[Suggestion] PS1 Anti-Air MAX weaponry.

Don't forget that the Starfire also had a DoT plasma burn effect. The Starfire was probably the most potent of the 3 AA options. You could prefire the shots, then lock a target with your plasma already in the air to give your target almost no warning. AND the VS MAX could jump jet to clear its fire line to the target or get into trees.

And that the Sparrow would literally track you over like half a continent. The damage potential wasn't super high, but it kept you running for what felt like an eternity.

In PS1 AA wasn't a "deterrent" AA could and would kill you quickly. Also in PS1 you couldn't bail out of an aircraft at about 20% HP or so, your ejection system would malfunction at low HP. Aircraft had to rely on ground forces suppressing AA MAXs or skyguards.

It comes down to:
Deterrents bad.
Skillful G2A good. Change current G2A+add new G2A to skillful. Lock-ons have smaller lock-angle, possible maintain lock or even just laser-guiding. Flak gets it's detonation range reduced heavily. G2A weapons will be designed to be capable of killing aircraft before they escape, but aircraft can avoid damage and destruction because it's harder to hit them now.

The sad thing is i don't think it's that simple.

Don't get me wrong, from a pilots perspective skill based g2a is fantastic (altough a not very likley).

Idealy if the guy on the ground choses the right weapon it would become a more or less even fight, where both sides risk about the same amount of resources (be it nanites, time or loss of versatility).

The problem tough is that no sane person (other than for a montage) would reliably do that.


Aircraft don't tend to come in huge packs ...
Meaning your battle of skills is rather short lived.
Either you die or win or one side retreats successfully. (and let's be honest, retreating would almost always be easier for the guy in the air)

And now you have the skyguard problem.
You just spend time and energy and nanites on something that maybe brought you a minute or two of enjoyment and even by winning you ended that.

Ofc the g2a weapon could be made a bit more versatile, but then again you end up with a weapon system that most likley while maybe viable is far from ideal for any other situation (or everyone would just use that).


Another option would be to give the weapon a platform that is capable of pursuing aircrafts and head at a similar speed towards new potential targets.
Like for example planes^^ i am joking ofc but maybe this helps some people understand why it gets suggested on a regular basis

The downside here is that aircraft by nature have a very high mobility (not even directly the speed, but the fact that you can fly at an altitude that's higher than most obstacles and then just go from a to b in a direct line).

And the final nail for any high speed g2a option ... even if you manage to get the g2a platform to a place where it's fast enough to chase after aircrafts/to other fights with aircrafts at a reasonable speed ... there are a lot more enemies on the ground than in the air.

Meaning during your chase you are much more likley to stumble upon potential counters (like for example mbts) and due to it's speed you cannot simply give the g2a user the ability to destroy those too or you have something like the early vulcan harassers but on steroids (as in it can drive circles around anything and destroy them without major risks)


The last option ofc is to just make it possible to swap out of the g2a option, once the job is done.
But the first problem i see here is that you now have again a reactionary tool (something people pick when the damage is already done ... at least to some extend) and most people aren't exactly willing to put time and effort into mastering something like that.

Case in point all those people that end up blowing either themselfs or friendlies up with a lockonlauncher (or hit the nearest wall) and that one is quite simple to use.

But hey maybe the weapon is such a blast to use that people will still put the time in and master it ... then you have the final big problem like any current g2a.

The potential of getting one kill vs the chance to get a lot more in the same time but still get shelled.

Even if the skillbased option is more effective in the right hands, it most likley will not be enough to outweigh the things that prevent people right now from picking any of the g2a based weapons.

If the only motivation people needed was to want the esf/lib above them shelling them dead, then even with the crappy options right now the majority of people dieing to a2g fire should immediatly spawn in a lockon launcher or a burster max.

And while the current weapons might be a bit ineffective at times, they don't require any training time spent with them to be operated.


Lastly there is the whole risk vs reward thing ... basically any realy effective g2a option should in my book require at least some nanites.

