[Suggestion] Ground-based AA could use a buff.

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Talthos, Jan 20, 2019.

  1. Talthos

    I was definitely expecting angry skyknights to try and dismiss my concerns here, but I wasn't expecting the likes of BigG, who thinks VR equals 'tested against players', rather than 'tested against stationary target dummies'. This has become so utterly comical and hilarious to read, I'm not even sure if I want to reiterate my opening post anymore.
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  2. LodeTria


    Most of the actual good players of all the realms of this game are on reddit, this forum is mostly full of bads. If you want actual discussion go there instead.
  3. Talthos

    I posted there and here at roughly the same time. The more intelligent responses I got on the whole there, would suggest that your assessment here is correct.
  4. BigG


    You can sit here and mock me all you want, but the truth is I showed you roughly how many small arms fire rounds it takes to drop an esf. You can do with that information what you want. You leave out the important part of "when focused' when throwing your accusations at me. All you are doing is proving that you don't understand how damage multiplication works. It is true that a handful of players can "melt" an esf with small arms fire. Nothing I have posted in this thread is false. Enjoy your echo chamber over on reddit.
  5. Pelojian

    BigQ in any situation where you have amassed enough users of small arms to be a potential threat to an ESF, the ESF can easily use speed to evade fire and kill the rifle armed infantry.

    try as a single player shooting at a mobile ESF and see how much accuracy you can get on it moving to attack and then retreating.

    literally any scenario where you have enough rifleman to pose a group threat to 1 ESF you are better off with two lock-ons or 2 skyguards with one holding their fire till the right moment (and the pilot suddenly goes OH **** when the damage from flak sources doubles and the time he thought he had to attack, he doesn't actually have and dies as a result)

    even more then that getting 12+ people to shoot rifles at an ESF is wasting manpower and causing your other allies to be overpopped by the enemy at a local room by room level while providing the ESF easy kills with rocketpods if they are massed..

    every person vainly shooting rifles at one esf is one less person to fight against enemy infantry.

    the only time massed rifle fire was used against aircraft was in the early days of planes when they didn't have specifically designed AA and had to rely on inefficient mass rifle fire as their one and only option aside from having their own planes.
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  6. BigG


    I understand the concepts. I am not saying that everyone should start using small arms fire as their main source of AA against ESF. That would be dumb. I am just making it a point that on top of the dedicated AA, which in my opinion is pretty strong, there is also this other option that can go along side it when a player is faced against a light vehicle and is not in dedicated AA. I made this point because the original poster is talking about how easy it is to farm infantry in an ESF which is a light vehicle. If half the people who cried about the ESF and ignore it would just turn around and fire back, they would not feel as if air is so dominant against them. All I did was disagree with the main thread and then all hell broke loose. These other players decided to lash out at my statements as if I was trying to mislead people about something and discredit me as if I don't play the game. I was forced to back it up. Players who throw this type of rhetoric around do not want to fight against air, they want it deleted from the game. The only way to get better as a player is to be honest and stop blaming everything else when you fall short.
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  7. Pelojian

    listen, reacting to air presence near you with solo rifle fire will not do anything other then get you killed, if an ESF swoops down and you don't have AA tools, take cover otherwise you'll be smoked in no time flat. scratch that even if you do have a lock-on you can still get smoked.

    the feeling of dominance would not change at all if people reactively used rifle fire on an ESF and got killed as a result compared to merely being cut down by an ESF as an infantryman without shooting back with rifles. in both instances there was no chance of fighting the ESF and living.

    the only viable choice with no AA is to run for structures and take cover.

    shooting at an esf with infantry primaries is not a viable strategy, no amount of VR testing will change that.

    when posting actually think about what you post, you aren't going to convince veterans who know more about the game then you do if you throw around nonsense.

    i'll leave this here:

    • Up x 3
  8. BigG



    Players keep creating this situation where you are a solo player fighting off an esf. I never once said "as a solo player". If you are out there trying to 1v1 an esf without AA around then you are in my opinion playing bad. If you don't have AA then your unwillingness to pull it is getting you killed. So don't get upset when I call it out. If this is what you want to be able to do then you are being delusional and dishonest about game balance. You may see that as not the case, but I do. You shouldn't even be in the situation you are describing because that means you have put yourself in a very bad position. Quit trying to twist my words to fit your narrative. None of this is nonsense.
  9. Inogine

    There's also the false narrative floating around where people seem to think that if you engage an ESF for around 4-5 seconds you're not helping the fight. It's possible to reload and immediately "rejoin" (since you never left it anyway) the infantry fight.

