No role for air

Really Guys?

Do we play same game? Walker Sundy owns M20 Sundy easy, and isn`t a walker not an AA weapon?
A walker Sundy owns Lightning and with a good Team it owns an MBT...
i Play it, and Walker Sundy is one of the strongest ground Vihecle with a good Team vs Air and vs Groundunits.
If you don`t belive it, you don`t play this game really.


Ya the fakt is Air is **** in this game now, and AA Vihecles own very hard Air and Ground units.

Inability to imagine something does not mean that thing does not exist.

Hey guys, first post. Long time PS1 vet, started PS2 only a few months back, but this is a simple take being over complicated.
Having played both sides of this. My takes on this is as follows:

Yes flak is a deterrence and not normally a lethal obstacle on its own to air. However when you couple flak with additional flak and/or lockon (we can also add vehicle AV shooting air to this), air survivability % drops significantly while said infantry or vehicles will remain untouched. This is what OP is referring to in big fights, air presence becoming Non existent due to the created no fly zone.

This is a cause and effect scenario that was created by devs who made all of these weapons on both sides (air and AA). ESF A2G weapons were not something really needed in this game, tell me what purpose do they really serve that couldn't be fulfilled by other aircraft namely your liberator. Rather than having certain roles, every aircraft is able to cover every role from transport, infantry farming, vehicle farming, air 2 air compatibility. This over the top versatility led to ground having to cover their ***** from every piece of air that flew their way, which is why you have so many options for air deterrence. PS2 should have taken a page from PS1 here and benefitted from the simplicity of dedicated sources to AA. There was skyguard, base AA, empire unique AA Max, and infantry shooting you (Phoenix, lancer, Stryker, deci) that was basically it. Also aircraft could not instant kill infantry in .001 seconds when they stepped out of the spawn room. It took good aim to take down infantry whereas ESF can do it at ease in this game.

TL;DR Giving every Vehicle the options to fulfill every role removed specialization and teamwork. Paved the way for what is too many sources of AA in the game, leading To OPs point of air becoming obsolete and not having a role in big fights. Simplicity is sometimes best. Yes Planetside is an MMOFPS, and war is chaos, I get that. However, one vehicle should not be able to satisfy every role in the game. Inb4 someone says prowlers aren't spawn points though.

ESF aren't the reason we have such terrible AA, it's Liberators, Gals, and Valks. ESF have had their range nerfed to the ground. Flak/Walkers have to be effective past 450 meters, creating huge no-fly zones, not because of ESF, but because Libs Shred from 1,100m, and Gals and Valks drop troops from the flight ceiling. It's fair to say you should counter Gals/Valks at the flight ceiling with your own aircraft, as they don't directly hurt anyone on the ground. But flight ceiling Libs would be devistating without effective long range AA. I'm quicker to point the blame to them, at least in the game's current state. Imagine if Libs had an effective max range of 450 meters. Then Flak could be tuned down to that range as well. That change alone would 1/4 the volume of AA that aircraft have to deal with, letting aircraft mingle in fights, which in turn could let those AA units be buffed to killing machines. It's a quick and easy band aid.

Aye, A2G ESF was just an example Not the sole reason of course. Flight ceiling libs were devastating in PS1 as well, but easily countered by a couple aircraft going up for a fight. AA had difficulty reaching flight ceiling libs and that's how it should especially if they are on the move.

Point is that not every vehicle needs to have AA. And not every aircraft should be just as capable of killing infantry as they can aircraft and other vehicles.

Final point. If a lib is killing you at render distance, you should probably do something different.
Most weapons they operate you need to be close enough to effectively kill targets with.
Duster up close
Zephyr relatively close but pretty useless anyway
Dalton- has the range but all the target has to do from far away is move to make life difficult. The majority of dalton users have trouble hitting moving targets while at any range.
Shredder- more forgiving due to rate of fire, but still if a flight ceiling shredder is your major worry then life isn't that bad. I don't see the need for
Over saturation of aA to account for this.

Gals and Valks: let em drop on point and get farmed more kills and xp is always welcome

Having a vehicle be near immortal unless attacked by another vehicle in the same class, while it engages & kills others..
Is not a fun experience.
This is why Pilots complain about spawn-room AA maxes - Yet for a Liberator, it's fine?

Every vehicle isn't packed with Anti-air.
It chose AA over another weapon system; Given when Air attacks, you can't re-supply, and You also can't pick that fight usually.
People in prep for being first-striked by air, or dealing with hostile air locally, tend to like the ability to run a gun made for it.
Just like ESFs, can equip AA, or AI Nose-guns, and liberators can pack Tank-Busters.
Except, that ground vehicle just lost all practical capability against other vehicles & even infantry.

