AoE damage makes sense for high-explosive rounds, and I don't have a problem with that. That is fine. What doesn't make sense is why the ES noseguns for ESFs have AoE damage. Thats removes the need to really aim if you can just hit someone who you can't see, and they can't move or get away because they are pinned behind cover. You should have to actually hit your target to kill them. And its not like most ESFs aren't already running pods anyways, so thats just double AoE damage. So basically, either reduce the AoE field or remove it. Force players to aim. If this change was made, aircraft would be a lot less of a problem that you can't deal with, which the general consensus of them is that they are. It could possibly change the way pilots play, forcing them to actually hit and run in plane mode instead of lingering around.
You mean the Anti infantry ones I assume. Why would you use them if you have to direct hit? All the others don't have splash at all, except the dervish XE which is equal to a lasher.
Because, that's how anti infantry weapons work???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Precision aiming an ESF is hard enough as-is, no reason to lock A2G farming to a select elite. The VS Light PPA is a plasma launcher, obviously it should have splash. The TR Banshee looks to have been inspired by and resemble the IRL GAU-8 Avenger mounted on A-10 warplanes. These shoot a mix of armor piercing incendiary and high explosive incendiary ammunition, designed to kill vehicle drivers with fire (literally splash damage) after penetrating their armor. The NC airhammer would work more or less the same with the 8-pellet splash that it has now, versus a hypothetical 64-pellet nonsplash, as damage would be distributed more evenly in an area through projectiles rather than splash. There may be a performance reason for why it is like it is now.
Would this ruin the AI noseguns and pretty much remove them from the game? Yes. Would I be perfectly happy to see them gone? Yes. We've all had enough of the swarms of mozzies spamming the spawn room with aoe death. DBG refuse to add AA that can actually do the damn job so I'd be very happy to see ESFs lose their AI noseguns. But I'd also be happy if those noseguns got reworked into noob-friendly A2A roles, We all know how hard trying to fly in this game is, when you are instantly ganked by one of the 24/7 no life skyknights stalking outside the warpgate, so how about we change the A2G farming guns into A2A nooby guns? Airhammer and banshee for example could be be made into flak. Perhaps LPPA could be changed to fire in 3 round bursts with much higher velocity than now, With super large projectile hitboxes making it easy to hit, and high direct damage to aircraft. These would all deal less damage than the precision noseguns, but atleast give new players a way of fighting the skyknights.
As horrible as they are to infantry the A2G noseguns like the banshee actually have some balance. (can't believe I'm defending this thing, I hate it) The unpleasant aspect of being an A2G target is more to do with the broader air game balance. That banshee farmer should be getting like 1-2 passes at you max before he's shredded by someone running an A2A nosegun. But that other someone doesn't exist. The air game as a whole is wrecked. If you want to fix the air game and thus the A2G imbalance you're going to have to give the people what they've asked for. Fix the air controls. Fix the stupid acceleration bug that got introduced. Give an optional mouse yaw for the folks that want it. In other words, drop the barrier to entry to the air game and its health will improve. OR.. Sure, nerf the banshee. But I'd say just reduce the ammo pool. Make the guy have to rearm more often.
Well, its the fact that even if you DO pull AA, you need 3 other people doing it, and they can kill 2 of you before you can take them down and then escape and repair. I was an HA using a Lockon laucnher against a two man ESF squad, and I constantly stayed alive the longest because I knew the crap they were gonna pull with that orb of death, but there is no reason they should be able to withstand 3 rockets before needing to fly away. That goes the same for all of this air, actually. A Liberator was eating my lockons and staying in the air, repairing, because it could outrepair any major damage I did to it. I took 7 shots at that thing with a lockon, and he was at half HP. Like what? And yeah, I get hitting direct hits is hard. But why is the explosion radius so high?
