AA is Completely Broken at its Core

What's wrong with that, matey? As long as it's still integrated into the rest of play, it'd be no different from infantry having biolabs.

I dunno, I think it's pretty fun, shooting at ESFs with my Annihilator. I get lots of kills with it. I used to use the dedicated G2A until the Annihilator buff actually made it worthwhile.

Completely disagree. AA does not mean a spam shooting gallery. Leave that for lock ons and stuff. AA gets rid of air. And it does a fine job. Just because you don't want to do your job, and would rather spam something does not mean its not good.

ESF as it stands has a lot of trouble with armor. They are great at stealing kills. But its very hard to kill anything with full health. IF you were a pilot you would no this

Speed. While I agree that they need to be faster. This game has a rendering problem as it is. ESF approach a battle and things don't render quick enough so you get blown away before you know it. So speed is not an option in my opinion.

The only esf's getting away are very good pilots And why shouldn't great players live longer?

I would maybe suggest a better reward for playing AA cert wise. That way people would steer away from lock on spam and launcher spam.

Because that is what needs addressed in this game right now. But that is another subject.

Remove rocket pods, nerf AA against esfs, Miller is fixed!

On a more serious note, lolpodding on miller is boring, every fight has AA, usually 2 or more skyguards and maybe a burster or two, lock ons too, a liberator or esf cannot go to any fight on miller your only option is to move around the bases with 1-12 enemies in.

In fact, screw even going to a fight, half the time there will be a couple bursters in a hex just outside your warpgate, and it is fun, because they kill all of the dumb pilots and all of the pilots retreating, for ammo, reps, etc... I've done it myself, you can rake in the certs with a skyguard..

Seriously come on, you want to be able to 1v1 a MBT with a skyguard?

ESFs should be for dog fighting, remove rocket pods entirely ( will be both a lot of butt hurt and happy people though ), decrease their damage taken from AA, increase base lock on time, increase flight ceiling out of lock on range on all bases. Farming infantry will almost require a liberator, either solo lib or teamwork, though you will be able to pick off infantry with an esf nose gun. Liberators will continue to be easily countered by esfs, not really any need for G2A AA, especially with less new pilots getting shot down as soon as they leave the warpgate.

Dogfighting has it's own balance issues but I won't go into that... but having more flight ceiling allowing them to fight other esfs and counter liberators hitting the ground troops would go a long way, they still have purpose, they don't annoy ground troops so much that they pull AA every fight they go to before an ESF even arrives (miller).

But ESFs dont/didnt have to specialize. Pods = AV and AI work. Rotary = AA, AV and AI work.

While that's definitely true and players need to understand specialized vs. generalized weapons a bit better (if only to call out balance issues like the Vulcan sooner and more loudly), not all specialization is (or should be) absolute to the point where you can only engage that one target type.

With AA especially, a slightly generalized weapon is going to be preferable to a pure weapon most of the time. Which is why flak isn't totally defenseless against infantry and light vehicles (although it's bad) and weapons like the Annihilator are flexible enough to also target ground vehicles (though I find that bit of flexibility isn't worth it and avoid using Annihilator/Strikers.)

the solution to unrewarding AA is simple: increase xp for damage to aircraft. (it should be about 2X the current amount)

and ESF rocket pods are seriously OP, i've gotten huge killstreaks by doing hit and run against infantry, and the only thing their AA can do is force temporary retreats. so i think ESFs need to be nerfed, and i propose that they be given truster damage, so that damaged ESFs get reduced speed for every direction except down, and very low health should mean a steady declined in altitude and forced landing. that way hit and runs against opponents with AA would actually be risky

Tbh, carrying around a dedicated GTA launcher is not crippling you to GTG action. While you do not have an armor lock-on ability, your launcher still do the 1500 damage that the GTG launcher does, and you can lock on to aircraft. This let's you dumb-fire against armor, much like the basic dumb-fire, and you are barely weaker than the basic launcher. It's not much of a loss in ability, though you have chosen to not have it very easy when shooting armor.

