Zepher nerf needed soon.

This man speaks the truth. A lib has to be within render distance to be able to hit infantry, which is well within the range of AA. No offense OP, but using this kind of misinformation and whining for a nerf isn't really healthy for the game.

FACEPALM
that is just....sad....i never facepalm, but for you i'll make an exception

Better hope they figure out to stop flying in straight lines straight towards libs too. I especially like the ones that fly straight up behind a Lib and then slow down. Flying escort, riding the AA or following along on the ground with my Sunderer and an AA Launcher, they make for easy kills.

Oh and take it from someone who rarely, but has actually sat in the Lib's gunner seat with a decent pilot. Skyguards that know how to aim are dangerous. Burster MAX? They're usually all but invisible thanks to the infantry rendering issue. HA's with Rockets? Stop standing out in the middle of a field and definitely don't just stand there and reload. Tankers? Stop driving in straight lines when a Zephyr starts hitting you. I've seen exactly ONE driver that actively tried to juke and funny enough, his Prowler managed to make it back into the watchtower.

From the ground? The AA Launcher and MAX units are your friend, but intelligent ESF pilots are better. If all else fails? Drop pods are surprisingly effective.

You know, while OP has made a very confusing and ineffective argument, the point he makes isn't totally worthless.

I play almost 100% infantry (I use sunderers as AMSes to help push up the lines) and I've noticed a big spike in liberators on my server since the patch hit rocket pods.

It's anecdotal, but I was in a squad attacking a bio lab and a liberator started camping the respawn/teleporter area and mowing down all infantry that tried to run between them. I switched to an AA MAX ready to try out the buffed arm (I only had one,) found a spot he wouldn't immediately check and started firing. After about 5-7 seconds of point blank flak (which is, in terms of TTK, more than enough time to die 8-10 times as an inf) he was down to about half health and finally hit his afterburner to get behind a hill. At this point, a second liberator killed me. I respawned at another remote base that I saw was being capped and the same thing was happening- a liberator was hovering with its guns trained on the spawn.

I think the bigger problem is that playing as AA sucks right now, regardless of whether it's effective or not. Liberators can absolutely lock down infantry in a lot of situations right now, which is incredibly frustrating. From my perspective I'm not sure why they made these things so effective against infantry or, if that was the route they wanted to go, why they made them so accurate. The dalton/zephyr guns are swivel aimed, can be equipped with thermal/IR filters, and are both (whether it's their role or not) devastatingly effective against infantry. In PS1 the liberator's bomber was in a locked, straight down perspective, which meant that pilot and gunner had to communicate effectively to fight effectively because the bomber couldn't control his angle of fire and the pilot couldn't see the straight down view of the targets. It also prevented camping, because you were forced to make multiple flyovers. In other words, it was a bomber.

In PS2, the pilot mostly hovers in place while the gunner groundpounds everything into submission with a superior vantage point and greater accuracy than anyone on the ground. There isn't the tradeoff that required teamwork and planning for the massive power of the weapons to be used to full effect. Instead, the liberator is less of a bomber and more of a floating shooting gallery where the games last until you either fly back to repair or get overwhelmed.

I think you meant the zephyr. Dalton IS an instagib - I know because I was landing to rearm when suddenly a Lib some 300 meters horizontally from me flipped on its side and suddenly BOOOM DEAD ESF.

Sorry for the long quote. But this is entirely on the head here, on all accounts.

I guess I'll be as constructive with this as I can be. Maybe as a liberator pilot and infantryman I can give you some perspective.

You can't spawn liberators in a situation where your side does not have air superiority. Liberators are kings of small fights until any air units show up, and they're common in larger fights that have already been won through air superiority. Basically, if you see Liberators, you need to adjust your tactics, or realize its about time to give up the ghost because you already lost a long time ago.

Keep your skies full of friendlies, and you'll be able to exploit the same advantage in hunting AMS units/tanks or locking down infantry flanking units, forcing the fight indoors. If you lose control of the skies, prepare to get bombed out. If you can't win the indoor fight at that point, you've got no options left.


The weapons on the unit are just fine, it's the tactics that are defeating you.

Zepher can hit a medic in the face and not kill him in 1 shot

based on this guys realism topic we should increase the damage by each shot by x100 increase the aoe by x10

Zepher needs to be buffed

Zepher should be 1 shotting tanks and any inf it lands near

I'll agree that the lib needs a nerf and would be even worse if it was actually possible for this game to do what the developers had in mind and actually have large scale battles (I don't think we can say that it does now what with the 10m draw distance if there is more than 200 or so people in a battle.) because then they could just fly out of range of all AA and spam shells down.

