[Suggestion] Balance the liberator appropriately against ground vehicles

Fly with a LIb above a tank zerg at 500m with a Schredder. What do you think will happen? Lock-ons? Simply elevate a bit higher to prevent them. Skyguards? Start circling they have 400m/s projectiles, way to slow to make constant hits. Base Turrets? Only 450m Range. So what you think will going to happen? You are clearly visible this way, but only a few weapons can hit you and most projektiles are so slow that ground players will have to be very good predicting you.

You have clearly never seen halfway good Lib pilots in action. The areas provide plenty of hills and Libs are very fast. In addition you have selective perception which means most ppl will not even notice you.

Calm down dude, you brought it up, not me. I don't think PS2 should be a simulator.

I'm arguing all the same things. G2A is broken, and I differ from most in that I want to fix G2A instead of nerf air.

Well that's a core problem. Air shouldn't be any different, infantry and ground should excel in roles which air can't compete.

You're not going to like it, but there's a real life solution, as real life often has solutions. Let A2G weapons be powerful, but limit their payload to what's visualized on the wings and make them go back to the warpgate for a lengthy reload. This lets them strike where needed with precision without farming. That's air's special role, they can be called in to bring the pain where needed without being able to single-handedly take over a base. Let tanks be tankier and have sustained dps and be re-armed in the field, maybe with cortium so they don't spam HE rounds at spawn rooms. Keep infantry free but give them access to powerful nanite-based weapons that can actually one-shot an ESF or MBT. It brings logistics to the game, but just a baby amount so that the CoD kids can handle it, and it solves some problems that the devs are still clueless about years after release.

One of the core problems I see is that these disposable vehicles are just re-skinned infantry, or at least that's the way they're headed. You can't kill a 3-person Lib crew fast enough to keep one of them from pulling them, so it makes sense that unit should be about as weak as infantry. I don't know about you, but that just sounds like crap. ESF are in a tricky spot, where decent pilots can pull them as soon as they're killed, they just have too much firepower for how disposable they are. So it's either leave vehicles nearly-free like they currently are and have them on par with infantry, or let tanks be tanky but make them valuable.

Actually, I do like this. Quite a lot in fact.

I do think we'll need to make some compromises between "realistic" payloads and game-balanced payloads. I doubt most pilots will be prepared to go back to the WG or nearest air-tower after firing like 2 missiles - far too much boring back 'n forth with that. But the exact details can always be tweaked later. The idea is a good one.


As for giving infantry powerful weapons that cost nanites, I'd totally be for that. I'd like to keep the current launchers as they are, so that those who're short on nanites aren't completely screwed, but adding in NEW weapons that cost nanites every time you pull them (just like grenades or medkits) would be aces for me. I wouldn't mind spending the nanites on something I knew would actually achieve something (unlike current G2A).

We're not supposed to agree, this is a video game forum, cut that **** out.

Anyway, there's a big problem with this air solution of mine. These important targets that air take out would have to stay down to make up for air not being able to apply constant pressure on a point. Be it a turret, tank or another aircraft, if it can instantly re-spawn there's not any point to my realistic payload idea. What we currently have is like CoD with vehicles, and this would drastically change vehicle play. For the better I think, but plenty of other players like to spam vehicles and hate the idea of having to worry about resources. I think there could be a cool hybrid between simulator and CoD. Let people spam infantry and new NS vehicles all they like, but let faction specific vehicles be hard mode but more powerful. Then you could make logistic vehicles and construction be for the strategic brainiacs. It would let everyone fine tune their experience depending on what they like to do. I think it's too late to make a change like this, but there's hope for PS3.

Some wild ideas that came to my mind when thinking about ways to balance the G2A game:

- reduce the maximum speed when flying at low altitudes for all aircrafts to allow ground forces to react better.
- reduce the maneuverability at low speeds to prevent fast constant dodging
- add angles to air weapons similar to ground weapons to make them impossible to use in certain angles (for example rocket pods being used straight down)
- reduce the effective weapon range against ground targets to force air closer to the ground
- remove the effect to exploit vehicle weakpoints (tank backs) by air vehicles making them always hit the roof no matter their angle
- remove the solo lib capabilities
- reduce the maximum height for drops to allow ground forces to do something against it
- Improve the damage and lock-on times against air in low altitude

Overal i think it would be a good idea to limit the interaction between ground and air in certain ways. The 3D space could be modified to have a space where ground forces cant interfere, which is currently not fully given. Then there could be a space where both can partially interfere with limited effect. And a space that is closer to the ground allowing ground forces to fight back more effectively.