Personally i don't like the idea of having a skillbased (and by necessity very effective) g2a option that you can just swap in and out of if it doesn't cost nanites. (But maybe that's just me)

Just making it a free of charge infantry weapon imo isn't a good idea and yet it's the only way i see for it to even stand a remote chance.
(Personally i never understood why any launcher, be it g2a or anti tank doesn't cost at least as much nanites as a grenade, but that's for another rant)

As repairs don't cost nanites either.
You'd drain the nanites of infantry rapidly, while repairing for free.

Aircraft rapidly travel distances, rain down high DPS & alpha damage weaponry with high ammunition counts.
By the time one dies, they have nanites again.
As well aircraft have the ease of engaging & disengaging without warning anywhere.

If the Skyguard was worth a ****, without needing to be swarmed with (which makes any weapon, inferior or not, seem effective)
Most people would say a Nanite-based AA option is the Skyguard AA tank..
Which it presently isn't.

Well healing is nanite free too ... and grenades still cost nanites.
But i get what you mean (somewhat)

And at the risk of sounding like a skyknight, it's not exactly easy to remain nanite neutral with esfs either^^


But back to topic ...
The point i was trying to make was that i think a good skillbased g2a weapon has to be vehicle based.
Which in turn causes all those issues i mentioned above to flare.


If you make it a nanite free infantry tool you end up with a weapon that requires a lot of training and is only usable in very specific circumstances.

And any skillbased weapon will be a hell of a lot less effective (as in you miss) in the hands of someone who didn't put the time in to train with it.
Which in turn means it's less likley to get picked up than the current choices and that kinda is exactly the thing they are supposed to solve ... right?

@demigan

just like with adam i disagree on getting rid of lowskill weapons .. instead have highskillweapons allong with them so any player can create the loadout that fits his skill and playstyle instead of forcing options one may not be able to use well no matter how hard he may try .. i sure won't be able to hit with a vanguard ap or decimator on a moving esf ... and if you were to take away my flak or lock on then you basicaly damn me to eat a2g fire without being able to do anything against that ... and there is nothing more frustrating than being killed without the capability of retaliation whatsoever .. an ANT without any aaoption is simply a dead ANT and what does it help me if i have a superdamaging weapon but can't hit jack with it ... there is a individual limit to how much people can "git gud" ...

Healing?
The infantry are often 1-shot by AV, shredded by AI, and lack the armor of vehicles.
Repairs are on a vehicle with higher health, better armor, better speed, and better weapons - and are often quick to repair damage that took multiple impacts to even cause.
I would hope the most fragile thing in the game, was easier to restore when it doesn't straight up die.

The problem is, then literally everything is better done by vehicles.
And infantry are ****** the moment, aircraft come to play.
So in short, Infantry are dead, Vehicles counter infantry & aircraft, Aircraft counter Vehicles & infantry.

Summary of every single AA weapon, and weapon in general that is focused on head shots..

Welcome to every bloody gun?

Damn, I must be some badass to have more vehicle kills with infantry equipped weapons than actual vehicle AP weapons.
Frankly, I do not mind everything being done better by vehicles, infantry have their role in the game, vehicles should have theirs, but the thing is, I'm having a far easier time simply using a lockon than a skyguard for AA (Well actually combining the two works well), but then I use an ESF, hey, suddenly thats better AA, that's fair. Welp, I need to cap this base now, but this tanks giving me the biz, I'll simply duck back into the base I'm fighting at and never risk dying to it because I don't need to.

But whenever I'm in a tank and a guy is running at me with C4? I simply use clientisde, pop out, triple tap with the warden, pop back in, he can't stop me, I only stop for a second, even if his flak shrugs off one of my tank shells, nothing he can equip can stop my warden aim. It's actually far more effective and often less risky, because I save that shell for the next AV threat that can pop around the corner, best part? If I'm in an MBT, I simply have my gunner pop out and kill him and keep moving. After all, infantry are disposable, they can even serve as a distraction to stop another vehicle from chasing, I've actually killed harassers with my heavy by being bait, they ignore and I simply rocket spam them while the tank suddenly has them in a pinch.