I will concede that it's not terribly fun to use a lock-on in general, but that's the option we have right now. If lock-on's were removed and replaced with flak-cannons and air-burst weapons for anti-air, and direct-fire or dumb-fire weapons for anti-armor, we would have weapons that require more player interaction and skill, and require you to make a hard choice with no alternatives.

I'm not sure this would even change anything in the long run - ESF pilots that are highly capable will still play around anti-air, whine when eventually they get shot down, and hold to their childish better-than-thou "ground peasant" taunting, while less-capable pilots will die far more easily and not be a terribly large danger to infantry and tanks.

Hi. Please keep being a dumb tool. It makes shooting your kind down so much more rewarding and fun.

Best regards,
Ground-hogging peasant - armed with anti-air weapons, fool.

They do as much damage as a t-50. Stopped reading there.

They are crap period. Or post a current video to prove me wrong.

Libs are too squishy and too unintuitive because of the terrible design, and ESFs get HEAT weapons. HEAT weapons are currently too adaptable to every situation. It's true of pods, true of Halberds, and still true of AV mana turrets despite the slight nerf batting to secondary dmg radius.

Eliminate hoverspam from ESFs, and people won't even care what you do with AA. Some low velocity frame sway would be fine, as would specializing pods into AV and HE variants. Meanwhile, Libs could easily give up speed and the tail gun for simple any sensible secondary A2G seat configuration that allows a greater forward field of view, and a bit of belly armor.

How can you shoot me down? I almost never fly.

Nothing in this game is particularly effective unless it's used as part of a team, that even goes for ESFs to a degree. Try joining an outfit that coordinates squad level team work by doing thing like pulling multiple burster maxes.

You're right,

AA is broken, but as others have expressed...not for the reasons you detail. Although I don't pilot any aircraft and only rarely jump into tanks...I'm one of those individuals that believes realism should be sought after in the most balanced way possible whenever possible. For example, I believe that anti-vehicle rounds should always one shot infantry soldiers with a direct hit and deal a significant amount of damage with the explosive blast to any caught within its radius. The way to balance this out is simple...you make these weapons inefficient to use against Infantry and a last resort by giving them a low velocity and firing rate that still renders them exceptional against vehicles...but not that great against masses of infantry. A vehicle geared towards armor will be able to one shot an infantry soldier...but they're unlikely to be capable of taking on a mass of Infantry soldiers who all certified into Flak Armor despite the fact that, if the target doesn't dodge the slow projectile, they can still one shot a single soldier with a direct hit.

This makes sense to me because a anti-vehicle round is delivering a far greater amount of force to the target in order to penetrate that armor. If you take a hit from one of these rounds...you should die even if it is meant for vehicles. The key is making this type of round impractical to use against infantry...hence Flack Armor, the slow rate of fire, and the low velocity. Now Nanoweave and Flak Armor are equally important and truly force players to pick between what they want to gear themselves into. You're not supposed to be a Jack of all Trades capable of handling any situation and you're not supposed to be stronger than a tank without support from multiple soldiers capable of engaging that tank.

I believe the same holds true with aircraft...they have superior weapons geared towards the various situations they get involved in. I'm more than sure that infantry in real life find it unfair that a jet can fly by and drop napalm across the field of battle...reducing everyone to ash...but that's just the way it is. Aircraft are going to be stronger than the lone soldier and typically countered by allied aircraft and ground oriented vehicles dedicated to the cause of taking them out. Still...you have to factor in gameplay...

So how do you accomplish this without making aircraft absurdly underpowered against ground? You give them a reason to fear the air by implementing a system that gives them something to actually do in the air. The entire resource system that they are working on should be altered to give air something to do beyond harassing ground forces.

