A "slight" problem regarding Air (yes, I know)

hey dude, nice to see you around, I thought you left


The main problem we have with air is how easily it can switch for farming air, to infantry, to vehicles, with no G2A counters. "AA" in it's current state might scare away newer players, but it's not a real counter to air.


The decimator is my go to fly swatter, but even that doesn't always do the job, because it's not always a 1hk, and it's obviously very easy to doge for any pilot that is paying attention.


AP tanks are nice, but need something to angle themselves to actually be able to aim at the aircraft, which itself can easily maneuver to avoid the tank's turret angle of elevation.

In short, air can pretty much out-dps everything, and stay highly agile/mobile while doing so.

I also consider the bastion to be air.

Air is not the only thing broken in this game, but you gotta admit the only counter to air for quite some time now has been to pull air yourself.

ESFs cost 350 nanites, Skyguards cost 350 nanites. I'd put my money any day on 10 skyguards vs 40 ESFs.

Sounds like counters are working to me.

here's 2 really great players in skyguards against 4 really great guys in air. You'll notice that the air rarely wins the engagements, even when coordinating on voice comms, even factoring in some of the best pilots in the game. Skyguards scale exponentially, especially when the air isn't as coordinated as these guys are. 2 Skyguards beats 4 ESFs, 3 skyguards craps on 8 ESFs, 4-5 skyguards could wipe out a full squad of ESFs. These guys are in the open, no cover, against pilots who have thousands and thousands of hours flying.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyX2ipS4sXc

If people put the same effort into solving their problems as they did complaining there would be a lot less things to complain about, but that's probably self defeating. You're here to cry and enjoy the tears of fellow people who would rather cry than solve problems. If you ever ran out of stuff to cry about you'd just cry about having nothing to cry about.

so for those of you who don't know i'm a tr main, and mabie thats why i find it so difficult to believe the "there's no effective counter" line of thinking. that line of thought comes from people who really havn't given lockdown burster maxes a go, or the striker a chance.

just the striker alone nerfed to hell though its been is enough to keep a few esf away. a major strategy of ours in cik for ow was striker heavy's, but that's not to say the striker is the only effective aa out there, had we all been running anihilator or swarm that would have been just as effective a deterant.

"air can pretty much out-dps everything" this is simply not true. skyguard>all esf with all options including hornets, aa turrets for all ground vehicles>esf, many other unconventional options (ap tanks and such)> esf. the only instance in which that statement is technically true is esf vs ha due to the travel time of projectiles, but i would suggest the option to peak from any cover negates the argument and shoots to **** your mobility argument.

in the beginning you suggest its an easy thing to swap, its 280 nanites at a min to swap esf. but with the existence of constructable air terms i'd agree with you there it is extremely easy to swap atm, but again you can say that about literally anything not just air.

idk man, a solo esf will die to literally anything in the game including small arms, or at least will generally go away once they realize someone is looking up. a squad+ of esf is extremely powerfull and can be difficult to counter (if your pl doesn't know how to say pull skyguards), but again a squad+ of LITERALLY ANYTHING can be extremely powerfull and difficult to counter.

on bastions, your talking to a participant of the speed record (we believe) for downing a full hp bastion, 1:28 from the first shot... the bastion is as "op" as any of the other perfectly counterable air options out there.

force multipliers are exponentially more powerfull with pulled en masse by an organized squad/platoon, but just because thats a thing doesn't make the force multiplier "broken." the last major nerfhammer to come down on the game as a whole was CAI... because hesh bad and muh kd and stuff, lets think a minute on that before we call out to loud for the nerfhammer.

ty for the wb, i actually only just made a forum account to comment on this because **** the servers i guess? i think they're up though... i think i'll go pull a banshee.

Why that? If you enjoyed it, good for you.

Replace base flak turrets with G2A lockon turrets. There's also an unused missile launcher turret, so that asset can be used.

So let me put this as simple as possible:
Air = part of the game that has the least truly skilled users, as well as being the most of a pain to get into
Consequence = few people want to actively pull aircraft
So if people manage to actually get an airzerg that does 2 things:
1) Being bloody unstoppable, because the one thing that's truly good against air is other air, but as signified above, pulling together a counterzerg in the air is neigh impossible, and doing anything else does not work. Skyguard wall MIGHT have a chance, but that would have to be tested.
2) Prove that air is out of balance beyond doubt. As stated, both ground and vehicle zergs can be attacked and defeated using all available assets. Air zergs can not.

Even air zergs aside, it only takes one good pilot to shred everything on the ground, and it's even worse when the pilot's team already has control of the ground.


I don't mind staying back and fighting zergs, but when there's a pro pilot that dodges all my rockets and denies anything from leaving the spawn room, that's typically when I redeploy.

Burster MAXes don't do anything, lock-ons are a laugh, and the skyguard can not be pulled because their team hold the ground.


Even if their team doesn't hold the ground, a skyguard is extremely situational and like all AA can simply be avoided by activating the afterburner. A liberator doesn't even need to avoid a skyguard, it can out-dps it. Not to mention it can also sit above the "effective" range of the skyguard and kill it in 3 hits with a dalton.

I have had some success with them recently, but that stops either at the 3rd ESF of the 1st competent Liberator. (Helps that when AA-MAXing, I usually have a pocket Engi.) Until then you can at least send them packing again and again (with a bit of luck before they get anything killed). It's not great, but it's something. And unfortunately this is about 50% better than intended and we can hope for...

yeah what I mean by that is you can't really kill anything, because you must either sit in the spawn or hide someplace you won't be C4ed or easily spotted, because an ESF can easily out-dps you.

