These things need some serious buffage. My favorite idea is to remove esf afterburners period and change the pods to actual after burners. "Why?" You might ask. Well because it will help reduce the number of hovering rocket poddists farming infy, nerf a2a lock on esfs in a way where the weapons are not changed and lastly gives a rather good reason to use the least beneficial esf option. It will also put the esfs in a more a2a oriented niche (what most people want anyway) but this will make the a2a gameplay slightly more based on the more fun nose gun gameplay. My reaction to possible responses. "Ppa/air hammer + ab pods will be op" - no, you try dogfighting even a bad pilot with those guns.
Couldn't agree more, not only would it force pilots to specialise for either A2A or A2G and create natural counters, it would also go a long way towards fixing the current A2A lock on monstrosity that is the current air game. Unfortunately it will never happen, people have been spoilt for far too long with jack of all trades, anti everything ESF, the outcry if this was implemented would melt the internet.
I'm not going to lie, when I first read this, I thought.. "wut...?" But then I gave it a second thought. And this just might actually be the way to help some newer or not so great pilots stay airborne just a bit longer. I mean a rotary + AB pod will still wreck face.. it already does that. But Rotary + Rocket Pods does not make a great dog fighter. Even a bad pilot with AB pods will be a threat.. and even if they aren't, they can get away to safety.. thus staying airborne. My concern however.. is the Reaver will be the worst aircraft if this happens. Its focus is on its engine and afterburners. Requiring it to have AB pods just for its faction strength is very bad. Even the Vanguard doesn't require its shield to be tougher than other MBT's.. it just naturally is. So if they did a change like this. The Reaver is going to need a small overhaul. Maybe give it increased health or armor or resistances. Or maybe even allow it to have a small afterburner naturally.
Make fuel pods create a bkig explosion on death so they can have the seconsary purpose of allowing for kamikaze attacks. Have thr power of 2 c4 at least.
That would be hilarious (afterburning into the back of a tank and bail-assaulting at the last second) but the tears from tankers would melt the internet as well.
uhm... lol wat Buffing AB Fuel pods would make the Reaver even stronger because it has the highest AB speed by like 30KPH. It would actually be an indirrect nerf to Scythes, since they're the slowest by a fair margin on AB speed, so would get the least benefit from increasing AB fuel or increasing AB recharge speed even further. I'd also like to have AB fuel pods increase AB speed and maybe even cruise speed, to further reinforce their role as an interceptor fighter craft.... but this would require testing.
It's a great idea actually. As a dedicated pilot I would gladly accept that change. I'm against nooby ez mod farming with pods. However I'm not sure how it would balance out. a2g ESFs would be at great danger against a2a ESFs. Now, having little AB allows people to have at least some maneuverability against a2a. Taking it completely away means times higher risk. So there would need to be a buff in some ability of a2g ESFs.
ah, that idea in particular is dumb IMO. Missed that one. Just buff AB pods to make more of a difference. Rotary + AB fuel should be the premiere interceptor, but as it is, fuel pods only shave 3 seconds off a 4km distance. The only potential downside here is AI noseguns and AB fuel being harder to deal with. TomCats and Coyotes should offer absolute dominance over A2G specs, and indeed against rocket pods and hornets they'd continue to do so, but this change would make it so only a better Rotary AB Fuel ESF would be able to take out a AI noesgun + fuel ESF.
So you are saying more people may use the AI noseguns over Rotaries? That's unheard of, nobody should use them.
