[Suggestion] No More Solo Liberators

You wanna tell me what hacks you are using to teleport out of the view of a belly up dalton? If you get to close, its even easier for a dalton to shoot you down. The only safe place fighting a liberator is staying directly to its top. If you are anywhere else, Or that liberator rolls, You are suddenly no longer safe. If you can see that dalton, Majority of the time, It can see you. I fly more than enough to know the weakspot of a liberator. That weakspot cannot be used with how maneuverable the current liberator is.

Story Incoming: Do not Read if you are a TL;DR type. Do read if you want an immediate, current example of what happened 24 hours ago on Amerish on this topic.

I have to disagree with you completely that we are wrong. I literally sat yesterday in a skyguard, spotted a Lib flying at about 1 hex away, I start shooting. He is already pointed at me. I empty one entire magazine into him of skyguard. He starts smoking. I get dozens more rounds into him- he's steadily closed with me, no maneuvering, no dodging. About 90% of my shells are hitting, if not more. He is smoking, but pops fire suppression for the 5-15% hp repair to tank the damage. He is now 50m away. He aims, he shoots. I start moving before he fires. He misses a few shots, but easily corrects because unlike an aircraft, I am limited by terrain. I go down. He flies away. He takes an G2A lock on from a heavy. He is smoking. Not on fire. He crosses a ridge line, and is gone.

It is not saying "OHK shotguns are OP because they kill in one shot while LMG needs several". It's saying "I need over 150 shots to your 10 or 20, and your 20 come out of your gun barrel at easily triple or more my ROF. Sure, I have range, but if i'm shooting that slow, and hitting, and you can just -tank- it anyway from a Hex away, without even dodging or landing to repair OR HAVING A SECONDARY GUNNER FIRING AT ME? No. That is unbalance. Too much power for one player. That's broader balance.

But please remember here: I'm not making a thread about Nerf The Tankbuster. I'm not! I'm making a thread about stopping ONE PLAYER from using BOTH the Tankbuster, AND the Dalton, alone, without major penalty. (I.e., crashing to their well deserved death).

Auto pilot is fine, it would be a neat mechanic. But for balance reasons, I think it would be best if the nose gun were disabled to carry an auto-pilot feature. I certainly wouldn't mind having Liberators flying in straight lines for me to shoot at while being unable to do anything to dodge. The problem is, Libs can nose gun, climb, roll, switch to secondary, fire a Dalton at you (after aiming it), and pop back in pilot seat, and only lose a handful of meters of altitude, and recover with ease.

Interestingly, the Valkyrie cannot do this nearly as well- if you switch to second seat, the Valkyrie noses over immediately and goes into an inverted dive, which is VERY hard to recover from when not at max altitude. Libs should do this, but they actually don't.

But really, it just makes no sense for pilotless aircraft to be a thing.

Also, if we should have auto pilots in the setting, why don't we have unmanned drone aircraft? Why don't we have gyro-stabilized gun turrets with computer aim assistance like modern main battle tanks that could literally lock the turret to always stay pointed at a single place regardless of if the tank hits bumps or turns. Tanks in PS2 (also, Battlefield Franchise) are actually operating in turret mechanics on World War II era fire control technology!

And again, Libs don't -have- auto pilot, so your point is kind of invalid here. If they make it a thing, and balance it, I'd be all for it, but it's not relevant to our current discussion. If you think it really has merit, please, make a suggestion thread of your own about it!

I am an adept-level pilot myself. (about 12 hours of actual combat flying, (that is, 12 hours of knowing how to fly well enough to engage enemies and reliably damage them without crashing into the ground or automatically losing to them in a dogfight, I don't count the dozens of hours prior spent in the VR and free flying at 1-3:00 AM.. *shudders*.)). Liberators take even longer to kill with an ESF than with a skyguard, regardless of what you use on them. I have already engaged Liberators that were not good enough to Dalton me, but literally had time to -try- for about 10 seconds, and then they flew back to their warpgate from half a continent away, without dodging my Reaver's Mustang nosegun (the stock AA cannon) even once. And they were pretty hurt, but they did make it back easily enough with composite armor and fire suppression repair points in play. It's just too tanky- but that all is beside the point.

My thread point here is Solo Libs are stupid mechanically and area easily fixed so they are the team based vehicles they are supposed to be to begin with.

Whether or not (Whether, in this case, NOT, not.) the Lib needs some kind of survivability nerf is a good discussion for another thread. I certainly think it needs to be more vulnerable to ground based weaponry. I also think it would do well to have a built in limitation to not be able to roll inverted, like a real life helicopter gunship would be unable to roll inverted for any period of time.

But really, something like Battlefield has, only longer for a big vehicle, where the engines should cut, and take 5-7 seconds from being pilotless to start back up would help things. At least they couldn't afford to do it on ground attack runs.

If you drive as a heavy with a decimator, it can happen with Walker harassers. Quite efficient for the cost.

