Flak is quite bugged.

Flak weapons need a re-work IMO.

Twice in a row I have had my Max taken out by a Reaver packing Mustang AH.

The first time I got the jump on him and started unloading twin bursters. When he realised he was under fire - he opened up with the Mustang and got me down to about half health despite me packing top tier ordnance armour - then he road killed me by landing the ESF on top of me. His killboard showed he still had over half health left and apparently took no damage despite effectively crashing into the ground to road kill me.

The second time we saw each other and opened fire at the same time - I was dead before I even got him down to 3/4 health.

ESFs should not be able to go toe to toe with a dedicated AA Max like this - and road kill with an ESF is just laughable. It's bad enough that flashes can do it without taking damage. It's also ludicrous that ESFs can pack weapons that do both direct and indirect damage (sometimes in the same weapon) - yet a Max can only protect against one type at a time. Maxes need a composite armour option (like what ESFs get)

IMO - bursters should have the following changes:

1. Direct damage should be massively buffed making toe to toe combat deadly for aircraft. it's ludicrous that aircraft get what is in effect a massive armour buff against bursters if they get in close. To my knowledge, no other weapon in the game penalises the wielder in close range combat like this.
2. Cone of fire should be reduced to make the weapon more skill based..
3. Rate of fire should be increased.
4. Flack damage should be reduced to make it a deterrent rather than the primary damage mechanism.
5. Flack activation range should be pushed out so that close range encounters are on a direct damage basis - and flak only comes into play as a medium range deterrent.
6. A hard cap should be placed on burster rounds (i.e. they get 350-450m out and they explode regardless).
7. Add some smoke to the hard cap explosion to allow bursters to act as flak screen deterrent to help obscure friendly units from air units. This would give them an additional defensive role to play on the battlefield.

Yeah, Mustang AH is like that. It's quite potent when you get close with it.

Explosives.

That mechanism would never work. Radar and spotting mechanics completely invalidate any form of anti-spotting. If smoke can't reset doritos, then flak bursts wouldn't be able to. The one way to break spotting is separation by static level geometry.

Most likley he actually didn't ... at least not when he killed you.

I would have to check if the update rate for vehicle killboards got fixed but i doubt it (was "broken" since pretty much day1).
Compared to the actuall game the killboard has a realy low update rate and from my experience is especially slow for vehicles.

Basically it is extremly likley that you got the hp shown from quite a bit before the actuall kill.
Even in infantry play where it at least feels more accurate you can quite often see a huge difference between the hp shown in the killfeed and the actuall hp your opponent had.

My quess is that tanks and aircraft killfeeds work on the same update rate ... which tends to be fine for tanks but can cause quite confusing results with esfs.

I had plenty fights where i saw my opponent burning when i died (both esf) and the killfeed showed a full hp bar


When in doubt just ask the guy in a polite non accusing way (if possible^^)




Now i know you probably don't wanna hear this ... but if you expect to survive a close range fight in a burster max vs an airhammer then you might wanna reconsider your weapon choice.


By no means am i saying that flak is in a good place ... just to get that out of the way
BUT
You are basically running a long range weapon system, that's designed around sustained fire against the most powerfull cqc burst weapon an esf can have.

I don't think this is actually a problem with flak, just well a part of the overall lack of choices when it comes to AA weapons.




Until (if ever) more choices are implemented i recommend to use anti vehicle weapons on your max if you know that you are facing off against an airhammer reaver.


Personally i would love to see a burst fire variation of the "bursters" ... one that does a lot more damage within 100m (or whatever range might be needed to cover a base from hovering a2g esfs) but has no flak effect.

Desvastating if fired at the right time/target but without the doom bubble effect the current flak has once stacked.

But that's my point - the AA weapon should be at least as potent in such close range encounters.

Sorry - I don't follow. Explosives are at their most potent at close range?

I didn't say anything about spotting.

How can you consider you weapon choice when you are already engaged in a fight? The problem with air is - it's so fast that a long range encounter can quickly become a very short range one. AA weapons should account for this.

