Anti Air partisans - A global invitation

I love playing as anti-air.
The only part that I don't like is encountering an enemy tank, but that's entirely my fault.
I can honestly say that 9/10 pilots I encounter aren't very good (sometimes they're distracted by other aircraft). The 1/10 pilots are simply good pilots, and will beat you 1v1 (that's what you get for lone-wolfing).

ladies and gentlemen,

i hereby submit that by the opposition's own admission, these are the statistics that represent their entire argument.

1. statistics irrelevant
2. argument invalid
3. discussion over
4. microphone dropped

Apology accepted.

For the rest of the post. I usually read it all really fast, and then read it again slowly. Here's the thing though, while reading yours, there was just some things that were so blatant that I didn't bother reading the rest. Here goes:

You mean the variable render distance that allows infantry to sometimes to be rendered at extreme ranges? The one a few players complained about a few times? Not sure if that's already altered again, but it's possible to hit MAX's from just about any range in a Dalton. Not if they move ofcourse, but a Burster MAX tends to stand still for extended times, easy pickings.

That's easy, I've seen you come up with the non-sensical argument that somehow by flying a Liberator 2 or 3 times you can prove that AA is OP. I've continually pointed it out perfectly without resorting to "it's non-sensical and I'm going to ignore it without giving a real reason". Oh wait, you did give a reason, which was "I didn't know about a render range distance being variable and I'm going to be ignoring any arguments regardless of truth based on that ignorance".
Oh, and then you use the quote and try to make me look bad in your signature, didn't you know that naming and shaming (you make it look like I say something stupid despite it having been possible) is not allowed on the forums?

Nope, tank mines get more vehicle kills than C4, and other tanks kill even more than C4.

Didn't I already tell you that dedicated AA kills less Liberators than the Vanguard+Prowler AP canons? Did you also look at the video? These aren't chained experiences, these are seperate instances where he got an aircraft kill. At some point I personally used dumbfires to kill aircraft, with the Fire Supression becoming more rampant, I would whip out the Comissioner to finish it off. I could have made a nice little montage of that as well and made it look like the Comissioner is a wonderful ultra-air killer.

Now if he had a continuous video where he kills aircraft effectively multiple times, then it could be used as some proof, it could still be cherry-picked of a single instance where he was on a roll rather than a reflection of how it normally goes in the game.

Translation: I like to shoot down arrogant fly-boys who over-extend and die in flames because I feel they deserve it and their rage tells amuse me. This makes me a bad person IRL.

Thanks. If I cared for every time people told me I was an evil A-hole I might just be offended.

As for your claims about our 'gank-squad' that designation is ofc your choice. I'd like to see you be able to dive 12 mossies into a 96vs96 in progress and surgically remove one sunderer after the other with incoming AA to hinder your work. ESF's are not terribly expensive and we managed to replace the losses often enough to keep the pressure up. And yes, believe what you wish but when you constantly remove the enemy's sundie spawns the whole battle start to change and the overall picture becomes different. Course, by the time they only have 2-3 sundies left the number of dedicated AA players start to get very nasty. But by then most of your job is done, so it don't matter that the last of your squad died in flames to 6+ burster MAX'es, does it?

Finally, for your laughable 5 ESF vs 5 lightnings example: this entire example relies on a huge range of factors, one of them key ones being terrain use and the co-operation and aiming skills of the skyguards. Here is the best part:

The 5 ESF's can leave. Quickly and in relative safety, to find other fights elsewhere on the other side of the continent if they wish. The 5 skyguards are 5 land-locked dedicated AA vehicles that has little protection against ground targets.

But yeah, AA is totally OP, because 5 dedicated AA vehicles can out-gun 5 all-purpose Assault Craft that don't bother to disengage and leave for another fight, somewhere else.

What...?
So you say that the bads only die to AP canons? That means that the nosecannons would get more kills normally and are even more astoundingly good than already shown?
Now I don't have open hatred to aircraft, I have open hatred to people who spout nonsense and try to pass it off as truth.
Did you see me campaining against Libs? Or ESF? I have been campaigning for a different and better AA system that helps both the AA users as well as the aircraft.

Where do you guys get the idea that stock liberators drag the stats down? What does it even have to do with AA? The whole premise of the thread is that AA is UP, but you guys continually bring up just one aircraft, the Liberator. And I'm not pushing my agenda in any way I can, I just use statistics and logical arguments. The fact that all kinds of weird stuff ends up here is not because I brought it up...

