[Vehicle] ESFs own the skies now

Lock on range nerfed. Skyguard nerfed.

I spent some time in a Valkyrie tonight and basically if you get in a fight with an ESF you're dead. Several times a Reaver one-magged our Valk. Same with Galaxy, an ESF can take one down solo very quickly.

I like most of the update but ESFs are more OP than ever against other aircraft.

This was part of my concern with nerfing the liberator. The changes to the noseguns didn't offset the Dalton changes enough to maintain parity, or the lib community is likely still adapting their playstyles (If they aren't outright quitting)

I'm all for that Dalton nerf, I've explained why I think there needs to be more trading blows and less luck other places. But I wanted to see a tailgun buff accompany that, and the Lib nosegun nerf was really uncalled for. Making everything like the spur is interesting, but the view angle is too bad to do much with it. If libs are going to keep this level of firepower then they absolutely need some more mobility, and better firing angles.But yeah, I'm sure a lot of people have quit. It sucks when someone's playstyle was taken away after so long. But the skys have been horrible for so long, they're just a tiny drop in the ocean.

Hmmm...... Makes me question your credibility. You have to admit that Valks were heavily abused before, this nerf was way too long in the coming. If the Valk was shooting back and positioning its belly then I've actually had close fights with them with my Vortek. Pretty far from a 1-clip scenario like you've mentioned. Now if you brought the wrong gun.... But an ESF would die in the same circumstance as well.

I campaigned heavily for the Dalton nerf. But always from a perspective of Balance. I for various reasons, both practical and philosophical, only fly the Valkyrie. People read that and immediately say "Its just buff my main, nerf your main". But its actually about the ecosystem. As the odd-aircraft out, I need Libs to kill vehicles that can shoot at me (Skyguards, MBTs, Etc.), but I need ESFs to be balanced against libs to kill the libs that inevitably come after me. The dalton nerf is good for the ecosystem. Some of the wankery with the Tankbuster and others is not.

I'll give the update some credibility and they did improve how some weapons felt against other vehicles, AI noseguns for some reason actually feel better against aircraft for some reason, valk weapons feel better.

ESF's dominating everything in the air now, well yea, but that's kinda how it's already been imo. Personally I wish the Galaxies had more AA weaponry so it's this sort of area denial for ESFs so they would need a lib to destroy it, but that would actually be interesting and teamplay so can't happen. Generally the balance between air units was the most skillful player generally wins, no buts about it, if he was a better ESF pilot, you lost, it's why we had other factors of gameplay to balance that out like ground to air weaponry that everyone severely underestimates.

But again, they made some aspects of air feel better, but in terms of balancing it out, not really, same for tanks.

Air superiority fighter

I wouldn't say ESFs own the sky however I found the Swarm launcher has been nerfed in two different ways:

-lock on range reduced
-once launched, the missiles hit far less frequently : i used to have on average 2 hits out of a volley of 3, but now often zero missiles hit

Is there a missile range reduction as well ( reduced TTL)?

IIRC RLs now have a maximum range of 300m.................not sure if that applies to the Swarm though as it is a bit of an unusual weapon.

Question all you want. I'm part of a group who regularly run Valkyrie Striker squads. Basically fill a Valk with HAs with Strikers and an engineer or two. Yes it's bit cheesy but it's fantastic fun. Last night was the first time we ran one since the update and decent Reaver pilots were hitting us and taking us down with ease. Pre-update we at least had a chance to fire back and/or bail out.

Now basically if an ESF attacks us with a good pilot, we bail or die.

Also felt like our Galaxy was made of glass several times.

See, that sounds more like it. Reavers 1-clipping Valks and Gals just sounds silly. I can't say I feel bad for your Striker Valk. It was exploiting the repair ability and the ability to fire missiles that had no excuse for being in the air. I really love flying Valks, but TR was a little out of control with Strikers, and everyone abused the **** out of stacking engineers. I'm completely happy with the new changes.

Well I never I said Gals were 1-clipped (just died quickly) but our Valk was several times. I can't really complain, I did say it was cheese. We don't really stack engineers though, we have one on the gun who swaps places to repair, and a pilot, so there's only ever one doing repairs in the air.

The general consensus of the squad last night was that we are more powerful in attack since the update, but far easier to kill by ESFs. We seemed able to take more damage from ground forces.

The stock gun got an accuracy increase didn't it? I just looked at it quickly but I think it's as accurate as a needler now. And a single current engineer is comparable to two old engineers. Lock-ons and Flak are weaker against it. It honestly feels like it's in a good place. The only problem now is getting enough people flying on all the factions so these other aircraft can do their job. I still think buffing air locks was the wrong way to go about getting new pilots flying though, they'll never learn by using those things.

