[Suggestion] Dalton - the new AA and the ultimate gunship.

These "nerf dalton and liberators because I died once while flying an ESF" threads are always the same.

They all think that it is ridiculous that a Liberator can roll on it's side, or god forbid, be upside down without crashing into the ground. They all think it is absolutely ludicrous that the CANNON attached to the base of the Liberator can fire unless pointing directly down. They all think that Liberators are purely anti-ground vehicles and should not be allowed to do anything else. (akin to nothing else in the game) They all think that Liberators should die as a matter of course to a single ESF, every time.

None of them realize how awful the tail gun is. None of them realize how much skill and practice it takes to kill aircraft with it. None of them even consider the reality that it takes a ~15k certed vehicle manned by 2 highly competent, practiced and skilled people in order to be remotely effective. None of them realize just how many things threaten the Liberator on a moment to moment basis. None of them realize how easy it is for good ESF pilots to kill the best of Liberator teams.

Every single thread like this is always full of the same ignorance, full of the same uninformed opinions. None of them have a semblance of understanding of game balance. None of them think for a split second what it is like to be in the other person's seat.

If anyone gives a single shred of validity to any thread like this, you should yourself a favor: try certing out a Liberator and accomplishing the same thing you think so desperately needs to be nerfed. It is an overwhelming and monstrous undertaking to be as good as the %1 of Liberator teams who can do what the OP describes with any reasonable reliability. If you want to nerf the single most difficult thing to do in the game simply because you can't proficiently fly an ESF, well, just please stop spreading your drivel on the forums.

T0rin the problem is most esf pilots will lose to an AA dalton lib. Got my gf playing a couple months ago and just at BR10, she was sniping esf's left and right for a couple of weeks. She's just finally hitting 1/1 kd after much improvement on her ground game. Yeah against competent esf's we'd get smoked but by and large we'd come out winners most of the time with many esf's taken out before we'd lose our lib which is far from fully certed. I like to think of myself as a competent pilot (nowhere near pro), but she was a complete nublet tearing it up. Dalton sniping the average esf isn't that hard man. And it's pretty cheesy. Just my honest opinion.

I agree libs should be able to defend themselves in a 1vs1 against an esf but one shotting your opponent is lame. And I mean all insta-gib weapons are lame. This isn't exclusive to the daltons but loathed the most because people don't like losing a vehcile they'll have to wait 15 minutes to be able to spawn again because of cooldowns. You don't see as much hate for shotguns, bolt action sniper rifles, mines, rockets, ubgl's and grenades simply because, as infantry, you can just respawn right away in the loadout you just had.

I won't pretend to have a perfect solution, and I try to see this issue from both sides, but this is a balance issue and the devs have been aware of it for months now. It's just not abused enough to have warranted their time just yet. But it's just a matter of time before a nerf comes along.

So basically what you're saying is that once the resource revamp hits scrubs making awful threads like this will be a thing of the past?

ok excellent

Depends. If you can spawn vehicles all day with no downtime then I would suspect that indeed there will be alot less of these. But I doubt they'll let us do that. You won't have a cooldown, but you'll have no more resources. So the rage will continue

I have seen a lot of complaining on this thread about taking away the Daltons AA ability. Frankly, as the op stated, a Lib shouldn't be as maneuverable as a stock ESF with and upgraded frame. Trust me when I say a High G 3 Frame Lib is just as maneuverable as my Stock Reaver because I've pulled some crazy stuff with that Frame.

Liberators role should be Air to Ground. It should rain destruction upon any enemy dumb enough not to bring in tons of AA. ESFs should only be able to pick off Lone-Wolfs random infantry and should never be able to engage ground targets after the battle grows in size. Currently because the nature of AA ESFs can rain down damage even in the largest fights and flare, AB away without too much damage and then seconds later come back for more. Currently Libs can fly over a large battle Flare or supress fire just to die because they are such huge targets.

Solution. Make Libs Cost around 450 resources, Give then double the armor, but make it so that after it turns such and such degrees it loses speed and begins to lose altitude. Also if a libs Rolls completely over they should hit the ground unless they were close to max altitude. This would make it so that Libs can do damage and support ground troops in big battles while the ESFs can provide A2A support and the Lolpods can pick off any lone-wolf infantry and tanks that decided to be Rambo.

This would also means that AA would have to change to be able to truly Deter ESFs without hitting them at max altitude while still being effective deterrents to libs when used in mass. Also with this change Libs should become a more attractive object to attack ground targets with and less attractive for ESFs to lolpod everything in sight.

I would also like to see the spalsh on Daltons removed for a more pure AP approach like the Titan AP(can still OHK infantry but have to be more accurate) while the Zephyr should be the HE infantry killing machine it is.

This is not the only change that is needed. More changes would be need to be worked in so there is synergy between ESFs and Libs and make them have defined roles.

