-Tank Gun or PaK - Panzer-Abwehr Kannone.