[Suggestion] Aerial Bombers

And you thought it was all a 240vs240 fight? That's the point.

Missing the point, because you know jack about flying. You can't even approach a battle in an ESF, just to take a look, much less make an influence.

That, plus countless opinions by every other player on PS2 that big battles = no fly zone. If you're so adamant that this is easy to do in a big battle, feel free to demonstrate and post the vid.

Not sure what you mean. That I imply that all of the 480 people were in the same fight for one base? Of course not. But air forces were used to dominate the biggest battle of the whole server smash - fight for the Eisa Tech Plant. The outcome of that battle basically decided the outcome of the smash itself.

Missing the point, because you know jack about team play. Like every other lone wolf pilot, you only know yourself, think about yourself, and care about yourself. "Where else can I farm dirty ground peasants without meeting any opposition?" is your usual chain of thought.

How many times I have to repeat before you understand? Bring a GROUP. At least a squads of pilots. Nothing can protect from a sudden, coordinated airstrike. Expecting for one ESF to be able to approach a big battle unscathed is as silly as expecting to survive as infantry after running out in the open and screaming "Hey guys pls don't shoot me, I'm just gonna farm you a bit".

I don't fly a lot, but I've been a part of outfit op where we used a dozen of mossies with A2G missiles to take out multiple sunderers in a big fight. Sure some of us were shot down. Myself I gloriously crashed my mossie in a tree. Thankfully, rest of the group are much better pilots than me, so after the airstrike fight was essentially over.

If that's not making an influence - I don't know what is.

No. Just no to more aircraft.

Absolutely the worst idea ever. Please lock this thread.

IIRC that was 480 people split into 2 factions and made to fight over about 1/3rd of a continent. That should have easily matched primetime player density on Indar at the time.

And when did i say i held that opinion? Ive seen it done. I know better.

Not possible, for 3 reasons.

1) I am a fan of arcade flight sim games and i have a seething disdain for all the VTOL crap everywhere. So most of my flight experience is in a Galaxy. And by "flight" i mean "crash" since i dont want to stay airborne.

2) I dont particularly feel compelled to fabricate and present evidence to you on your whim. Id rather waste that time playing more Monster Hunter.

3) Im on boycott until they finish the Resource Revamp anyway. As long as the game is an endless TDM (or TeDiuM) i wont waste my time or money here.

There's no sense in starting a straw man argument, I'm not going to get drawn into your side stories. You can talk all day about the "theories" you have about air play, despite not having any experience to make any of these claims.

Here's your claim to my response of:

“Air is useless in a big fight.”

"A common misconception. In ServerSmashes, wins the side that wins the air.

1 ESF is useless in a big fight. So is 1 tank and 1 infantry player. What about 20 ESFs?"

I call complete BS. Pony up some proof or go home. Vague stories about how there were once 480 people in a game, who used aircraft, is meaningless. That's just an implication that it might've happened, despite all evidence to the contrary. Any pilot who has even a few hours in an aircraft will know it's pointless to even approach a big fight, much less make a difference.

Bring 20 aircraft? LOL, why not bring 1000? If I had that much resources, I could bring 1000 tanks. I bet that would make much more of a difference. Zerging works in all shapes and forms. However, in a big fight, any resources wasted on pulling air can be put to much more effective use in anything else. TTK of a burster max on an ESF is only 6 seconds. In a 96vs96 fight, the chances of 2 burster maxes simultaneously engaging for an insta-gib is pretty much guaranteed. Bring 20 aircraft? Wait 120 seconds and you've now wasted all those resources instead of pulling maxes and tanks.

When you're ground bound, AA IS fighting back against aircraft.

True, but I also ment taking it to the sky.

1) So you really don't know any better if you have no experience to "know".

2) Then why are you posting counter arguments if you have no intention of providing any proof? Especially to one that's a widely claimed fact. You just came to jump in and say "nuh huh, it's not true" and think that's a convincing enough argument?

3) Why are you even here then? You don't even play?

I think you're biaised in everything air-related

Part of the role i fell into in what is now one of the largest active VS outfits on Cobalt (...last i checked) was that i had access to people who did have this experience.

And i tell you, ive seen it done. I know better.

Then why are you posting inane arguments if you have no intention of providing any proof? Especially to one that's a widely panned fallacy. You just came to jump in and say "uh huh, it is true" and think that's a convincing enough argument?

Goes both ways mate.

What's this thread about?

Add Liberators?

Its been derailed. RadarX will probably notice it and close it soon.

If air is fighting ground infantry within said infantry's 300m render range, they should take massive damage.
One lock on should do the standard dumbfire rocket's worth of damage.
One burster max hitting an ESF should get the reaction of "Oh, ****! I'm dead, I'm SO dead!" rather than "Oh, flak. Better leave for a bit and come back to farm in about 45 seconds".

Outside the 300m render, AA is essentially fine as it is (maybe a bit powerful as far as detterents go, but it certainly isn't going to do any real killing).

But within 300m, it should be as poor a decision for an ESF to enter a fight with AA up as it would be to pester an enemy AP MBT within 100m at only 30m off the ground in front of the tank's main cannon.
Getting that close should be a fools errand for ESF's.

Libs not so much.
The main point to an ESF is to kill enemy libs, so that's when you should need to pull air if you really want to kill it rather than just deter it.

And of course Valks are fine as they are AA balance-wise.
They're already quite susceptible to virtually any AA as it is, they have to operate within the 300m range in a good 90% of their operations, and they have no heavy weaponry to speak of.

