[Suggestion] AA range/view distance absurd.

That's what Hornets are for. Ground just needs better anti-air options.

AA only being useful against air is a problem for vehicles, as air can easy bug off and find an easier fight, but the Skyguard can't. The Skyguard and Burster Max in particular need to be multi-purpose.

As someone that tries to do AA at every opportunity I can tell you that flak and lock-ons are nonstop. Lock-ons are as balanced as they're getting with their current mechanic, but that flak..... I'm playing Arma till the Ranger is nerfed and Purgatory is gone. But yeah, most infantry ignores big A2A fights because they aren't getting farmed, and they aren't getting farmed because neither side can spend more than a second looking at the ground with enemy ESF around. This is why we need 1/2 off nosegun ESF. It would keep the skys more populated and let ground go about their business more easily, plus ground would get more kill assists as taking half health from an A2G ESF would be a death sentence for it with enemy air around.

Flak is just bad. It needs a much tighter cone, more velocity, half the burst range, some sort of damage falloff, and its pre-CAI damage against vehicles back.

So you're just against OHKs then. Getting rid of OHKs isn't something that should be done 5 years down the road. Snipers, granades, C-4, shotguns...... So much of this game would have to change, it just shouldn't happen. I'm just looking at it from a balance perspective. AP is basically useless against infantry, and for such a slow firing gun it doesn't feel right. None of the tank guns are right this patch. But as for how tanks can get infantry support in open fields. They shouldn't, they're in an open field, there are rep Sundies for that. Vehicles survive combat with armor or speed, and infantry with cover or evasion.

no, i am against too many OHK options were people barely have the chance to fight back or retreat ...
and it's simply the worst case against vehicles were small arms do jack and classes like the medic and infill are just entirely helpless ... engineers are limited to mines or otherwise forced to be stationary with AVturrets and still both engineers and HA require multiple missiles to down a tank were the non-viper tank requires 2 shots max ...
LA's with c4 and/or typhoon generaly have to close the gap and against a heat+ kobalt the odds are stacked against them ...

so in other words lets throw combined arms out of the window and have battletheaters be isolated into themselves, screw the idea of tactical compositions and limit them to a binary foot or tankrush with nothing inbetween ... yea that's very exiting ...

Here's how it should be. Infantry should have their world where they're supreme and vehicles should rule the open territories between bases. PS2 ****** it up when they let a single infantry squad wreck armor in open territory thanks to render distance. But that's been fixed. But the problem we've always had, and still have, is that infantry can't wreck armor in urban warfare. Tanks and Harassers should get owned if they try to get all close and personal in an infantry fight. But we don't have that scenario. The way I see it, infantry need a strong rocket launcher to own close quarters fighting, but they'll never have it as long as rockets are free and spammable. Nanite-based launchers are the only solution that I see.

The way it should be is that vehicles can engage in basebattles
and infantry should be able to support vehicles between bases
as well as be able to defend against vehicles within a base
Liberators should be the firesupportaircraft were esf's should do strafingruns when it comes to A2G

infantry in open areas gets mopped up against a infantryfocused vehiclecolumn with kobalts up the vasu so they need vehicles to get from base A to B (unless you want to redeploy for pure infantryfights) ...
on the other side AV focused infantry can give support to a vehiclecolumn be it through laying out mines or launching missiles behind armor as cover, meanwhile engineers repair armor and maxes aswell as providing armor to HA's Maxes and medics that ensure the continueous firesupport ...
LA's flank vehicles and punish those too focused on antivehicleduty as well as infils either getting into wraithgunflashes or position themselfes so they can pick off the supporting infantry ...

additionaly medics would participate in the AV firesupport with grenadelaunchers as primary and small teams of infils pick of singular vehicels with AV grenades from their backside ...

Vehicles already heavily participate in base battles where they mop up infantry. That might be the single most complained about thing in the game. And earlier you were even complaining about vehicles farming infantry. And you want more vehicles in bases?

This just sounds awful. You don't want a fast ttk from snipers or tanks against infantry, but you're fine with Kobalts shredding infantry. And you want medics and infils out there trading blows back and forth with armor.... Everything you've been saying is contradicting and off in so many ways.

The bug was fixed. The damage of the flak bursts was increased from 25 to 35.

Anti-aircraft fire is in a good place right now. Continuing to push for it to be buffed may result in it being buffed, but it may also result in a larger counter swing that sees it being heavily nerfed.

