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

Most people do perceive themselves better than they really are, but we can still use a bell-curve to get an overview and say with definite precision where "normal" or "good" skill begins, where "bad" skill is and where the upper echelons are. You make it seem arbitrary what we can call bad and good, which isn't true. You also make the fallacy by saying "well now I can call 90% of the players bad and therefore I'm right in saying everyone should git gud and nothing needs to change". That's not how you create a good, enjoyable and balanced game. What you are using are reasons to keep a game as bad as it can be, as your arguments remain true even if the game is the worst crapshow in the history of games. You could use this type of argumentation to defend E.T., the game that nearly broke the videogaming industry!

Also just because you are so bad at the game that you don't feel a difference between dying to infantry or an aircraft does not mean the problem isn't there. (see how easy it is to invent something on your twisted reasoning?)

No you can't stop defending yourself until you actually have a solid argument. You claimed that people were editing their posts, which they weren't. You insulted people based on your opinion and warped idea's ("90% of the players are just bad"). You try to prove that small-arms are great against ESF by posting a static attack against an ESF that does nothing and try to pass it off as if this type of knowledge makes the difference between the good and bad players. As long as you keep doing stuff like that you are going to have to defend it.

As for how ineffective ground-based AA is... How about the fact that on Oracle of Death when it was alive, for all the years it was alive, almost every single G2A weapon scored more groundvehicle kills than it did aircraft kills? You can look up threads about that yourself. And most of these weapons are not regularily used against vehicles. Or just look them up at Dasanfall and .Fisu and find out how bad they really are? You claim yourself that you want data but you provide none (that is actually useful). A video showing that you have a TTK of 23 seconds on a stationary, non-moving ESF is hardly proof that these weapons are effective.

And again with the lies.
On point, we don't refuse to admit that small-arms do anything to air (you even made a "point" about your arguments not hinging on it when I stated for the umptillionth time that we don't think they can't do anything). We point out that small-arms just aren't useful against aircraft.

You yourself basically admit that this is true in your "point by point" post. While you claim that you and your buddies always use small-arms fire (after a post where you point out that you shouldn't use small-arms if the ESF hasn't spotted you or it would be suicide, make up your mind dude), you can only think of one special case where an ESF actually died and you keep referring to it. As mentioned by others and myself small-arms can be effective in a once-in-a-blue-moon situation, but that's the exact reason why you shouldn't be using it. There's too many downsides. Additionally you proclaim that you don't have to be smart to do your type of tactics of driving a bus somewhere off the beaten path and not being in the frontlines that are attacked by ESF. The big problems are ofcourse:

- If you aren't in the frontlines and are safe from ESF, someone else still is. Just because you avoid the bulk of situations where you get gunned down by aircraft does not mean it is an OK situation for the entire game.
- If everyone is as "smart" as you and avoids the frontlines, a new frontline is created. Likely on top of you, and now you are in the same boat as the previous frontline players or you have to move even further out to avoid being targeted by ESF and having your small-arms argument fall apart again. Besides that in all likelyhood your frontline will collapse as you need a mainstay army to do the heavylifting.
- If small-arms are so effective against ESF in your group setting, it should be easy to come with examples and even video evidence of this fact. Yet you keep referring to an once-in-a-blue-moon event.

Whelp here we go again. I can see you have tunneled out on me and are no longer interested in a real discussion about balance. You are right I am not going to provide anything other than in defense of myself because that would be doing your work. It is silly to make claims and then expect everyone else to back it up for you. Referring me to forum posts that are years old is not evidence. Show me yours and I'll show you mine. Also TTK was just under 20 seconds and shorter if you don't count the reload which isn't necessary if you stack players like I said you needed to do. Kinda shows you looked at the time and didn't even watch the video or even care about the context of the post. I will say it for the last time. You as a single infantry are not designed to 1v1 esf. If that is what you want to do then you are being dishonest about game balance.

Context is everything. It make sense if esf kill more infantry than infantry kill esf because there is far more representation for infantry than esf. More targets. It's basic numbers.

Instead of attacking my character, a more intelligent response to small arms fire would have been well how many more shots does it take if they pop fire suppression?
What about composite armor?
What if you use x gun instead of y?

Instead you are only interested in lashing out at anyone who disagrees.