I tried to keep my mouth shut, but I have to say:

Well duh

Before the patch, ESF were used 5x more than all other aircraft combined. That's not an overstatement, that's the cold hard truth. Just for comparison: Heavies take up around 33% of the total infantry and are considered too multifunctional and omniversally present compared to the 4 other classes. ESF have "only" 3 other aircraft to deal with, but take a whopping 83% of the total aircraft population for themselves.
After the patch ESF have less threats (Liberators have less AA capabilities) and more firepower against both ground and air. Besides getting more firepower against, well, everything, the G2A weapons have been hammered to death. The Skyguard, supposedly the strongest G2A weapon in the game, has gone from 35 hits to kill to 55 hits to kill, where it can't even guarantee 2/3rd of his magazine to hit (47 hits). And considering 95% of all ESF carry a far superior firesuppression than anything ground has which adds 25% on max level... Hoooold on, 25% of 55=13,75, which means that you now require 69 hits with flak to kill a single ESF... With a 70 magazine weapon that has a large COF. So basically ESF have become immune to a single Skyguard, but have the firepower to completely obliterate a single Skyguard by themselves! Talk about a giant "f uck you!"
G2A lock-ons then? Nope. Dealing more damage doesn't mean anything if you can't even hit your target for more than a few seconds at a time as they can zip in and out of effective range in a snap.
So yeah, ESF have gotten an even gravier end of the stick. The only thing that has ever kept this from spriraling out of control is the ludicrous flight system which makes it impossible for the average player to join the A2A system. That's not a good thing, mind you, all it means is that the non-average players who get to use it have a monopoly on an OP weapons platform.

So... Is the Liberator UP now? Nope! It's only UP compared to the ESF, which has the weapons, firepower, speed, maneuverability and capabilities to simply destroy Liberators now. But against ground the Liberator is even more massively OP than before. If an ESF requires 36% more Skyguard ammo to down, then a Liberator requires a similar 36% ammo increase. However, it also have 50% damage reduction from all sources that hit it from below!
So I used an old calculation sheet, Liberators used to take 129 Flak hits (right?). With 36% more ammo you would need 176 extra shots. Since you now deal 50% damage against the bottom but for "fairness" sake we assume you'll be hitting the bottom half the time so "only" 25% of the total damage is actually reduced, then we end up with 234 shots to kill (right? Not really in a good frame of mind for math right now).

That means that, even at point-blank range, you would need 3,34 magazines with 100% accuracy to down a single Liberator. He's got enough time to fly in, blow up 2 Skyguards and then take down any luckless players that were hoping to be defended by the misnamed "skyguard".


Frankly, I hope that the devs deliberately tried to break the mold just so that people accept any change afterwards. And it doesn't matter if you assume pre-patch or now, the air-game&G2A needed a change deperately since forever!

Made a quick toon to check on the update. Mossies are just farming the spawn, no fear for lockons.
They come almost as close to infantry that you can see the pilot now.

Rockets are weak now and no harasser nerf, infantry_farm.exe activated.

So I had another go last night, this time as a pilot in a Valkyrie with a single (good) gunner. My previous post was based on being a HA with Striker and listening to the pilot.

We engaged a few ESFs one on one. I quickly flipped my belly towards them and it does make a big difference. I found I had to use armour instead of stealth though. But still, most ESFs just owned us although we managed to kill 3 or 4.

Interestingly I was in my outfit's TS and they were running Valkyrie training and I heard 'I see what you mean about ESFs 1-clipping valks' a couple of times.

ESF are holy terrors to pretty much everyone now. Libs are mostly just dangerous to ground pounders. The complete hardcore nerf to all AA means that the sky rules all. I think the tank balance is pretty good, but the sky just got really dangerous for everyone.

I am going to call it now; hate me if you like: ESF will either be nerfed hard, or AA will be buffed. One or the other.

i'm hoping they made the changes they did so they can see and reassess things like skyguard, lockons and balance between tanks and harrassers.

maybe we'll see buffs to skyguards, it'd be nice if they got buffed and they got a close range AA secondary (only on skyguard) thrown in for when an aircraft tries to facetank them at close range.

With the latest patch AA is as weak as never before. It's ZERO fun playing a Skyguard and considerably less fun (it already was boring as hell) to play AA MAX. I don't understand the preoccupation with giving flyboys all the advantages?

To be fair, most pilots just wanted it's range reduced and would be fine if it was stronger at close range. Instead DBG decided to just nerf it all the way way instead. Although now I guess infatryside knows how it feels when vehicle stuff gets nerfed into the ground.

I think your math is off since repair sources add a resistance bonus when applied. So even 100% accurate Skyguard shouldn't be able to kill an ESF with fire suppression outside 25m. (flak arming range)