Air/Ground Balance, why it's hard, and what can be done about it.

Simply making AA more powerful is not the answer to the problem, because it doesn't address any of the core issues in balancing the two out. A boring, stupid unit like the Burster MAX that performs at its absolute best just sitting on an ammo box, abusing a technical limitation of the game and having to share kills with 3 other people is just as boring and stupid if it has twice the firepower.

The game wasn't any more fun during the days of Beta where AA guns could knock all aircraft out of the sky in seconds. Making anything easy makes it less fun, because it's the place where skill meets challenge where your brain is really engaged in the experience, which is why the problem can't be solved by simply tweaking the numbers on AA until its easy to get kills.

I tend to find that an organised squad with at least 3 G2A launchers makes the ESF's **** off.

Does it make an organized squad of 3 ESFs go away?

Besides, a raw numbers game with weapons that allow for practically no personal skill to come into play just isn't very good gameplay, even if it does do well. If you're running with a weapon that can't miss and only having more people gets you good results you might as well be a unit in an RTS game that doesn't need a player with a brain and shooter skills.

That's usually when our mossie pilots come in and kill the rocket podders who can't dogfight for ****.

Which takes us right back to fighters being their own best counter...

Turn all base defences into AI operated sentry guns. They would still be able to be operated by the players for more accurate fire.

Buff the Flak Armour (Infantry) and call it a day.

Wat. I have manned the belly gun and the tailgun on many Liberators - chiefly my friend's. The ONLY time I have downed an ESF that came after us was when my buddy barrel rolled and I managed to tag the Mossie with a lucky shell from the 150mm cannon. The tailgun on the Lib is worthless. Literally the only thing you can do with it is throw a Bulldog in that slot and let the tailgunner shoot at infantry and tanks too, because all the Basilisk does is alert fighters to where you are, and the Walker is even worse..

Do you play AA or do you just fly? Skyguards are complete crap. An ESF can saunter over to one, drop rockets on it and turn it into so much slag, and then fly off and repair. Liberators laugh at it as they can fly high enough that they can still see it, but the COF on the Skyguard is so huge it can only ping the Lib and then get blown to hell. Galaxies can tank the damage and then drop some HA on it which it can't do anything about, and then it dies. You need a 2:1 ratio of Bursters to Fighters to kill the most inattentive pilots, and good pilots force a 4:1 or 5:1 ratio. That's three double burster suits, or 5 guys in single burster suits. Libs can straight up ignore the MAXes, Skyguards, and base flak - fly over a base, kill the cannons, kill the Skyguards, retreat and repair/rearm. Fly back out, lower this time, kill/supress the MAXes, kill the flak, and now they have air control back. I've gotten into duels with Libs and made them retreat, but any time there are two Libs and two ESF's, the airpower is practically invulnerable.

This is a start. A gun/gun platform should be good against a MAXIMUM of 2 unit types. Right now Rockets kill vehicles, infantry, and air. They don't often kill other ESFs, but they're murder on Gals and Libs. All rounder weapons are fine, but they should be mediocre at everything. Like Basilisks.

It still doesn't resolve the problem of AA not being able to get kills - which is a problem because it means no certs and no incentive to play a role that costs 1000 certs for anything beyond a single Burster MAX.

Only minor tweaks are needed to balance air/ground. We don't need a sledgehammer here, just a scalpel.

Skyguard:
Allow certing into the Skyguard to buff it's round velocity by 5,10,20%
Allow certing into the Skyguard to buff it's damage by 5,10,20%

Hawk(or faction equivalent):
Allow certing into the hawk to buff it's damage by 5,10,20%
Allow certing into the hawk to reduce it's lock on time by 5,10,20%

Rocket Pods:
Reduce it's damage to infantry by 20%

Make people earn that AA buff.

fixed.

Infantry can already reduce their damage to rocket pods by 15% by default...

Basilisk and walker are designed as a deterrent to chasing ESF, not as a general-use weapon. I generally only right with one gunner and have them switch to the rear gun when we are getting out of danger or have a tail.

Hence why I referred to a skyguard as "point defence". Liberators at high altitudes are big targets for ESF and the liberator gunner can rarely render targets properly at that altitude. Most skyguards I deal with tend to have the same problem: they forget to hide their rear and don't scan the skies in all directions - I can just sneak up behind and wipe them out in half a clip. Point defence means the skyguard needs to be at the location where the ESF's are attacking not up on a hill or out the back (like the immortal skyguards from beta) because they simply do not deal well with high transversal targets. I agree that damage of all AA against liberators and galaxies is lacking, but that is counterbalanced by the slow speed and large size that makes them juicy ESF targets.

Pretty much. SOE seem to have a bad knack for balancing - it would do them well to stick to a philosophy like this. I'd personally like to see all the vehicle and infantry weapon/upgrade information to be much more revealing (like in EVE: Online) so we can make some educated decisions on how weapons operate.

I have no problem killing aircraft with my AA HA launcher, but you generally need three to hold down an area. That said, once you have three in an area you can defend against quite a few dudes... SOE are having a hard time with this because in beta the AA was TOO effective, making flying air anywhere near a fight nigh-on impossible. Generally in big firefights it is alot harder to operate air now but it still dominates in small fights. When more people begin to unlock AA weaponry we might see a shift in how these operate.