So when are you addig anti-air to game?

But I ended up at 90 kills and 3 deaths for a 2 hour session riding in a MBT, dont know how many kills my gunner got but he got a lot too.
I even have a video of it.
And I didnt even have neither defense, utility or perfomance equipped.
So all forms of weapons and vehicles are deadly if you use them correctly.

Me and the members of my outfit never fears air anymore since it's so easy to keep them away.
But less recoil and bullet drop on the burster wouldnt hurt I guess.

Good tanking skills, however, there are ways to counter you. There are currently, no real effective ways to stop light aircraft whoring, with no fear of death.

I'll repeat, again, please give us an in game unit that can 1v1 a light fighter the same way a light fighter can 1vMany everything else in the game.

Many of your points make sense if you don't take into account resource costs and cooldowns. If you take down a fighter, you've triggered normal respawn time on that person, cost them 200ish resources, and cut into the time they can use their hand-of-god rocketpods. They have every reason to fear AA. If AA is common, they can't afford to use fighters all time because they will just run out of resources.

Flares only negate lock attacks that are currently chasing the fighter. The instant they pop it they are vulnerable again, and the two other guys with rockets you have with you should unload on them, while you ready the third. If they get away, mission still accomplished, you removed them from the fight. If you think you're going to solo an airship as infantry...maybe you will, but just like with a tank, only if they let you. The point is a single infantry isn't supposed to be able to trivially wipe the floor with airships. Infantry are free, and airships require resources.

Between tanks and air, tanks are harder to kill, but more limited by terrain and speed. Air is actually squishier than tanks, but have mobility as an advantage. Both of them have a 1000 cert, high damage unlock that lets them deal hefty damage to the other, and 1v1 all shots getting off, the tank kills first. Keep in mind, the only reason air is dominating right now is because most fighters immediately grabbed the air-to-ground pods because:
AA is hard to get
Air is hard to counter without AA or air
This means that they would be able to fly around, as they are right now, with relative impunity because almost nobody will have AA.

As others have mentioned, another viable option is jumping in a fighter yourself and going air-to-air. Those hovering campers are pretty easy to scare off with things their pods can't hit. Picking them off I find to be harder.

Your experience with max's is different than mine. I rarely see max's destroy or deter airships. I have seen 7 max's with double bursters failing to take down liberators. Its totally possible that I've just had a string of bad luck and all the max's I play with stink at AA. Keep in mind that "Damage" is a misleading statistic and may not reflect time to kill, and is subject to accuracy.

The problem is, again, that nobody has AA yet. I had to blow my AA rocket trial the other day just to break out of an air cavalry lock, and now I can't do that again for another 30 days. Tanks can't trade effectively with air until AA weapons are unlocked, which limits viability against other tanks. Because Fighters can slip through frontlines easily due to lack of anti-air, Unmanned turrets net a nice 100 xp for anyone (say a fighter with rocketpods) to run around and pick off before a fight, and it usually doesn't occur to people until its too late to repair them. Even double burster max's take an unlock which is a pain to get and only really useful against air.

When these become more common, fighters will be no more of a problem in a fight than tanks, and fewer fighters will slip through frontlines to take out turrets, giving turrets a higher effectiveness as well (provided people remember they exist). Keep in mind when I say "common", I mean more than just me or you buying AA. I mean like 3 out of 5 people have access to AA. Given that, on amerish, a small outpost MIGHT have one phalanx turret, people will have to do 1000 certs of grinding before they can set foot out of a biolab (Yes I think this is bad). Also, at that point fighters will probably start complaining to nerf AA. Which...no. Just no.

I have read through all of this thread and it makes interesting reading. I personally tend to be a MBT driver. I have unlocked the A30 Walker as a secondary gun for my vanguard but sadly have found it to be rather underpowered.

Myself and my squadmate who tends to gun my MBT found that if an ESF was attacking another target and we emptied a full clip into it we could do 20-25% dmg. This means either 4 vehicles with concerted fire on one target or four attacking passes without repairing inbetween before we can bring down the aircraft.

This for me in and of itself would not particularly be a problem but when this is combined with the fact that my MBT can be destroyed in 3-4 seconds by a volley of rockets from the aforesaid ESF then i start to feel this is a little unbalanced.

I could however even still live with both of the above facts if there was an appopriate AA vehicle or other counter whose job was to protect my MBT. Then fair enough I could accept that my MBT was ineffective against aircraft. To put it bluntly, in that scenario it would not be my job to worry about aircraft. However it also seem from my perspective that their is no effective counter to ESF aircraft.