Mis-typed in the last post - it was moved from 20 to 25, not 25 to 35

Because the lock-on can be fired right away, instead of after a while giving the aircraft time to locate and kill you. It increases the potential options for the weapon, and depending on the missile agility allows you to fire from cover and lock-on after it traveled in the general direction of your target. You could also potentially pop-up, fire, get back to cover, wait a moment, pop-up again (potentially somewhere else) and then lock-on.

Switch to gun = missile keeps flying and depending on the warhead (flak or FFP for example) could still hit the target. Giving you another functionality in dumbfire potential.
Get killed = same as switch to gun
Break line of sight by a branch or pole = potential to re-lock the target, or lock-on to another target entirely.
At best this new lock-on offers new ways to engage aircraft, can potentially limit exposure or increase it depending on how you use it giving the player a perfect tool to pick and choose it's own difficulty where higher exposure means higher chance to hit and more safety means lower chance to hit, and with potentially different warheads to switch to just before you open fire you can change the damage and hit chance to suit your needs.

Deterrents offer nothing good. The lionshare of users don't like to use them, the lionshare of aircraft users don't like being attacked by them.

I just tested it out in the VR:
Skyguard still has 35 indirect damage and still needs 33 to 35 flak hits to destroy a single ESF with 100% accuracy (and if you hit it from point-blank where the flak burst doesn't activate yet, 60 hits). This is no different than pre-CAI. But there is a difference in accuracy, which has gone down according to the patch notes (not sure what it was before but it says 1.5 now). I just tried to shoot some heads at 10m distance, and sometimes I missed my first 6 shots before I actually hit something. Against a non-moving target, at almost no range, in the VR room.

I don't see how this is any good. I don't see how the deterrent system is any good to begin with as it can only have losers, and if there is a winner it completely obliterates the opposition because either aircraft will have no fear from the deterrent or the deterrent will be able to insta-wreck any aircraft that comes along. There's no good way to handle a deterrent system in PS2, in fact in most games there's no good way to handle it.

yes indeed they are and that is why i additionaly said infantry should be able to participate in vehiclecombat as support ...
because why would it be ok for vehicles to farm infantry at bases were infantry is not allowed to support vehicles in non basebattles and open field? this just doesn´t make sense .. and nowhere did i mention that i want MORE vehicles in battles ..

dude you don´t understand me at all (that or you don´t read well) ..
it doesn´t matter if sniper can OHK me if i have a non vehicle way to defend myself against them
and yes i take the kobalt over the ohk AP because kobalt is designed around that primary role the AP is a AV weapon
it does matter that many infantry can´t do jack against vehicles with their cannons ..
also nice move on the " ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING you say is contradicting" .. what a cop out way to handle a discussion

i already said:

and you return with "oh you don´t want OHK" again?

a sniper is easy to take out
as a medic however you can´t do jack against a harrasser much less any heavy armored vehicle same with being a infiltrator ...

this is something you didn´t talk about before, you only mentioned maintain lock (same in your linked thread) which was still vague on how your idea of a lock on would operate exactly ...
still

the lionshare of people does not like being killed by liberators or esf´s
the lionshare of people does not like being killed by OHK cannons of any kind
what about your launcher vs flares?
what about people that still can´t operate your launcher well against esf´s? want to leave those in the dust then?

me being according to you the minority i like the current lock on ..
and again as i said before i don´t mind your idia being a additional option to the arsenal ..

You compare a skyguard with a flak? 33 hits vs. 35 hits but you do not consider that the sky has a much higher speed like the flak. As an example, while the flak makes 100 DMG, the Sky 200 does, in the same time, because of the higher RDM. Also, the splash dmg is higher as with the flak. is the same as comparing a ZXR to a bicycle

Everything in this game needs its balance, an overwhelmed played game that has spam air would be nightmarish for anyone on the ground, I admit flying an esf sucks when your not in a position to do well in it. If you over-pursue you might get double teamed, or that one heavy 3 hexes away waiting for an enemy esf to fly by with light a rocket into you.
About the statement first described, I've been in the same situation sitting on a pad getting hit by something not seen, and traceable on the map or visually. It could have been many things. It could have been a LA sitting on top of the tower rocket gunning your esf toying with you, it could have been, something 1 hex away was shooting at you and for some reason (Glitchside2) or (Hackside2) decided you shouldn't be able to see tracers. we are talking about Planetside 2 here... the pad was probably angry with you, grew a pair of rangers and killed you.
Daybreak Games is not SOE Games <<

I don't think armor should be able to farm infantry at bases. Base design sucks and infantry don't have a reliable way of countering armor in close quarter combat. I think vehicles should rule the open battlefields and support infantry fights but with the requirement that infantry are there to protect their flanks. Air is another mess, and I think bases need ways to get to the point without being farmed by LOLpods, such as tunnels, covered paths or teleporters.