Ahhh, you forgot the ground > Libs in there too.

It does not do it's job beautifully when there are 4 enemy ESF's shooting it down, and it has a useless AA weapon.

If Libs were so powerful and always hit the ESF, why did I get shot down so many times by ESF's, with one of the top Dalton gunners on the Mattherson Server ?

PS: Do not even tell me to fly with escorts and all the blah stuff....My outfit regularly does.

Top reason to run Dalton (I have flown em all) is that to use the Zephyr, you need to be >~370 meters (face it Zephyr is not that great on armor) and you are striker/lockon easy kills.

It is fun to run with a shredder , and use that for AA work as well. Nothing makes my blood chill more when I am flying my Lib when I hear a shredder nearby.....

we can all rejoice, on PTR Striker can no longer shoot through walls, mountains and everything else! yaaaay!

I can't trust a man who says things like this that are 100% lies and fabrication. This is not even REMOTELY close to being accurate.

You also are NC on Waterson and are probably very tired of getting Dalton'd by Sasha, amirite?

yups i agree the AA gun needs to be better (and maybe put on top so it can swivel 360)
the problem is that dalton shouldn't be getting use for AA, the AA gun should be good enough that you should want to use that instead while letting the dalton stay fixed on ground work, thy should try sticking a shredder on top

Implement some sort of change to make A2A dalton more difficult, then give the lib a certable tailgun that sits somewhere between the Walker and the Tankbuster. Make it inadvisable to attack a lib from behind by beelining, but more feasible to attack from the side since you won't be one shotted out of the air.
Of course, this could all change with the new ESF weapons and roles incoming.

Its a self solving problem really, once you fix the AA in the back most of the people will resort to that instead of risking death after some missed Dalton shots.

Improving the rear gun isn't going to change anything, because in the end, it is a rear gun. You can actually kill ESFs with it, though it is slow, and unless you are only being chased by 1 of them, you're going to die either way.

The reason the Dalton gets used is two fold:

1) The TTK is low enough against ESFs that you can potentially defend yourself before you die, because escape is rarely ever, and mostly never an option
2) Shots are available with a 45 degree pitch away from having sights on an ESF, unlike the tail gun which requires 180 degrees of pitch

Even if the tail gun was twice as good, you would still have to be essentially running away and requiring the ESF to chase you in order to potentially get a kill. And since ESFs are infinitely more maneuverable, they can still break off at any time. All forcing a Liberator to use the tail gun as A2A defense would do is force you into a position where you are constantly running away from the enemy. It would increase the time it takes to respond to a threat (see 45 degrees of pitch vs 180 degrees) because of having to turn completely around before you could shoot at them.

The tail has has always been, and will always be, simply a weapon of opportunity to use as you are running away and have no other means to defend yourself.

If anyone wants to advocate for going down that road, please explain to me why galaxies have 4 turrets on them.

ITT: ******** ESF pilots

How about you switch up your play style and learn from your mistakes you insufferable WHINERS.

I don't even pull my (HUGE WASTE OF CERTS) lib any more because I can't find a competent gunner.

Yes yes yes!

I've explained this to some of my gunners before, but it could really use a diagram and I'm not that artistic. Basically using the belly/nose gun combo you give the fighter much less uncovered area to attack safely. Nose and tail together though leaves huge holes in your defense that are easily exploitable.

Oh, you mean like, every single liberator nerf since launch?

Yeah, great idea, because it clearly isn't hard enough now.

I can pull some of the same maneuvers in my Lib that I can do with a Stock Reaver.

If by 'same maneuvers' you mean 'take off and landing', then YES, you can pull some of the same maneuvers in your Lib that you can with a stock Reaver...

Otherwise...NO, you CANNOT. That's not my opinion, that's a mathematical fact of the airframe limitations.

The airframes aren't even REMOTELY close.

Cuz hitting a moving aircraft, from another moving aircraft, with a low velocity projectile that has a decent amount of bullet drop is
n't hard enough already? You really think that needs to be harder?? *sigh*

So what you're telling us all here is, "Lets take the single HARDEST thing in the entire game, and make it HARDER because literally a HANDFULL of people on all servers combined are able to hit ESF's with them on rare occasions?"

Even the BEST Dalton gunners in the entire game aren't hitting every shot on ESF's. They aren't even hitting every OTHER shot...for many of them it takes multiple shots to hit an ESF but it's usually due to the ESF doing something dumb like flying level to shoot their nose gun and that's when they get popped. Sure there are some guys getting some very well times awesome shots at range but that's just as rare as a sniper hitting a guy from 300m while he's jumping through some rocks and he gets a head shot.

Sure, just 3 times as slow.

Anyone who tries to pass off a 'truth' that Liberator yaw/pitch/roll are anywhere remotely as good/fast as an ESF is a liar, through and through.