The TTK of AH is far lower than any Max weapon against air, even at close range - so choosing a different weapon would make no difference to encounters like I describe. Even the Gorgon (the only other viable alternative) has around a 30-40 second TTK against ESFs at close range - compared to the AH's what - 5 second tops?

Buffing the direct damage of AA projectiles would be an easy way to correct this discrepancy (and it might also give AA maxes a fighting chance against infantry too). ESFs should not be able to get this close and go toe to toe with a dedicated AA unit and survive.

Actually, you asked:

Never threw a sticky grenade only to have your target advance all the way to you anyway?

It's not necessary to name things explicitly. You and I are both playing the same game and are familiar with how its mechanics work and how they interact with player intent. To what you are talking about, spotting is an important consideration.

You used to be able to OHK a MAX with the AH if you got a headshot in CQC. I once managed to kill one MAX with two hits and another with a OHK in mere moments this way. On one hand this sounds about right. It's an airborn shotgun. On the other hand it's way overpowered compared to the relatively pathetic G2A weapons available to MAX's (and ground troops in general) compared to the survivability of the aircraft. Best solution: Give in to both worlds and give the ground troops weapons that give the aircraft just as much survivability against G2A weapons as the ground troops have when engaged by an aircraft. If the aircraft can engage you without you having the option to escape or find adequate cover most of the time then the ground troops need a way to do the same to the aircraft. This does not "upset the balance", it would only be fair.

I think all flak should have similar changes. I also think that you should add the following:
8. Flak will not explode upon entering flak detonation range near an aircraft, it will only explode once the distance to the aircraft starts increasing again. This means that if you can get the flak projectile closer to the aircraft before it explodes and deal a higher damage (means the inner AOE damage needs to be higher but start dropping off quicker). An additional bonus would be to actually hit the aircraft, which would now deal both direct damage and flak damage since the projectile was activated by entering flak detonation range. I assume number 5. is functioning (flak activation range is pushed out) this would mean that at long range the damage can still be balanced through the use of damage degradation of the direct damage.
9. Flak damage is increased, but magazine capacity is decreased. Flak uses spray&pray to reduce skill requirements which is one of the reasons the damage was kept down. By reducing the magazine capacity there is more downtime for the aircraft to act, but the higher damage per shot gives a higher reward for actual hits.
10. Flak detonation range is reduced. It's currently about 8m. It should be 2m maximum, meaning you need to get the projectile 4x closer than before so that the reward for actually hitting or getting the projectile close is much more present. Alternatively, the damage degradation of the AOE is heavily increased so that at the 8m mark the damage is far lower than what it currently is.

funnily enough, the PPA, the least A2A of the A2G Noseguns is also the one that gives infantry the longest time to react
Both Banshee and Airhammer are just absolutely murderous to infantry in split seconds, but often only to a single one at a time, maybe 2 for the airhammer, up to 3 or 4 with the banshee in a single mag.
meanwhile the PPA is dangerous to like 5 to 8 infantry per mag, simply due to splash radius, but none of them can die as quickly as to the other 2
and in my opinion all 3 A2G should be the same in that regard:
Airhammer should distribute splashdamage with pellets over a wide area per shot, but not instagib infantry unless really, really close (for example done with bigger pelletspread, bigger splash radius per pellet, lower direct hit damage)
And the Banshee should just be a really fast firing CAS14. not all that accurate, but just saturating a target area with splashdamage via high RoF

On one hand it could work, despite the fact that AOE spam shouldn't be encouraged and that it would homogenise the way ESF attack ground targets. But in the end I would rather give ground units viable tools to combat aircraft, both lethal and non-lethal (which would work mostly to protect the player and would be available in most loadouts), of which the dedicated lethal weapons would have enough firepower to murder the hell out of any aircraft that comes their way, just like the aircraft can murder any ground unit that comes their way (only aircraft have the option to do it with weapons not designed for that task).