Libs: I think the pre-CAI Lib was about perfect, and the only problem was inadequate ground-based AA. And from what I hear from some veteran tankers the Lib wasn't loud enough when driving armor.
OHK cannons: Like I mentioned earlier, I think this is entirely the fault of bad base design and the inability of infantry to wreck tanks that get within spitting distance.
Flares: I think they should be ammo-based and not a hard counter. I've mentioned this a million other places. It goes along with a variable radar signature of aircraft which determines everything from lock-on time, coyote track range, and missile tracking speed.
Players who can't operate my launcher: I've proposed a flak or spread bullet spam option, just with tighter tolerances than what current flak offers. If that doesn't work for them then they just need practice, pvp can only get dumbed down so far.
current AA left alone: No, for the reasons I've already listed. We should promote conflict, not deter it. Current AA mechanics suck to fight against unless the damage is so low that AA is no longer a threat. No matter how you slice it, either air or ground will continue to be pissed as long as we travel down this same path.

that was meant for @demigan
not for @adamts01

Just for clarity it was in the description:

But I'll forgive you for forgetting that after 2+ posts in between. This is however a problem I continuously run up against: Not detailed enough and people only imagine the worst possible scenario for a system I design, too much detail and people start complaining about textwalls and often don't catch on anyway.

My launchers vs flares I also explained. It's underlined in the "laser-guided missile" part, takes up half of the explanation of the weapon. I hope that's clear now.

If people still can't operate the launcher against ESF's, then they won't be able to operate a Carbine, or a tank, or something as simple as a medgun properly either. For those people there are only two solutions: Learn to play FPS's in general or quit entirely. You can't go around designing every single weapon or vehicle with the notion "what if not 100% of the playerbase can use it". Just because a game like Just Cause or GTA can have a different controlscheme for aircraft that takes a little time to learn (and would have been a much better way to handle aircraft) doesn't mean suddenly less than 100% can use it. All there is is a time barrier before reaching the skill floor. And unless that time barrier is massive there's no problem in having a slightly higher skill floor. That said, the weapons I propose still have extremely low skill floors. Since they don't have bullet drop and have methods to reduce the skill required to hit (laser-guidance, lock-on, flak range, FFP etc) they would be easier to use than something like a Carbine, especially since you don't have to worry about your magazine size as you'll likely be shooting the entire magazine in one go never worrying about conserving ammo for a possible next target.

Perhaps that's the answer. Give flak weapons a massive direct damage buff against aircraft and push their flak trigger range out (and maybe reduce their flak damage a bit).

Flak AA weapons do either flak or direct damage - but not both at the same time. If an ESF/Lib gets close enough - the flak AA weapon get's what is in effect a massive nerf because the direct damage is so much lower than the flak damage.

So in a scenario where the aircraft should be absolutely owned (i.e. toe to toe with a dedicated AA unit) - they instead get to just laugh in it's face.

By buffing direct damage but pushing the flak detonation range out and reducing it's damage - if an aircraft strays to close to an AA unit - they should (rightly) die very quickly.

This change would make AA units deadly at close range as they should be - and they would be more skill based as you aren't relying on area of effect explosions. For longer range engagements - the lower flak damage would act just as a deterrent rather than as a direct counter.

You have a tendency of turning your posting into a sales pitch. It's hard to not tune that out after a while and just skim every other line, especially when you're doing repeated back and forth quote-comment sessions with another poster.

...... -_-'

Yeeeee easmir or however you spell it, was designed to be that way. In before times each continent would be specialized for an apsect of gameplay, amerish was for air easmir was for infantry, and indar for armor. Alerts used to reward the capping of the continent with extra resources of that specialization.

Flak is Flak as it is in the real world, the only other concept in a game that is set in the future, is that it would be wayyyy more deadly and effective.

This thread I think has gone off topic in so many different directions.