Implement a new aircraft dedicated to transporting resources and then you have aircraft gearing themselves against enemy air forces because it's more lucrative, more prominent, and more entertaining...as many pilots prefer dog fighting over ground bombardment anyway. It no longer matters if aircraft gear themselves against ground...because now they're rendering themselves much more handicapped against the MAJORITY of pilots who gear themselves against air due to the new objectives involved.

If the entire resource system is dedicated to air transportation...most pilots will be gearing themselves to the cause, meaning that any aircraft that chooses to target ground makes themselves vulnerable to a massive amount of specifically air geared pilots just waiting for those dogfights they have longed for throughout the course of the game. Now there's no need to nerf air against ground at all...they can be extremely deadly against ground, which is realistic, but won't do this as often because OTHER pilots will be gearing themselves against air in preparation for any resource ships trying to resupply their base.

The option to assault ground is there, but you open yourself up to risk from enemy air. This is how you balance air, you give them something to do IN THE AIR.

I really liked your post until you the very end when suggested a possible change that I think is a bad.

I REALLY wanted to "like" your post. I feel doing so helps get it more attention to players and devs alike. But with that final bit tacked on to the end of it, I couldn't "like" it since I don't want to lend support to that small part.

I'll somehow soldier on without your support. you know, if it helps put your mind at ease, a 90% is still an A. It doesn't need to be perfect, if you're really aching to hand out that thumbs-up.

Battlefied 1942 mod called "Desert Combat" has still the best most fun AA so far in games.

Game engine didnt have any lock on abilities coded into it so AA-missiles were AA-rockets, fast straight firing and did decent damage when they hit. Damage to armor and infantry was nothing to talk about but aircraft took much damage.

AA-turrets and Shilkas were more accurate (not flak) and had a real proper quad AA-cannon firerate. They could shred infantry and aircraft alike if they had your lead correct. Our skyguard is a pale shadow.




Unfortunatly as far as I recall, you had to pick up the AA launchers from boxes on the map and there was allways Limited number of them. Same goes with the Shilka, only one in the map and you had more flying units then AA units.

In planetside you have much much much harder time of balancing because the numbers vary so much more. No fixed sides, no fixed equipments or vehicle numbers.


I feel the OP's pain , it is somewhat depressing sitting there with your dedicated anti-air skyguard and then dalton lib just parks on top of you and grinds you down while tanking all your certed out fire.

Why is that every one of these posts has to end in a nerf/change to ESFs somehow. While I agree that AA is stupid, and broken at it's core, I can't agree with you because no hover ESFs would absolutely destroy planetside dogfight, which is arguable one of the funnest things in the game right now. I don't even try to ground pound anymore because of the very high possible that I will get mauled by an ever present barrage of flak and lock on missiles. There are so many things that are SO much better at farming infantry in the game right now I am shocked to see how many people complain about getting killed once or twice by an ESF rather than getting spawn farmed by an HE prowler (or something).

Just sayin.

"90% is still an A" doesn't work. The 10% in this case is just too toxic to risk any support to.

I think you ended up getting support from people who hate flyers. They'll frequently like anything that suggests nerfing Air or calls it unfun. But I think your post wasn't trying to communicate Air is OP, but rather Air vs. Ground is poorly designed and unfun. I have posted similar things in the past, and was just communicating my support for it. (along with the concept that keeping posts more concise helps them from getting their ideas cluttered and confused by its readers)

If you have nothing constructive/positive to add to this comment, then please don't reply to this comment. I mean no ill by it, and want none either.

Remove Rocket pods for a start. Theyre not even balanced between the factions.
Fix flak fire freezing aircraft, make base turrets either do more damage, shoot longer or more accurate. remove TRs ability to shoot multiple locking rockets through flares. Or code a multiplier for aircraft to be more susceptible to flak.

All easy, and all would make things better.

1. The number one rule of forumside is that you are not allowed to have any significant experience using whatever you are calling out to be nerfed.
2. Few people use ESFs.