Infantry are so bloody good at everything in the game if you know how to use them. AA? No problem, AV? I run heavy gank squads. AI? You kidding? HE+AI topgun or even AI nosegun on an ESF has never served me better than simply a heavy run and gunning.

We have plenty of skillful G2A. AP tanks, Strikers, Phoenix, Lancer. You might argue that AP tanks shouldn't be here, cuz their purpose is to kill other tanks. But friggin Vanguards do better G2A job than Skyguards! While I have seen people using Strikers against aircrafts, I have never seen Phoenix and Lancer to be used against air, while they have capability of hitting aircrafts and even do significant damage. It takes skill and determination.

But... there is one thing that you don't see. People don't want skillful G2A. People want weapons that are easy to use and effective at its job. That's why people used to buy Annihilators and Swarms. Why bother? Why should we make more WWII weapons in order to cherish "skill"? People don't want it.

why would he need a video?
bursters take 6-7 seconds to kill an ESF,
high RPM ESF weapons take less than 3 seconds to kill a max,
lolpods take 3-4 seconds to kill a max,
PPA takes a similar amount of time as bursters so it is 50/50,
airhammer can be down to 2 seconds at closer ranges, up to 4-5 seconds at further ranges,
banshee averages at 3-4 seconds
hell, with practice you can simply roadkill them!


but lets be serious, was there ever any doubt what the opinion of a skyknight would be on the subject of AA?!
its obvious that you'll be against anything that is actually a threat to you!

We do have plenty of skillful weapons that can be used as G2A. But they aren't designed for it. The fact that a Vanguard AP can score more aircraft kills overall is more a testament to the Skyguards weakness than the power of the Vanguard AP (and it's also a testament to how Vanguard AP canons are simply pulled more, and that their aircraft kills is more because of the sheer amount of potshots that get lucky than that Skyguards are worse at G2A).

And that's what I'm trying to change. The current Skillful G2A is too skillful, and has a payout of a OHK or near enough a OHK. Which is incidentally the only reason why it's even thought off as a skillful G2A weapon. But this also has a problem: An aircraft hit by a OHK shot doesn't feel it was fair. It could just as easily be a lucky shot, and most of the time the aircraft user can't even be really aware if he's being shot at by OHK weapons until one hits him.

And people do want skillful G2A. Because while ease-of-use is important, G2A weapons are among the least used weapons in the game. Results/effectiveness is what people want. It doesn't matter if you have a weapon that can hit targets at the other end of the continent while you are blindfolded, if it can't get the job done no one will use it. And an aircraft running away only to return less than a minute later to murder another vehicle or bunch of infantry isn't a good result, even if you do get "rewarded" with XP for hitting an aircraft.
You can easily introduce a range of difficulties. For example, the easiest weapons would be maintain-lock weapons with a relatively wide angle of lock. Give them a low acquisition time and the ability to have missiles lock on after they've been launched/a lock has been broken and you have a relatively low-skill weapon, but not as low-skill as the current weapons. It also means that even the lowest skill weapons have a much higher skill ceiling to reach.
Then the harder it becomes to hit the target repeatedly, the more you get rewarded. The next lock-on type weapon could be a laser-guided version with a Coyote-style missile so you can guide it to the aircraft and it guides itself when you get the missile close. The next version has a flak warhead so it's harder, and might have less agility on the missile so you have to lead the target more. And the last version might be a dumbfire without flak and only a high velocity.

Now most people immediately assume that such weapons would be OHK weapons as well. Not they shouldn't! To make it fair and fun for the aircraft players these weapons would have a small magazine so they have a short uptime in which they can wreck an aircraft if they can hit it, and then a longer downtime in which the aircraft can retaliate, engage something else or flee.
Note that these type of idea's aren't just there for infantry weapons. But also for vehicles.

Oh boy i am going to regret this but here we go ...

First off, to me (and from personal experience on the recieving end of this) you are at least as much basing your "facts" on perciefed feelings as he does.