No evidence, only anecdotes, and can't counter air.

as you wanted some stats @BigG:
lockon launcher(grounder/hawk/nemesis) lack the range to lockon, vs stealth ESF your lockon range is below 280m if the ESF knows you are there wich he does after the first lockon attempt you are unable to even get a lockon before being shred to pieces thx to range differences.

MAX-AA incl ordonance5 armor 2x42 burstershells set an ESF on fire at best while beeing killed during reload thx to the horrible cof if you are unlucky in regards of AoE-headhits you are even dead before you have to reload.

Players are getting killed by esf because of their lack of teamwork, not balance. These players like to say air is OP and point out situations that serve them such as small 3-5 man fights or 1v1, but disregard larger fights such as 96+ vs 96+. In these larger fights many air can barely get into a hex without being locked on and catching flak from invisible sources that don't render. Ground AA scales extremely well. Players need to stop trying to be lone wolfs and then getting upset when it doesn't work out. This game is about teamplay and combined arms. That is why they let you make platoons up to 48 players. These players would just rather not have to deal with it. I like planetside because it is combined arms. If I want infantry only, there are plenty of other games out there.

These players are really showing just how pathetic they are at this point. L2P! Git Gud! Bad Bad Bad! Whatever you want! Or just keep getting farmed. Doesn't matter to me. I will be wrecking air in my hex when the time calls for it while the baddies keep crying here.

First off, people do use them against aircraft. I see it all the time. If you wanna call me out on sweeping stuff, guess I'd better call you out. Again. Look at that, you did say they're useless. But every ping means that aircraft is not regenerating for free, which means he has to go further away to start the repair. There are many benefits to having small arms fire directed at aircraft, even if you can't secure the kill. Again, you don't shoot at it, it has no reason to go away. AAA flak is better suited for the task, but that's assuming anyone's bothering.

You've also made it a point to lie repeatedly and say that AAA fire can not kill aircraft when I see them knocked out of the sky every time I've booted up the game. Skilled or not, pilots don't hang around when the AAA comes out. For being useless, pilots sure do avoid AAA like the plague.

You keep calling me a liar, but you more or less are lying about the actual effectiveness of AAA. I understand that you have some seething hatred for air, but mobile AAA's in a good place. You just want air gone for some reason.

I suppose I'd better actually answer some of the other stuff too.

I'm often in frontlines moving through and around them. Now, I'm not taking on a maggy with a sundy set up for spawning. And no, you don't have to be smart, just use your terrain smartly.

I've referred to said event once. YOU keep referencing it repeatedly in your head I guess. You also reference a lot of other scenarios where all factors for infantry to have a bad day against air are met. Specifically those and not the usual scenario of combat where air is present but generally not much of a threat without ground forces to back it up. Pull one AAA unit and air's gotta go away.

What is this, some effort to discredit me? ;D

I suppose I should put a disclaimer then eh as you're gonna take things out of context as usual.

If the air's just flying by or otherwise not after your base. Hold fire.

If it's already shooting at you/your base, open up on him.

If you're in a bad position or otherwise engaged with infantry. Hold fire.

What you're equating to is the same as saying that you shouldn't fire at infantry cause tanks will see you. Or you shouldn't fire rockets at tanks cause infantry will see you. Use common sense when engaging cause there are nearly infinite scenarios to throw a person into on that front.

All the data you need regarding air is to pay attention to the meta. Here's a summary. The best teams in the game at winning fights and locking continents are almost entirely infantry. Aircraft have a very small impact in the grand scheme of things, and the reason is that AA keeps them from doing work.

That doesn't get anyone riled up, it just makes you come across as 12.

A single lone-wolf ESF is engaging 1-12 groups of players, where a single vehicle makes the largest impact, and the composition of those players on the Ground matters a lot.
Any Infantryman able to disengage to focus fire on the ESF, without being shot dead by any actual enemy on the ground itself, while getting LOS on said lone ESF Pilot, means that ESF is sitting around, near numerous targets it can detect via Radar.
Or it's sitting way too close to the ground, or not using Terrain properly, or just near floating.

ESFs, much like other Aircraft avoid 96+, as when there is around a Hundred infantry & tanks:

• Dedicated AA Sources are not affecting the frontline's ability to actually function against the near-always-present threat of other land-bound enemies.
• Dedicated AA sources, are actually able to be properly defended by other land units
• Enough people on the ground have died, or can afford to spend the entire battle scanning Skies instead of actually engaging, without a severe disadvantage against even Infantry.
• There is enough people on the Ground, that LOS to & from multiple units can reach the Isolated & uncoordinated Pilot in the Sky, drawing mass attention to it.