The over-saturation, is from those Vehicles all picking exclusively anti-air weaponry, at the sacrifice of being ineffective at self-defense against anything on the ground, with limited effectiveness at anti-air, without sheer amassing.

Flak is a deterrent, that is incredibly hard to avoid, but deals bare min damage; Skill barely affects this weapon.
So it's hard to dodge, but is incredibly ineffective; this is stacked by en-massing the flak, which given its lack of skill-requirements, and lack of skill-rewards, in order to get a decent result, the DOT effect of Flak is amplified hard by 11.

Which in turn means, Flak is either a joke, or a near instant death for pilots.

What Aircraft exactly, is lacking an Anti-ground weapon, or an infantry-murder gun?

If a gun is the only option to engage a target, it will be used.
If a gun is only capable of actually killing the target, so it stops murdering allies, when said gun has 4-9 brothers, It will be used in groups, to function.
If a gun has an AOE, with piss-poor damage, but is incredibly hard to dodge; This effect stacks up in groups, as no cap.

It's saturated to hell, as without that saturation, Air kinda refuses to even stop shooting.
Let alone die, unlike Vehicles which when you fire AV-specialized weapons, you have to aim, and you get rewarded, possibly with their death.
Air, You pay a specialization price, and due to how flak is designed: you need multiple people. And it's not fun to use.
When Flak finally works, It is not fun for pilots, as they go from chip-damage to near-instantly-dead from the flak-storm.

Point is: Anti-Air is too specialized, and focused on deterrence with hard-to-miss-Explosion-Clouds & Low-Damage.
Which means, the weapon type feels bad for both sides, and stacks horridly, as Skill isn't a factor nor rewarded. Just spam.
So we have Tons of Flak guns aimed at the sky, so we have a break from Air Gun-Turrets.


If we can't fix flak, to be not a horrid mess.
I rather we Go with Adam's idea.
Oh, and not basically render G2A more specialized, so we can still be stuck with crap Flak, but be unable to even arm ourselves unless we picked the right vehicle to be attacked by an ESF crossing the map inside 3 seconds.

Libs are supposed to counter ground vehicles.

Combined arms means that if a lib is killing all of your vehicles then you need to call in some ESF to take care of the lib.

This gives a role to air.

Currently the meta i see a lot is to run rangers on solo mbt. Drive around killing everything with the main gun and if air attempts to stop your reign of terror then you just switch seats and bam you are AA. No need to even bother with the highly overpowered skyguard.

Or you run a ranger on your solo ant and when air attempts to kill you to stop your base building just switch seats and bam you are an AA platform.

Or you pull a harasser and drive it to the top of a big hill where other vehicles cant reach you and switch seats and bam AA platform.

If a lib is killing your vehicles and you call in ESF what happens is the lib IMMEDIATELY has to stop attacking ground and try to deal with to ESF.

The same goes for A2G esf. If im flying an A2A esf and i see a ground pounding ESF i typically will kill it as it hovers before it can react.

For some reason people say air cant counter air, but the same people will tell you that you need a tank to kill AA vehicles.

Air engages Ground; Ground can not disengage.
Ground engages Air: Air can disengage at will.

Air Unit: Always able to return fire. Ample AV, AI options, for all aircraft. Works against any target, with efficiency drop.
Ground Unit: Anti-Air is specialized weaponry. Ability to engage other targets is impaired massively, or near impossible.

If an Enemy Liberator is the counter to all ground units, and the solution is ESFs:
Then control of the Air, is the only thing that matters.
As with Air, you have Liberators, and with Air, you have the ESFs.
This means, Pilots are more important than any vehicle: As control of the Sky controls the decimation of tanks, and protection of the units doing it.
This is why, Liberators should not only be countered by Enemy ESFs, whom are encouraged to massacre enemy infantry instead of patrol allied hexes to defend allies from Hostile Liberators.
How often are your Fellow Pilots, not harassing enemy lines, or as far from Allies as possible?
If ground is to rely on ESFS to be what kills & saves them, ESFs can't be encouraged to be Ground-pounders.

Pilots, are not forced into an engagement against a faster enemy, At worst, its an equal-speed aircraft.

Tanks can be killed by Infantry, by Aircraft, by other vehicles, and other Tanks.
Anti-Armor weapons , are universally effective, and reliably work; Skill allows greater results, and they actually kill.
Without absurd numbers of them being fired at once, by entire groups onto an isolated target.