So you basically just sit in one spot trying to scare stuff away, as you say.

Did you just, with the same breath, say that air has the least skilled players in all of PS2 while simultaneously being the most "pain to get into"?

Jesus H Christ how are you not self aware yet.

Do you know what happens when a platoon of air runs into one squad of Skyguards? They lose half their air platoon while they run with their tails between their legs.

Guess what, Teamwork OP. 48 people coordinating will crap on 48 people not coordinating, big surprise welcome to PS2 I guess you're new here. 48 people coordinating with force multipliers will crap on 48 people not coordinating with no force multipliers (WOW, :SHOCKEDPIKACHUFACE.

You know how you get a reaver/mosquito/scythe onto the A point of 90% of the bases in planetside 2? You don't. You know how those airballs stop people from capping a base when they have a router inside? They dont. You know what almost 17K worth of nanites is good for in the air? Trolling noobs who are too dumb to pull 5K nanites worth of skyguards.

This is one of the things that baffles the novice. Subconsciously, novice thinks that it makes sense to put anti-aircraft missiles on a fighter and is faced with the fact that this type of weapon is the most useless for air combat. The negligible range of target acquisition, low damage and huge time spent on guidance, all this is fundamentally contrary to what people used to think about missiles in combat aviation.

The least skilled players overall in terms of NUMBERS. I'm not a native speaker, maybe it's "fewest" or "lowestest". Dunno. With the wording of your reply, neither do I particularly care.
And that is due to the fact it's so hard to get into. So only the people who want to endure do that, which rules out most people who just go "okay, if the game and the others who do it don't like my trying, f*ck them, I'm out".

The thing is, on the list of everything that can one-shot an ESF, nearly every single entry is something that's not intended to be used against an air target. On top of that, literally every single one is a skillshot that an ESF's mobility laughs at. The number of times I've taken out an ESF with a tank cannon, for example, they've been flying abnormally low to the ground, and were preoccupied firing on another target. They were kills I didn't deserve, in other words. That doesn't make AP lightnings the definitive anti-air option, though.

That depends on your definition of "counter". The only thing that can reliably kill air is air. But there are a number of options that can easily force air out of the hex, more than a counter to air at a fight.

Say you get attacked by a whole squad of air, similar to what OP is describing. Pull 3 Skyguards and 3 AP lightnings to protect them. There you go, a full air platoon that can't get close to the fight because of 6 guys.

I'll be the first to complain about AA being useless once air inevitably bugs out, but that's the rock/paper/scissors approach of Planetside 2.

There's a reason you rarely see air squads when platoons are serious about winning alerts. They're simply too easy to counter with half the number of players on the ground.

That same platoon of air can out dps the skyguards, and avoid the angle of elevation of the AP turrets, at least in a liberator. As EFS they can take turns pounding the tanks and fleeing away to repair before they die, unless the tanks are extremely coordinated.

Also the fact you would need the AP lightnings shows how silly AA is.


The reason we don't se guys who pull vehicles in general win alerts is because the capture points are infantry. Yup, air is going to be able to spawn camp and even clear a few outdoor points relatively easily, however it's pretty useless if they can't cap. And then there's also the fact that very little people know how to fly, which is why it's really not a good idea as a platoon leader to have 48 dudes pull their default ESFs and crash into each other or into trees while taking off.

Has anyone even attempted an anti air column, MAX burster spam, or having everyone pull AA heavy with skyshields?

Numbers being equal, Skyguards have a HUGE advantage. They're just not as nanite efficient as Liberators. The AP tanks are only there to protect the Skyguards from ground, as I've never seen an air squad mess with 3 coordinated skyguards.

I've never seen 3 coordinated skyguards, however I've seen quite a few skyguards get 1-clipped by libs and pounded by max height liberators. A skyguard can't even kill an esf in 1 clip, unless the guy's literally hovering in front of them.

The Tank buster doesn't 1-clip tanks anymore, so no need to bring up past balance.

I'll mention this all 1 more time, but if you want to run in circles then I'll leave you to it.

My first comment to you was mentioning the varying definition of "counter". Flak can absolutely counter air if that goal is removing air from a fight. Flak is bad at countering air if to you that requires a kill. For all intents and purposes, both definitions have the same result, removing the enemy from the fight. We have clear goals, winning bases and locking continents, and since AA removes air from those fights, I think it's fair to say AA counters air very well.

And yes, 1 Lib beats 1 Skyguard. But per person, Skyguard are stronger. 3 Skyguards easily beats a 3/3 Lib. 2 Skyguards best a 2/3 Lib. Air is more nanite efficient, Tanks are more powerful per person.

There were 2 example where this wasn't true in the past, and in both cases air was nerfed. I already mentioned the Tank Buster. The other time. Single ESF could beat a Skyguard was getting the jump on one from behind with Hornets. If you fired your first Salvo right at 450 meters while flying at almost full speed at your target and chasing your missiles, your next Salvo would quickly follow and allow a fast kill if the tank didn't twist any damage to its side. This now takes 3 salvos, meaning the ESF spends another 5 seconds while going slower or even hovering. You could once pick out a tank from a column, and now you can't. That job is pretty much gone for ESF. Even back then though, you often needed 1 ESF for Skyguard bait while the other maneuvered for a rear shot. Especially in armor columns. It was often still 2 ESF against 1 Skyguard, even though only 1 ESF was doing the shooting.

I literally just tested that in VR. Which also didn't surprise me, because I've seen stuff like that happen for literally years now. Not sure why you thought they changed that. With the armor, yeah, the dude is only on fire, which is pretty easy to finish off with the belly weapon anyways