As a full time Liberator Pilot

Some of the belly guns also have too much damage potential.

That's one of the points that's often avoided by most of the people who argue against the changes.

Wow. Again the line with the shredder needing to be nerfed against maxes. To reiterate, you think it's perfectly ok that the shredder is outperforming both tank AP rounds at killing tanks and tank HE rounds at killing infantry while also being perfectly capable against other air.

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What the shredder needs is a signficant nerf to any two of these three: Killing tanks, killing infantry, killing air.
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Also, AGAIN the BS regarding the TB. Yeah, skill should be rewarded. I would like to propose reducing lib resistances further so that you can now kill them with a single hit from the AP primary and an AV secondary. If you don't want to compromise on the TB instagibbing tanks, tanks deserve an EFFECTIVE way of defending themselves. Letting them get the kill when landing two shots on approach seems entirely fair.

I've landed a 737 in a 16kt crossind during a thunderstorm at DFW with my mouse/keyboard, and you're going to tell me I'm not a pilot? Hand eye coordination works in many ways sir.

Who cares about the people who abuse the Liberator and throw a fit? You should be ignoring them too.

No, I don't think that, and I've never stated that, ever. Shredder is too good against armor right now as well.

You're like the guy that would look at a picture of me drinking a Diet Pepsi, and you would say, "OMG DREADNAUT HATES DIET COKE!!!" When in fact, I just prefer Diet Pepsi...

Then why do you keep stating that you want it nerfed against maxes, specifically? Also, would you mind elaborating against which target-type you'd like the shredder to be effective? Or would you rather have it be basilisk like where it's ok against all target types, but very inferior to the specialised weapons.

If the Tank Buster is so easy..."Show me". I'm from Missouri.

Tell me anytime you want a Liberator on ANY faction (on Mattherson). I'll pull one for you. I'll pull it as many times as you want me too. Then we'll check out your Tank Buster stats and see how well you do vs those of us that use it very very well. As a full time Liberator pilot I have a 3.5 KDR with the Tank Buster. You'd think that being one of the best users of a single weapon in the entire game, the KDR would be a little higher wouldn't you?

Have you seen the stats with the averages of the KDR of the users of some of the best weapons in the game? Tank Buster is pretty low on that list. The issue isn't the Tank Buster, it's the Liberator currently is too quiet and it's too easy to sneak up on people. The Liberator needs to be louder but nothing needs to be done with the Tank Buster. The only change I could see with the Tank Buster would be to decrease the per bullet damage but increase the magazine size so that a full mag still does the same amount of damage.

Example:
Change the Tank Buster from 335 dmg/bullet to 200 dmg/bullet and increase max magazine from 44 to 74 rounds (Certed).

This makes them almost identical in damage (within 60 hp) but you are decreasing TTK which requires even more skill from pilots and more time for ground targets to react. Don't think for a second I'm anti-change, I'm willing to listen to logical ideas but I'm not willing to let things get nerfed into the oblivion when it isn't really necessary. Remember the Harasser nerf? So do I, and if SOE had listened to our suggestions before that nerf it wouldn't have been rendered completely useless.


Your idea of having a Liberator 1 shot by an AP primary and 1 secondary is far too aggressive. It currently takes 3 150mm Dalton rounds to kill a Liberator. So translate that to the ground, with some fudging for mobility penalty, and making it 2 shots from AP primary and 1 secondary would be fine by me or 3 AP primary shots.

To answer your Shredder question, I think it should be primarily used against aircraft, and I think it should be an annoyance to armor on the ground. Just like the AA makes pilots go blind when they are being shot at by Flak, armor on the ground should feel that same pain when being shot at by a Shredder. That's not saying the Shredder should just murder them, but it should be an annoyance.

Want to put a damper on all the tank spam that goes on currently?

Increase the projectile speed on the Decimator and remove most of the gravity.

If they remove the OHK from the Deci against infantry, who cares if you're sniping people with it from range. The person you hit has time to react because it won't be OHK anymore.

That ONE change, would drastically change the tank spam phenomenon we're seeing in the game right now.

