A History of AA

There's been allot of threads about buffing AA recently, so I thought a bit of a history lesson was in order.

The AA buffs y'all have been asking for? Various versions have been tried and reverted.

Version 1: Turrets and skyguards buffed to be deadly versus air at long and short ranges. Result: Nothing flew, tank columns were endless and unmoving. The columns usually avoided each other, resulting in strings of one sided steamrolls of HE spam and endless infantry angst and calls for nerfs of everything tank related. When tank columns collided, they didn't have glorious large scale battles. They sat behind the nearest chokepoints and rained fire on anything that tried to move. These fights stagnated so badly that a single hex could be fought over for more than sixteen hours with nothing dying but infantry and the occasional tank that got impatient and tried to charge, only to be gunned down the instant it was in the open. Keep in mind this was the heyday of coordinated play and libs/esfs were far more deadly than now.
Tl; DR: Nothing flew, no infantry, tanks, or flyers had fun. Infantry died, tanks sat and did nothing but shell, and flyers simply couldn't fly.

Version 2: Rockets and short ranged AA buffs: Result: Everything hated everything else. Tanks hated aircraft and infantry because what they saw was aircraft swooping out of the sky and one clipping them, infantry locking on en masse and making it impossible to get near a fight.
Infantry hated tanks and aircraft because what they saw was tanks raining HE on them and aircraft destroying them, particularly in small fights.
Aircraft hated tanks, infantry, other aircraft, and everything else because everything had the power to gib aircraft. They couldn't get near anything above about a 24 person fight or they would instantly die, but had the capability to dominate small fights. Boring for air, punishing for small organized squads.


Version 3: What we have now, sans AA damage reward. Air was more dominant because it hadn't been nerfed to hell and back yet. Those who played AA were a mostly silent, hugely underappreciated bitter core of players who girded their souls and skyguards in an armor of unadulterated hatred. They were scary dudes.


Since then, air has seen significant nerfs all around and you get damage for simply damaging an aircraft.

I'll take any questions now. What I will not answer is people saying either it didn't happen that way, because it did and you can go find the history.
I will also not answer armchair generals saying "this tactic would have worked and solved 100% of all problems" because it was tried and didn't. If you can come up with something truly original by all means.

Just make air a deterrent like the Skyguard is. I won't complain if the Skyguard isn't the only toothless unit in the game.

Have a Liberator take at least 30 seconds to knock out a Sunderer or MBT by Tankbuster. Seems fair.

Your history lesson sucks. Where are the names? the dates? the patch numbers? how am I supposed to write questions for the quiz with just this?

I've been here since December 2012, when a half a volley of rocket pods killed multiple tanks and Infantry died near instantly because of ridiculously unclipped splash damage that travelled many meters through walls. Or the eventual progression where aircraft began paying more attention to targets on the ground rather than targets in the air because AA was a suckers' game at the time, everything died with very little effort, and a squad of AA MAXes had trouble dealing with a single ESF that could wipe the whole squad out in a single pass.
You didn't mention that, at all.
It's a very important step of the anti-Air shuffle.

I up-voted because I liked this part

...I miss having a purpose.

The only people that think flying is easy don't do it.

So basicly, nothing really changed much.

I play Skyguard a lot and honestly I don't know what to say: it's extremely frustrating because I rarely manage to kill any ESF. But on the other hand they neither manage to hurt me. I would say that's pretty balanced.

I also understand it's not reasonable to pretend a solo Skyguard to tear down Liberators. But I also find pretty silly they can fly belly on the ground, almost ignore the supposed-to-be-best AA weapon of the game and 2-shot it.

My suggestion is maybe the Skyguard could trade some max range for a slightly higher damage at close distance. It's ridicolous ESF / Liberators hover over a base bombing infantry, I open fire and they just press a button and fly away...

And what's missing?

Any ******* method that doesn't use extreme skill reducing mechanics like extreme flak detonation range, extreme-angle lock-ons, spray&pray and extreme muzzle velocity.

Remove all those, buff AA power and accuracy, done.

