I'm unsure as how to react to the A2AM changes.

No offence, but that is the Gunship version. As I have previously stated, the transport version (which is what the PS2 version is more similar too, the Lib took the role of the Gunship) was fairly vulnerable, and could only reliably survive with an escort.

Hell, everyone keeps complaining about ESFs needing to be A2A, and lose their A2G ability, but the minute it gets shifted even slightly in that direction, everyone loses their minds. I would honestly quite like to change it up, so the Valkyrie become the A2G farmer.

The Galaxy has a lot of resistances and HP to help it survive Anti-Air fire. Missiles, flak, the lot. It's weapons are supposed to give it either basic A2A defences, but mainly to support the ground troops it's delivering. It's designed to be relatively vulnerable to ESFs, as they're supposed to be the fast air counters. Where your own escort should come into play.

The Devs are trying to move the game back to a more teamplay, less one or two man death squads. Please, don't fight the change.

A simplified dead in the middle one. I can't haul tanks, but I can haul max units, meanwhile my armament and resistance is much closer to the gunship.

No, the lib took the role of strike aircraft. You cannot loiter in a lib effectively.

It's not closer to the transport or gunship version, it's the soimplified dead in the middle version. Extremely similar weapons load to gunship, extremely similar resistance values, cannot haul a tank, but can carry maxes.

You're projecting your own values on the devs again. If they didn't want the whale to be a combat craft, why the history of buffs to the combat capabilities of this craft in particular? Look at what the walker was and is now for example. Or the drake vs basilisk split. Or the bulldog a and g split.

How in the world is strengthening a single man fighter against a squad asset or multiple crew vehicle enhancing team play again?

I'm not complaining about an esfs ground attack capabilities, nor am I testing to get the change reverted. I went on a rant on the petition thread telling the gal and whale pilots there they were being childish. I'm here only to educate and because people like you keep coming along who really annoy me shouting about how my primary combat vehicle I've flown for years now, is a taxi. Hell, I flew Higby in my gal once or twice and he didn't have a problem with it.

The history of buffs is because people kept complaining it was underpowered, because they couldn't work out what role they wanted for, etc.

Why do people always pull that excuse? Haven't you noticed that ESFs generally work in groups? Particularly to bring down whales and libs? It promotes teamwork because you're supposed to have your own ESF buddies to chase them off, and only really need you own weapons in an A2A capability as a last resort.
ESFs were always supposed to be the counter to whales and libs. The Devs just seemed to get lost along the way.


Yes, and you made some great points that I agreed with. But let's recap. It can carry twelve people. Only 3 of which man weapons. That leaves 1 flying and 8 as passengers. Those weapons excel at A2G fighting, and are alright at A2A fighting. AKA, self-defence and infantry support weapons. It seems more and more like a transport.

And yes it is in the middle ground between the galaxy and gunship frame, but it definitely leans more towards transport. The Regular Galaxy had 3 turrets as well. They were just weaker.
Like many vehicles in Planetside 1, the Galaxy got shafted and changed to fit the smaller amount of vehicles in Planetside 2.

I have only recently begun to practice piloting aircraft. I have only and always been the recipient of repeated violations perpetrated against me by ESFs, Libs, Gals, and Valks alike. As I now hope to venture into this rarified air of upper echelon penultimate cheesers and begin victimizing any and all units in PS2 myself I must say I find this topic and subsequent discussion

Dude... Four turrets. Five man crew.

They buffed it because of its role as a gunship. Not because people whined at them. When they started down that path no one seriously flew gals.

The weapons that they've created are tuned for point blank and short range engagements on a slow vehicle. They created an aerial brawler.

And I welcome when packs of coordinated esfs roam the sky. It makes things interesting. But you don't see them often.

I stand corrected. As I've previously stated, I stopped using Galaxies shortly after Planetside 2 was released.

See above edit.

Additionally, if you can't even tell me how many guns I mount, what makes you the expert on my vehicles use and intended use?

Do I need to show you a whole new world? Come gun with me for a day and see what an actual whale looks like.

Cert barrier to a true whale is at least 3k, until then it is a transport. It's night and day between the everyman transport and dedicated gunship.

So skywhales should be an unfun mass of HP with one to two gunners on the bulldogs killing infantry with little to no risk of retaliation beyond a lib specifically designed to kill tanks.


Nty, I like how the tomcats are now, it's a ESF specialization to kill large crafts and will leave them more vulnerable to ESFs because they don't have afterburn tanks. It's a fair specialization so that tactical pushes like gal drops can actually be refuted by specialized crafts. Plus even with the tomcats, it's not like two rockets to the face and you're done, it's 10 to kill a gal, a 3 second reload, if you can't evade or run back into a friendly air zone or deter or kill an ESF that is pecking at you, you have no business in the air.

Yeesh that simplification. Very few whales even mount two bulldogs, it's impractical and limiting.

I'm not even taking issue with the changes all that much and went on a rant earlier about accepting changes and letting the stats the devs receive decide what to do.

Though I tell you now this really won't stop gal drops.

What I have issue with is the folk who think a whale should be nothing more than a taxi.

It's a taxi with FOUR ANTI EVERYTHING GUNS. That make you happy? A galaxy can destroy literally everything destroyable in the game, usually singlehandedly, simply because it has enough armour and HP to soak everything up, and powerful, if inaccurate weapons.

It's a gunship. It has guns. Oh my.

If you can't bring a whale down with a lib or an esf pack either you were outplayed or the whale had support. If you can't drive off or outright kill a whale with two skyguards you have a problem.

"Or the whale had support"


That's the point. It's supposed to have support.

In addition, even with this meta, how often will you run into coordinated air/skyguards? Hell, since this latest update, I've seen three Tomcats. I've seen a massive increase in treebait pilots, and an even larger increase in coyotes.

They'll rebalance, as time goes by, they always do, which you yourself have pointed out. It's just a push for more coordination, and making it so it doesn't take nearly 500 bullets, plus ten or so hornets to down a Galaxy.

Honestly, have you ever tried to solo a galaxy? Those nightmares just soak everything up. I invariably have to go back and resupply once it's down, and in the time it takes me to shoot it down, it's either returned fire with four times the return, or made it to friendly AA/ESFs.

So because you can't solo a gal that makes it unbalanced? I don't think so. If a single esf could bring down my three to four person combat whale then it wouldn't be worth playing.

I have soloed galaxies... In a galaxy or a lib.

I've seen a few coordinated groups of three to six esfs. Mostly newer pilots.

Really I'm surprised I haven't seen more use of the rebalanced noseguns.

I'm not saying it was unbalanced, but even with two or three ESFs, it could withstand a lot of punishment.

Which is fine. But once again, ESFs are supposed to be the hardcounter to other air. It was always their role. It just got lost in the A2G farm. Sure, it should take more than one ESF to be effective, but even with the new updates, it's still far from an instant kill.

Thankfully the new ones all forget to spacebar, and smash into things pretty quickly. Pump three bullets into them and wait for the free exp.

They've suddenly been replaced by the resurgence of coyotes. Give people a while for the novelty to wear off.

The thing that kills Gals the fastest is probably still going to be rocket pods and hornets, along with nosegun fire. I highly doubt you can empty 10 lockons faster than that. However, you can fire lockons from a safe distance, so there's that. Considering the versatility of both hornets and pods, I think most pilots will stick to those, and pull Coyotes for ESF's.

It's not healthy for ESFs to hunt Libs/Gals from up close.