Anti-Air is however, expecting entire groups firing on isolated targets to give results past "Target Survived & is prowling around near intact, with all nanites, all kill-streak bonuses"

You can't expect Liberators, to be countered solely or near solely by ESFs.
When ESFs aren't forced into an A-2-A role, Why exactly is anyone land-bound to do?
Pray a Pilot, stops farming or attacking enemy lattice points & troops 3 hexes away?
Pray the Faster & stronger Liberator doesn't attack?
Pray for a ******* ESF Pilot to engage a Liberator? As if Allied Pilots patrolling the fronts, in A2A duty is common..

How many tank drivers, and infantry are dead, incapable of action, or even defense, waiting for the ESF?
Whom, if engaged by anything, is never without options.
No 450 nanite tank is escaping a Liberator without terrain blessing.
The fact that people fly 1-man Liberators, and aren't getting **** results, says it all.
As that means, Allied ESFs are not preventing a 1-man vehicle from working: But 1-man MBTs? yeah, those are dead.

This is a problem I agree. However, lolpods do not have this limit so use them plus ESFs now have the Wyrm too The problem is that tanks can OHK ESFs that hover to do Anti-vehicle damage. Make it a 2 HK instead at beyond 300m.

That's unacceptable, at least in PS2 as we know it. You've mentioned how air has no role in base fights. This makes an attached air squad pointless. How are you supposed to "call in some ESF"? Call the air squad on command chat for a flight ceiling Lib? I could count how many times that was an option on one hand after 3 years of playing. Have ESF on standby doing nothing while infantry fights? Don't get me wrong, I'd love for this game to be more comolex, but PS2 simply isn't built for joint operations between infantry, armor and air. Sadly. The only way vehicles will ever have value besides farming infantry, is if the space between and around bases is valuable. Hybrid Hex for the win.

The only current role for all vehicles is in attacking sunderers, protecting allied sunderers, attacking PMBs, protecting PMBs, the what 2-3 vehicle control point per map, and spawn suppression.

Infantry can capture those anyway. It's way easier to cap crown one as a LA than pulling a defender vehicle.

Didnt you say you dont play ps2 anymore?

Libs are intended to kill ground vehicles.

You dont need to keep an air squad on standby if you have a menu which people can opt to be listed on which would be a list of pilots willing to do a2a.

And the whole point is that you HAVE to have air support.

If your enemy pulls air and you are too lazy or stupid to also pull air, you lose your vehicles.

Currently the only counter to vehicles is vehicles. and if you dont have an equal number there is NO counter.

This means vehicles surround bases. Often times solo ants and sundies with kobalts, along with lots of tanks, and they just farm.

No way to counter them.

No one is saying that libs should just farm infantry, at least im not.

But there needs to be a role for air. To say otherwise makes no sense.

You have to be within200 meters or less to kill infantry with ESF and infantry have plenty of ways to prevent that.

Yesterday i tried to kill some ground pounders who were taking one of our bases with a banshee and rocket pods. They didnt have any flak, just infantry. By the time they rendered i was dead. I tried again, same result. I got 1 infantry on the second run and then i died. So i pulled 2 ESF and got one kill.

I'm not great at ground pounding, i rarely do it, but the point is infantry are more than capable of defending themselves vs ESF.

The same thing goes for tanks vs ESF. Even when im doing A2A if i fly too low some expert tanker shoots me down with ohk tank rounds. At times i try to hornet them and many times if i dont die instantly to flak and locks i get ohk by the tank im trying to hornet.

So to give air a role isnt going to kill the game. If we had a role then you wouldnt have a hard time finding friendly air to help you defend against air.

Remember combined arms.

So, if they don't pull Air, they die to air?
If they pull vehicles, they die to air? If they pull infantry, they Die to Air? If they pull air, they live?
So your role, is anti-vehicle, and anti-air: What exactly would convince you to pull land vehicles?

Opt-in Menu:
Yay, I get to be reliant on an A2A pilot blessing the battlefield to attack a Liberator while said Liberator wipes the floor of vehicles & infantry, with a 200-300 miles-per-hour velocity.. waiting for an ESF Angel to begin attacking it.
And if it doesn't come; That Liberator gets a free farm of nanite vehicles, infantry, and anything else.

What motivates that ESF to attack the Liberator across the map, Over squishy infantry for quick certs?
Oh the opt-in? Hope that's never empty: Which to encourage, Likely means you're gonna suggest we essentially pay Pilots to kill Liberators.

