[Suggestion] ESF deep enemy territory penalty

There are a number of ESF pilots that just roam around farming far far away from helping their faction, or the ace pilots that hang around enemy warp gates scaring away new players from even trying to learn to fly. I'll often see Mossies in a battle between VS/NC or likewise Scythes at TR/NC battles (I'm sure Reavers are doing this too but I main NC)

My suggestion, is to have a penalty to ESFs and possibly other aircraft when over 2 lattice territories from friendly territory for more than 1 minute. With a new utility (Auxiliary Power) that removes the penalty at the sacrifice of other utilities. I would leave the actual penalty details up to the devs, but there could be a small hit to all stats on the ESF and it's weapons.

This encourages ESFs to participate in battles that matter along the front line rather than farming kills/directives randomly all over the place. And those that really still want to do that, because they are that good, can either accept the penalty or use the utility at the expense of flares/fire suppression etc. There would need to be a warning indicator and countdown to inform the pilot they will be running on reduced power.

1. High Risk v. High Reward. As a moderately experienced pilot, flying deep in enemy territory can be just as risky as it is rewarding. The number one threat to ESFs is being outnumbered even by novice pilots (2v1 or 3v1 is difficulty to track). You are more likely to be outnumbered in enemy territory and especially near 2-faction enemy battle or enemy’s warp gate. Additionally, you can’t count on other friendly air (unless in Air squad) to conveniently assist. Finally, enemy can pull AA without fear of friendly ground to suppress.

2. Attacking deep in enemy territory to slow Zerg or Galaxy drops. I’ve had to single handedly engage multiple enemy Galaxies to discourage a Zerg on a friendly base\Hive.

3. Air is required to attack Hives deep in enemy territory.

I agree this is a problem. This has been an issue in the game for a long time.

I'm pretty sure Wrel likes it. And I think the other Devs either like it or the players they favor like it.

I'm down to try it. I also suggested that any Air that flies into uncontested enemy Air Space lights up like a Christmas Light on all Radars (mini-maps, big map, etc.)

The pilots and gank squads that do this are not risking much, they are farming. Worst case you get blown up, respawn an ESF, and can be back anywhere on the Map in no time flat.

The ones that would be taking risks (lower skill pilots), don't do it because they get owned.

1) He's not talking about ESF that are trying to do things to help their team. Farming a distant fight between the other 2 teams is not "slowing the zerg". At best maybe an ESF pilot would be disrupting a specific Faction in a fight with no allies, during an alert... but this never happens.

2) Not sure with the Gal nerfs and ESF buffs what the current ESF vs. Gal situation is, but most of PS2 has seen ESFs unable to stop Gal drops: they happen to quick, ESFs take to long to take out a Gal, equipped and manned Gal's have (had?) very good Air deterrence.

You mean the Gal that lands through the shields? Hives attacks deep in enemy territory are EXCLUSIVELY content for Hardcore Organized groups. They can suck it up and just bring a bigger army to squash the 1 guy playing Minecraft.

If enemy air "ganks" you, you muster your forces and counter. How is this different from any other aspect of the game? I've encountered enemy AA nests, armor zergs, and Hives deep in friendly territory. They usually have a spawn sunderer or spawn beacon near a vehicle/weapons terminal to re-pull so that nullifies that response time argument. (Also note, with Indar air discount removed, ESFs consistently cost 350 Nanites).

I've encountered "pro Harrassers" deep in friendly territory and I've been upset. Shouldn't we lobby for penalties against all enemy ground vehicles and maybe enemy infantry deep in friendly territory? What's the logical end here?

Isn't attacking and/or killing enemy air helping your team? What happens when you let enemy air go on gentlemen's rules? They rocketpod masses of friendly infantry. Who adjudicates what's legitimate gameplay and what's fair play?

First off, "one guy playing Minecraft" is an unfair description as many Hives are defended by squads. I used to be able to kill Hives with ESF Hornets. (I've killed hundreds of Hives solo using Hornets on Connery - ask any leaders on Connery). ESFs still provide Close Air Support and Combat Air Patrol when escorting friendly Valks and Galaxies. Additionally, ESFs can protect a friendly Hive deep in enemy territory.



