[Suggestion] Remove Liberator Afterburners

So who the Higby decided to give Liberators free Afterburners? It's absolutely insane that a Racer + Afterburner Liberator is actually faster than a Hover/Dogfight ESF. It'd be like an MBT being faster than a Lightning - stupid. An ESF cannot chase down the Liberator and an A2A loadout Liberator can chase down ESFs - especially with the Engineer passive repair some Clegg decided to give aircraft. Not to mention such Liberators are impervious to G2A since they can also equip Fire Suppress as they no longer need to equip afterburners.

Given the RM that ESFs need for dogfighting, they all run dogfight or hover airframes.

Conclusion: 3 Man A2A Liberators are cheaper and better at A2A than ESFs now.

A2A ESF needs A2A rotary nose gun; Hover/Dogfight chassis; Coyotes; Stealth; plus Fire Suppress (everything upgraded)
A2A Liberator needs stock nose gun (just upgraded); Stock belly gun (just upgraded); Hyena tail gun; Racer Chassis; Composite Armor (or stealth if it really wants to gank ESFs).

In the end it means that the A2A Liberator actually costs about 2k less certs to buy than the A2A ESF and the A2A Liberator is far stronger and FASTER.

for about 2 seconds every 20 seconds.
meanwhile A2A Missiles are still faster than it even while after burning.

Not to mention using after burner on an ESF can get you fast enough to out run a missiles flight time limit.

The reason why they were made free was because they were being used by everyone and their mother, and that has been the case since the early days of planetside 2. This is because the ability to mitigate damage through mobility is an invaluable trait. And even if they were removed, all that would happen would be every one using nothing but flares for the exact same reason of minimizing damage.

Are you stupid? 3 ESFs vs 1 3 man lib is a faceroll for the ESFs, unless of course you're a bad like many on this forum.

Stopped reading there.. Yes Fully certing Lib is cheaper than ESF. And finding even one decent gunner is simplier than just click spawn now on ESF. Don't know what meds you're taking bro, but it's not nice not to share with others...

Indeed depending on the range the G2A was fired at - also stupid because a missile lock-on missile should be 5x as fast as any aircraft capable of hovering. It'd be fine if an ESF could out-run a G2A lock-on missile, IF the missile had 1k acquire range and the ESF ran with a 950m head start. However, This being able to out-run a missile fired from 350m away is stupid.

Fine, then give ESFs 2x the afterburners for free or 2x it's normal bases speed to balance the fact that an ESF should be much faster than a Liberator.

True, but it should only take 1 ESF not 3 to beat a 3 man Lib. or 1 ESF + 1 lock-on G2A rocket hit. The ESF costs 350 nanites and should have almost as much power as a 450 nanite Lib. especially A2A. Explain to me why it should take 1050 nanites worth of A2A ESFs to handle one 450 nanite Liberator? It should NOT!

Your statements are not relevant to anything.

ESF's are naturally faster already, with even the scythe beating the lib in terms of top speed. Secondly, in order to deal with the constraints of map size, you can't double somethings top speed, especially if its already got the best baseline top speed. It's the same reason why tank cannons don't have 1000m/s muzzle velocities in planetside 2.

Plus, just because coyotes, stealth, fire suppression, and hover chassis don't seem to work for you, doesn't mean that liberators are immediately better then ESF's in a dogfight. Their are other builds that can be tried ( like say, as an example, running racer chassis, or a different missile option). Plus, if personal experience has hold me anything, even with that lib build, your still often dead.

And with regards to the idea of an MBT being faster then a lightning... that actually happens anyway with the magrider and its magburner, cause it can hit harasser speeds with it.

well it hits 100kmh, which is comparable to a racer Lightning Harrassers still hit 140kmh+

Yeah, equivalent for equivalent, lightning still out runs every other tank. But without racer on a lightning, every MBT with racer will match or exceed the top speed of a lightning.

60 to 65 for Mag+ racer to lightning without actually, but when is running away from the other that doesn't change a lot.

i would suggest actually playing the lib in its current state, you will change your opinions VERY QUICKLY.

A2A lockons are still crazy against libs

Big difference and a POINT OF THREAD is that Liberators get afterburners for free. Magriders do not get magburner for free. Magriders have to give up smoke or fire suppression to get Magburners. Fire Suppression is a big deal on a Liberator. Remove Fire Suppression and the Liberator suddenly becomes a lot more vulnerable to a single ESF.

As for A2A lock-ons, why would an A2A Liberator care? It can close with the ESF and kill it pretty quick, unless the ESF is running racer chassis and if an ESF runs racer chassis, guess what, it's toast against any other ESF should it even try to fight.

You're expecting a 1v3 to favour the 1? Like all vehicles in this game, the true cost is the man-power since nanite costs only really matter when you're dying. Putting 3 people into 1 lib is a huge investment of manpower, that is far more flexible and stronger if you just dump them ESFs instead. This has been shown to you in server-smashes, where nanites & man-power actually matter due to the rules of time and teams. They barely function on live cus no-one really cares. Oh and they are also super weak to flak now too.

The real reason libs got free AB was because after CAI the favour that was already siding with ESF swung so far towards them they had to do something to try and keep libs viable in the air. They still aren't, and they most definitely are not these monstrous power-houses of A2A you think they are. The only thing they have is the stupid land and repair cheese, which should have been removed anyway.

1 player and 350 resources VS 3 players and 450 resources.

The fact is a good ESF pilot can STILL solo a lib most of the time.

A2A missiles absolutely wreck libs.

Any ESF with racer is faster than a lib with racer. Stock mosquito is faster than racer lib.

If the Lib. crew is equally skilled with the ESF pilot, then the Lib. crew is going to win every time. In fact, a Lib. crew will beat 2 equally skilled ESFs every single time.

So a stock Mosquito can outrun a racer liberator? That should mean a stock Reaver can also outrun a racer liberator, so only the Scythe gets the short end of the stick? Can somebody confirm this?

Closing in is great and all for the lib, but unless you can actually deal with those missiles, a lib is gonna take some rather significant damage before it can get to within effective range.

Basically, if the reaver can out run it, particularly without after burner, then the scythe will out run it (given they should still have the same non afterburner top speed). Even if its not, the max speed difference (full thrust plus after burn) between a mossi and a scythe is not that big (320 for mossi, versus 300 for scythe I believe).

While the scythe may be the slowest of the bunch, it also boasts better versatility then the other two, mostly because it has way better loitering power thanks to its unusual hover mechanics. This gives it a better effective range in combat (A2A and A2G), and can allow it to pull maneuvers you would never dream of in a mossi or reaver.

Yeah. This first bit is definitely correct about 3v1 fights. In fact, this rule applies to basically every form of combat in planetside 2.

Just to critique you and show your total lack of air game knowledge:

you said you need rotarys and coyotes? nope.
when people go A2A its always with the stock nosegun, and fuel pods (sometimes fast re-charge, but not required)
when I started my NC toon in the air after auraxing mossy I just certed straight into max hover and 1 off max stealth and fire suppression (last ranks are kinda expensive) and left the nosegun default and was good to go!

coyotes do much more harm than good in terms of giving and taking damage when compared to afterburners.

if you are fed up with libs either run lockons, or nosegun them to low hp and rocketpod/hornet them when they land to cheese reps.