[Suggestion] AA range/view distance absurd.

How things are in the real world has next to nothing to do with this game. It's all about gameplay, and current AA sucks for the shooters and receivers.

because a game could not be conceived without having something as a baseline like WWII flak cannons to reference it to. in a game it gets changed because its in a video game with limitations, so that is correct. Remember how this thread started, and how it develops into. trying to shoot down an aircraft with lockon's from a designated distance sucks, your nearly dead before you even have a tone, the solution to it would be, keep the ranges it developed as it wasn't broken, and give aircraft what most aircraft have, I remember having a discussion in game over coms about this. Someone said give air flares ect ect as standard, but it should only disrupt locks at current and prevent for a short while, less than it would be now with the cert line, and give them a passive certline to the cooldown flares could be used, everything in a consideration of balance gameplay.

And I would like to nominate this one for post of the year! The change is extremely minimalistic of a system already in place (range where flak activates) and with changing the damage numbers and that flak activation range you have an extreme control over the weapons effective range while it can easily be made a skillful but still easy to use weapon.

(also, is the world ending? I just agreed with 2 posts within a day...)

I don't do a salespitch:
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO THIS SYSTEM IS BAD BECAUSE <ULTIMATE EXTREME WITH OP NUMBERS AND SITUATIONS>".

I do a small salespitch:
"I disagree! And here's why <still a misinterpretion or not having read the thing at all".

I do a large salespitch:
"TEXTWALL ALERT! I'LL JUST DISAGREE WITH IT BECAUSE IT DOESN'T SAY WHAT I WANT RIGHT AWAY!".

Ofcourse it's not that black and white, but it's what I keep running in to. So unless you have a better idea than simply explain and hope someone either understands or comes up with a good idea like Moony, I'm going to continue with what I'm doing.

If ESF were cheaper, more people might feel inclined to fly. 350 is a lot of resources for something which cant participate in any large battle. 350 is a lot for something that cant even kill a 150 resource harrasser with a ranger on top.

G2A would be a lot more fun if the fight was more fair. Change the skyguard to be similar to an ESF nosegun. Something like the locust, with no damage falloff and decent velocity. And then adjust the damage of ESF noseguns to a point where they are much better against a lightning.

Something like the Skyguard has half the TTK vs the ESF. It takes 3 secs for 100% accuracy skygaurd to kill an ESF and it takes an ESF 6 secs. Or whatever equals a balanced fight.

Make it so that the ESF WANTS to fight with the skyguard. Sure the ESF can fly away, but he can win so he will stick around trying to outgun the skyguard, and sometimes he will win and sometimes he will lose.

Whats awful is a machine in its current iteration that is virtually impossible to beat with THREE esf let alone 1. The risk to reward is not favorable in any way.

After the last patch it is again completely impossible to operate in a large battle as an ESF or even a lib. Which is wrong. Every large battle has tons of infantry surrounded by a ring of tanks and sundies with harrassers darting this way and that, and not a plane in the sky.

So the most effective fastest vehicle in the game, with 2 weapon systems for a single person..
Harasser has been buffed oddly into a ******** machine - This does not mean buff the highest preforming solo vehicle.

More fair...
The equal price skyguard, which generally needs 2 to scare, 3 to kill, the equally priced ESF.
If the nosegun is better against the lightning, the secondary weapon of the ESF will make it even harder to survive let alone kill the most agile opponent... IE the ESF.

100% accuracy, while the ESF with a nose-gun has half the time..
So the more expensive by your changes, skyguard, dies in half the time to the smallest aircraft, while paying more.
This is apparently fair?
Are you accounting for the damn secondary weapons?

It makes sense, you need half the TTK, less price, and more for your solo killing machine, given you want the original LOL-pods back, just for the ESF to be one-shot by the low-velocity dumbfire missiles..
As if killing entire squads in moments, with the fastest fly-by, is equal to the risk of a low-velocity rocket landing to kill 1 hovering ESF.
12+ deaths in under a second that can't be prevented vs 1 possible ESF death if hovering & not paying attention.


Have you ever been on the ground?
The reason large fights have so much AA, is from being massacred by aircraft repeatedly.
Skyguards do not work until the aircraft is basically dead or dying from focus-fire.
IE its enough skyguards to make it a no-fly-zone, or it's barely noticeable to aircraft.

It's ******, but it's RNG flak, hence why Adam for example, wants it to be a better weapon, that needs aiming.
So you aren't either being blown on by it, or blown apart in a second.

IE not making a Nosegun-Only-ESF the equal to skyguards at less nanites.
That is... to be blunt, to give the best vehicle, a literal sky-high advantage against the largest Anti-air vehicle.

I've made another thread requesting ESF without A2G weapons be cheaper while A2G ESF would stay the same.