Can you imagine what happens, in those situations, where the lone ESF Pilot, actually coordinated with others?

A lone-Wolf Lighting-tank, is man-handled by 3 Infantry soldiers, and lacks the speed, the firepower, and the ESF's ability to easily achieve first-strike against target.
ESF has built-in Radar, Built-in Auto-Repairs for Engineers, and even has the ability to boost their speed at will.
Add in their ability to field two weapons at once, which automatically reload while the other is equipped, and it's no wonder, a Lone-Wolf ESF is the Normal Aircraft on the field.

A One-man MBT, from any Faction is half the threat of a 2-Man MBT, able to threatened by vehicles, and coordinated infantry.
It takes having dedicated AI to make that difficult.
A Solo-Manned Liberator however, is already equal to the 2-Man MBT in firepower, with spades of agility.

Air is the literal perfect example of Lone-Wolves.
Any solo vehicle on the Ground, is at danger when engaging near any target.
Aircraft however, when operated solo, without any Coordination or communication, are expected & easily operated Alone, in Enemy Territory as casually as in Friendly lands;

Their counter is numerous coordinated infantry strikes, Dedicated 450 Nanite Maxes, and Dedicated 350 Nanite Priced AA Lighting-Tanks.
A Lone wolf Aircraft, demands coordination from opponents, but Requires none for operation.
Nor does Air require specialization to engage target types, like Armor or infantry, in a practical sense.
Every ESF Nose-Gun, can damage armor, while the AI even has effective splash per round, at high RPM.
ESFs also have access to AOE rockets, which also damage armor.

Liberators, have even more brutal options.
But the most used Aircraft is the ESF; Which is a single-man 2-weapon aircraft.

For a Vehicle that demands teamwork & Coordination from the Enemy, It's a bit ironic, that Air can operate without even talking to each other, while engaging Entire groups.

As if you ever noticed, that if a second ESF pilot were to coordinate with the first pilot, you could kill Dedicated AA pretty quick.
Or you know, not hover like Turrets in the air.
IE, planned attacks, Teamwork, Coordination.

IE, The actual capability of air, is pretty Vast.
And the entire ground has to specialize, and coordinate, to take on the Lone-Wolves that can't communicate with allies.
Imagine trying to engage Pilots that speak to one third, of what is needed to Coordinate fire on a lone-bird in a Blue sky, that is announcing its entire presence with Loud rockets while sitting perfectly still.
--

If the Aircraft, which picks their engagement & path, stays in the field of fire of AA, that is called a very idiotic pilot.
Given that if that was a Tank, they'd be doing the equivalent of running into an open field surrounded by Guard-Towers easily reached by Heavy-Assaults with Rocket-Launchers, then not leaving after the next 2 hits, waiting till half dead before considering repairs.

Mean-while, Air stays in the field of explosions for longer than they should or need to, with Pushing their Luck too far, and lack of planning, leading to more deaths than any action of the AA crews.

Totally agree. Air has a small impact in the grand scheme of things and AA is effective at keeping them from doing work. If you can't fight them off then you are bad!

I've contemplated the problem and I've come to the following conclusion:
1. Air is OP. ESFs in particular, Liberators too. Galaxies are also secretly OP but tend to lack the firepower to really influence the battlefield as something other than spawn points. The only true counter to air is other air, and the only true counter to ESFs is other ESFs. This is the textbook definition of how you find something OP. Anyone disputing that air as a whole is OP whatsoever should be put on ignore, no questions asked. Same goes for people who argue that "Deterrance" somehow shouldn't mean "Killing dead".

1.1 One caveat: Valkyries are actually fine with regards to ground. After all the nerfs to their self-rep, their huge frame, and comparatively sluggish movement means you usually don't even need any form of dedicated AA at all to remove them. If redesigning air with more detail, Valkyries should be viewed as the baseline air vehicle.

2. The main reason for the air OPness is twofold, first, that air has almost always the initiative due to their mobility. Air gets to pick their fights. Anyone arguing "Rock paper scissors" should take to heart that doesn't work when one part always gets to choose when to fight. ESFs and Liberators in particular can accidentally run into sizable AA, and still escape with the magic of turbo. No vehicle that is at a disadvantage to an ESF (i.e. all ground vehicles) can usually escape, unless there's like an amp station or tech plant with intact shields nearby. This means ground with and without AA is always running the danger of getting murdered by air. ESFs are never at the danger of being murdered by AA, as they can always escape until that critical zerg AA mass is reached.

