This sums it up very well, and as someone who frequently goes to bat as a Skyguarder I can say that I've heard it from pilots many, many times. "Oh, you're not supposed to kill aircraft! You're just supposed to damage them so they run away!" "Well why can't I have greater damage so I can kill aircraft before they run away?" "Because you're a deterrent!" Well now I get to smile and tell pilots that they too are being downgraded to mere "deterrents". See how they like what they've done to AA in the game.
Your Karma points have been deducted for sportsmanship reasons. A representative of the Falkyrate will be with you at a randomly appointed time in the future to deliver your mandated Valkyrie Lawn-Mowing Simulation. Thank you, have a nice day!
If i were you when the top armor changes go live and get protection to the rear side to put it on one of your skyguard builds to troll them indirectly, when they complain use the arguement that 'skyguard is AA therefore it should be able to be highly resistant to A2G esfs' which is a reverse of what they have been using as an argument for one esf easily being able to beat the niche skyguard easily (or reseting the fight as soon as the ESF pilot starts loosing)
thats like throwing a rock and hoping to hit a bird though. its 99% blind luck, unless as i already said, you're aiming at an idiot (hovering in one spot saying shoot me! XD) even then, the G2A weapons aren't very effective, ironically the most effective weapons at G2G like decimator and tank shots. a dumbfire shot from a G2A weapon still needs the same 3 shots to kill a FS ESF. also you didn't factor in that the moment an ESF gets touched by G2A they can simply fly away at 300KPH, no ground unit can catch them, if they want to live, they'll live, no amount of willpower can allow a ground unit to escape like that from air hence G2A being a deterrent. lets agree to disagree, before we need to talk about Libs XD
Now the Devs need to make the Rangers do more damage to the Liberators so vehicles will have a small survival chance. They have to balance the Ranger against the real threat, not from 1 Liberator but from the prolific cancer of 3-5 NC Liberators. Nothing screams balance than a handful of untouchable Liberators wiping out all ground with a few passes.
Higest threats for ESF have and always will be the terrain. Terrain kills more ESFs than anything anyone shoots.
Next update; Tree Launcher; New heavy assault RL. Engineer update; Can now plant trees. Medic; Can now tend to tree making them grow even larger! Light Assault; Can use a nanite wooden staff to leap great distances and whack Aircraft mid air. Infiltrator; Can now cloak trees using the nanite biotech module.
Some1 even did a render and a video in which they shot a skyguard and trees came out of it, but i cant find it now
Except that A2G isn't an effective deterrent. Game is sprinting down a dark path. And I don't just mean with regards to the ESF (which did have poor newbie accessibility and shared being OP with other OP units). The game is rapidly overhauling itself, but without any Oracle of Death, or public player Loadout data, or a healthy/robust public community to make support tools and communicate info at a level to support being able to digest and transition into these changes. I think they have basically come out and said it. What are you doing with your Mossie now? Are you playing it a lot now that you are enjoying it so much? You like games on rails and easy mode? Maybe players could just select a Loadout and then it could cycle through a bunch of cut scenes of our unit in action. Well, it does foster a sense of awareness and community calibration. Some people are better at it than others. Seems like that might make them want to seek out and develop that ability, as well as a method to keep track of how they are performing over time in that ability. For a company that needs to do balance a lot and with significant consequences, and that has had years to develop their awareness of their own limitations in doing it, you think they would have figured out how to either get better at it or put in place a method for consulting others to do it better. Or that someone in a leadership role would have gotten involved at some point who could figure this out. SOE/DBG, defying belief, decade after decade. Which is basically the same case for any Scythe running LPPA. The LPPA makes the Scythe a free kill to enemy ESFs (who are not much lower skilled pilots). Also, many ESF pilots choosing to run Ground AV or AI feel they are at a big disadvantage to ESF pilots choosing A2A. Yet other units have reliably effective AV and AI built into the same Weapon.
I wonder sometimes if Planetside 1 had the better idea. It bothered me from day 1 that PS2 changed this. For the longest time, PS1 had two aircraft: the interceptor and the ground attack plane. Two different aircraft with very different handling. The ground attack craft was the Reaver and was hard-fit with a 20mm cannon and rocket pods, making it good against ground but pretty worthless air to air. The interceptor was the Mosquito which only had a hard-fit 12mm gun, making it good against aircraft and infantry but not much else. PS2 uses one airframe for both roles, with weapons that seem to be decent enough at both. I've certainly seen good pilots say they equip A2G and still win plenty of air duels, which was not really a thing in PS1 that I recall. In that case, A2G had to run from A2A and hope their own ground forces or own A2A could save them. Meanwhile, A2A could do nothing against vehicles (I don't think the 12mm gun even damaged tanks). A2A had a secondary role, though, of ground radar built in. So if there was nothing to shoot at, they could patrol around and look for infantry dots, revealing them to their team and helping them find cloaked AMSs. Air was also a lot slower in PS1. About half the speed of air in PS2. A ground attack craft was only about 20 kph faster than a harasser. They still had afterburners but speed without afterburner was way slower. PS1 eventually added the Liberator which I always thought was a mistake. It's basically a troll machine. Then PS2 came out and combined A2A and A2G into the same super-fast, nimble airframe and launched with the troll machine Liberator. I've never been terribly happy with air vs air and air vs ground in this game. I think the original course they took was a mistake.