Obviously we dont want a bunch of ground pounders pulling unlimited ESF.

It sounds also like you dont fly. Saying that it takes 2 skyguard to scare an ESF, when 1 skyguard is a match for a lib in its current buffed state. 1 good skyguard is enough to make any competent pilot leave.

Why do you think we camp warpgates for A2A fights? Because we arent ALLOWED at large battles.

And yes, i spend most of my time on the ground. I die frequently to tanks, but rarely to ESF. Because ESF cant kill anything in a large battle, and almost all of the battles are large.

You also seem to be missing the entire point. The reason that flak doesn't get many kills is not because its weak, its because its overpowered. Its not fun because it takes no skill and it is impossible to fight against.

I guess you dont fly, but if you try to kill a competent skyguard with an A2A ESF you are going to die VERY badly. And you will die every singlee time. The same is true for any weapon system on the ESF. There isnt one that can kill a COMPETENT skyguard.

In order to balance it and make it fun for BOTH sides. Instead of having skyguard for some reason create area of denial, we change it so it is more of a ground based ESF.

If I get killed by an ESF i go get MY ESF and kill him. The skyguard should be the same type of thing. You can pull one and COMPETE against air, NOT completely dominate.

This makes skyguard fun, because it makes it a fair fight which most players WONT just run from. I simply run away from flak, i NEVER try to fight it anymore, i learned long ago that is suicide.

Not only that but a nosegun style syguard would be much better against infantry which would also help alleviate the crap that is the current skyguard.

Oh you would also adjust the skyguards resistance to a2g weapons too so that the dps is the same as the nosegun.

Skyguards should kill ESF's

Not ESF's noseguns should be on an equal footing to the Skyguard, the skyguard is a focused weapon system that is allegedly meant to be good at killing air, whilst leaving it vulnerable to tanks, infantry, max units, mines, c4 and random things in the road...

When the skyguard is no longer vulnerable to ground units then I will accept that ESF's should be able to kill it.

A single Skyguard should destroy ESF's easily
A single Skyguard should be able to ward off Liberators
Multiple Skyguards should be able to kill Libs and Galaxies

Make the Skyguard have two weapon systems, one long ranged skill based, the other a short ranged high DPS weapon like flak.
Give the dual Burster max the cqc G2A weapon

So now it's "You don't fly, after the changes"
Which change, where Libs got a 50% shield from ground-fire, while ESFs became the premier lib annihilators?
Or a more recent change.

Flak can't kill as it is weak by nature, and is impossible to dodge.
It isn't overpowered: It is however a weapon that either fails, or when enmassed becomes near instantously fatal.

Rather than ensure an ESF can solo a dedicated anti-air tank that sacrificed everything for this gun, as a multi-weapon highly agile fightercraft IE ESF...
Make Anti-aircraft weapons more practical, less flak, more proper weapons.
IE ask Adam.
Whom also likes the cheaper A2A-only ESF idea,as he says it himself.

As well, the reason large battles are where ESFs can't do **** is simple:
That's the level of AA spam, needed to go from "I scratch the paint" to "It flies, it dies" due to amassing of Flak that is required by the nature of the weapon.
The same number of dedicated weaponry in AV or AI, does the same to the intended target if focus-fired.
However with 1 AV or 1 AI, these weapons still can kill -- let alone on nanite vehicles.
AA can not, even with nanites, so it's spammed or rendered useless.

Infantry as well, are not the thing you want to spend 350 nanites to kill, with an Anti-aircraft cannon over an HESH or HEAT round..
Let alone when a Nose-gun ESF can own your *** for equal or less nanites.
As ineffective as it is, the present flak-gun already has some barely tolerable AI, assuming the target has no AV or cover.

As well, did you consider if an ESF with a nose-gun can solo an Anti-air tank, any A2G with the secondaries, makes it vanish..
You know, the ESF that would most definitely be the AA Tank's target & opponent?
Given if an A2A ESF's nosegun could win, the A2G would win hands ******* down..

Go fly up to a skyguard and start shooting it with your nosegun, rather than afterburn away from it while diving toward the ground, and tell me how you do.

A solo ESF NEVER kills my lib, so i dunno what you're talking about. Again, it sounds like you dont fly. You spread misinformation.

Most of your post doesnt make any sense to me sorry.

You apparently didn't get what I said.
With your wanted changes, Nose-guns being able to fight the AA tank effectively as an even match, empowers any of your cheaper A2A ESFs to kill AA, and allows A2G ESFs with dual weapon systems to massacure them.
No ****, present Nose-guns can't mulch an Skyguard that well.

Is your Lib solo? Half the forums seemed to complain about the ease of the ESF attacking a Lib, whom lost the 1-shot dalton, the Tank-buster of anti-everything, and the usual ineffective-as-**** tail-gun being ineffective as hell against air.