    "You'll die if you engage an ESF with small arms." Why are you standing out in the open in the first place? I tend to wander a bit away and draw ESF rage. While he's engaging lil' ol me other folks are over there fighting and he's not being effective. Use cover to make'em mad.

    It's all situational, but the general idea is that if there's an ESF just constantly farming over and over, react to it. Don't keep running out into his crosshairs like a lemming.
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  10. Talthos

    I understand all of this, but I'm drawing attention to the glaringly large gap in effectiveness between weapon platforms on aircraft, versus the ground-based AA platforms that are meant to confront and destroy them.

    Again, I'm not asking for nerfs to aircraft weapons, I am simply suggesting that ground-based AA platforms should probably be a bit stronger. I have no issue with how much damage an ESF or Liberator deals with its weapons, it's their absurd durability that seems just a bit off-balance. And as I said before, I'm saying all of this as a pilot, who considers his job to be, on the whole, too easy to perform.

    It's a bit silly that, the only consistently 'dangerous' threat to aircraft (assuming equal skill level), is other aircraft. Keywords being 'consistently dangerous'; I don't want other pilots to be my 'only' real threats, I want to be readily challenged by the forces on the ground, too.

    Keep the aircraft weapons the same, while making the ground-based AA hit just a bit harder against air. That's it, that's all I was suggesting.

    Edit: And you seem to be underscoring just how easy it is to lay waste to infantry with the AI nosegun and the dumbfire rocket pods. Once an ESF pilot learns your patterns, then unless you're taking shelter behind a spawn shield, then you just become another free kill to them, once they finish repairing, come back and quickly locate where you're launching lock-on missiles from
  11. adamts01

    +1 that Reddit is an echo chamber.

    Let me say that as a pilot, I never worry in the slightest about small arms, in an ESF anyway, Valks vary patch to patch. But, I frequently survive with a sliver of health, so when I see an ESF from the ground, I almost always try to land some hits on it. It's minuscule damage, but sometimes it's enough to turn the tide. Also, any damage resets their 12 secondv auto repair. And at best, it makes them maneuver to avoid that damage, at least until they realize it's just small arms tickling them. So please understand that I'm not saying small arms fire is pointless, just that it's not even a sliver of as powerful as you make it out to be.

    I'd also like to add that I've long argued for small arms to be buffed against ESF, by a factor of at least 3. In exchange for no spawnroom AA of any sort. Small arms direct fire is pointless at range, so it wouldn't compound in big fights the same as flack/lock one. But, it would give all infantry in small fights a tool to at least keep from being farmed without dedicated AA.
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  12. Talthos

    Sure, why not. Just bear in mind that buffing small arms damage versus ESFs, won't solve the remaining issues with Liberators and Galaxies, since both are immune to small arms fire.
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  13. Inogine

    As a pilot, albeit a ****** one, you're raising that bar that other newer pilots have to jump over cause "I'm the elite. Get on my level." It's why some methods are more effective than others. In fact, that elite bit is why AAA was nerfed hard in the first place. The few that COULD use it to extreme effect were knocking sky out of the air like it wasn't a thing. Air was being knocked around into uselessness, but hey, your funeral. I fly a bit but I prefer harasser to air. Wanna give me more power to murder more air out of the sky? I guess I won't complain, but air's gonna disappear pretty fast and then there will be that one or two pilots in the air compared to the lowish numbers we see now except for free air time. Not that that ever turns into air killing ground anyway that I've seen.

    Also, as ineffective as you make out small arms fire to be on aircraft, it's not as infinitesimal as you make it out to be. Talthos, you assume I use lockons in said scenario. More likely I'm using an archer or in the lynx these days. Often times a stream of pings leads a pilot to jitter and hit his afterburners on reflex or at least throws off his aim. Enough of it and he starts trying to hunt. Position yourself right in the rocks and you're not an easy target. While he's wasting time with you, he's not laying waste to your team.

    Again, scenarios vary. In most cases not shooting a pilot with small arms means he continues to farm without issue. If there's a burster or any other form of AAA, then he's gonna have issues sticking around unimpeded.