----Edit: The OP is upset by one facet of gameplay (roving pro ESFs - which I've encountered myself) but applies a sledgehammer fix that hurts the broader meta with a slippery slope.

Wait a minute, this is just a discussion, you don't have to try to dig for motives and get personal.

You make some good points, this should probably apply to all vehicles, and maybe add a new ability like existing ammo/repair to sunderers and galaxies that lets them remove the penalty for friendly units within range. This encourages teamwork and allows for everything you were concerned about losing.

This isn't Starcraft. You can't just spawn a bunch of units and send them to attack your enemies.

And this is also Air we're talking about. In PS2, 95% of players can't handle hardcore ESF vs. ESF A2A. And the A2A Wingmount skill "equalizers" have been nerfed into extinction.

In PS2, if you get ganked, you just try to stay away from the gankers. If it gets really bad, you switch Continents, Servers, or login as their faction. Or you go spawn as ground or log off and do something else.

Only Air consistently is involved in farming behind enemy lines. And farming to extent they actually can wipe out enemy Air. Some Harassers can farm behind enemy lines, but it's harder for them to travel, find targets, and survive. Some Infil (especially Stalkers) farm behind enemy lines, but it's mostly just griefing afk people or people using terminals.

Other units don't have the mobility, visibility, survivability, and firepower to farm by quickly roaming across the map.

A zergling repsawning into a zerg is containted. It's even standard game objective.

I personally hate Harrassers. I think they are a train wreck for the game. I'd be happy to nerf them into extinction. But I'm not actively lobbying for it. Hossin and Harrassers are both things I don't like, but I am fine with others enjoying them, and I am fine leaving them in the game... unless enough people really don't like and want them or they suddenly become a major problem (like Hossin is when it's the only Continent unlocked).

That said, I've seen Harassers operate behind enemy lines, but not nearly as often or as effectively as ESF behind enemy lines. ESF just have better mobility, visibility, and survivability. ESFs can find targets or relocate to new hunting grounds much faster.

I've only read rumors of gentleman's rules between 2 skyknights. I've never actually seen it. Closest I've seen is the random pity/whim release.

To be clear, I DON'T blame the players who abuse loopholes to get results (unless they lobby for those loopholes). I blame the Devs for not closing (or even supporting... or even intentionally creating) those loopholes.

I am not saying Ace and Gank Squad farmers can't affect allies. I am saying (1) they are toxic to the game, and (2) they are not doing it with any intent of helping their team. Especially when they are not patrolling their team's battles to assist with enemy Air there.

And on the "good for the game" issues, DonAlfago's group is VERY effective, but they are a plague in terms of their affecting the playability and balance of the game.

Ok, let me clarify:
One guy playing Minecraft or a Tryhard Squad trying to power game with stacked loopholes in the game.

Are Hornets still a thing? Are they back?

I totally get that ESF are powerful, especially at defending a Hive. I've done it myself. But 2 things with regards to that:
1) I hate Hives; I hate Hardcore Organized only gameplay that affects everyone else
2) at least that ESF is helping his team
3) any ESF that shows up with a Hardcore group suddenly has a whole Hardcore group to help deal with any anti-ESF issues. There should be some sort of danger/consequence for operating behind enemy lines, not just go and set up a picnic. What's the point of Lattice and controlling player movement, if Tryhards can just Minecraft camp anywhere they want?

His fix just makes it harder to do operations deep in enemy territory. That sounds fine, even thematically sensical.

If it means players can't put Hives in broken places, or can only do it with a harder go of it, that sounds like a plus.

Too many players are trying to protect elements of gameplay that gets in the way of making PS2 a much better combined arms and faction objective game, with balance and depth, that would appeal to a lot more players. Too many players push for things that provide them power in farming, imbalance, and shallow broken tactics (especially tactics that lots of other don't have access to).

I got "chippy" in response to Zaspacer's response (a bit more strawman, snarky than your OP). I apologize if it otherwise sounds personal.

