[Suggestion] Automated AA turrets - always on stand by

It does seem like everyone is on one side or the other.

I do like to fly probably more than anything else in the game. It offers the most room for improvement. Even after 50 or 60 days flying i still find pilots who are better than me.

On the other hand although i have 50 or 60 days flying time i have probably at least 300 days played so really flying isnt the only thing i do.

I think its very important to try something before i speak about it because i have found that the grass is not always greener.

I have spent a lot of time driving tanks and i know the frustration of dying to air in them.

However i also know that if i stay with the armor column ill never die in my tank.

I also shoot down more ESF than i die to even in a magrider.

I know i could put an AA gun on my MBT and not even have to worry about ESF.

I just have a problem with people who have never flown talking about how air is so powerful.

I want them to fly so they can see exactly what we are talking about.

Yes a solo skyguard is mainly an annoyance because we can fly away from it, but you cant look at the game in a vacuum. Since flak is everywhere in some form you will ind yourself almost constantly bombarded by ground attacks.

Thats OK if you are an A2G ESF. Then you SHOULD feel the wrath of the ground. However currently the range of flak is so great that you get hit within 1km.

Now i know its not easy to hit things at 1km with a skyguard, unless they arent moving that is.

If you are in a dogfight then you will often find yourself hovering. We try to fight far from actual battles and as high above the ground as we can, but of course altitudes can change very rapidly. Even at the skybox in most places flak can still hit you.

Now the problem with this is that we have no recourse. As an A2A pilot i have no way of killing that skyguard who can sit down there with impunity and shoot at me.

Now imo skill should trump everything. Skyguard goes completely against that.

A fight between a 1 man 350 resource ESF and a 1 man 350 resource lightning should be pretty even. The skyguard should have a slight advantage in DPS because the ESF has the advantage in mobility.

Now if you balanced skyguard in such a way as i said previously, making it a shorter range more versitile and fun weapon to use, there would be some back and forth between skyguard and ESF.

I would go in with my ESF knowing i had to use my mobility to get the upper hand, knowing that if i make a mistake im probably toast, just like fighting a dalton lib, but i go in knowing if i play well i can win.

Then when i got in my lower skill level skyguard i could have fun actually fighting the things im designed to fight, not just wtf owning them.

I currently dont enjoy skyguard at all because i dont get any kind of thrill from using it. If you utilize positioning, get yourself set up with some cover and behind the friendly armor column you are pretty much unkillable in a skyguard.

The thrill of this game comes from the danger. Flying into a group of 5 enemy ESF who are tunneled in on the ground, or attacking a vanguard with a harrasser which is nearly as hard as fighting a skyguard with an ESF.

G2A locks are completely silly to pilots as well. They should all be like the striker, which i find, despite the whining, is a lot more fun and actually better at killing hovering ESf than it ever was before. It is just about impossible to add onto dogfights or ESF which are out of range to attack you as well, which i find to be perfect.

Of course im not a fan of the way A2G works in this game either. I think thermals are what make it so overpowered. Although really i only find A2G to be overpowered on Hossin. I would worry that A2G would get out of control without skyguard.

On the other hand, it would allow A2A pilots to get close enough to kill the podders which currently we cant do because they are protected by the skyguards in the armor column.

It would be nice if we had a better communications system. If i feel like playing infantry and dont want to pull a plane to kill these podders, there should be an easy way for me to locate a pilot who would be happy to kill them. I should be able to do a /who ESF or some command that will give me a list of people currently available for A2A duty. I would send them a tell and wait in the spawn room or another safe location until they arrived.

I spend a lot of time flying around looking for podders, it would be nice if the people getting farmed by them could call me up and tell me where to go.

A thought occurred to me...

What if buffing Air (probably nanite cost) would make using AA more fun?
with more targets to shoot, you'd get more action playing as AA and it might counterbalance the buff to air.

If you nerf air hard enough, eventually using AA becomes the most boring thing ever because nobody's in the sky.
What if the opposite was true?

Buff air buy reducing nanite cost to 250 for ESF's (750/3=250, with change left over after you've used them all)
375 for galaxies, 100 for Valkyries, 300 for liberators. Or whatever reduction seems good.

The result would be a lot more AA pulled, and it'd be very fun to stay as AA.
What if the problems infantry have vs air are because there aren't enough targets in the sky?

Your side would also have more of an airforce to balance it out.
With more targets in the sky, AA turrets would be manned by players a lot more.
That's the kind of thing that would get me to play an AA role for hours at a time.

Cheaper planes might mean more being pulled, but perhaps the skies would be a lot clearer than they are today (due to more players pulling AA).


Is this madness?

Yup, that's total madness.. didn't they increase the air nanite cost because there was too much air ??
I think it the game is more balanced now than it ever was.. yes, including air.

Fair enough, I wasn;t around when the air nanite cost was cheaper.
Thought that more AA would have been pulled and people would have overcompensated for the increased airforces, making the skies hell to fly in.

I'll trust your RL experience of how it was before, but it feels odd to me that AA didn't take care of the abundant airforces back then. Why was it that not every man and his dig pulled AA, with so much more air in the sky to shoot?

It used to be that Amp Stations and all towers, had 3 AA Turrets.. 3 ! Around the warpgate that made for 9 - 12 AA turrets.. and sometimes enemy factions thought it was a hilarious idea to dive bomb via kamikaze with their Galaxies into the enemy warpgate.. dying on impact.. in those days most never made it all the way, due to turrets.
We had the skies filled with AA tracers from those turrets... oh, the good old days..

Air could not get near an amp station , if the turret gunners were even half decent shots.. 'cause there were so many of them.

Air complaint, rightfully so, then SOE removed the other 2 turrets, and moved the one remaining one to the back.. illogical, but its a game.