I have not personally certed all types of AA so i can only speak as to that which i have witnessed around me. If i join up with a zerg of vehicles then usually the sheer volume of skyward bound fire drives off enemy aircraft but then as expected it drives off tanks, infantry, everything.

If however i am part of a small group of vehicles of varied composition (lets say 10ish vehicles including skyguards, MBT's with A30's etc) then i am still fnding that the group is incredibly vulnerable to 3-4 aircraft who can chew through vehicle after vehicle pass after pass.

I do not think that a massive game change is needed. From my perspective i think the best solution to the problem is to make those vehicles or units who are purely AA focused and therefore unable to kill any other unit a little more effective at their jobs.

The problem is if you buff AA too much you will render air ineffective, as it is a buster max is a large deterrence to aircraft 2 of them essentially deny you from that space as you will certainly die as an aircraft or go critical if you go there.

Even though I messed up on the first bullet my other ones still stand. I really meant a couple of dual bursters in the first bullet.

You will notice that most of those who want to buff AA are looking at it from one dimension only. If a burtser max is allowed to take out an air craft easily then that burster max whom can cover more than one hex will deem them inaccessible to air. We will simply go back to pre-nerf levels in beta.

Many ignore the big nerf to the afterburner, the buff to A2A, the viewing distance of ESF versus any target in the game.

Many ignore that almost every vehicle in the game is basically and could be AA except for the flash.Many ignore that people have not certed yet in everything.

I have played yesterday on Indar and a few AA maxes defended crossroads. It was instant death for many and please don't tell me I don't know how to play this game. I found my AB insufficient to escape if shot by more than one max not to add all the air chasing me.

One factor though that I have to add and it is the dog fights in this game are not lasting longer due to buff against rotary guns and it has become in a way enjoyable.

The dual burster max can get an upgrade to double the ammo by the way.

For the first time in this game I am seeing a combination of arms and it includes everything. Eventually, the one who win the air battle wins the battle. This to me makes perfect sense, and I do not feel sorry for those trapped in spawn and are being spammed...

Are a few tweaks needed? Surely I'm not denying it as well but people need to stop asking for one dimensional buffs. A buff to AA power may require a buff to ESF AB and the outcome will almost be the same.

People simply need to stop thinking in one dimensional terms. You will notice that most of the posts doesn't really address any of the short comings of being in an ESF. They are just simply asking for a buff. Sadly though and due to my experience with this game so far; every patch swing thing to either far right or far left so expect the next patch to completely kill air and be ready for the spam post from pilots complaining.

Regards.

But there is already anti-air in the game! Oh wait... sarcasm, eh? Clever.

Wow, you've obviously have NEVER flown an ESF so I don't even know why you're commenting on this. Who says I hover at 50 meters? If I get hit by a few AA shells of ANY kind from any distance I presume that I'm being targeted and will stop everything and get out of the fight. And your "afterburn safely away from other ESF" further shows your ignorance: this only works if I'm near friendly territory and the pursuing pilot decides not to risk getting shot down, but if he wanted to chase, a FULL afterburner would buy me 2 to 3 seconds but he could catch up if he wanted to, yes, I speak from experience.

And YES, ESF are the most dangerous to other ESF's, especially if it's packing A2A missiles, because I can't simply run away due to the reasons above. I don't know where you're getting 4 to 5 missiles from but IT TAKES ONLY 2 LOCK ON MISSILES TO BRING A FULL HEALTH REAVER TO THE RED, I have yet to survive an encounter like that. Don't believe it try it yourself and see what happens.

Here is a piece on enlightenment for you, "dedicated AA units" are meant to DETER rather than kill, if the pilot is dumb enough to stick around after being targeted... They do the job fine because AGAIN, I RUN WHEN I'M TARGET BY ANY AA. Also GROUND UNITS are meant to gain territory with DEFENSE NOT ATTACK against air. ESF's are dedicated attackers of ESF's (I target groundies LAST, if you're getting hit by air hard, then you team isn't rolling enough ESF's). It's not my fault that your faction can't function as a cohesive unit with common sense.

"You should have to bring more than one person to bring down Aircraft but it's okay if a single pilot can destroy an entire wave of enemies alone".
Yep nothing to see here, move on.

I certed the 2nd Burster on my Max earlier today.

We were at tech Plant in Amerish and the sky was literally FILLED with enemy NC craft of every make pouding our forces. I hopped in my Max, walked outside, and proceeed to completely empty the skies within minutes with my dual bursters. They then sent in tanks, so I switched to dual Cosmo's and wiped out some lightnings before I noticed another wave of aircraft coming in (or freshly repaired ones that I wasn't able to finish off). I went to a station, resupplied to bursters again, then wiped out their entire air force again.