You really have no idea how statistics work...

...
As should be completely clear, the rangers are better than walkers, but they still are not very good AA. Skyguards and most other AA sources are still better than Walkers or rangers.

So:

1. You have misinterpreted
2. Your argument makes no sense whatsoever
3. discussion has been over 10 times already, but somehow old and refuted arguments are brought up again and again,
4. before you say it, I have to keep repeating my own arguments because they are the ones that refute the ones you bring up

i would but your server is unplayable for me from australia

also im the one usually flying libs (i mostly fly scythe) not gunning for them and if you look at my VS stats you will see im not totally inexperienced at flying myself
so its not like i need to try your lib to know what its like in the air

many of these questions i am also waiting for the answers to
what are the parameters of success? 1 kill 5 kills? 1 tank? 5 tanks?

That's the goal. Playing without supporting vehicles, you need the blockade armor and the mobility (that you lose w/ deploy shield) to give yourself a fair shake against ground vehicles.

so sorry!

What statistics? Demegan's statistics? Of course I don't. But they don't really teach Demegan's statistics on Uni. Just classic.

You are trying to use his in ability to fly as a crutch to call the liberator weak against AA. "Yeah, Watch my fully certed lib that you don't know how to fly die to flak. But let me not show you how AA will never get close to killing a lib when the pilots are half competent."

Do you know how many times I have seen a liberator simply tank a skyguard and destroy it? And don't give me that its a 3/3 vehicle crap. A skyguard is a HARD COUNTER that has given up everything JUST for AA damage. A Liberator can still perform AA, AI and AV roles effortlessly. A skyguard has enough trouble having to worry about tanks on the ground, But also having to worry that a solo liberator is just going to tank all its damage and destroy it? Yeah..

This made my day.

well for one thing it's obviously not a hard counter. there aren't really hard counters in this game, it's a system of overlapping soft counters that work through partial damage resistance. the skyguard is definitely not a hard counter for AV loadout vehicles or infantry of any kind. it's really best used as a support unit for AV ground units and infantry spawns.

for a second thing, Liberators have to make some pretty big tradeoffs for AI work nowadays. you can still do light AV with a zephyr and bulldog if you catch something in the open and you aren't being attacked by enemy air, but you will have a really hard time with that against even a single ESF or a lib with a dalton or shredder. likewise, you can put a bulldog on the back of a dalton lib but you're hindering yourself in some way in exchange for it. you can kill infantry with a dalton. i mean, my gunner can piledrive a heavy into the dirt from 350m, but it's not efficient and certainly not something people should be crying nerf over.

the only generalist loadout left for the Lib is shredder/drake, and while it is really powerful when upgraded and manned by a skilled and practiced crew, it's also not even that great for infantry anymore. the only infantry loadout left is zephyr/bulldog/composite, and you only pull it over infantry farms for really short runs when there's enough friendly zerg to support it. it's totally defenseless if you try to roam like that. believe me.

for a third thing, i guess, it's really not effortless at all. if you think hitting a good ESF, or dogfighting 2v1 against a lock on team that trades off running away/shooting you in the back is easy, then i'd already know who you are because you'd be one of about 6 or 8 gunners that are well known in the air community. and if you were one of them you also wouldn't say it's easy. in fact that is what the whole thread is about, showing us all how easy it is by joining up with the OP on Emerald. as far as i know, the offer still stands.

incidentally, i suppose a fourth and final note would be that it wasn't the premise of the thread that AA is overpowered. it is simply that AA isn't underpowered or in need of buffs. go back and read it. it's all right there. but as usual, most forum rhetoric is based on false characterizations of the opposing argument.

The reason those AA sources are on the bottom is because this list is a "total number of kills by". The vast majority of the players in the game don't have a skyguard or a dual burster max, because they are 1000certs each. There's only like what 40 Phalanxes per continent? So disregard those.

A better way to judge is to look at kills per hour.
http://stats.dasanfall.com/ps2/items/vehicles

Skyguard: ~8 KPH
Dual Burster: ~ 8KPH
ESF AA nosegun: ~8KPH

So flak gets the same amount of kills as an ESF AA nose gun.