So you were part of a zergfit and think uncited opinions by people in said zergfit makes it more credence than actual experience? Lol

No it doesn't go both ways, just because you think it's clever to recycle an idiom. There's several opinions buried in this thread that corroborate that air scales poorly with larger size.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/2fqkv2/ps2_air_units_and_their_strength_in_smaller/

Now. Where's your proof otherwise? Where are these "experts" from your zergfit?

Of course not, god forbid you have to consider being wrong for a second.

I've given you my experiences.

You don't have to be so disrespectful. Is that how you want to "win" this argument? By making it not worth my time to argue with you?

Here's your proof. Air being used in Cobalt vs. Ceres mergersmash.

1) Link:
Starting at 37:10. Unfortunately, they don't actually show the fight itself, but they show the numbers, and it was an even 48+/48+ fight for Freyr Amp. There were no 96+ counters at the time, so we can't really know how many people really were there.

That's what they said about that fight:
38:02 "Cobalt has so much air that they just take them out whenever Ceres tries to go for the A point".

Starting at 43:30. Ceres almost ninja'd the Freyr Amp, but Cobalt's air force with gal drops and air support + some redeploying reinforcements took it back easily.

45:40 "It's the air force that's making all of this happen for Cobalt"

50:58 "And if Cobalt ground forces feel like they need help - they send that huge air force to come and bombard the area".

54:50 "Cobalt can take two bases at the same time, because they're close to each other, and air force can protect both of them at the same time".

57:00 - 58:00 Cobalt air completely denies all attempts of Ceres to capture a base.

Other quotes over the course of the smash:
"Freedom of movement is being denied by Cobalt airforce".
"Ceres has to dedicate a whole platoon of Lightnings and Skyguards at Mattherson's Triumph (Octagon) just to keep safe from Cobalt air infantry fighting for capture points inside the walls". Air wasn't actually present in the fight, yet it managed to affect the battlefield just with the fact that they could be there.

I got tired of watching after the first hour, but there's a second hour of the smash that goes pretty much the same.

There is no question about it - the overwhelming force and mobility of Cobalt air won the smash.

You don't need to have that much resources. You need 20 people with a little bit of resources. You don't see the big picture. You don't seem to grasp that PS2 is a team game, and expecting to rambo in every fight is not smart.

So okay, your ESF gets shot down. While the rest of 19 ESFs devastate everything around. Even if they get shot at from the shielded spawnroom, it rarely provides good angles for the defenders, angles enough to sustain fire on one ESF to actually kill it, and anyone leaving the spawnroom gets obliterated.

"Resources can be put to better use" - it's situational. Sometimes it's better to pull 20 MAXes, sometimes 20 tanks. Sometimes 20 ESFs.

I get what you're saying. One ESF doesn't stand a chance to survive in a big fight, while, say, one Infiltrator can sit on outskirts and snipe relentlessly. Maybe that's even a problem, though personally I don't think so, it's just an inherent disadvantage of being a flying vehicle, which has other advantages to compensate - mobility, mostly.

But saying that "air does not and can not exist in big fights at all in any form" isn't 100% correct either.

I can see my own quote every time I read your posts. You don't have to shove it in my face every time I say "ESF" or "air".
I haven't said in this thread anything that would demonstrate my bias, so it's not even warranted.

It's just a friendly reminder to double-check what you're saying for bias. Put your arguments in different perspectives. For instance, if someone tried to play a serversmash entirely without infantry? Or only air/infantry and no ground vehicle (including no sunderers), Against someone who did use those. What would happen?

I keep your quote because it is far too rare for someone to admit bias, so hopefully it will help reminding you to double check yourself every time. It's not mean't to offend you in any way

Edit: decided to PM instead.

Well they do keep stats from the Server Smashes. The most recent one is here.

If you were to rank weapons by total kills (including both infantry and air) it would look like this:
1) Orion (who knew )
2) Anchor
3) Reaver kills
4) Mosquito kills
5) EM6
6) MSW-R
7) Blueshift
8) Cyclone
9) Scythe kills
10) H-V45

So air is actually killing a good amount during Server Smashes. If you just look at infantry kills:
Mosquito- 1034 kills
Reaver- 1012 kills
Scythe- 311 kills (were the VS pilots asleep?!? )

Which is a lot. About as much as the MAX Blueshifts killed, and more than many other infantry weapons.

Was air dying a lot to infantry in return? Not so much, it we looks at times when infantry killed air:
Reaver- 113 deaths
Mosquito- 82 deaths
Scythe- 24 deaths

And it's important to note that all other ground-based AA was pretty much unused... AA base turrets got 5 kills and Skyguards got 48 kills across all factions. That's because flak AA sucks and the best players know this.

Anyhow, what we see is that when air is used en masse and in a coordinated fashion, it clearly is capable of shredding ground targets without taking many losses. For every time a Mosquito died to infantry, it killed almost 13 of them in return. That's definitely not a situation where air can't participate in large fights.

Huh. I did not expect that. So what are those killer AA infantry weapons? Lock ons?

From what I can see...
NS Burster- 103
VS Nemesis SAM- 97
NC Hawk SAM- 82
TR Grounder SAM- 61
NS Annihilator- 18

Which only accounts for 361 possible air kills (assuming every single kill was an air kill). Out of the total 219 ESF infantry-related deaths, it's quite possible that the majority of them were caused by infantry lock-ons (since the Bursters are all three factions lumped together).