Then your pilots spread miss-information as well.
In addition, you don't get it, as you somehow don't read it... the words "rather than ensure" , which implies If your changes went through..

Like do you want mean to increase the post length, ensuring to have double redundancy of what the **** I am saying is clearer than day?

That's a good direction to go with the Skyguard. I do think it needs a damage falloff though, otherwise it would be either too weak against tankbusting libs or too strong against aircraft at render range.

I think noseguns should actually have their accuracy nerfed and damage kept the same. Gank squads focussing tanks from render range with stock guns is the main reason the Skyguard needs to be so powerful at 800m. Less accuracy would limit long range harassment of libs as well, and get ESF to have to get close where fun air combat actually happens. Maybe keep the long range guns the same so they'd finally be a competitive option.

I'm 100% behind this, as long as all wing weapons are included. Half off nosegun-only ESF would benefit everyone but A2G pilots, who would always be looking over their shoulder. New pilots would not only get more flight time, they'd have more new pilots to fight. If we have to have cancerous missiles in this game then this would give a competitive reason not to run Coyotes, and by shear will you could whittle down lock-on squads.

ESF have so many balance problems. It's pathetic that this game is 5 years old and the single competitive option is fire suppression, stealth and hover.

This makes me miss the air ecosystem in Battlefield 1942. Planetside could learn something from that game.

Fighters cleared a path for bombers, bombers cleared a path for ground vehicles, ground vehicles cleared a path for infantry, and infantry did the objective. THAT is what combined arms looks like.

And to top it all off, AA was very effective without being gamebreaking. Its range was long enough to protect ground forces yet short enough to give air plenty of room to play. You didn't want to face AA head-on, but you could destroy them if you played your cards right.

Meanwhile in Planetside, you can't even duel another ESF without a flak cannon dune buggy dropping you to 60% from the other side of the hex. Then the AA has to wait another 3 minutes before another air target shows up since nobody wants to fly. Not fun for anyone involved.

Here's another idea of mine. Nosegun-only ESF are still half price. Increase G2A weapon damage against ESF. Increase the benefit of ESF flak armor. All that in exchange for raising the flight ceiling 500m. This gives ESF room to play, lets them swoop down for quick kills/strikes, but shifts the A2G role to Valks and Libs. The ESF is just too good at everything.

atm you either have air vehicles killing you or antiair.
there is no reason to pull antiair in advance nor is there reason to keep it after the fact.
you are better off to to ditch a skyguard and pull a new vehicle than to keep it, because for some reason a rapid firing 40mm cannon is shooting marshmellows at anything thats not atleast 1m above ground.
really what this game needs is a reason to pull AA preventively, before it can be assessed how powerful and how skillfull AA needs to be against it's intended target.
just like in ny favorite RTS ever World in Conflict the Skyguard needs the ability to defend itself and support other vehicles. the skyguard cannon already manages to miss 90% of it's shots at 10m so it should be easily capable of killing Infantry with 2 to 3 shots.
also, for once that would be great to adopt from reallife is that 40mm anti air cannons absolutely shred light armor aka harrassers and Sunderers. you should not be able to pull something cheaper that is literally the thing it's designed to counter, just with wheels instead of skids and survive.

after that we can talk about maybe reducing it's effectiveness as an air deterrent and cater it more towards a close range air killer that air can try to duel instead of getting either blinded or plinked to death by annoyance.

As i already said, obviously a weapon like an ESf nosegun an a lightning platform would be quite good at killing infantry. It would also be accurate for dealing damage to enemy tanks at ranges that give them an advantage, though dps would be quite low vs strong vehicles as ESF noseguns do little damage to heavily armored vehicles.

I wont bother with a skyguard. It sucks at everything, including killing enemy air. Its overpowered and drives away anything that flies, while being unable to kill anything that doesnt.

A weapon that requires skill would be much more fun for everyone.

Just throw a locust cannon on a lightning chassis. Done. And that gun has no damage drop off at range so it would be fun to harrass enemy tanks at long range with it.

So it becomes an Anti-Infantry killer, with a passion to target aircraft.

Overpowered in numbers, due to the explosive flak that can't be dodged, that builds up to fatal-in-instant in said numbers.
Alone it's worthless as **** - Flak is why at number, it is that "overpowered"

Again, refer to Adam posts.
Throwing a Locust Cannon, which is a fixed-mount cannon, would be a little more complicated..
If nothing else, due to how most AA weapons even those on the Liberator's tail are often ******.. some.. how..

I've been wanting ESF guns on lightning for a long time. A pre-nerf vortek! 500 damage, 750 ROF! Faq yeah!

i can dig that .. have the weapon act at shorter ranges like a walker and at longerranges as actual flak ..
what i would add to that is to have the projectile still detonate at max range