Actually... there's a very easy explanation for the Ranger stats outperforming Walkers (and even Burster arms or Skyguards).

The explanation is the old "pistol stat conundrum", where AKPH is only calculated based on hours of actual usage. If someone is sitting in that spot and using the weapon, the clock ticks. But the second that seat is empty, the clock stops.

If you have a weapon that is used very situationally, then it will have an unusually high KPH. This is because most of the time it is not used, so when it is time to use that weapon you only use it for a brief bit, get the kill, and then put the weapon away again.

This phenomenon is called the "pistol stat conundrum" in PS2 because it is very clear when examining KPH stats of sidearms. Statistically it would appear that sidearms are stronger weapons than most other infantry small arms... yet we all know that this is obviously not the case. The reason is that sidearms are usually only used briefly in cases where a kill is likely.

The same is true for most Ranger variants. Harassers run around as 1/3, stop when they see aircraft, and open up with the Rangers. Many MBTs running around with Rangers on the roof will actually lock other people out of their tanks... the Rangers are empty most of the time until the MBT driver encounters aircraft.

Essentially you can confirm this phenomenon by the absurdly low usage time on the Ranger. The Harasser Ranger, for instance, has a daily average use of one hour per faction... across all players on all servers on that faction. That's really, really low usage!

So that's why people say the Walker is better than the Ranger... even if the Ranger seems to have better stats, that is the product of stat inflation and not really a reflection on the power of the Ranger. I think it's just that most people are aware of the "pistol stat conundrum" so we kind of expect that these skewed stats will be ignored.

Skyguard: 142 to 170 hours of playtime per faction, a total of +/-472 hours of playtime during one month.
Comes with an average A KPH of 6,08
The Skyguard is only pulled when aircraft are available, and either left behind when aircraft are gone or destroyed pre-maturely. This means they maximize the amount of time they can kill their dedicated target. Also look at the 3x more infantry kills that just the 3 most used the nosecannons score.


Dual Burster: we take the time of the lowest used burster as that's the one people buy, when that one is equipped we know with the most certainty that it's a dual burster. 194 to 216 hours of husage per faction, a total of a little bit more than 600 hours of playtime.
comes with an average A KPH of 6,21 this month
Seeing that Dual Bursters are taken when there's already aircraft around and switched out for other weapons when the aircraft go away, their KPH is maximized as they are only equipped when their target is there and killable.

ESF AA nosegun: 493 to 625 hours per faction, 1671 hours of playtime for the 3 most used canons.
Comes with an average A KPH of 6,29 this month
Aircraft also suffer from the fact that their targets aren't always around, and that there's tons of players who only infantry-farm or perform other A2G functions and never get any aircraft kills. Looking at the vehicle and infantry kills the ESF AA nosecannons get, you can clearly see that these canons not only get a great A KPH, they score tons better in AI duty than the Bursters and Skyguard.
But there's more! Since each secondary weapon is always accompanied with a nosecannon, we need to add the secondary weapons to the nose-cannon statistics!
Let's see... Hornet weapon, has a V KPH of +/- 16 over all 3 factions and a A KPH of +/- 3. This means that the ESF A KPH goes up to 9,29 when they equip Hornets...
Breaker pods! V KPH of +/- 5,5 and an A KPH of +/- 2,5. Now this is where statistics get tricky, I'm not sure if we need to add these KPH to the nosecannon's total, or that we need to take an average of all the secondaries and add that to the nosecannons. I would say they need to be added right on as the KPH of Hornets does not go down when Breaker pods or Fuel Pods are used, but that's what makes statistics tricky isn't it? It's not always what your gut-feeling tells you.
And yes, you are allowed to add the Viper+AP+HEAT+HE canon to the A KPH to see how the lightning itself works overall against aircraft. But that's the lightning frame itself, not the AA Skyguard that we were trying to compare. The reason I'm allowed to add the secondaries to the mix is because they are equipped at the same time as the nosecannon, always. Ofcourse, some will be used in conjunction with other nosecanons, so the actual total that's added is lower. But seeing the amount of awesomness we already added, it's going to be a rather futile attempt at lowering the stats, even cutting the number in half would still mean the aircraft win out over Bursters and Skyguards.

Anyway, you get the idea. Just taking ESF AA noseguns seperate doesn't show the actual KPH it can cash out. Just like taking only the MBT primary canons doesn't show the actual effectiveness of the tank, you need to add the secondary canons to the mix as well to get the complete picture.