The problem with this - and Zaspacer kind of alluded to - is that gank squads will always be gank squads. Numbers will always overcome the individual. Even with this restriction, 6 "restricted" enemy ESFs will likely still gank 1-2 friendly ESFs. (You may counter by neutering those 6 enemy ESFs even more but that sets a bad precedent). By the same token, numbers can be used to overcome the "pro ESF." So we are back to square 1, the status quo (of mustering and countering).

It really depends on how much effort is put into addressing it. In changing things to address gank squads. But I agree that in the PS2 we know and the PS2 Devs we know, it is (unfortunately) an almost certainty that "gank squads will always be gank squads."

PS2 *still* doesn't even have a looking-for-group tool for multi-person Vehicles. The player tools to communicate with their faction are non-existent. It's only a game for solos, loosely grouped mimes (zergs), small group isolationist play (squads), and the rare, rae occurrence of a fully coordinated Server Smash.

Actually, ESF is definitely one area where numbers don't have the same impact. 1 Top ESF can wreck havoc on enemy ESFs, and 2 coordinated can be brutal.

This is due to a number of factors:
1) most ESFs aren't coordinated, so multiple ally ESFs will not coordinate well in handling an Ace. The only time I see skyknights get ganged up on is when they seem to WANT to get ganged up on (fly right in front of the Warpgate and kinda taunt everyone, or fly into a bunch of enemies and engage them in full view). Otherwise, they just divide and conquer.
2) A2A Wingmounts were nerfed, most weaker pilots don't really have a good way to reliably get damage on Aces... something A2A Wingmounts actually used to give them.
3) ESF is probably the unit where skill gap has the most impact. Lower skill pilots are not gonna beat an Ace.
4) Most players cannot really fly ESF at all. The most they can do is join a giant airball that implodes after 1 Alpha Strike. I've run accross many Ally airballs over the years, I fly over and join them, minutes later I am the only one still alive.

Applying it to all vehicles seems like it might make sense. I haven't though a lot on it. Maybe have a Certline just for operations deep in enemy territory.

I'd actually love to have formal objective "missions" that have players and groups doing targeting strikes outside the Lattice lines.

Sorry for any frayed nerves. I don't get very heated personally in these things, though I often get very interested and sometimes use aggressive wordings. I respect and greatly appreciate the input of just about everyone on these forums.

And for what it's worth. From a game health standpoint, probably leaving the gameplay largely intact and alone at this point is probably best, because people who are still playing are here specifically for that familiar gameplay.

[I am losing my writing by quoting]

To sum up my counterpoints (numbered by your response):

1. I play on Connery. We have Air pros in every faction (or who move between factions). We also have pros in every vehicle and mode of gameplay (even simply by the fact that they've certed entire lines in their choice way of playing): MBT pros (e.g. JohnGalt), BattleBuses (SundererKing), Valk pros (BakaRaymoo), HAs, etc, etc. The skill curve for other vehicles are not easy like the ESF. Furthermore, the skill curve of the ESF can't be agreed upon. Some pilots may argue that a BR1 novice ESF should not have the same stopping power as a veteran pilot who has put 2500+ hours into the game.

2. Farming is farming. People want Air nerfed to the ground (or AA buffed) anywhere and everywhere. Lightnings and MBTs often shell the spawn rooms. Libs will Tankbust and Dalton the lone vehicles. People will drop C4 from Valks. Our reaction should be the same: muster and counter.

3. ESFs are not godmode. They are exceptionally squishy and not cheap. As they traverse the continent, they will encounter an enemy force tactically augmented (or will adapt/augment) against Air even with a single G40 Ranger. They will also eventually encounter enemy air. As stated in my first post, hovering over two enemy factions means you have double the enemies looking at you (no easy feat).

4. That's the problem. You don't like Harrassers. I don't like Harrassers. But that is not my right to complain about (unless something is overbuffed - Gatekeeper circa 2015). I know people like that gameplay. Let them play and enjoy. I die? I respawn and move on or counter (same logic you implied earlier but with a positive spin).

