Air Supperiority

This isn't a lack of balance between empire air complaint. Its the extreme dominance of air, of all empires, mine included.

I think the way air is at the moment is intentional, its just a frustrating system. I do a lot of platoon leading, and the thing that stops me every time is air, UNLESS, I have an air squad with me. And then I just steam roll the enemy.

Its frustrating to me that the success or failure of a push is so dependent on air. If I am running without an air squad, its not that I have no options to kill the air, its that once I decide to fight it, the push has to stop.

The air can't kill my Dual Burster Maxes and my Dual Burster Maxes can't kill off the air (Not that there aren't losses on both sides, but both sides are able to either spawn new ones, or repair fast enough) so it turns into a total stalemate. There are no tactics. There is no strategy. Its just gun at each other, repair. Unload on each other, then repair. Rinse and repeat, I've done this for two hours before.

The frustration is that the enemy then wins, not by superior skill. Just because when we decide to fight air, we can no longer make progress.

I want to be able to continue a successful push, without have to turn my armor into sky guards, and my infantry into engineers and Burster Maxes. We should be able to keep air from harassing us, with just a few AA batteries, and still have enough infantry/armor to continue our push.

I don't expect to be able to kill the air with just a few batteries. But be enough of a nuisance that they do not want to bother me. Air should only dominate a ground push, if the ground push is not willing to load up AA. As it stands now, even if I shift to total AA mode, they still dominate the push.

Soften up the air. Decrease their A2G capabilities. Or increase our AA capabilities. A successful push should not be determined by if I am running with an air squad or not. I agree that the AA was way to powerful at the start of Beta, then the pendulum swung way to far in the other direction, and got hung up there for launch. The slight reduction in A2G capabilities was not enough to offset the massive AA nerf.

last night 3 max-aa 2 heavys-aa and 1 engeenier hold a base, and there come 3 Liberators and x moskitos!! where is the problem ??
60 cent in a hour is not bad, or?

dual-buster maxes MUST work in groups

Ugh. Honestly, I got tired of all the G2A complaints so I went and bought the AA Launcher for HA when we were attacking a TR base and had half a dozen mosquitoes and two liberators harassing us in the air. The Sundy I spawned at was almost immediately destroyed but an engineer was around and placed an ammo kit for me. I was immediately able to make the two liberators retreat, no kills or assists on them but it removed the two floating weapons platforms of death. I then started shooting at every single mosquito I saw. Got one kill, four assists. In just under a minute. This was fairly far from the fight at one of the teleporter caps, I was able to lock on and shoot at a lib that was on the opposite side of the base. With an ally the mosquitoes would have died instantly, but as it stood I was the only one from my position taking the AA role, despite having two dozen allies around.

I've had great success with dual-burster MAX, I just wait until the enemy is at a decent range rather than spamming the weapon from across the map. However, I don't really like using the MAX build as I loose the ability to do just about anything else.

Why haven't your HA units been taking the AA role? It just sounds to me like you're being overwhelmed by air and all your vehicle secondary turrets are upgraded to deal with ground targets better, and all you're left with is two MAX units against a horde of aircraft and nobody willing to switch to HA to fire off a few missiles. Even if the fighters pop flares they only have a handful of seconds to keep shooting before you can lock on again, and even if they retreat they have to wait nearly a minute to return, otherwise they have no defence at all against the missiles. Against some pilots you don't even have to fire the missile, the threat of seeing "LOCK" on their screen is enough to have them pop flares, at which point you wait for the immunity to expire and THEN fire at them.

I have no friends, I am married, I am the original Billy no mates (English thing don't worry)

So I need friends to kill Aircraft that is hardly fair.Aircraft don't need friends, I know this guy John (only an acquaintance can't call him a friend) he can destroy a MBT all on his lonesome in his Aircraft, I heard rumours of a guy named Dave who can destroy a Sunderer that can spawn many many infantry in his Aircraft all the time this Sunderer is being guarded by a loner in a Max, hardly seems fair to me.

I think if we made the planetside 2 universe a huge scale,and we placed the solo aircraft on 1 side how many Dual Burster Max's or Skygaurds or AA turrets do we need to place on the other side to reach a pefect balance 2,3,4.

I am sorry, but in my world if a Multi purpose unit can destroy say a MBT in 1 Salvo, then a purpose build unit should be able to destroy the Multi Purpose unit in 1 salvo.

If you want to drive at 200mph then you accept the chance you may get a blow out and crash simple as that.