On a side note:

Why not slow down its fire rate but make it like a real 105mm and make it level buildings? Or since the Vanguard has a 150mm cannon make it more realistic when it has HE by increasing its infantry kill radius to about 10m? Or give ESFs 80 flares with no cooldown instead of 1 with a minimum of 20 seconds? Also, if I'm in my ESF I don't even need to go near your 1 hit kill AA missiles because I'll just farm tanks with missiles launched from beyond visual range, that's not even taking into account firing the likes of an AGM-129A from a Galaxy. And on the subject of AT there is no record of any M1 Abrams ever being destroyed by enemy fire, of those that have been damaged by infantry AT they have been hit in the rear. If you want to make the game a bit more realistic make infantry AT have a > 90% chance to do no damage on a frontal hit.

Therein lies the problem of trying to fix problems by using realism in an unrealistic game.

lol, nothing renders at 900ms.. Good try.

a Lib is slow, Goto a terminal and pull a MAX with even the single Burster. A magazine into him will scare him off.

Thats why the "150mm beast" named the Dalton was made

Zepher is so hipster, Ill take my insta gibber anyday. Kills a sundie in 4 rear hits.

Well, if OP wants realism then rocket pods need to be given a giant area of effect that will effectively instantly kill infantry units. Also, remove the invulnerable shields from spawn rooms and in general make rockets and similar make buildings collapse. Eg rockets shot at the roof of a spawnroom will collapse it and award the aircraft shooting the building kills.

PS liberators were never really meant to be taken out by ground fire.

Actually it is common for aircraft to survive more than 1 SAM, especially from SMAA like stingers.

And it is also common for tanks to survive ATGMS, hell you can even point out freak examples like the challenger that took 70 hits from various RPG-7 and ATGM missiles in Basra.

Prototype/FCS self propelled guns now are capable of 12-20 rounds per minute.


Reality doesnt back you up as much as you think.

Going to agree with this with one cavat, effective anti-air weapons are pretty limited at the moment.

That said I've rolled single buster MAX suit before and with a few others and an engineer to keep us ammoed up I've repeatedly cleared the skies so that enemy aircraft would only linger at the edge of the render limit, far beyond their effective range. If you're getting hammered by aircraft one of a few things need to happen.

1. 2-3 people roll buster max with 1 engineer supporting at least
2. 2-3 people get ESFs to try to clear the skies
3. Consider getting out of there you may be too extended from friendly air cover, usually hostile air is most prevalent close to the enemy warp gates and away from your own

900 meters? Wow didnt know infantry rendered at that range now.

They don't for ESFs. I typically need to get to 250 meters just for freaking infantry to render.

That range seems to extend for liberators for some reason.

i promise you, as someone who bombs for libs daily, that you can NOT render infantry 900 meters out, that is almost to the ceiling of the map, INFANTRY cant render infantry at that distance.

I thought so. All in my head then.

Render issue is a freaking issue in this game, almost game breaking.

Actually render distance doesn't make much difference...as long as a lib gunner knows a base layout (which they can see just fine still at max altitude) they can just sit and rain shells down on the spawn exits and/or the AA turrets. All it takes is a couple of libs with a CAP to lock down a base (especially the smaller ones with a tiny spawn room) and yes while you can bring up a Sunderer its still wayy to easy to just spam the entire area with arial artillery and strike it lucky, especially if anyone on the ground uses /re to relay even a rough location.

The number of times I've seen The Crown (or anywhere with multiple aeriel pads) get taken and then about 20 scythes and 10 libs suddenly appear...good luck if you are Ti Alloys or somewhere nearby..I dont care how many double burster AA MAXs you spawn, most of the time ,even with engi support you won't get anywhere outside the spawn door without getting blown to crap. TTK on libs even by double bursters (especially at max alt) is wayyyyyy too long currently (especially on ones certed with comp armor). They're like the tanks of the sky but in even more numbers now than the ground tanks themselves.

Not whining about it though, I just get on with it, but for my money tank and liberator resource costs need to go up dramatically so we can get back to more infantry based combat instead of vehicle zerg spam that currently dominates in most places.

What we need before anything else is changed is for the hordes of ESF's that are flying at 30-50 Metres height and then coming to forums and screaming "STOP SHOOTING AT ME...I CAN'T GET ANYTHING DONE IN MY LONE WOLF GODMOBILE !!!111!!111!" to go and intercept those Liberators that are just hanging up there in the air, unmolested, bombing everything back to the Stone Age.

As long as it's easier and more profitable for ESF's to have their noses pointed at the ground, then that's what they will do. Smed's vision with GU1 for it to be suicidal for planes to stick around in low level airpsace simply hasn't materialised. They get scared off but keep right on coming back again and again.

The idea that weak but numerous AA will be a sufficiently multiplied force to push ESF's upwards has not worked and never will. Planetside 2 is a schizophrenic game at best at the moment. It markets itself as a combined arms game and yet offers the most tangible reward to play styles that are the opposite of working together.

As long as this game is about KDR we will never see people using weapons that don't actually kill on an individual basis. That is why there is so much air in the game. Make air a deterrent that has to work in groups in order to get kills and you will see a mere fraction of what you see flying around now.

If pilots started looking at the Air around them suppose to the ground. You wouldn't have this problem.