    I'll also state that fire from the spawn room is what answers spawn room camping directly. I'm not sure if it's you, but I do remember someone campaigning to take out firing from it entirely which would be a terrible idea. Don't want folks shooting from the safety of it? Don't give them easy shots and watch the alleys that they have to use instead.
  14. Campagne

    Well really, firing small arms for 4-5 seconds at any given ESFs puts the player in a position of extreme vulnerability. Not only does it force the player to give away his position, it rapidly drains the magazine and distracts him from other enemies in the area.

    There's also the matter of time which could be spent on other, more valuable actions. As I've shown in the past, it's very possible for a single infantry player to kill three enemy infantry in five seconds or less while little to no damage would actually be done to an ESF.

    One doesn't ave to be standing in the open to shoot and be shot. With the sole exception of a spawn shield any time a player can see and ESF and shoot it the ESF can see and shoot him. And given that all AI ESF weapons have AoEs...

    And finally, ESFs can come and go at absurd speeds and can engage from ranges considerably longer than infantry can. A player might not even realize there's an ESF in the hex until a Banshee instantly destroys them from 200+ meters away and be gone gain by the time anyone looks up.
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  15. Inogine

    You're in extreme vulnerability the moment you step out of the spawn protection if you wanna go that route. And yeah, if he gets tunnel vision, then said person won't realize the danger around them. I capitalize on this all the time as a harasser on MBTs. It happens whether or not they're engaging someone else so long as they're tunneled on some direction or task. As I said, it's highly situational. If you're not engaging from within your spawn shields, odds are you can pop off a clip at a ESF as you might have pushed them a little bit away from the spawn room. If you're stepping out from an objective room when he's not even aware you're there, that's on you. Use your brain, and engage rather than wanting to be hand held and told when to fire at something. Again, depends on the scenario. You're saying always, I'm calling ********.

    As I've said with most arguments on PS2. Terrain, terrain, terrain. Use that thing you have on your shoulders when picking engagements. "Can't reach!" Spawn somewhere else and truck it in rather than spawning directly under an ESF's nose. Use terrain to your advantage and pick places he's gonna have some trouble with. Depending on your goal, it's very easy to achieve his attention if you're drawing him away, or cause him to not be able to stay on station as long if he's not gonna give you the time of day.

    ESFs hit and run with some nasty firepower then leave. Gee, sounds like the very theory behind flight combat doesn't it? That's not even a realism thing, that's just basic theory. Get in, hit your targets, get out. The issue I believe some people have is that they're VTOL as well which adds a bit of "meh" cause they're fast and can hover. Kinda how I'd expect things to eventually go as technology advances. Application seems easy to see to me.

    "Small arms is NEVER effective!" I see ESFs drop often if they get into a decent pop fight and everyone glances up to pop off some shots at them. Is it ideal, hell no. Should it be, hell no. Use your head though, if you don't peck at it it doesn't go away. If you're being farmed by it... That's your fault. I'll maintain that I still have yet to see an ESF farming easy unless it's a small group, air is super swarming, or the enemy already has superiority on the ground. ESFs might make up perhaps a tenth or less of my deaths and I've gotten a number of small arms kills on them. It's not often, but it's a treat when it happens.
  16. Zagareth

    The problem isnt the tools available for AA - the problem is the proper handling of them. As a formerly dedicated Skyguard user (other toons, than my Snipers :p) I can only say: 5-10 minutes and the sky is empty of ESFs groundpounders - not because they are all killed, but they left due to the constant annoyance I cause to them. Only skilled bombercrews (and of course other tanks) are a counter to the Skyguard. And even these fail a lot.

    Its always a matter how skilled someone is to handle the given tools.

    Groundpounding is not really a problem, even when I admit it can be annoying. A simple good handled AA MAX solves that. And as always its all about teamwork. You can counter everything if you work as team
  17. Nenarch

    hmm, yeah.. and what I have seen there aren't that much top pilots left. Consider how these new players and mediocre players gameplay would be if we'd buff AA even more. Would they stay in the game, would some new ones learn to fly when the game requires more of you to be succesfull.