Again these ideas a just wild ideas and are not a concept.

I'm sorry, but most of these are bad ideas. Comments below.

Think of air vehicles as vehicles, not infantry. Ground vehicles have limitations when moving around depending on angles.

The code base does allow angles relative to the vehicle. Im sure that this can be repurposed to work with angles relative to the ground.

Why not simply lock the belly gun seat from firing when the pilot seat is not occupied? The Lib is the only vehicle that has this type of issue and im sure that this would be a simple and fitting solution.

Perhaps it wasn't a great example, but you still kinda missed the point.

My point is that if you modify control options (movement, in this case) by a semi-random variable (height, in your example, or rough terrain in my infantry one) you make it substantially harder, if not nearly impossible, to develop the kind of hand-eye-muscle-memory-stuff that makes up a substantial portion of "skill". This is a bad thing, so the idea is bad.

We'll have to agree to disagree. I've done some coding (obviously nothing on the scale of an MMO), and I don't think it will be nearly as simple as you assume.

On the one hand, I agree with you. On the other, not so much.

I can easily see lib pilots arguing that if you're going to lock their weapons you have to do it to other vehicles as well. Plenty of people I know leap out of their 3/12 Sundy to repair while it coasts along and their gunners keep firing. Or out of their tank between reloads for some quick repair.

It's hard to do right, and seems to take quite a bit of skill (I certainly haven't ever pulled it off efficiently). The same is true of solo-gunning a 1/3 Lib. At the end of the day, 1/3 solo-gunning a lib is a pretty niche style. I know I certainly don't see a ton of that around. Given the skill requirements and the limited scope of it, is it really that big of a deal?

All ground vehicles have it and still ppl are able to hit stuff and move around even with all the shaking going on.

Im coding for 8 years now, and it is as simple as i assume. The vehicle tracks its angle to the ground already to calculate the forward movement and work with movement prediction.

From my perception at least 20% of the Libs i encounetred lately are solo Libs. Using Tankbuster+Dalton as very efficient way to take out tanks. So yes i see it as a big issue. On top of that ppl always bring in the teamwork argument when talking about ground defending against air, so i see no reason why to not apply it to the air side of the game aswell.

If you can't comprehend the differences between a 2-d plane with front-back movement and turning and a 3-d environment with essentially 6 DoF, combined with the complexity of variable (rather than consistent) control, well...... I came up with a lovely insult, but I'd like to avoid a forum ban, so I'll just keep it to myself and smile a little every time I think of you. I'm done here.

I know the difference. And i still dont see an issue why a slower speed in lower altitudes would break anything, especially when counting in that some air is clearly slowing down and use the high speed mostly for getting in and out. So you still owe me an explanation why anything would break here.

and yet many of your suggestions go more torwards a simulationstyle play

if i constantly have to fly back and forth to be able to stay within a battle then that means i get a TON of downtime were i am not participating .. and missing those powerfull but limited shots punish new players even harder ... average players would even less want to fly around with the already imo conveluted flightcontrols ..
because they get then even more easily killed by tryhards .. the learningcurve ... would not even be a curve realy but just skyrocket into orbit and beyond ..

esf´s can get oneshotted by defaultrocketlaunchers and decimator already even with the high dropoff .. mbt´s lose to c4 ..what more do you want?

maybe slightly buff the lightnings armor ( and maybe give the skyguard high velocity)... mbt´s imo are in a good place ..
yes maybe adjust the nanitecosts for vehicles across the board and/or add a cooldown ..
maybe slightly nerf the dalton (it´s still a antitankweapon) that requries accuracy, maybe slightly nerf esfpods against infantry
maybe turn the lib into a light armor veicle to allow infantry to dmg it, even if just slightly (yea that´s a lot of maybe´s) .. but i don´t want any more tryhard orientated solutions at best only additions ...
logistics to the fps player aren´t fun ... leave that to the RTS construction player because THERE resources matter ...
i can imagine DBG to create continents in the future that work more torwards contructed bases .. the new biolabs are already going torwards that direction ...