And i am not blaming you ... honestly i hardly ever have seen any game that has been around that long and yet still doesn't manage to provide clear and up to date numbers on it's mechanics and their interactions.

Hell even i (and i am a god dam* stickler for numbercrunching) haven't gotten the faintest clue right now about the exact numbers.
(Altough i have been out of the loop for a while now)

So please don't take this wrong but i feel obliged to point out a few common misconceptions (on both sides)


1. Theoretical time to kill vs actuall ttk
Even the best of the best pilots in this game do not achieve a higher accuracy than 25-40% (and the 40% dropped severly once battleeye came into play) with any of the primary noseguns (by which i mean rotaries or the default option)

Whereas flak has a much higher accuracy rating (detonation range and all).
Now that doesn' mean that flak suddenly is usefull ... but let's not base our examples on the very best case that not even the top 1% can achieve

2. please do not base your assumptions on youtube compilations
For crying out loud ... roadkilling maxes as a viable strategy ... viable enough to warrant a rant here??
We all freaking love those videos where the skyknight does crazy **** ... but we love them because they are crazy.
Do not forget about all those times those things do not go as planned or are basically rigged just for viewing pleasure.

3. skyknights will always defend the status quo
So far, neither soe or dbg have shown that they understand what makes flying enjoyable to the majority of us and more importantly for the most part none of the changes have shown any indication that the "airgame" is valued by them.

Basically if every "change" you ve seen has been to the detrement of the enjoyment of what you like most in this game then yeah you too will become a tad bit cynical.


Mind you i am by no means defending the current state of the game.
Honestly it has been tackled from the wrong end since the very beginning. (at least that's what it feels like to me and the people i used to play with)

Fact is we would need drastic changes ... changes i just don't see ever happening (i would be a fool to expect wonders form a company that can't currently even afford a 3d modeller)

It's just that from day one the airgame wasn't in a good place and somehow it only got worse with time.
(Not just for the people on the ground but for the guys flying too)
To a point where most people either left or learned to fear even the slightest indication of possible change.



Tl;dr.:
Your examples are either incomplete or simply wrong and any pilot who played for a while learned to be a cynical bastard by necessity or simply left.
So hate them (me) as much as you like, but maybe try to understand how you would feel if almost every change you experienced in this game was not just lessening the fun you get out of your playtime but also ended up causing your forehead to hurt from all the facepalming

Btw i still think that solj is a trolling ****head (at least when he feels like it) but that doesn't mean the bs you spout is helpfull either.

Edit:
A bit spitefull and i am sorry for that, but let's try and keep the whole evil skyknight vs the rest of planetside mentality out of this.

That's something I already adressed, but didn't repeat in the post you quoted: These weapons could each have a secondary nich ability they could perform.

For example, missile-based weapons capable of hitting (relatively compared to ground) long-range high-speed aircraft would be well capable of hitting ground vehicles. So these weapons could easily perform a light AV role, possibly with a focus on Harassers.
Bullet/Flak based weapons would also be accurate and speedy enough to hit aircraft, so these weapons could easily fulfill an AI role when aircraft aren't present.

And that's also part of the Skyguard problem: It's reactive. You don't pull a Skyguard when there's no aircraft around. And if these skillful weapons have a solid role to play when aircraft aren't around they won't be reactive and they will be present when aircraft attack. These weapons should be just as omniversally available in every fight as AI and AV weapons are. Aircraft should never, ever, have the opportunity to seek out a fight with little to no G2A, just like a tank can't pick a fight without AV or infantry can't pick a fight without AI.