I'm not interested in seeing things marginalised as much as the Harasser either. I also think that libs are currently suppressing tank-playstyles that rely on flanking, mostly due to how effective the TB/shredder/dalton combo is at instantly killing tanks. I wouldn't have a problem with this if there was an effective counter we could employ, but even bringing a skyguard along doesn't help most of the time as it simply needs too long to kill the lib.

I think increasing the amount of time the lib needs to stay on target is a perfectly viable solution, as long as the time-increase isn't just from ~2s to ~4 seconds. So, in addition to what you proposed above, I would suggest decreasing the ROF further. The goal here should be fore MBTs that are being escorted by AA to be able to effectively deter Libs from ganking them. I think it's key that just a single Skyguard should be able to do this job, as it's not really fair to have the minimum amount of people necessary for being super-effective in a lib being 2, while it's 4 (2 in the tank, and 2 in skyguards, for example) for tanks.

To me, this sounds quite reasonable.

i don't think he knows how modern civilian and military drones are piloted, or that some drone pilots even use programmable dual stick controllers. but they probably aren't "really" pilots. or are they?

i found this article: http://www.daily-times.com/four_cor...ne-operator-shares-experience-remote-piloting and the part that really struck me was this:

while i am not trying to compare PS2 to real, honest to god life and death military service, i hope the point is clear. if operating a live fire drone for 8 hours in a box with a kb is that serious and real to a career military pilot, then it is safe to say that the same interface is valid in simulation. the stressors are obviously different, since real soldiers depend on that drone pilot and the assets involved range in the $100,000s. but the interface and the required skill set for top tier performance are analogous.

furthermore modern drones have different design restrictions than large airborne weapons platforms that were designed to carry humans safely to and from conflict, and may perform radically different than the 25-50 year old designs of fixed wing aircraft. very light or small craft with very powerful engines don't have the same handling restrictions as craft designed to carry humans within human tolerances. so it is also safe to say that some of that old school stick-jockey mentality that "you're not a real pilot" simply doesn't apply and would get in the way and cost lives and material in practical use.

so in a way anyone with the mental stamina to retain focus and manual dexterity under long periods of stress is imminently more qualified as a "real pilot" than someone who has the physical stamina to put their meat body through high-g turns but isn't as mentally fit or stable. the point to take home from this is that given a "more realistic" or even less realistic, totally alien flight model, there are those of us who would excel at extremely high levels of skill vs skill contest and those that would not.

i think for exactly this reason that if Star Citizen does it's Newtonian flight and independent thruster controls/damage correctly it will be another really fantastic test of mental acuity and adaptability. one where the highest tier of skill means creating new maneuvers in an alien physical environment, and where hours of meat-pilot-and-stick simulator are totally useless and only the raw ability matters.

sorry, definitely OT but i feel its sort of important tangentially because it also applies to ground skill/awareness, if you think about it. and important because dismissing or attempting to invalidate player ability is one of the first arguments people reach for when attempting to argue for these huge balance changes.

that already is plenty, if played correctly. depending how they load out, the 3 ground players in that situation could be bearing a skyguard, a basilisk or walker, and a heavy assault with G2A lock ons. adding a 4th player, or rounding out to half a squad with a 5th and 6th, could easily increase this flanking squad's potential with an ammo sunderer that then also provides easy access to AA MAX units and limitless rockets and raises/spawning for infantry. scaling this up to a full squad immediately multiplies available force by an order of magnitude.

and situations like this do arise organically in live play, and through player strategy and teamwork. yet the argument you present is that the Liberator needs to be made ineffective because ground players don't like to do AA. or maybe it's some other argument about resources and team play that is actually a completely different aspect of the game that, ironically, air players have also been asking for since release.

but it is just so much simpler to say "nerf the things to make it easier for me." well here is what you don't consider: Lib players respond to balance changes with strategy changes as well. if i find a tank or sunderer by itself i am still going to wreck them, even if i have to drop light assaults out of my plane to place C4. so call for all the TB nerfs and AV nerfs you please, we'll keep doing our job. if we have to, instead of dogfighting top ESFs we'll fly HA/safe landing and jump out to fire 3 G2A locks at them. whatever it takes to do the job and win.

