Burster Max vs. ESF

Correct, but I feel a better solution than the guy I quoted who suggested nerfing bursters was the right route.

*edit* ...who suggested nerfing bursters was the right route to allowing him to A2A easier. Higher ceiling could keep the dogfighters a bit more content and those that just want to pounce on enemy A2G ESF's would have a nice fat bit of atmosphere to dive out of.

In order for AA to be a threat, it needs to be able to kill and punish ESF pilots.

If you can hover for a time without fearing death then that AA isn't effective. Asking to have AA of any form lowered because you cannot hover in it's fire is the same as the lone wolf ESF pilots that complain about 4 to 8 gunned AA Sundies locking down the area from strafing runs, expecting to be able to enter a 16v1 and come out the winner each pass.

For AA to be effective it has to limit the options of air. Numbers matter, tactics matter. Your ESF isn't meant to be a flying tank able to just soak up fire and laugh it off. You shouldn't be able to hover at all if there is AA without getting punished for it.

An AA max is useless vs infantry and vehicles. A skyguard is near useless against infantry and vehicles. Sure, a skyguard can kill infantry, if it gets extremely close, so its only near useless. Neither the AA max nor the skyguard can effectively kill an ESF. They can only drive it away. They are deterrents, unless you have a bunch around, in which case you have a bunch of people who are near useless to anything not in the air. Is this a fair trade for AA maxes and skyguards? They rarely get kills, earn very little XP/hour, and spend most of the battle looking at the pretty skybox, but if they weren't there, ESFs would happily rocket spam everything.

ESF pilots don't understand the choices the AA people have to make. ESFs get rocket pods, which are anti-infantry AND anti-vehicle, and they get to keep an anti-air chaingun, and they get to keep their afterburner. ESFs get to be anti-everything, and make no compromises. I'm not talking about the A2A ESFs who are a very rare sight.

Then they come to the forums and complain that the 2 units specialized to counter them, who give up all usefulness against infantry and vehicles, who can only deter them from fighting over a small area, are OP. In this thread, people are again complaining that flak is OP and that ESFs should be able to better counter it with armor upgrades, because apparently 15-30% damage reduction isn't enough. Do MBTs or lightnings get armor upgrades even THAT effective? No, they get less upgrades and then on only one facing. A ground vehicle has to make a choice of what to protect against, be it mines, air rocket spam, or anti-vehicle weapons ( and then from the front or sides) - choices ESFs don't have to make.

If anything, ESF composite armor is far more effective than any armor upgrade on any other vehicle.

Hey man,
I can feel ya. But here's the thing. Most AA max are robots without brains who are used to esf bailing as soon as they take a hit instead of going for cover, repair, and then go straight for the max.

If there's more anti air than a max, then yeah forget about this...but if there's only the max, he'll likely not have so much cover because hes used to not getting attacked, rather watching esf escape. Use that to your advantage. If you ambush the max (it's possible ) 50 rotary hits into his ***, then lolpod him if you can. The key here is to score direct hits, because splash doesn't harm max really, but direct hits pwn.
If you open the fire with lolpods when the max has 100% health, you need 4 direct hits and about 7 splash hits to kill a max with flak armor. Hitting directly may be hard on moving infantry but not on a almost stationary max. Aim well, because if you get 16 splash hits it'll be a close battle, all depending on your aiming skills with the rotary.

It took me a while to get the idea but roadkilling maxes on hills and bio lab pads is fun too. It's dangerous, but very fun, and be ready to be reported for doing it cause it insta kills them all

Cheers, youll figure it out and then pwn!

PS: as soon as you're 150m away, the max will hardly hit you if you don't fly in a straight line (trying to escape). Try it

I can't tell you without actually seeing what happened, but either you're:
1.) Hovering too long to line up your shot
2.) Not reacting fast enough
3.) Flying away too predictably (flak has to be lead quite significantly, so arcing away instead of flying straight out and pulling a roll or two should keep you from taking too many hits).

Of course, it could be latency on the Burster's part or some other weird issue but generally you should be able to get out clean if you come in undetected, fire on the move and bug out in some kind of unpredictable fashion. When TRing I run a mossie with auto repair and hover 1 and I generally don't die to flak unless I start taking wild risks -- so it is possible. If you're anywhere but Esamir you can also try and get out of line of sight of the flak.

Afterburner while engines vertical does exactly that. Or do you want to do it while flying level?

Yes it does take at least 7 seconds for a Dual Burster to kill an ESF with full composite armour.

In actual gameplay conditions it takes a lot longer than that unless the pilot has fallen asleep at the keyboard.

If you don't believe me, get a friend on another Empire to spawn an ESF and then see how long it takes you to destroy it with a Burster.

Found your problem. Hovering near a known Burster MAX is like skinny dipping in a pool of piranhas.

I didn't know this. I suspect the OP doesn't either then.

+1

It's definitely handy! You have to nose down slightly too, or the engines will flip forward again pretty quickly.

This is hilarious, I play in a reaver and also AA.
I am a bad pilot, plus the reaver is a flying garbage truck, it is so easy to escape burster maxes its almost ludicrous.

1. find the battle you are going to start farming
2. fly over with after burners and watch where the enemy has grouped up
3. If they have more then 5 burster maxes then you can't farm here (no that is not OP, organized platoons will always protect themselves from air farming, if you nerf it then it will just require 10 burster maxes and so on and so on until you need 90 burster maxes to protect 10 infantry which is not fun for anyone.)
4. strafe your targets and unload, killing 2-3 people which each pass
5. if you feel like it you can use the rotary to gun down the AA maxes

ESF's should not be invincible lone wolf death machines, they are very powerful and easily net me many kills.
lolpodding is also completely useless in a regular battle unless you want to pad your k/d and should not be promoted any further, a scout ESF or A2A ESF is far more valuable and sadly does not get much reward for their efforts.

Burster max's absolutely need a nerf at this point. They need to have their range reduced so they only provide effective protection from aircraft within the render range of infantry. Meanwhile the skyguard needs a velocity increase to fill the gap the burster is currently filling. This would fix everyone's complaints without shifting the metagame in favor of aircraft.

yeah I'll try this

yeah, being able to see where the AA fire is coming from would be a big plus.

Except i'm not talking about nerfing AA maxes. i'm also not talking about 5+ AA maxes, just one that finds me hovering. I'm not big on farming. I'd rather be an asset and take out a target designated for me by smoke or squad beacon. Sometimes there happens to be that invisible AA max waiting for an ESF to hover and we shouldn't even be able to get away from?

A single burster max should not own the skies, combined AA should own the skies. That is all.

Thanks for this, I actually just rammed into one a few minutes ago. I died but it felt great to one shot him.

I believe the skyguard and the dual-burster max should have their offensive attributes switched. Things like damage, range, rate of fire, accuracy. I could accept that damage output from a vehicle (I know the max is technically a vehicle but it doesn't show up until infantry render distance).

Go to the VR and try out the bursters on the stationary aircraft there, wow it takes a long time to destroy them doesn't it?
If you are hovering for that long then you chose to be destroyed.

The only other scenario is where there would be multiple AA maxes waiting for you to make a mistake, and hovering is exactly that - a mistake.
It will take 1 rocket or tank shell to destroy you, mobility is the ESF's advantage and becoming a hover turret is not how you use an ESF.