Counters to Vehicles:

• AV Vehicles
• AV Maxes
• Tank-mines
• C-4
• Heavy-Assaults
• Light-Assaults
• AV Turrets
• Engineer AV Turrets
• Anti-Material-Rifles (Archer)
• Terrain

Hell, God-Saws & Spiker pistols.
When a vehicle engages, there is actually a lot of possible tools that work.
When a vehicle engages, it's not a surprise attack with a rapid TTK from near any angle, with the ability to invalidate any cover past a solid enclosed building.

If a Harasser rolls up, It had terrain to deal with, and you can even have some tank mines.
If an MBT rolls up, cover actually works, and AV options not only are plentiful, but can kill the thing reliably.
You didn't just sacrifice 50-70% of your firing angle, nor most of your damage, nor have any aiming skill invalidated.
You have an AV weapon, and it can kill the target, which Isn't typically able to boost across a Hex in an instant.

Air engages: You can not use cover as a vehicle.
It can pick the fight.
Good luck calling into any channel for Any sod to scare off something able to formally 1-burst an MBT.


An MBT is in the rear lines: It dies, as a 2-man: As if it engages a larger force, it lacks the acceleration to escape all AV threats.
1-man: Fodder. As it doesn't have the top-gun which is half the tank's firepower.
The fact of the Top-gun being a deciding factor between "viable" , and killed casually , discourages 1-man MBTs past sheer zergs.

Liberators, are viable at 1-of-3 pilots.

If we went with your notion:
What does Air need of ground forces?
Ground needs ESFs to kill Liberators: Liberator maul the ground units. ESF can also kill ground units.

Your ESF is able to target any threat, it's not a Specialized Anti-air unit
Your opt-in, means we have to encourage Pilots to even make it work:
And if it did work: We have ground forces reliant on being delivered from death, strictly on having an ESF willing to attack another Pilot.


Allied ESFs are rarely on the allied fronts
They rarely speak to anyone on the ground.
I'm meant to signal for a Pilot to grace me, from a Liberator's farm?
Skynights are able to have TRUCES BETWEEN EMPIRES, and I'm meant to rely on a Pilot to handle an Air-based threat.
With said Pilot, only needing to care about Enemy Aircraft, and Enemy Aircraft: That's the Liberator pilot.

If Ground has no reliable means to kill air:
Ground is reliant on Air.
Air is reliant on Air.

It's the same notion when People demand Infantry be "combined-arms" with tanks, Whom they expect to dictate if they die or live.
Tank arrives, Infantry presence means nothing; Same goes with Relying on ESFs to save Ground from Air.
It's Air vs Air, with the only time land isn't farmed by air, due to air attacking air.

Rather not have the Sky-Gods Bless & proclaim further about the battlefield.
I rather fire my Archer round into the cockpit of a boosting ESF, and the man dying to it.
Rather than, I call up an ESF, pray he answers my Praising of their flame, and holy power, to save me from the Evil Thunder-God that is his rival.

Or in reality; Pray the pilot trying to farm the entire hex, isn't a ******* buddy of the only ESF pilot nearby.
As then, all of us are ******. Unless we can fly Just as damn perfectly as that aircraft.
Whom I bet, Wouldn't be as willing to duel in tanks or infantry, But will demand an Flight-Duel for scratching their paint.


We can not have, Air be the solution to Air.
As then what exactly is the point of anything else? Air destroys land, Air Destroys Air.
God-Complex comes up, whenever I see a "duel" demand, by Aircraft.

Yeah, I started playing less and less after CAI. Once air was almost entirely removed from meta, I slowly gave up on PS2. My point is that this game's natural progression was towards infantryside. Control points are for infantry, inside bases, isolated from vehicles. As long as the only point of this game is infantry on point, vehicles will be useless unless they can affect that point, by farming. 99% of players are infantry, so of course they're catered to.

My point is that any meaningful change to air/armor/infantry balance in current PS2 has to revolve around putting pressure on a capture point, or that change won't affect the meta. And since infantry will be catered to, the only hope for vehicles is a fundamental change to the flow of battle. Basically, for vehicles to ever have a meaningful role, redeployside has to go, there has to be fighting between bases, and there has to be fighting outside of bases while the infantry fight is going on, not this dumping of vehicles once you get to the next fight. I'm not convinced there can ever be a happy point where vehicles can fight on points without either being useless or overpowering infantry. So while I'm interested in AA/air balance, it's a rather pointless argument.

redeployside has jack to do with it ..
the core problem of PS 2 is that vehicles and air wipe infantry outside of bases ... vehicles and air do not need the help of infantry however infantry need the help of vehicles and air .. infantry outside of capturepoints has no role and that is why infantry is isolated with buildings and walls .. that is why vehicls can´t enter bases ... that is also why people dislike hossin cause vehicle players have a thougher time to farm infantry in outside areas of that map aside from how hossin´s bases are build ..

infantry should have a degree of AV across classes and vehicles should be the cover outside of bases ..
and outside terrain needs to support that ..