As for "aircraft don't tend to come in packs". Ask yourself why. On one hand you have G2A weapons that completely ruin any illusion of a fair fight. It's run away or kill the G2A user, and while killing the G2A user takes some aiming skill and the luck/foresight to be facing somewhat in their direction when engaged, it's not exactly a wonderful experience.
Then there's also the lobsided skill to power ratio. In any other (good) game without a lobby or selection system to prevent noobs vs elite fights, the skill curve gives you less power per skill earned the farther on the curve you get. This means it's easy to learn and hard to master. But in PS2 it's the other way around: It's hard to learn, and even if you have 80% of the skill of your opponent you are still almost guaranteed to die. Additionally it's a pretty niche skill: Hover fighting and RM. In infantry or vehicle fights you have a mass of skills you can learn. Trigger discipline, keeping the right range so your weapon functions better than your opponents, flanking, aim, COF control and usage (IE don't shoot for the head if the COF grows to big), situational awareness and all that brings, using your classe's mechanics and abilities to your advantage etc. You can have masters at different skills, and who wins is based on a culmination of that. But that's absent in A2A combat. Not only do ESF make other aircraft almost obsolete, with 5x more pulled than all other aircraft combined, but you can't have masters at different skills. You can be 50x more skillful at normal flight combat, if you don't HF/RM you lose it against someone who does.
So that needs to change. What I proposed here was a solution to making the G2A vs A2G relationship better for both sides. What also needs to happen is to open up the A2A combat to more ways of mastering air combat, so that simple things like "trying to escape" are actually possible rather than being forced in a Hover Duel or you'll get chased and die. If that happens, aircaft will come in packs. Especially if we also add new ways for aircraft and ground units to coordinate with each other without the need for heavy communications.

From what I can see, most people who suggest "then pull a plane yourself" are doing it for themselves. "Why fix a broken system if there is a 'valid' counter available, which incidentally gives me more people to farm in the air?"
It's like elite snipers suggesting that to beat them, their opponent needs to join their sniping game, in which they have more experience and are better, to win. Which is impossible because as said that player is more experienced and is much more likely to win any engagement. A good suggestion against such an elite sniper is to use other tools to beat them, but that rarely happens.

Yes, and that makes any G2A weapon reactive, and requires them to be present at all times even if aircraft aren't around (or to make sure there's always just as much aircraft as ground vehicles in any fight because you make them both just as useful and fun to use). The solution is to make sure G2A weapons are capable of doing more than kill aircraft. Just like AP tanks are well capable of dealing with infantry so people don't have to sit around doing nothing until new vehicles arrive the G2A weapons should be capable of performing other roles. And that means that it doesn't even have to be a secondary role, but that the weapon basically has two primary roles. As in my previous example: A missile-based G2A weapon that is used just as much against long-range vehicle targets as aircraft. And before someone comes with some ludicrous idea: These missile weapons would be available to both infantry and vehicles, rather than only infantry. Because someone is going to complain about that if I don't mention that (and as history has shown, someone is going to ignore that anyway).

I vote for a teleportation ability for G2A weapons to keep up with aircraft!
Besides ofcourse that the Harasser has shown that even with a paltry 90 to 120Km/h you are well capable of avoiding ground units and their damage. If you are capable of doing the 200+Km/h of an aircraft to keep up, ground units won't be that much of a problem I would think. Flipping your vehicle or jumping 300m into the air is going to be your problem.

Well, there's your answer: You have to be more careful that the high-speed vehicle doesn't become OP than that it keeps running into it's counters all the time.

With the current weapons, what's there to master? Even learning to lead the targets isn't that much of a problem because the COF is quickly so big that aiming 10m ahead or behind the lead-point doesn't matter, the aircraft remains 100% in the COF and the actual RNG of hitting the target doesn't change.

That's got nothing to do with "mastering" the weapon, but by having to choose the lesser of two evils.
If you pick a spot where no friendlies are nearby to get hit or no cover is nearby to catch the missile and potentially hit you, then you are now out in the open where aircraft have an easy time finding you and picking you off, besides ofcourse every single infantry and tank in the neighbourhood being able to murder you while you do some stargazing hoping that your lock happens faster than it can.
If you do stick to cover you run into the problem of friendlies running in front and breaking the lock, or catching the missile with their teeth, or the cover catching the missile even though you deliberately aimed passed the cover because the missile doesn't come straight out of the barrel but is already slightly turned towards the path of the aircraft.

