The Fighter Privilege (And why it is bad design)

But the reality is many people fly ESF with a normal or AA nose gun and rocket pods (zerg pilots). I guess if you have 3 real pilots with their ESF configured for the roll they are in then they can go 3 on 10 and come out alive but that is probably do to skill and coordination. Now take 10 pilots that fly all the time with rocket pods and either the default nose gun or AA nose gun and throw 3 enemy ESF with A2A and AA nose guns at them and the 10 might become 6 but if I have a squad of ESF configured multi role (AA nose, and rockets), which I wouldn't by the way, then when a enemy ESF is spotted I'd have a 3-4 of my ESF break off and engage. If there are more Enemy ESF we might all break off the ground and engage.

In reality when we run a flight squad the ideal set up would be something like this
2 Libs (nose gun as the tank buster) Dalton belly gun (2 man crew)
2-4 A2A ESF
4-6 A2G ESF (rocket pods are only used for vehicles)

All during the assault we are in our own channel calling major targets.

Pulling 3 ESF to counter us would just get you killed. Not only do you have to deal with our 2-4 ESF pilots but our lib crews are very effective at taking out ESF too. I've said it before and I'll say it now. The tank buster is INSANE against ESF. But everyone cried when I suggested it should be nerfed against ESF ... so I use it because it would be stupid for me not to. Second you have to deal with my tail gunner if you come from behind and don't think coming from above will save you. I can fly that lib completely on its side forever and even start to roll on to its back for extended periods of time. My bomber/tail gunner hardly ever has to say "No shot No shot, Tail UP!" or anything like that. If a ESF is stupid enough to start to attack us if my tail gunner doesn't get them then the other A2A ESF get them while the lib soaks up a lot of damage. In the rare case that 3 ESF coordinate then the lib will go down but to be honest they all probably died to our ESF shortly after because they spent to long fixating on the lib. I respawn and I hardly ever have a timer so I'm right back in it.

Now a medic, engineer and 3 AA maxes would honestly be more effective as long as they where a bit smart about where they are. I'm not going to say how they can be more effective but most Bursters are idiots against libs because they think they can play chicken with a dalton.

From Higby 2 hours ago on Twitter.

Still won't stop my ground carnage but it will stop a lot of zerg pilots from flying.

PPL dont know how to play yet, anti air max can kill air before the air see him.
Today i fly to take a tank, and thing what for some reasson his secondary was AA i got killed before end the sweep.

ANd nerf rocket pods and everything will be fine.

A squad of HA firing "anti-aircraft" rocket launchers should absolutely decimate a handful of aircraft, not merely "run them off"

I seriously do not understand why pilots think they have the right to fly into any airspace, survive long enough to deliver a massive, imbalanced, overpowered payload, and then still have enough health left to fly away and repair behind a mountain.

Air-to-Ground should only be viable if friendly ground forces are keeping pressure on enemy AA. "I'm in a plane lul" shouldn't be an excuse to fly wherever you want and then maybe consider leaving if an enormous amount of AA ends up being present. G2A should not be a deterrent, it should be bloody area denial. If a pilot flies into unknown airspace and his team isn't actively countering the AA on the ground, that pilot should be shredded and sent home in a confetti box. He definitely shouldn't be unloading 16 rockets into the juiciest visible target, then laughing as he flies away to repair at a friendly tower.

Airspace control is almost exclusive to aircraft that can then take huge dumps on all kinds of ground forces with impunity. As the amazingly well-written OP detailed, this is just very, very, very poor game design.

I think this would be fun to test out. But I think anyone who certs rocket pods or A2A missles will lose almost every dogfight LOL.

I think a better solution is to make ESFs with rocket pods shoot two rounds (4 rockets) before each reload. It will limit rocket spam to shorter passes, they will still be great at taking out tanks (they won't totally **** like the do now), but they won't be that good at killing infantry since it usually takes bursts of three to spam infantry.

If that doesn't work they can make the reload time longer.