3. Secondly, for some reason, weapons that are attached to aircraft magically are much better than weapons attached to ground based vehicles, when any sense and logic and realism should dictate the reverse. Imagine merely if the skyguard had the same gun as the default ESF noseguns. It would immediately be the most OP ground vehicle. But instead, the skyguard has a fraction of the DPS against both air and ground, and is inaccurate as hell. Realistically, any weapon you can put on an aircraft, you can put a bigger, better version of that weapon, with much bigger muntions reserves, on a ground vehicle, because you are less constrained by weight and balance issues. If you balance gun performance around the fact that you can't aim a fixed gun as well as a turreted, but then ignore to balance that this gun can be 2 hexes over in about 0.5 seconds, you're doing it wrong. Especially if you then add a much better tank gun than any tank has that can be mouse-aimed anyways.

4. The problem of giant zergs becoming massive AA fields is actually result of AA being ineffective. If there are only a few pieces of AA, because air is OP, they will quickly dispatch them and proceed to wipe out the remaining non-AA ground forces, because G2A is bad and air is OP. Zergs have learned that basically every sunderer and every 2nd or 3rd tank needs to be an AA vehicle if they do not want to get farmed by air. But this means conversely, that if AA becomes significantly more effective, then there is no point for literally everyone to bring AA anymore, because a few pieces of AA are perfectly capable of keeping the skies clear, and more AA will just have nothing to do. What I am saying is that with regards to mass long range plinking, this is precisely a result of weak AA. A stronger AA will find a new equilibrium of fewer pieces of AA, so the long range plinking will remain the same level of threat, because the equilibrium the zerg equips itself with AA with, is based around removing any nearby air threats efficiently. Zergers will fight until they get killed by air, in which case they will pull AA. In the case of ineffective AA, this simply means that when attacked by air, the zerg will naturally equip itself with AA until everybody has AA. If nobody dies to air, then nobody has a reason to pull anti-air. Why would you **** yourself in your attempts at fighting ground targets when there's enough AA around to keep the enemy air from bothering you?

5. Sunderers are in a bad spot. They are actually the most important AA unit in the game, but they are woefully ineffective at this and every other job they have, especially given their limitations. A Godsaw is a better AA gun than a Sunderers Basilisks, for starters. A fully 3-crewed, deployed shield sundy with specialized AA guns may be able to keep a competent 1/3-crewed liberator or ESF away - but not 2 ESFs or a 2/3-crewed liberator. That is an absurd imbalance. CAI and the improvements to the light assault class have made the balance between armor and infantry much more even, allowing infantry to bully armor into retreat instead of getting HE farmed until they pull their own vehicles. But Sunderers got nothing, instead, everything about them got nerfed, and nerfed by proxy (because most other things got buffed) Say that again: The most important unit in the game that enables infantry fights in the first place, cannot defend itself against even ineptly driven other armor, much less air, and are weaker than ever to infantry, due to the apparent gameplay concept that sunderers must suck and I guess infantry fights should just happen by magic and its your own damn fault for pulling a sunderer, because anyone can pull literally any other vehicle short of a flash and be heads and toes at an advantage against a sunderer. This while the Sunderer is the slowest vehicle in the game even when not deployed that can not ever truly pick its fights.

6. If Planetside 2 wants to live, then Air needs to die. When I ask people who tried the F2P game ages ago why they stopped playing the game early about what made them quit, it's never the weak gunplay or the lag or what else you have, it's most often the fact that they couldn't do **** to stop air farmers even when they had acquired and pulled AA. (Second are accusations of P2W, and followed by MAXes, which are their own BS) Air being OP is the biggest hindrance to new player retention. If air wasn't as OP, PS2 would have more players, and a much better reputation. So this Air being OP thing is not a minor cosmetic issue, it is actually an existential threat to the economic performance - and thus the continued existence of the game. The game needs new players to actually keep playing the game and spend money on it, not give up frustrated after they find their newly unlocked G2A lockon or skyguard just gets them farmed even harder by the air.