Neither is a good option. Which is why so few people actually use it. It's also why every single G2A missile launcher gets more ground vehicle kills than it does aircraft... And it's not as if even dedicated missile launchers get a lot of vehicle kills.

Eh, no they wouldn't, because the ESF/Lib above them wouldn't die from it. It would actually increase your chances of actually dying to the very aircraft you are trying to kill, and getting the actual aircraft kill is low because they have enough speed, health and armor to escape any G2A weapon before it kills them unless it's massed, and even then aircraft have plenty of options to still operate in the area. But why would they if they can just go to another base with less G2A instead?

They are ineffective all the time. Even if you do amass enough players to actually kill it, that's still one kill for 3 or 4 players and the requirement to swap loadouts or abandon your vehicle afterwards. But that might be a bad idea because you can't know when the aircraft will be returning. It could be that no aircraft will return for the next hour, or you could have an aircraft coming for you the second you've dealt with the previous aircraft. You don't know, you can't know, aircraft have too much speed and freedom to know if there will be aircraft to shoot. So you basically have several players doing nothing after they've dealt with an enemy aircraft.

Yes, for infantry it would be utility-based G2A weapons. For tanks it's just the cost of the tank. And considering that aircraft have guaranteed more effective weapons than their ground counterparts, the G2A weapons of tanks should at the very least have similar extreme damage capabilities. If you pick an MBT primary G2A weapon (yes that needs to be introduced)+G2A topgun then you should be well capable of going up against a TB+Dalton Lib and have a 50/50 chance of winning.

Considering how much more effective aircraft weapons are overall, I don't see the problem. Take the ESF: It gets two primary weapons to use compared to the Lightning's one, and just the Rocketpods are more effective at AI compared to the Viper or HE gun, and at the same time these Rocketpods also outmatch the AV capability of an AP Lightning...
Take the Liberator: Costs the same as an MBT, has 3 seats, it's Bellygun even if it's a Vanilla Shredder is already a powerful primary gun and it's TB is also a primary gun compared to the MBT's single primary+secondary gun.
Or a Galaxy, with it's 4 secondary guns and more health and armor than anything else in the game?

If I saw a problem with swapping out these weapons, it would be that these weapons are still reactionary.

Because a grenade is a terrible weapon.
Yes it's got one of the largest AOE and kill range in the game. Oh noes the tank guys are going nuts! It's also not explode-on-contact and indicates it's presence meaning most people can easily escape, you can only have a severely limited amount, it doesn't deal direct-hit damage (something the tank guys like to ignore), it has limited range, it's throwing is server-side so it can have a wildly different path than you expect and it costs nanites per use. I would much rather have an HEAT strength clientside explode-on-contact grenade than the current grenade. Yes I said HEAT not HE, because seriously even HEAT AOE would be better if it was explode-on-contact.
Infantry rocketlaunchers don't cost anything because they already are weak, they take forever to reload and similar to G2A weapons infantry can't keep up with vehicles even if they back up (exception: Drifter LA's, they can keep up but can't overtake a tank that's backing up, that includes the slow-as-molasses Vanguard). Their effective range is also very short, and for those weapons that don't have a short effective range (Lock-ons for example) you have a long exposure and uptime before you can fire.

Any resource-based infantry AV/AA weapons would need to have a short reload or function with magazine's to kill their opponents. Also consider that a tank costs resources once while these weapons would cost resources each shot meaning that if the tank escapes with it's life you wasted the resources while the tanks further upkeep is free (besides that tanks are relatively cheap already). So to keep it fair infantry would need to have a lower cost to destroy the vehicle than the vehicle cost in the first place when using a resource-based weapon. And because some smuck is going to think it: No I'm not asking for infantry to get weapons that guarantee a vehicle kill. Just like with any combat it should revolve around a more or less 50/50 deal depending on who uses their vehicle and weapons best and against the right targets.

And although I may seem to disagree with most of what you say, you've been using arguments and reasoning that's pretty much absent in most of the G2A/A2G discussion from any side, thanks for that.