Redeployside has everything to do with it. All meaningful fights are at bases. You don't need vehicles to go from base to base. Worst case is you'll have to pull a gal to bypass enemy armor that does want to stop you. With beacons and routers you don't even need Sunderers. To fix all of this, and give vehicles a role outside of farming spawnrooms, we need to be forced to fight over open territory in between and around bases, not just hop skip from one fight to the next. We need persistent fronts on every lattice.

I hate to do this to you Silkens, but your own actions and your words here completely invalidate your argument. Most of the time I find you you're over NC/VS fights looking for cheap, easy kills. For example, just the other night I was part of an infantry group trying to hold off some encroaching vanu. The VS had two PPA scythes plastering anything that even thought about stepping out of spawn, and so I pulled a reaver from the next base over to chase them off. Instead, I line up on the first one and immediately start getting shredded by a mozzy (you) from above. I believe your exact words were "I'm here to kill reavers. Come fight me. It's fun."

You claim you want air to have a role, well guess what. It does. It's just not a "farm everything" platform like you want it to be, and that's a good thing. I mean seriously. Think for a second about what would happen if you had your way and the changes you suggested went live this very moment. What would counter A2G? Vehicles? Nope. A2G farmers could just sit up outside of AA range and farm with one hand. We already see that with libs, lolpods, and banshee/PPA (Airhammer does little beyond annoy infantry at range). Infantry wouldn't be able to counter air either. And pulling air to fight air is a joke and you know it. There are too many veteran pilots, all of whom would never leave the skies if anything you've suggested here went live. Any ESF that tried to make a run at the A2G farmers would be cut to shreds before he even got within render distance of said A2G. And libs remain the most unbalanced thing in the game. Get a halfway decent crew in a lib and they're unkillable without mass AA, which I might add has been nerfed so hard against libs that you might as well just pull demo pouch engie and use those four c4 bricks to blow yourself up rather than pulling a skyguard or ranger against a lib. It'd be a far better use of the nanites and doesn't give the easymode lib crews any extra padding on their precious stats. If your suggestions went live then there would be literally zero chance for an infantry fight to exist while a lib was in the area. Air would control fights even more than it does now, and I'm sorry but I don't see that as fun. Not unless they're going to add a poker minigame to the spawn rooms so we can have something to do while we wait for the holy and revered skyknights to have had their fill and move on, allowing us to play the game as well only in their absence.

And before you try it, yes I fly. I was never on your level and I don't fly much anymore since the NC rarely does anything even resembling coordinated on Connery and I prefer to fly in support of ground forces, chasing off A2G farmers and such, but I do fly.

I can tell you why there are no planes at huge battles. "Most" (not all) pilots got a cowardly nature and they avoid getting shot at. Why I know that? Because I was a dedicated Skyguard driver shooting pretty accurate at ESFs and Bombers. Not that I made a lot kills with the nerfed Skyguard, but the most pilots flew off to another infantry farming ground and came never back to the battles. Only a few pilots even tried to attack the Skyguard or other things on the battlefield and only very very few pilots are good and coldblooded enough to stay on the battlefield and do their thing.
And ONLY very good Bomber crews made successful and repeating runs against tanks.

It is possible to stay alive and successful on the battlefield with ESFs and bombers, but with the cowardly nature of most pilots, they never gain the skills of a good pilot, who learned by his mistakes in huge battles and still came back to improve his flying skills over and over again. Well, I guess its easier to farm infantry at safer spots somewhere on the map... but you'll never learn how to become a good pilot.

so everyone and their mother pulls a tank, sunderer and or flash to get to the next base, any other infantryplayer that dares be on foot for a long enough moment get's wiped just to respawn at the last base to repeat the whole process again, cause that's fun ... ... no if you want vehicles to have more play than more pmb's with outside capturepoints are required ...
or as i mentioned give infantry the ability to fight vehicles so bases can be opened up cause then infantry wouldn't have to constantly hide in bases ... if you force infantry outside as they are now they would just be turned to mincemeat over and over ... otherwise it's pull a vehicle, get killed, pull maybe another vehicle to get killed again just then have to wait minutes before you can pull another one to repeat that proccess ...