CAI rebalanced infantry vs tanks nicely, but the Rocklet rifle has not altered the infantry vs air dynamic. Maybe it is time to revisit this and have infantry be actually good vs air. Air lockons are so worthless that most A3G infantry farmers still aren't equipping flares. The first thought may be to straight up double the damage of all G2A lockons and armor-based AA against ESFs and liberators. Or more sensibly, halve the hitpoints of ESFs and Liberators. But the "great equalizer" in the infantry vs armor dynamic has always been C4. Maybe there should be a similar anti air item, costing nanites, useable by all classes that can use C4, but reliably removing air threats. Maybe an EMP projectile that disables a vehicle for 10 seconds, and in the case of aircraft, causing them to go ballistic and crash into the ground while doing not much else to tanks? But my prediction is that everybody hates air farmers so incredibly much, that even if you make the thing cost 500 nanites, as long as it reliably removes all the air, everybody will get it ASAP, and air will be a thing of the past.

To reiterate:
- Air is OP (Except valkyries)
- Air is too tough for how mobile it is
- Air is too devastating compared to its counters
- Better AA means less AA, paradoxically solving the "mega zerg AA" problem
- Sunderers need un-nerfing
- Cut ESF and liberator HP in half and bring their weapon systems in line with ground based weapon. Remove liberator and galaxys small arms invulnerability.
- If Planetside 2 wants to live, Air needs to die.

Flak needs a buff, same for the walker, and lockons.

never mind

Enough of this garbage, BigG, post your character.

It really sounds like you need to just play an infantry only game.

Gonna take umbrage with 5 and 6 points in particular. The other points I don't feel really bring anything new to the table and have already been debated elsewhere.

5: Sundies ARE fine. You can get two rangers on the suckers to take care of air coming in. If you're paying attention to air threats with it, it can kill them. Solo sundies should not be tanks. Reasoning is that a lot of us have encountered the repair sundy train by now. Get a few of these together and even dedicated anti-armor vehicles have trouble removing them. More so when they're in particularly tricky spots and it becomes darned near impossible for infantry. The battle bus is a thing too. Don't underestimate that basilisk.

6: Combined arms. It's the sole reason I play this game anymore due to no other game coming close to doing what it does. For all the problems it does have, there's not one other game that comes close. You remove that, I'm willing to bet a lot of folks will migrate away to other games. Arena's gonna be a very real test of that apparently so watch it.

Having gotten several friends into the game I've seen a variety of thoughts on PS2. Auto-deploy putting them into a lopsided fight right from their first deployment. Slow-ish grind to weapons which most can come to terms with when they realize the strength of the default guns. Fact that they're up against folks that have played the game since release and are taking them to town. "What the **** is up with the purple dude's weaponry?!" has come up more than once. And mostly hit detection which runs the gambit of vets murdering them to hackusations and even some legit hacking.

Rarely was air called into question except to ask why tanks can't aim higher at them. I've seen air doing work before, but rarely on the unimpeded scale I keep hearing called out here. I still see a large number of them get shot out of the sky, but there is an exception.

Repair Galaxy artillery train. Seen UPS on Emerald running this a few times in the past week. Super coordinated assault as they were obviously calling very specific targets and concentrating fire on individual targets one at a time. But I watched'em walk over the battlefield without much hitting back at them. Angled my harasser up with the gate keeper to get them to reconsider staying too long, but mostly they stood outside of reach. I consider that a problem with having a repair gal above all else, but that coordinated use would be hard pressed to be stopped by much else than a coordinated air assault which never came.

No, no, no. Noooo. Nope. No. They are not fine. "Solo sundies should not be tanks" - What does that even mean? Should tanks be tanks? You do realize the sundy is tankier than a tank, it is also slower and has piss weak weapons (especially at range). That repair sundy train? I invented that. And yeah, its fun to farm clueless lightnings when you have a team of 6+ highly coordinated people doing it. That's how you "Battle Sundy" in 2018 because Blockade armor is trash now. But guess what, a single competently driven 2/2 MBT will absolutely destroy a small sundy train like that. If you think it doesnt, you suck at tanking.