Oh and your second version didn't happen. At no point did everyone murder everyone.

That would be balanced if the ESF hurt everything else just as much. However, the moment the Skyguard isn't present the ESF can murder the hell out of everything, but if the Skyguard has no dedicated AV units that try to destroy it that Skyguard is still looking at ESF escaping.

This isn't balance. Balance isn't just "my target can't hurt me and I can't hurt them", especially not if you are a dedicated weapon that can only really be used against that target.

The solution: Add two types of AA. "Light" AA which is designed against ESF and Heavy AA that is designed against any big aircraft (Heavy as in strong, not Heavy as in Heavy Assault, so sad that I have to add such a warning). Heavy AA has slower muzzle velocities and gives Liberators, Galaxies and Valkyries a chance to dodge or stay out of the way, but the Heavy AA functions in every other way like an Aircraft Buster: It murders them.
Especially if we add an Heavy AA secondary weapon and a Heavy AA primary canon for the MBT this could give a viable alternative against Liberators and Galaxies without unbalancing things.

Reduce the flak detonation range from it's ultra-high 8m distance to something closer to 0,5 to 2m range. Tighten up COF. Increase damage. It's now a lot harder to hit aircraft especially at range because due to the massive leading time you only really hit because of the massive COF and flak detonation range we have atm. There's also no guarantee that you'll hit aircraft that are nearby, but with the added damage you stand a chance of destroying them if they don't use maneuvers during their escape. And especially if you sneak up on a hovering ESF and flank him from close range they should be almost guaranteed to die and only a crapton of skill and reflexes can help them survive.

Something to make clear:
AA=Anti Armor
AAA=Anti Aircraft Artillery

LOL. You never fly. Try and think again.

Yes that seems logical and fair,from experience.

Hard =/= Good

That seems good idea.
How about making the Skyguard an Missile Flak Launcher?
I mean something like Flak Coyotes ,at short range devastating [below 100m],
now max-damage is 200DMG < 100M,how about they Flak Coyotes do 400DMG < 100m
and really small damage [ due to loss of the fuell ] over 100M somthing like 10DMG ?
Increase the velocity to ~ 500m/s and slight decrease in RPM?

Maybe make another gun like that for Lightning?

I like this history lesson.

It's fairly accurate, if a little biased. The Air vs Ground in this game has been through some horrible iterations. So horrible that it's still difficult to understand just what the dev's were thinking at the time.

I remember a time when nothing could fly (literally) due to insanely overpowered flak, and I also remember a time when the number 1 threat to any aircraft was other aircraft. Not because air vs air existed, but because there was literally no viable AA in the game leading to a massive over-population of air over every spawn point. So many aircraft that dying due to a collision with friendlies was almost inevitable.

Both times were bad times. I think that what we have now is as good as it's going to get. There's no point in dressing this up. Playing AA in this game is completely unrewarding and incredibly boring. But it has to be that way. Being effective at flying is not easy, which is about all the 'balance' that we can hope for at this late stage in the day.

Although true in real life, in Planetside 2 AA is Anti-Aircraft and AV is Ant-Vehicle (just as it was in Planetside 1).

Just like AI is Anti-Infantry rather than Artifical Intelligence...or something

I do agree with that. But even though it's too late for this game now, nothing should be King of both Fight and Flight. It should be either/or.

ESF's and Lib's in more than competent hands are the absolute Kings of this game. They can kill as well as, or better than, any other vehicle and they can also escape faster and easier than anything else. They're the only things in the game where the only viable hard counter is pulling the same thing yourself.

But it is what it is and I think things should be left well alone now.

i've played since march of the first year, and i can confidently say that you're talking nonsense.
the only period i remember when there was a severe AA threat and lack of airgame was during Striker's reign of terror.
(back when it was a lock-on launcher)

All the salt in this thread can be summed up here:



People don't like to look up.

So much irony in this little picture. While people love to tote the advantage of moving with a 3rd axis of dimension, they also forget to point out the immense disadvantage of being neigh constantly visible.

Some continents are better then others(**** Esamir), but it's always present.