5. A roving pro ESF or gank squad suppresses enemy air that can later affect your faction. What prevents enemy air from moving to your allies' contested hex? Should we therefore implement rules where ESFs get debuffed if they move too quickly to another front? By putting gentlemen rules in one aspect, then more rules have to follow (which is nanny state ridiculous - who decides?).

6. I see your point makes clear that we have two competing visions: I don't mind the loose, almost anarchic environment. You and the OP seemingly want a more curated environment (lattice, maybe fixed tracks for MBTs /sarcasm). We won't solve our differences here. Some players miss the old system before lattices (it was measurably destructive as Indar fights devolved into Crown battle). The current Air system is not burdensome and freeflowing with fair opportunities for all sides to utilize.

Why don't you try asking them politely to stop playing the game?

Was it a formatting thing? Or did you lose your writing by a browser hiccup?

Losing posts in the browser is definitely something that can drive me bat**** crazy. I actually use an unsaved notepad to keep stuff safe until I post, if I find my post getting longer. Things gmail have a built in save mechanic, long past time forums had the same.

I played mostly on Connery/Emerald. I definitely found very good players on both, and only Connery has/had DonAlfrago.

I'm not sure what that means.

It depends what you want from a design side. That dictates how you set the curve and how you set power level across the curve.

If you just rely on players self-policing their own power levels, you will typically end up with people who skew things for themselves and who argue to as much favoring as they can get. Though to be clear, I tend to find a lot more objectivity (or at least sincere effort in being objective) than I do either in-game or on reddit.

Our reaction is not the same.

Farming only exists because of the payoffs people get from it. Stats, Certs, XP, Griefing, Cred, etc. VR has all the same units, and people don't "waste" their time farming VR. If you adjusted regular play to reward farming less (or not at all), people would do it less.

That said, I think that kind of cause-and-effect game design conceptualization is far beyond what the PS2 Devs can fathom. For them, you really need either some other game they can copy, or for them to just to toss a unit or buff/nerf into a game and then see what happens in a glaringly obvious way after half a year.

I flew ESFs. I was above average (though my accuracy with Nosegun is lousy). I'm pretty familiar with what they can do.

When I was getting my *** handed to me as Infantry, I spawned an ESF and dominated in small to medium ground fights. In large fights, my ESF usually had much, much less impact.

When I was flying around (I flew solo), I could kill just about anything else in the Air, except:
1) better skilled ESF pilots
2) full crewed Gals when the Gals had good A2A
3) Valks doing the repair exlpoit
4) Libs when the Dalton was accurate
5) gank squads

1-on-1 I could kill just about any unit. But later on some units had resistance buffs that made killing them much harder.

Also, once Thermal was removed, my old man eyes couldn't keep up. ESF without Thermal is for people who don't get eye strain.

I don't like Harassers, but I am not actively lobbying to nerf/change them. I barely ever used Harasser, and they have not been a major issue for me or my gameplay. I'll let people who use them, people who fight them, and people who get farmed by them speak their mind and push the issues on em and figure out between them what they want it to be.

I flew ESFs a lot. And I have and will continue to voice what I like and don't like about the ESF game.

I am not saying gank squads can't help teams. I am saying:
1) most gank squads and ace A2A farmers are not paying attention to how they help/hurt their team (and they can do both)
2) gank squads and ace A2A farmers are a train wreck on the playability and fun of the Air game, and it's ability to impact allies on the battlefield

DonAlfrago can be HUGELY impactful for helping his faction. But it's at a broken level where it's wrecking gameplay, not dissimilar to the various OP units that have been nerfed over PS2's life. If there was 1 DonAlfrago on every server, ESF gank squads would have been nerfed by now. Many skyknights LEFT Connery because of DonAlfrago.

Again, I haven't run into gentlemen rules in-game.

You preferred PS2 in the days before Lattice was added?

I would prefer other system, but PS2 Devs only have 2 choices on their menu: Lattice or no-Lattice (what had before Lattice).

I LOVED Crown. I would love to have it back. What I don't want back are the massive zergs that avoided each other and steamrolled empty bases.

Personally, I actually don't want most people to stop playing. Only really the TK guys and hackers. Everyone else, I'd just rather find a better way to get them playing a game that worked for each of them.