I was running 8 Dual Burster Maxes at Arroyo Tech. 4 Enginneers Supporting them. The few remaining Soldiers I had were trying to hold off the armor column that we were advancing against, until we had to stop and fight the air.

Of course Bursters can hold a base. Thats not the issue. The issue is being able to advance against air. Just holding doesn't work. Need to actually be able to push.

The HA rocket is not as effective as Dual Burster. Hence why we retain the HA for anti tank, and the Dual bursters for air.

You talk about only 1 Person... but this game is not a Singleplayer.
You must something you have to coordinate themselves.this is only the way over Teamplay.
THIS GAME HAVE INGAME VOICE!! Use it and you have the bigges Fun ever!!

ESF's MUST work in groups.

So because I don't have friends I cannot play this game?
Because I don't have friends I can't advance in the game.

Let me take a quote right of the Planetside 2 homepage.

Free to Play Your Way™
Our philosophy is simple: free games. No commitment. And if you want to buy, it's on your terms.

The way want to play is, I want to be able to have a CHANCE of killing an Aircraft in a 1 vs 1 scenario, I don't want to have to rely on a 2nd 3rd or 4th max to help me scare Air Calvary off. I don't want a 1 hit I win button, I just want the SINGLE PURPOSE AA Max I spent 700 SC on to be able to do a little more than make the pilot think "oh well I have 30 seconds before I need to bug out, I can kill 2 MBT"

My new saying of the day is:

If you want to drive at 200mph you have to be prepared to get a blowout and crash.

Why? ESFs don't have to.

Not really, you can take out a lightning in one rocket barrage, and an MBT in 1 and a half.

It was more a future tense hopeful statement.

Even if you find dual burster MAX units to be more effective than HA G2A, that doesn't mean you shouldn't have some of your HA soldiers bring the G2A launcher. It's still effective against vehicles, and they won't exactly be wasted as the HA soldiers can still fill a good anti-inf role, from the sound of it you already have tanks and AV weapons to take out opposing vehicles, I don't think taking the G2A launcher with two HA soldiers is going to do more harm than good. If you're running a whole platoon you likely have a Sundy that can let anyone swap classes and loadouts at will, even if you don't want to dedicate certain people to the role you can still have two people make the transition once the fight becomes more air-oriented. I don't see why a whole platoon has to be purely anti-inf and anti-vehicle. Either a whole platoon of infantry and vehicles can't deal with one or two fighters or you're being deliberately stubborn about only taking two AA MAX suits while being attacked by a swarm of aircraft.

Also, why is everyone so intent on this 1vs1 stuff? If every infantry could take out a tank or aircraft 1vs1 then we'd only see infantry. The only reason you see infantry taking out tanks in 1vs1 scenarios is either due to a massive height advantage or a tank driver that doesn't drive or shoot. Most vehicles take a group effort to take down. Infantry also don't have to spend resources, wait 15 minutes to spawn again, or have to drive/fly themselves to the battle, they spawn in the battle five seconds after being killed.

I support G2A 100%, and im a scythe pilot!
What i can't stand is the damn A2A missles, completely uneccesary and takes the fun out of dog fights

I don't think AA ground unit damage or effectiveness should be greatly changed, as it's easy enough to have your aircraft destroyed 30 seconds after spawning. The skyguard does need re-worked though.

To further increase the likelyhood that people will actually use AA, I think the burster and skyguard damage should be increased against infantry, and skyguard should at least deal the same damage to tanks that sunderer default gun turrets do. I don't want to see burster damage what it was back in the August pre-beta build (where bursters mowed down infantry), but right now it is more effective to try and melee infantry when using bursters. It's a flak cannon! It should hurt infantry too!

The game is based off team-play, not solo-play.
* Sure a single enemy fighter can be deadly, but 2+ AA Maxes or Fighters can be even more devastating.

A single max is an easy target, during the beta they where buffed to the point where people didn't even bother with aircraft.
* Personally I fly the mossie with A2G rockets and I have no chance to get kills on an area that has 2 AA MAX units.

I loved using AA, and I also don't want to see it how it was in August, but I would like it back to the last day of beta., all my comments are on the Burster Max, I nver really used Skyguard or Turrets because they are just easy prey, so I do have a 1 sided argument, I just know when you have pilots sayng what a joke AA is then you know there is a problem.

They do, that is how I am also getting sort of mad at the fact groups of them spam me with A2A by playing solo.

This guy is complaining about groups.