    Anyways I gues dev's will think about that if this suggestions ends up in their meeting.
  18. Inogine

    Something else that's been bugging me the more I think on it. "As a pilot" eh? You want more of a challenge eh? Then why don't I see any pilots stick around when AAA comes out? That's bugged me more and more as I thought of it. "As a pilot" you're not gonna be happy until even the slightest bit of attention can kill ya? Seems fishy.
  19. TR5L4Y3R


    yes going for ad hominems is a very good way to convince anyone (not), have a nice day ..
  20. Demigan

    Oooh, bad move.

    First of all, you said I was a hypocrite based on a (at best) a misinterpretation of my words. But even if what you had said wasn't a misinterpretation it still wouldn't have been hypocritical as that's not what hypocritical means.

    Secondly, you say that "people go back to edit their post after being called out". You obviously don't know how this forum works: You can edit for 30 minutes at maximum, and every single person you talked to through a quote already had this time expire, hence they couldn't have edited it in hindsight.
    Now ofcourse this is a trend of what you are doing. Instead of pointing flaws in the arguments, you are trying to discredit the people who have a different opinion than you. If they edit their post afterwards they must be wrong right? But since this editing isn't possible for anyone you quoted you are posting false information (besides that their original quote in your post wouldn't change so there would still be "proof" of the edit, but that is absent in this thread).

    You try to proclaim that the VR is the place to be for the best-of-the-best to train and become good, while in reality it teaches you the most basics of damage but nothing about actual combat.

    You try to call me out on being a special snowflake because I call on "other factors". Unfortunately for you those "other factors" are very very important. It's like with a weapon's stats: You can argue "but it has superior damage per shot!", but if you don't include the "other factors" of COF, ROF, recoil, magazine size, downsides, zoom level, sway etc then it is actually meaningless.
    But on to the special snowflake. We've seen a lot of snowflakes on these forums, and their general MO is not to argue the point but to try to discredit their opponents. I think I just saw a good example in this thread, let me find it for you:

    There you go! Instead of arguing the point this guy calls someone else bad based on the fact that the other guy does not hold the same opinion. Oh that's funny, this is you! You are the special snowflake! What a surprise... Hey this is some textbook hypocrisy right there! Calling me a special snowflake while you are the special snowflake! Good job on making such a great example!

    Kidding aside, your argument is that someone who is bad at the game must have bad facts and opinions. But a bad player does not need to have bad facts or opinions just because he's bad. A great player can in fact be just as vulnerable to bad facts and opinions. Take the Gauss SAW, a great player will be awesome with it and think this is a great choice for a starter weapon for the NC. But since it's a starter weapon and it requires a lot of skill to become awesome, the opinion and facts are bad. it's only good for some players, but not everyone.

    You are also one of the people who maintain the "if you are higher skilled, then you should win" mentality. Allrighty! So I've been within the top 5% of Skyguard users. That should mean that I'll be better skilled than say, 80% of the ESF users, right? flying in PS2 only has a medium-high skillfloor, once reached it's very easy to do A2G. Only A2A takes high skill (because of the lobsided system rewarding one particular skill with an inverse skillcurve). So I should be murdering 80% of the jack-of-all-trades ESF's with my dedicated good-at-only-one-job Skyguard right?

    Well ofcourse the problem here is that I can be 50x more skillful than the ESF pilot, but in the end whether I win or lose depends almost entirely on him. Escaping a Skyguard is as simple as "don't fly towards him, don't aim your nose into the scenery". There's nothing to it, and this counts for any aircraft design even if you have the worst loadout in the history of PS2. In reverse an expensive tank or infantryman cannot escape an aircraft, vehicles have virtually no cover anywhere on the map where they can effectively hide and you are completely dependent on friendlies to deal with the aircraft, while a tank vs infantry battle both teams can still use situational awareness skills to go from cover to cover or deal with each other in different ways.

    Oh and ofcourse this completely destroys your notion of "you must be bad". Because I'm good. Hell before the CAI update made HE good against vehicles, I killed more vehicles with my Lightning HE than most people did with their Lightning AP.


    And lastly... You argue that everyone is bad because they don't use small-arms against aircraft. You also argue that if an ESF hasn't seen you, you shouldn't shoot at it and attract attention. Now this is (again) textbook hypocrisy. That ESF isn't there to hang around and do nothing until attacked, it's looking for a target and it's going to kill something. If you don't use your "awesome small-arms" against it then no-one is focussing it and it won't die now will it? But firing at it is also a no-no according to you!

    The big point is ofcourse that everyone has already tried using small-arms at ESF. But it's useless, so no one really does it.
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