The liberator should have never been a mobile Howitzer flying through the air. That is the #1 reason why it is so absurdly strong. Not only is it extremely durable but it can annihilate everything. Even other aircraft.

Make it a bomber like it was in PS1 and then we can talk. Till then, its going to continue to be cancer.

Real life is a good starting point when all the crazy ideas we've seen just don't feel right. I don't mind crazy and creative ideas, but the crazy stuff from DBG just doesn't feel right, at least to me.

Yeah, missed shots under my ideal solution with the most powerful weapons would be brutal, but so would the damage they deal. If you only have 2 Hornets then two hits would take out a MBT and be hard mode, which taking out a MBT should be hard mode. That doesn't sound like a big deal now, because vehicles are so spammable, but with the increased cost and the cooldown you mentioned, managing to take out a MBT would be a huge contribution. A more sustainable load-out if you want to limit your downtime would be LOLpods with many more shots and of course the nosegun. You couldn't farm in the same way or missile spam, but that's the point, and this system would also let you have much more powerful weapons instead of the nerf guns air currently has. A much more sustainable loadout could be the Valk or Lib. With it's limited firepower maybe the Valk could be re-armed by a Sunderer, but the Lib and Gal would have to go back to base like the ESF. A noob-friendly loadout could be 2 Tomcat AA missiles and a nosegun with 1/3 the dps of a stock nosegun but with 1m of tracking. A nosegun like that would still require a basic skills everyone needs to master, let noobs and average players contribute in A2A, and puts them on the path towards hard-mode noseguns by letting them get some hits with an easy to use but vastly inferior gun. Air would be more thoughtfull and less arcade-like. I wouldn't suggest completely rewriting the book if things were working, but it's pretty clear by the huge balance changes and removal of things like thermals years after release that things aren't even close to working. The only options are stringing us along or turning the game upside down with known working strategies to fix it.

Come on, those weapons rely on bad pilots or equal amounts of skill & chance, like a Dalton against a god ESF, they're just not reliable. I want medium-skill AA that average players can use effectively against average pilots and let average shooters scratch the paint off great pilot's ESFs. We have medium skill weapons for infantry and armor, we should have it for G2A and A2A as well.

All cool stuff. All easy to implement bandaids but still a big move in the right direction.

That's why I think logistics should be almost absent from Infantry play, aside from some way to limit infinite troop spam and some nanite based super weapons. Construction logistics doesn't hurt fps players at all, but look at how pupular it is and how many players it keeps busy, and it's still not even close to tuned. I think some of the brainless jobs like spamming Sunderers or a suggestion of a mobile field base could shifted to a logistics role without hurting the non-stop infantry action that so many PS2 players want to keep.

The ability for all tank HEAT and AP main guns to one hit ESFs. Lightnings currently cant do it, even with their AP. And if someone flys low enought to be hit it deserves to be destroyed.

- Remove the tank directional weakness from counting towards Air weapons. With the speed and manouverability of air vehicles its to easy to exploit it. Instead all ground vehicles should have omnidirectional the same resistance against air weapons, alternatively make all air weapons only hit the top of the tank, making top armor usefull against air weapons
- Nanite costs for ground vehicles should generally be reduced to allow better vehicle vs vehicle battles
- For some air weapons add angles to the ground needed to fire them, removing the ability to fire pods head down and so on
- For the Lib reduced resistance against AP projectiles. Again if it flys low enought to be hit it should realy hurt and not give them the option of speeding up in a slitsecond and run away
- Skyguards should get much faster ammo so they can reliable hit fleeing air
- Maybe we could also think about reducing the acceleration so air vehicles take longer to get to max speed

My main issue with Air is: It is easy to be scared away but to hard to kill, thus it can destroy alot of assets with lower risk.