the big difference is that running LPPA on your scythe will let you get tons of kills against infantry, running ranger on your tank will only work as a deterrent to air. the TTK with a ranger is around 5-7 seconds if all of the slow moving projectiles are landing on the target. the only time they're effective is if there are multiple of them, a sunderer with 2 can do good for example. but its not like sticking PPA on your scythe which lets you become an anti infantry god ranger is so bad that a "top 10 worst weapons in PS2" list simply isn't complete without it
that gif just shows how horrible ranger actually is XD but you're right, the only thing that can kill an ESF before they can simply fly away are the few things that oneshot them
Not sure what the OP wanted to point out here - he is obviously a very talented air v air pilot and is moaning about Ranger on MBT whereas the vast VAST majority of MBT wouldn't consider an AA secondary, they really need an AV or AI secondary. The recent nerfs to air seem predominantly targeted at the A2G crew which although none would openly admit it, seems to be the majority of pilots hence the incessant whining. The Ranger has been dreadful for a long time - I personally haven't witnessed all MBTs suddenly arming it to make air a worse place (admittedly, the servers seem to be down more than up at the moment so maybe i'm mistaken !)
I was speaking specifically to the Loadouts which then makes you unable to handle 1 or more other targets. Specifically a target that is (or right up there among) your main threat on the battlefield. I know most persons (not saying you, but most people) on this forum have a fascination with killing everything, but for most gameplay it's enough to be able to (1) kill/hunt the primary target you are good at killing, and (2) deter/survive those target that are good at killing/hunting you. With regards to LPPA making players "an anti infantry god", I think this speaks more to the Scythe pre-nerf (Thermal). ESF AI has changed notably with the Thermal nerf. I have don't know the big picture impact nice and clearly, because I can't pull any data on it. Vanguard AP is probably the most versatile and powerful weapon in the game. Maybe Dalton. Or am I missing some other weapon? I think the ESF OHK has been good to have in game, at least at the moderate levels it was happening. I would have preferred all HA 1-shot Dumbfire Rockets (as long as they stayed slow and lumbering) having OHK, AV Turret having OHK, and Engineer AV Turret having OHK. A2G ESF has been the majority of ESF pilot focus (at least pre-nerf). I don't think that's ever been a secret. The only dedicated A2A ESFs are Skyknights (small group), Gank Squads, Skyknights-in-training, people spawning to get A2A revenge, or if the skies are too crowded with enemy Air and players have to go A2A. However, pretty much ALL ESFs have to deal with A2A, on a regular and ongoing basis. Which arguably makes all ESFs A2A to some degree. See all ESFs have to do A2A (or take major steps to avoid, mitigate, etc. it) because Air is very exposed to being spotted and engaged by other Air, and ESFs have a hard time evading other ESFs once engaged. Air has no cover (other than ground), ESFs can quickly close distances and engage other ESFs not already running while still far away, and Air non-AI weapons have the reach and line-of-sight to negate any incremental speed differences between the ESFs (also, it's usually the A2A agressor ESFs that have the superior speed anyway). But A2A-only (as in ESF losing its A2G) is a losers game for ESF. There are just not enough non-ESF Air targets, and ESF vs. ESF is too quick and lethal for Resource rates to sustain it. Maybe if ESF was made fully A2A but it was almost free resources to spawn.
AA hasn't been an effective deterrent for a long while in small numbers and airside has persisted in 'tough luck' because they want ez mode farming without AA having a decent chance at besting them. now that airside has been nerfed and lost their ez mode scopes and weapon dps they can spend the next few years UP like AA has been for a long time. if air has high DPS weapons for A2G AA should have high dps weapons to use to have a decent chance of besting them, but airside didn't want that, they wanted you to pull more costly manpower intestive AA to kill an ESF or two effectively while being able to flee every time if they try to ambush a skyguard and start loosing.
I actually spent a lot of time flying ESFs and a lot of time also doing AA (mostly with HA Lockons, spawn room or Cloak Sundy locally supported). Outside of small encounters, great line-of-sight breaks for Air, getting zerged, or lack of hard cover for Infantry, the HA Lockons were very effective at disrupting and driving off AA. Just as the AV Mana Turret or Striker was good at disrupting AV from range and elevation. Once you understand that Air detests annoying downtime, you can get very good results in sticking them with Locks and hits, that force them from the field. Kills or repairs, it's all just downtime to me. But Downtime and affecting the battlefield are my focus, not KDR. That said, I did think the old (pre-Thermal) ESF (and various other units like HA and MBT) were overpowered in general. And I regularly suggested non-major changes that could keep them feeling the ~same, but in being a better overall synergy (role, power levels, impact, etc.) with the rest of the game. For ESF, it was things like: 1) changes to make new pilots able to get better faster 2) changes to limit the power level of high skill pilots 3) changes to add Perma Air Radar to limit the ability of enemy Air to travel ally air space 4) Faction wide channels (by base for Infantry, region for ground vehicles, continent for Air) for player to be able to work as a team outside of Squads/Outfits: call in Air support, coordinate AA efforts (AA is lethal when coordinated at a basic level), etc. 5) better tools for AA, and much more clear support to learn how to use AA most effectively I get that many players hate Air. Before I was able to fly ESF (which I started many months after the game was out, maybe a year), I often posted if there was a Continent with no Air, I would play that. I get how much ground can dislike Air. I don't think I'd have as much of a problem with ESF being nerfed, if the state of the rest of the game wasn't so plagued by bad ideas of design in stunted and shallow, absurdly odd, gimmick gameplay.
my usual ESF spec is LPPA and lolpods so i can be effective against 2 of the 3 targets, you're totally right about ESFs being a huge threat to this spec, i run stealth and fire suppressio so i can usually escape them though