Edit: Oh yeah and don't use Dasanfall for current stats. Dasanfall seems to take the total statistics since launch, Oracle of Death uses only one month of data. This means that Oracle Of Death shows current statistics with the updates from now. I think you can still see the carnage that the ZOE carved in their stats on Dasanfall even though it's been months since they were nerfed.

Allright, if you are so good at statistics, show me exactly why these statistics are invalid and inaccurate to measure the amount of OP or not OP. I have given the exact reasons why this data is perfect for the job, but you have done nothing but say "it's not good". You really think a bunch of people went through the trouble to connect the API or whatever it's called and collect data from every server all day, then put that into comprehensive data just for fun?
How do you think the developers try to balance stuff? With a wet finger in the air and just typing a few numbers "that feel good" or "that in their experience seems right"? No! They look at how good the weapons work, they see that the Betelguese is working far better than it's directive equivalents on the other factions, so they started buffing the other two weapons (not nerfing the Betelguese!) to make sure they started working OK. they used comprehensive statistics such as the one's on Oracle Of Death.



Oh, and for OP who so enjoyed my quote about 600m Dalton shots on MAX's:
http://www.pcgamer.com/planetside-2-infantry-render-distance/
And yes, I'm on Miller, one of the servers that did get in on that test.

And here I'm repeating my thoughts for the last time:

0. First let me clear something. I feel like you're mixing words "stats", "conclusions" and "facts". These are 3 different things though maybe having something in common.

1. Stats on OracleOfDeath are just that. Pure numbers.

2. To judge something and do a correct ACCURATE conclusion you need:

a) Stats,
b) Group of people whom stats were taken from (people inside a group should have similar properties),
c) Type of situation stats were created in,
d) Personal high level of experience in the field of stats.

3. If you have all the 4 parts (and maybe there is more), you can make the best conclusion. If you start cutting off different parts of the analysis of data (stats) - ie mixing all players together, not taking in the account what weapon is a finisher, what people prefer and what kind of players play different types of vehicles etc - MORE you cut those parts, more mistakes you can make and totally decline from the truth.

4. Just for an example (not trying to start another debate): let's take two groups:

a) Skyknights: among all high level pilot it is known that scythe is kinda OP compared to Mos or Reav. Even pilots who fly Scythes willingly admit that Scythe is OP. Their opinion is based on Saron's shortest TTK (default noseguns) and slim profiles from front, side. Skyknights often gravitate towards Mos and Reav cause it's a better challenge, requiring higher skill.

b) Major group of casual / mid level pilots: they think that scythe is fine, even maybe UP. Their experience stems from pray and spray type of fights and they may get often killed by those Skyknights who chose NC or TR but also die / win equally against average pilots (where skill of users is low enough not to utilize ESFs advantages etc). Now in their eyes scythe's just a pancake, which is a major flaw to them. However they don't even realize how flak works for example.

Let's mix the data from both groups: a) has 10 people and b) has 1000. Looking at KPU on Oracle of death for example at seeing that Saron is actually below Needler in KPU, you'd say that Saron is maybe even UP. Why is Saron performing worse than Needler? It's a mystery, because Saron has better TTK and better speed and my personal experience as a dedicated pilot tells me that Saron + Scythe is an exploit in hands of good pilots.

So here we have stats that say something else than my long experience does.

5. Who's right? What to balance around? You may not agree with me but at least you can take time and think about my chain of thoughts.

We're talking about AA effectiveness. Pods & Hornets aren't useful for that. Tomcats would, but there's such a stigma against it, you rarely see it on Emerald outside of a few NC outfits. The vast majority of the AA pilots are nose gun & fuel tanks. Also, like you mentioned since rotaries are better at AI duties, we can safely assume that the VKPH of noseguns is much lower, making it worse than skyguards and bursters.

30 day statistics is a joke. The error margin a huge part of your average. Looking your link, TR Skyguards have .31% less kills than NC Skyguards. That's a 28% error margin. Slap on a 28% error margin on the NC Skyguard and it outranks the TR Rotary in # of kills on Liberators. Since Flak & Rotaries have stayed relatively the same the majority of the time, I think it's better to use the Dasanfall stats unless you can dig up current yearly data.