"if i constantly have to fly back and forth to be able to stay within a battle then that means i get a TON of downtime were i am not participating .. and missing those powerfull but limited shots punish new players even harder ... average players would even less want to fly around with the already imo conveluted flightcontrols ..
because they get then even more easily killed by tryhards .. the learningcurve ... would not even be a curve realy but just skyrocket into orbit and beyond .. "

no, it WILL BE a big deal ..

imo farming is not a problem with vehicles but with the limitations of defenderspawncapablitity
as you said yourself even while your suggestion may limit farming it will always be there .. for the same reason infantry may keep sundy´s alife to farm there ..

no, it wouldn´t let ... it would REQUIERE them ... you can still get powerfull weapons with the current system that are extremely limited in ammo and force you to fly more runs such as say bombbays or tvguided missiles f.e ... heck you could get even nanite based ammunition that make a vehicle cost more depending on loadout like tactical missiles ..

completely rewriting the book would in the worst case just lead to the same problems the game already has, there is no guaranty that your suggestion would work out the way you wanted ..

most fights are about the opponent making mistakes or you reading them ..
also imo for air to air you already have mediumskill weapons and that again are either pods or laserguided hornets .. for G2A the HA assault has the masamune f.e., NCmaxes have ravens and engineers AVturrets could have a higher turretpitch
just aply the same to vehicles and adjust the dmg torwards air .. then again skynights may start to cry even more ...

*cough* https://forums.daybreakgames.com/ps2/index.php?threads/bfg-esk-ns-heavyweapon.244973/

well as said before vehicleterminals and airpads aswell as spawntubes on constructed bases already are resourcedependand so keeping that up means ants driving around for consistent cortiumsuplies and i can dgb maybe make a continent more torwards that idea .. ... it is however not easy to get a proxybase up unless you got 3 or 4 dedicated people .. and the overall certcosts are pretty steep on those ... now should cortiumgatherung be more implemented into general terminaluse? .. i don´t realy think so ..

[quote="Xebov, post: 3451773, member: 107355"



- Remove the tank directional weakness from counting towards Air weapons. With the speed and manouverability of air vehicles its[
to easy to exploit it. Instead all ground vehicles should have omnidirectional the same resistance against air weapons, alternatively make all air weapons only hit the top of the tank, making top armor usefull against air weapons[/QUOTE]

no

no

no

libs take enough dmg per shot already dmg from ap against them is good enough so no

agreed

libs already have low acceleration imo ..

everything is easy to scare away .. my problem is that scaring away is not rewarded at all which it should be ... the game is at the moment too focused on raw kills which is not the point or goal of the continental play ..

I guarantee there would be no end to the crying if devs gave a tank buster/dalton equivalent to tanks/sunderers. AA is garbage, plain and simple, and many players benefitting from it aim to keep this the status quo

Adding more powerful weapons to the game with limited payload is essentially fine tuning what I'm suggesting. Maybe it's what's visualized on the wing plus one reload. Maybe it's half of current ammo. Just details to be worked out and tweaked

Nose guns are high skill, it takes hundreds and hundreds of hours till a new player can deal a significant amount of damage to a good pilot, and that's not even getting close to a kill, just not an embarrassing display. LOLpods are much slower than bullets and if you can't track with a nosegun you're not tracking with hornets, especially if you're not in a Scythe. There aren't medium skill weapons on ESFs, just hard mode then no-skill Tomcats & Coyotes.

High skilled players on the ground use accurate weapons that can kill faster than anything else with headshots, new players use medium-skill weapons like spray and prey ARs, LMGs and shotguns. New players in vehicles use medium skill weapons like the gatekeeper but step up to the Halbred once they get better at the game. Medium skill in the Lib is the Shredder, high skill would be the Dalton. ESFs just don't have that variety, and that's the number one problem with the air game in my opinion. It forces new and average players to form ganksquads and use noob weapons. Noob weapons which require no skill and don't help them build the skills to transition to noseguns. My proposed nosegun with a 1m tracking ability but 1/3 of the damage would be perfect training wheels for new pilots. They'd still have to aim, still have to maneuver, still have to dodge, and not just wait till they have a green box and click fire like with lock-ons. The game needs this.

The vulcan on a Harasser or a Vulcan/AP tank is pretty close.

Not many people like AA the way it is though. Pilots think it's annoying because you can't dodge any of he no-skill fire from the ground, and ground players hate not having a skill-based option to get kills. I see that as the general consensus. There are a few people now and then that think it's good how it is and people just need to get good, and funny enough they're mostly HAs or Skyguard players who don't mind being a deterrent. But I don't think they're real people, just bots from the game who learned to post on the forum.