Gonna have to go ahead and say that this is not a good idea.

It has no means of discriminating against who is and isn't being a cheesey skyknight ****ter, and who is merely supporting their team and happened to chase an enemy ESF or intercept an enemy gal too far into enemy territory. The mechanism listed ("Auxiliary Power") is not a discriminator, merely a compensation for the bluntness and poor design of the mechanic being proposed.


Furthermore, you'd be inhibiting operational freedom by forcing pilots to plan far into the future to see if they'd actually be engaging over enemy territory or not, turning this Aux power into an effectively deadweight utility that pilots would feel compelled to use at all times to meet changing operational needs.

This is not even getting into the implementation and dev resource questions for what would honestly be a diminishing return. It'd just piss a lot of people off, not really solve the problem, and take up people's time in implementing it.

Someone doth protest too much

It should be mentioned that certain players have on occasion been excommunicated from the Falkyrate for their admitted usage of macros to operate the flight controls of the Valkyrie, which is heresy. I'm not naming any specific names, but it doesn't really do to mention such players as "Skilled" or other such iterations there-of.

Halloween begins. NC's Warpgate will be blocked by Mosquito and Scythe.

This is the dumbest suggestion I've read all year....

Contrary to what most probably think of this, I say, YES.

There's nothing more infuriating than the 3rd Faction going WAY beyond their lines to randomly pick you off in the middle of your fight with Faction #2. Or even just trying to leave the Warpgate and even though the lines are numerous hexes away an Enemy ESF jumps on you the moment you leave the shield. I may have done my share of spawn camping at an Outpost or player base, but that's the worst case of spawn camping in this game.

I thought of the idea of putting a 2 or 3 Hex deep exclusion, or "Controlled Airspace" zone around each Warpgate, that's effectively guarded by NPC anti air batteries. If you get too close to an Enemy Warpgate in an Aircraft you start to get hit by inescapable Flak that gets worse the closer to the Warpgate.

Why? What? No!

Seriously, stop playing PS2 and play Battlefield or Battlefront instead.

Why would someone spawn a vehicle at the warpgate? To just drive around? To test things? There's the VR-Area!

To get to a fight? ... as in "reinforce" that fight? Well, then it should be completly within the game to try to stop any reinforcements, ESPECIALLY in the case of Heavy Tanks where one faction lost its tech-plant.
But why not spawn closer to the fight? Or redeploy to the fight?

There is no reasonable reson for that suggestion ... and i've been often enough on the recieving end of "spawning quite far within friendly territory jsut to get blown up by some random mines guy.

I'm in favor of something myself.Many front lines offer zero AA help, and it just makes everything feel like a dead continent the way you fly by empty base after empty base. I don't think it should be immediately activated though, as I want Infils to have more of a role behind enemy lines besides terminal camping, and pulling vehicles is part of what they do. I actually think all flak should be removed from the game and those turrets replaced with what we have on Hives. Then let those shoot at enemy air that engages friendlies a certain number of hexes back from the front line. Now that aircraft can more easily function in larger fights, pilots aren't pushed away from battles to have to resort to ganking in the first place. They could still do it, they'd just have to be a little more careful of where they picked to jump their targets.

This is a great suggestion too.

When starting the game, it's faster for an ESF pilot to spawn at Warpgate and then fly to where they want (ESF is VERY fast), than it would be to redeploy to where they want to go to and then spawn an ESF there.

Also, when spawning at a warpgate, an ESF is able to launch without being immediately attacked and killed. When spawning at another location blindly, the ESF may be spawning into instant death.

Some locations take a long time to run from spawn location to Air terminal. It's faster to just spawn at Warpgate and fly to the destination.

This is why ESF are most often spawned from Warpgate. (though Tower are popular to spawn ESFs from too... if players know they are "safe" or the player is willing to risk it)

This problem is particularly bad during alerts, when you are fighting the alert initiating faction and here comes a squadron of the other losing faction to attack your aircraft and help the other enemy win. It's bad enough when the enemy faction doesn't fight the alert faction, this just piles on top of it.