Maybe, but it's incredibly risking. If we're talking about an experienced 2-man crew with a good dalton gunner, he'll be getting pretty close with his shots. There is almost an element of luck involved. And the pilot will also be trying to ram you or hit you with his TB, which is damn near and instakill because the TTK on ESFs is so low. Like you said, it takes a lot of time. That is a lot of time spent dodging dalton rounds, rams, and TB rounds as well. It's not a matter of whether or not it's worth the your time, it's a matter of whether or not it's worth the risk.

Now, 2 ESFs who know how to dodge a lib can weak havoc on it.

Unless the Liberator isn't flying out in the open and is making good use of cover...

Some people in fact feel that shotguns are rather unforgiving in CQB. Add in the fact that Liberators can be fast and are heavily armored and have an enormous HP pool, and suddenly you can understand why shotguns attached to such a vehicle do seem very unfair.

Just imagine as a normal rifleman fighting off an NC Scatter MAX who not only was far more heavily armored than you, but who could also move very quickly and fly like a Light Assault.

That's pretty much a Liberator. It's quite OP in its current form.

Oh man I hadn't thought of that. I HAVE to try that

It makes me giggle like a 3 year old whenever I pull it off.

The best way to stop solo liberators is to stop guns from reloading while not manned (this would also help with ESFs switching secondary). You can't sit there waiting for Dalton to reload while solo, same with tank buster (which is a too OP weapons and needs more nerfing as there is no reason to use any of the other two weapons available= OP). Simply stopping background reloading will force more team play on the already anti-social elitist who have no friends but should really make some cause friends make life (and games) better and people less douchy.

This thread is a perfect example of why bad players shouldn't be allowed to impact weapon balance.

If you can't 1v1 a solo lib with an ESF, you are a bad pilot. That is just a fact. Please deal with it.

Liberator need to touch the ground to kill a tank. If you have problems killing a solo liberator you have a problem.

I think solo libbing is really annoying, and a major factor in why I refuse to learn the air game. I'm all for forcing a 5 second seat switch or something like that.

New players don't know how, and it makes for a very bad experience that most likely will end with them quitting to play the other parts of the game.

Liberators don't need to touch the ground to kill a tank...

but I love my lib
and soloing it is so much fun

ya the esf are so much more manuerable than my lib
its quite hard to predict the flight plan of an esf to meet my tankbuster rounds in the air
the easy people flying straight are the ones I shoot down
and they are gathered here today in this thread.

Or you could say that part of being a good Skyguard is not to sit near obstacle Lib pilot could use as a cover. It isn't that hard, Libs don't have that much cover to choose from unless they fly really close to the ground but at that point they can be easily shot by tanks.

If what you are saying was true then Liberators would have twice as many users than MBTs do. Yet the reverse is true.

What is more likely?

A) Liberators are indeed OP but for some reason majority of players refuse to use them despite the fact they jumped on OP-weapon(ZOEMAX, PPA, etc...) bandwagon in the past without any hesitation.

B) Your perspective is extremely biased because you only drive ground vehicles? You only see half of the picture.

No, it is nothing like that. To close distance from, what, render range (400m) to OHK range, an infantry needs a minute. Meanwhile, the LMG can kill it in under two seconds from at least 100m. To close the distance from vehicle render range (1000m) to ramming range, a Liberator needs much less time than infantry. You can probably do it in 15 seconds if you already accelerated and run racer. Meanwhile, even if you're being fired at from point blank with zero hit chance, it takes like 30 seconds for the Skyguard to take you out.

The example is with someone unloading several magazines at someone running in a straight line towards another in an open field and just tanking all the hits. Magazine after magazine. Taking headshot after headshot with the bolt action sniper rifle. Just coming closer like an indestructible brick, and when under 8m, simply instagibbing you. You'd say "Hax", or "WTF is this BS" right?

Here's what needs to change: AA needs to be deadly. Not deterring. Deadly. Meanwhile, aircraft need to understand they're supposed to use range and speed and sneak up on things. Not simply being tankier than any tank while flying at 250kmh. I've had duels with my "3/12 double walker blockade sunderer" vs an elite "2/3 AV Lib" and when the sunderer was deployed and gunners actively scanning the horizon and the driver repair tanking, the fights were even. When surprised while driving on the road, the sunderer was toast, because we couldn't get to repair tanking fast enough.

That's the supposed 3 person AA vehicle with the supposed toughest frame in the game being outtanked and outdamaged by a skilled liberator crew. Liberator is far too tough and AA is far too weak. These days I prefer AP over my skyguard as AA, any liberator will take off in a hurry if it gets struck by that, instead of turning towards you and just shrugging off the hits. Also, not useless against tanks and infantry either.

Easiest solution I see. Set vehicles back up like in PS1 where you have to actually go the the entrance point for a gun/pilot position on the vehicle. Enought of this seat swapping, I've thought it silly since beta and it still is.

You want to solo? Fine, you get your nosegun. It should require a crew to have use of the full capability of the vehicle.