if you want my best suggestion, rather than simply criticism, i say this: move position 2 to main gun MBT, create a position 3 for current secondary, and make position 1 a dedicated driver with access to something that i'd lovingly call "Skyguard, Jr." this makes AA much more prevalent/accessible in vehicle groups, increases overall awareness of MBT teams, and includes a feature that MBT mains and really, everyone, has been asking for since release. i'd also make SG, Jr. available for sunderers and harassers. with a change like this we not only avoid nerfing all the f*cking things, but also give ourselves some room to rebalance air without ruining the play experience or effectiveness. but that is probably too much to ask, because that would qualify as good game design.

Wat. How is nerfing the shredder, which is ridiculously effective atm, and increasing the amount of time a TB needs to stay on target making the lib ineffective? What I want is being able to flank without having to have half a squad of support players preventing a single lib from instantly ganking me?

Also, just for the record, an AP primary and an AV secondary are mandatory if you want to kill armour in yer tank, especially if it's a mag. You also need at least 1 engineer, but preferably two, in the tank to keep repair times down. As stealth is somewhat mandatory as well, NAR isn't an option either. If we're going with the AA secondary on tanks though, we'd now need to tanks with AP primaries and AA secondaries + a skyguard. That's 5 people.

@Your suggestion ... That's never going to happen, so more realistic goals like shredder and TB adjustments seem like the best course of action. Oh, and in regard to your last sentence: Libs are, in fact, ruining play experience. Both for me as tanker, as well as for many other people that get farmed by their too broadly effective weapons.

has absolutely nothing to do with hand eye coordination and everything to do with the lack of finite control. keyboard keys that are only on or off do not give you the same control as an analog or digital joystick. i don't really care what you have done in other games, any respectable flight sim WILL kill you if you try to do much beyond level flight with a keyboard and mouse, because finite control is a necessity. the grand theft auto games have better flight physics than PS2 (and with a keyboard and mouse the planes in vice city generally wanted to kill you). hand eye coordination is required for running around as my heavy assault too, but that isn't piloting either.

this game has no pilots because there is no piloting.

you are still avoiding the primary point which is: the flight physics in this game are a joke.

if i tried even half of what i do in this game in a flight sim, i would rip my wings off (if i managed to escape stalling first) while i blacked my pilot out.

never going to happen.

Except it's not a flight sim, it's got a different flight model for a good reason, to be different. Also runways would take a lot of work

We'll see when the patch hits.

this game has no tankers because there is no tanking.

this game has no infantry because, no actually there are a lot of infants. especially on the forums.

Remember, the game is in the future and the future isn't all about realism and jets. It is a game and games are all about being fun.

And this is also a game with different flying mechanics from any other game that makes it even more fun.

no flight physics are mostly nonexistent. there is basic Newtonian physics and that is pretty much it.

like i said before this is like playing IL2 with all of the realism turned off. IL2 has the same physics as planetside 2, BUT it also includes things like lift and drag along with actual damage effects beyond "am i dead yet". ever fly with only a rudder and elevators? i have. turning becomes a much more complicated process.

in IL2 if i put my plane in a steep dive i can gain lots of speed AND reach a point where if i pull up too fast my wings will snap off instantly.

this game is full of poorly modeled biplane battles.

i am ok with this being all about fun, but don't hide behind "piloting skill" where there is none. i picked up and flew both the scythe and the liberator effectively in under an hour just by fiddling with the controls on my own. if this is a flight sim then it is a kindergarteners first practice flight sim.

i am not impressed by your "skill".

"flight mechanics are different" = "flight mechanics are horribly dumbed down so FPS gamers can comprehend them"

Flying a Liberator in PS2 is much like flying a Helicopter in Arma III with some suble differences.

It's a good thing we're not discussing how aircraft fly in this thread because that's an entirely different conversation. Why even bring it up?