Oh yeah, a dual ranger sundy will absolutely keep an ESFs away, so it only takes 3 people, coordination, and a bajillion certs to defeat a single guy, wow such balance. A competently flown Liberator or multiple AV ESFs will murder it still. In between the element of surprise (Stealth vs relatively fixed location), CAS30 + facetanking, or vertically skydancing hornet ESFs - that ends with a dead sundy. The problem here is not the sundy, it is the airs overall DPS+Tankage combination. The problem with the sundy is that with the 40th nerf to the fury and the 90th nerf to the basilisk, the sundy now has no decent AV weapons, and is essentially forced into AA/AI. And then we're back at the AA problem, which is always that G2A must not anger the sky gods and be ineffectual and impotent, while somehow air has all the highest DPS weapons, and yet still is as tanky as an MBT in many respects.

With regards to your "combined arms" - Air needs to die for Planetside to live. Not get removed. But the flyboys have to die like flies. There is a place for air, but as it is right now is as it has almost always been, air is so OP, only dramatic changes to the balance of the game can fix it. With a new balance will come a new dynamic.

I'm hard pressed to comment on your repair gal experience because I did call for a substantial nerf to gals. What else do you want from me? You think removing their small arms immunity wouldn't change much? Look, you're not supposed to single handedly defeat what requires platoon levels of coordination. But without small arms immunity, an infantry platoon caught / besieged by a galaxy train can put substantial pressure on them, instead of getting farmed while waiting for friendly air to show up. In between Ambusher Jets and Rocklet rifles, CAI allowed a bunch of light assaults to rout MBT zergs. Which, in the case of ground forces, is a substantial result, and I believe this is overall a good change to the game. But the air vs ground game is still the same it ever was. And that's why I want some substantial changes to the air.

I... think everyone created the repair sundy train...? Saw multiple when that first hit. But you claim what you want I suppose. It wasn't a tall leap in logic to think "auto repair + group = wowee" really.

Also, does it not take ESFs some cert dumping to get to where they can "effortlessly" kill said sundy? I don't think the pods or guided rockets come standard. Likewise the survivability options don't come standard either. You also get "free" DPS outa folks spawning on said sundy. It shouldn't take on tanks, but it can and I often see sundies pushing tankers. Haphazardly, yes, but any fight I've seen has had just as many sundies pushing the lines as tanks. Also, again, do not underestimate that basilisk. Seen it do plenty of good work, just don't expect to trade blows with tanks.

Dismissing the slower than tanks and tankier bits cause... Wat?

Also watched many a sundy train push back tanks. Seen'em ambush and kill a few at a time even. It really depends on the numbers brought there. As some folks have said a lightning can be man-handled by three infantry, I've seen lightnings murder groups of infantry. Scenario heavy.

I'll also not comment on the last bit cause... Again, wat?

As for the second to last bit. Every argument I see against ESF seems to want to negate their role entirely. How can it function if it's knocked out of the sky effortlessly? Most people killed by them are putting themselves in the crosshairs repeatedly instead of being smarter with their spawns and cover. If you relegate it into uselessness it will be getting rid of air. It's in the air, you can usually see'em coming from decently far away and hear'em besides, and they do die to AAA. Libs are the tankier problem, sure, but they die all the same if you've given yourself time to line them up as they approach rather than giving them a nice wall to pop over and deliver their ordinance before ducking behind.

No. What you saw, with your untrained, untanking eyes, were TANKS pushing other tanks, because the TANKS were supported by a rep sundy train. And if you see rep sundies actually spearheading the group in such a situation, that's probably me, while angrily shouting in proxy chat about how the MBTs should goddamn push already. MBTs like hiding behind the repair sundies when they're getting hit, even though they're usually getting repaired by multiple sources at that point, and from the front, MBTs are still tougher than a sundy and should really really form the front line, shielding the sundies from being hit.

But no, a sundy train cannot push a tank line unless the sundy train is merely part of its own tank line. And I could educate you on the limitations of how Sundies would "ambush" tanks and you'd never in your life lose a tank to a sundy again.

It is outperformed in DPS against tanks by the Godsaw. Nuff said.

Here I'll paraphrase some things you said in the last paragraph:

You're very obviously not a tanker. Let me tell you some things as a tanker: When you're on the ground, you're not always able to choose where you fight, quite the contrary actually. So what ground needs is the ability to overpower anything else pound for pound. It requires that to function, because unlike infantry, which can just redeployside to the other end of the map, or air, which can fly there in about the same time, Ground is committed to where they are. If air is able to remove even competent AA-protected ground units while remaining nanite- and manpower-efficient, that is a massive balance problem.

The moment you start quoting things I didn't say, we're done.