? I use them. Just more targets to shoot at AI nosegun users would still get dominated by Rotary pilots, but the issue would be if you increased AB fuel speed, they'd have a much better chance to get to safety before a Rotary pilot could kill them. From personal experience having spent a few hours behind the stick of all 3 AI noseguns + fuel ESF's, I had a high success rate of escaping back into friendly territory to force a tail off or make it even all the way to WG if they were tenacious enough to give chase that long, and that's without even more speed or fuel to work with which, while it wouldn't affect a Rotary + fuel ESF's ability to stay on me, would reduce the amount of time they have to kill me before I'm safely behind an AA wall, friendly swarm, or WG bubble. I play all kinds of ESF's. I've invested more certs into ESF's than anything else as well as several SC purchases. I play A2A, and all flavors of A2G. I've got Coyotes on my Scythe, and Tomcats on my Mossie. I've got all the AI guns and all the rocket pods. I've got Hornets on Scythe and Mossie. I've used "Interceptor" builds (Rotary + Fuel) on all 3 factions (Reaver is definitely the top Interceptor craft), pure A2G (nosegun + rockets/hornets), AI + coytoes (Scythe only ofc), Rotary + rocket pods... All I'd change with ESF's is: Increase reload on Coyotes (by like a factor of 2). They seem pretty decent all around, but they should be more of a supplement for rotary/nosegun and less capable to win all on their own. It's still by far the best to combine them with nosegun which gives the absolute highest DPS possible in a RM hover duel, but currently pure coyote vs pure nosegun is too good as eveidenced by my time with LPPA & Coyotes. I should have to dodge 2-3 reloads of noseguns before I can use my Coyotes again. This would make them still great to deal out a solid 40% damage to an enemy ESF to reduce how much nosegun I need, but easily allow a better pilot with nosegun only to beat a lesser or even equal pilot with Coyotes only simply due to time between shots Reduce turn radius & speed on TomCats and increase damage. Preferably primarilly increase damage by changing resistance to do more to heavy air without changing damage (or change much) to ESF's. You could still hit ESF's with them in the right circumstances (primarily when chasing, or when sitting back and firing at an enemy ESF engaged in a hover fight) but their primary purpose should be in taking down the bigger air targets to make ESF's the premier air dominance they're supposed to be. For A2A ESF builds though, they should be unquestionably the worst for fighting other ESF's (compared to Coyotes or Fuel) Increase AB Fuel capacity (+ recharge rate to keep fill to max the same) as well as increasing AB max speed similiar (and stacking with) Racer. Perhaps even increase cruise speed. These should be Interceptor craft, and the extra speed would also be enough to allow Interceptors to escape lock-ons. With Coyotes being nerfed, these would become the best ESF dogfighter in skilled hands (though the Coyote still has DPS advantage with a high damage burst in RM fights) Reduce Fire Supp to 15% at max and/or only allow to be triggered when in red (or at the very least below 25%). It's just too strong and universal right now. If other ESF survivability traits need to be tweaked because this is effectively a nerf of 10% HP to max certed ESF's, then so be it.
AB pods aren't used because they don't really give you an advantage in a dog fight, because speed doesn't mean jack, they need to just come to the realization that ESFs should only have 1 weapon at a time, just like the lightning. Because lets face it, the problem is that they can grab a nose gun and hover duel without any disadvantage, while still having an effective A2G, buffing pods won't do anything, lol.
AB with VThrust is indeed useful in a dogfight. You break enemies targetting with it. It's main strength should be in engaging only in fights it wants to though, and forcing fights it wants to. With AB fuel you should be able to escape or catch anyone without them. The difference isn't quite significant enough though.
And it never will be as long as the preferred method of aerial combat is the ******** hover duel, now if the game didn't have ******** physics better afterburners would be used to outrun or run down the A2G loadouts, but nope we have this ******** helicopter with afterburners.
Your tears. so salty. SO DELICIOUS. If you don't think speed matters only because of RM then you obviously don't fly.
That would be nice. I mainly use ESFs for quick transport that I then ditch, this would make it slightly easier to outrun enemy ESFs that do not have AB.
Actually running certed AB tanks does allow you to blip the AB with only 3 bars instead of 5 and the faster regen is very helpful in dogfights. If you encounter an enemy pilot who has the same skill level as you and you have rocket pods on and he has AB tanks then he will have an advantage in the dogfight. I myself was in favor of buffing the afterburners, i even made a thread about it, but i think for performance reasons it would be better to nerf coyotes and a2a missiles instead. A2A missiles should do 12.5% damage and be returned to the old fire and forget type, and coyotes should do 12.5% damage per volley instead of the 25% they do now. Running Coyotes as a primary should not be an option. Secondaries should be just that, the second weapon of choice, something to use between reloads or to get an alpha strike advantage. Most of us know that and agree with it, and even Higby knew these weapons were implemented incorrectly and planned to fix them. Hopefully those changes are still in the works.