It will feel a little more realistic too.

Skip to 16:00

Learn to play gumbas please! now get off the forums

Cough, the real reason you're raging is that the good AA weapons aren't immediately available to new players, so they aren't fielded, so they appear to not work. The fact is that the AA weapons like MAX burst guns are totally effective in the right hands and one player can absolutely kill one fighter using them.

Also, fighters and tanks can't capture points, cough, good day. AT mines. C4.

Cough, cough.

What happens when the people already using rocket pods think they're overpowered?

And this is balance?

Nope. Nope. Nope.

You are entitled to think whatever you want, but since they clearly won't be doing any "nerfing" no the rocket pods as shown in the video I would say that topic should be closed.

If anything why not make the rockets cost resources like grenades and what not? The only people that don't want to see balance issue are clearly the ones reaping the bennies from the way it is now. Fwiw a single tank round will not kill a fighter.

Wrong, I'm ashamed to say I've gotten one shotted by MBT's (Mag and Prowler) from full health + 2 layers of composite armor for making the mistake of flying too low and slow. For the record, an ESF pilot going low or slow enough to get hit by a tank shell deserves to be one-shotted.

One would hope that enough customers saying the same thing would lead to at least a small change. We're going to drive away people who want to play an FPS but are forced to play a flight sim to keep up. I'm perfectly happy getting tons of easy kills (picking your fights well, any half-decent pilot should have dozens of kills for every death) but sooner or later those guys will get tired of being farmed. You can say they're "bads" if you want, but the fact is we need them.

If kids want to play an FPS only game they can go back to playing CoD, PS2 is just like BF3.

All it takes is one burster arm in order to counter an ESF, if you can't or won't pull a MAX to shut down the fighters then the only person you have to blame is yourself. If anything burster MAX units are OP, there is no single way to counter a burster MAX since bursters are always well protected, and destroy all air.

Not listening, too busy farming tanks in my rocket pod fighter.

HOLLA HOLLA, GET DOLLA.

Not a prowler.

Rocket pods in themselves are not the problem. There is nothing wrong with a vehicle having a specialized weapon that is good at what it does. The only thing about rocket pods that's seriously overpowered is their ability to attack air units so effectively.

The issue with fighters is entirely the fact that they have no counter but themselves. When you get a huge air zerg going there is simply no way of effectively breaking it up. People keep talking about how air is needed to prevent the tank zerg, but what do you use to prevent the air zerg?

Specialized units that exist only to shoot at air units are total garbage if they aren't a solid counter to them, and the guns that can genuinely be called a deterrent like a walker on a tank or Liberator, aren't strong enough to actually deter a fighter.

Also when you're talking ground warfare and your MBT blows up you can grab a Lightning, when your Lightning blows up you can grab an HA. What can you grab in the air once you're down a fighter? There isn't even an alternative for seriously participating if you have no fighter available.

I just ignore any post made by someone with a aircraft as their avatar.

All the pilots posting here are a bunch self-serving sky-divas. When AA was overpowered you didn't see every ground pounder saying AA was fine.

I'm not saying nerf pods. Just limiting the amount of spam. They always go too far when nerfing something. Keep them hot and make pilots use them more sparingly.

I play air because it's fun, but I don't want the game to be miserable for everyone but me. 6 round rocket pods on my Vanguard would be nice (just to be fair of course). ^_^

Of the enemy has significant AA you CANT bring in air support, unless it was already there and you are throwin zephyr rounds into the spawn. I think a lot of the idea about how fighters work in this game is based on never actually flying them.

I lost my FIRST AND ONLY G2A fight today. This was against Goons on Matherson. They had about 30-40 ESFs supported by 5 liberators. It was a complete stomp. But there's nothing OP about that. They had us dominated with applied resources, manpower, and position (they set up quickly and perfectly.). Even then we still dropped a couple Libs and quite a few Fighters before we bailed.

Wait until more people spec AA before saying that AA is useless. Combined rocket fire and Max AA is devastating.