AA turrets, Skyguard lightnings, dual burster Maxes, homing rocket HA's. They've added them all the game, just wait till more people cert for it and it will balance out nicely. I wouldn't be surprised in a few months to hear fliers all complaining about how useless they are because everyone has the aforementioned certs and blows them up too fast, heh.

vanu max is garbage vs infantry or tanks but their AA weapons are exillent!

There needs to be a slight upgrade to AA, not so much damage, but range imo. Libs and AI rocket planes can stand off a significant distance above a base/outpost and shell it with no deter value at all, well outside the range of AA.

Otherwise, there's not that many HA with lock on AA yet, or doesn't appear to be rather, but I have been with 3 others who did and we cleared the skys in a couple of minutes. They either flew off for an easier target or got blowed up. As they thinned, 4 rockets going to the same ESF caused em to fall apart for some reason.

Nope, you are invunrable for 5/6 to six seconds after popping your flares, after which anyone that wanting to lock you has to reacquire.

Basically, right now A2G damage > G2A damage but it should be the other way around because air can pick targets and keep them engaged while ground can't do that to air.

If not for ridiculously short render distance for pilots, air would be obliterating all battlefields right now except biodome.

One of my mates had an awesome idea. What about some sort of EMP rocket/turret. Disable all vehicles for 2 to 4 seconds, would have to worked for balance obviously. But basically, if you are flying close to the ground, you are going to be killed when this is fired AND hits, would still be dodgeable. If you are flying high it would give, the current AA a chance to kill you and if the AA is rubbish you can still escape.

Just throwing it out there at the moment that is all.

Fine then nerf all air dmg to the level that ground can do to air. So that air only deters ground units into finding cover. That's your logic.

Personally, I don't feel air needs a nerf (maybe a small nerf to rocket pods). However, AA needs to be able to kill air units otherwise they just relocate and own some more.

AA max and skyguard are laughably bad

lol its stupid that people think AA is fine, when a dual burster max who cant take down any other type of unit cant even kill a esf without full flak armor upgrade there is a problem, whos stupid idea was it to give ESF flak armor, why not give tanks "missle armor" that reduce missle damage from all sides by 40%

stupid decisions mostly made because of the greed of SOE, buy buy buy, buy whill AIR is I win mode and we fix it, then buy AA!

Agree, not to mention, AA doen't actually cause flak any more. You are supposed to hit every shot dead on, with ridiculous spread/renage drop off.

PS1 had air/AA right. I remember trying to fly in that and just got owned so badly. Where as, the decent pilots in our oufit where able to operate fine. In PS2 I'm an awful pilot still and yet can zip around farming kills at will pretty much, until, TREE! MOUNTAIN! My only weakness!

The risk factor is your assumption, you have no basis for making this claim other then your conjecture and thus it must be dismissed.

The skill factor could be argued, flying isn't the easiest thing ever but then the point isn't just to fly around is it, it's to kill targets and some have suggested that it's in fact easier to kill targets when flying then when playing AA.

There's no resource investment only if it's a stationary turret which puts you in a fairly high risk position as you stick out a lot and are at known positions on a base. The other main AA types do require resources and the skyguard is both more expensive and uses a more stressed resource. HA AA requires no resources but I can't say I'm impressed with it's performance.

Check the cert requirement for the additional burster or the skyguard turret, or the HA AA missile, these aren't exactly cheap.

Both the MAX and skyguard have cooldowns using a stationary turret requires you to go back to the place you died which usually means you're going to die a lot.


Today I actually had an ideal time to test the burster in combat, this was a 1-arm burster however so keep that in mind. We ( the TR ) were defending a biolab against both Vanu and NC which resulted in -lots- of enemy aircraft around. Not only that but the usefulness of MAX suits as a whole there ensured there were a few around. In spite of this there were relatively few aircraft kills, few enough even that I often just settled for getting assists and the occasional kill on infantry jumping up onto the platform. The kills that were had were almost always ones that came within 50 meters of the platform, or in short those that were too dumb to live, didn't. I could see the dual-burster preforming well enough to keep aircraft at bay from a fixed location, if also provided some cover but it's not exactly something you get much XP or kills in.

This is the only particularly effective AA unit at the moment and as a whole it comes up as mediocre, costs certs and resources and has mobility issues. Clearly there should be better options then this.

MAX: Slight improvement in accuracy hefty improvement in clip-size ( and the entire ammo store )
Skyguard: Significant improvement in accuracy, double the clip-size ( and the entire ammo store ) or restore the flak effect
AA Turret: Slight improvement in accuracy

my 2 cents

ESFs need skillz to use and anything can damage me! Buff air again!