ESF infantry farming is out of hand

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by NotziMad, Jun 26, 2020.

  1. NotziMad

    I've said it a million times, and it's been like that for a very long time.

    Well now I've said it a million and one time :)
    • Up x 4
  2. MurgNC

    Any time you can be killed without any possible defense or countermeasure it's a problem. And ESF infantry farming falls into that category.

    Mostly when you die in this game it's because the other guy was quicker to shoot, the other guy was able to chain headshots when you weren't, because you lost situational awareness and got flanked, because you failed to prioritize targets, because you failed to use recon, because you got separated from allies or charged in alone, because you failed to correctly analyze the battle flow and choose the right class for the situation. In ALL those cases, your death is YOUR fault. If you had done things differently, you might have lived.

    But how many times has this happened? You're in a fun infantry fight, then some ESF zooms in, kills you instantly, then zooms out before any possible air defense can be put up.

    You did nothing wrong, made no mistakes, and there was no possible countermeasure. And as half the infantry fights in this game take place outside, please don't say fighting indoors all the time is a viable strategy. The small air defense shield is also no countermeasure, because it only covers a tiny area and requires you to have foreknowledge of the attack, and so it's useless in 99% of outdoor firefights including 100% of outdoor firefights with a moving front line.

    Now if I spawn at a base, see that air is pounding the ground, and that friendly anti-air is either not existent or not effective, then maybe I'll pull some anti-air of my own or at least play differently to minimize the risk I know is there. That situation is not the issue. It's the ability of ESFs to quickly get to any fight on the continent, kill some infantry with total surprise (no amount of recon or situational awareness can save you), and get away before any effective anti-air defense can be put up.
    • Up x 8
  3. Sumguy420

    I have a bigger problem with Harassers atm. they are Waaaaay too cost effective. They are better than MBT's and Lightnings, they rarely die and when they do its only costs a measly 150 Nanites to pull another. they need to make them cost as much as a lightning since they are more powerful than lightnings anyways.

    But yea, Banshee needs to be dialed back. Its way better than the PPA used to be and everyone complained about that till it was nerfed to the "meh" level its at now.

    They need to increase lockon range by a couple hundred meters, as launchers only lockon at 350 meters atm. bump that up to 450-500. I was on top of the tech plants air pad and couldnt even lock onto harassers on the other side of the road below me.

    Also un-nerf the engineer vehicle mana turret. No one uses it cause it only goes like 5 feet.
    • Up x 6
  4. NotziMad


    I agree with Harrassers too, and also I said that a million times, and also it's been a very long time :)

    I just thought I'd pick the number one that pisses me off the most :p
    • Up x 1
  5. OneShadowWarrior

    Actually I personally know the coder who designed the lock on weapons, they worked in the beginning on there intended purpose like they were supposed to in the beginning. Posing a real threat to air and vehicles, that includes the TR Striker.

    Even the Anti Air from maxes, turrets, skyguards hit you in the aircraft before you knew what hit you and dead on arrival.

    My son who likes to play on Dads games see’s more clear than the new company does, he says what is the deal with nothing working against aircraft, vehicles and the snipers who cloak? Not at distance, but right in your face.

    I can keep going on with this such as a Max suit that you have costing as much as a tank and a vehicle just runs you over like your just any other light infantry, when it should be hitting a fire hydrant or steel pole and your vehicle get’s wrapped around it, maybe these exploiters would think twice then charging defended locations?

    I can understand movement, keep your distance, driving or flying skill, but parking right outside of your spawn tube within 50 meters and you can’t do anything about it?

    I doubt anyone enjoys being camped.
    • Up x 3
  6. NotziMad



    This bit made me chuckle :)
  7. Trebb

    If getting farmed by ESFs, get yourself into an obscure spot, maybe where they retreat to, and put up an engie Mana AV turret. With enough practice, you can swat down those hovering pests in one hit. I'm not sure if it one shots composite armor ESFs, I'll have to play a bit more.
  8. Blam320



    Literally nobody uses the MANA AV turret anymore, and at that you're seriously suggesting that it's a good tool for killing ESFs?!
  9. Twin Suns

    All permanently fixed turrets defending bases need a major accuracy/handling overhaul. My little 4 man engi crew can only hold the line for so long against MBT, Harrassers and ESF's zergs. When we do actually hold the line, I notice the behavior of said mention vehicles tend to thin out because of effective kill zones.

    With those effective kill zones established, skilled vehicle mains start fighting other skilled vehicle mains and not so much the infantry anymore. Allowing tactics to comeback into play because the non-skilled vehicle spammers can't drive around and poach kills at a spawn anymore without some form of risk. It's just one small thing that effects the synergy of the battlefield.
    • Up x 1
  10. Clone117

    Buffing fixed base turrets would help alot for defence in general. Increasing velocity of said turrets would also help. Sometimes i think the game would be in a better place if we had muzzle velocity buffed across the bored.
    • Up x 2
  11. Badman76

    They're too tanky, how does a buggy soak up so much damage!
    • Up x 3
  12. LodeTria

    It's a 1hko on ESFs. Enjoy your free guided AP rounds.
  13. MichaelMoen

    Remember when Thermal Optics used to be a thing? Yeah Infantry farming used to be much worse. To me now trying to find people on the ground is horrendous until I'm up close and at that point I'm getting five different Heavies firing rockets at me and only one needs to hit.
  14. LaughingDead

    First off, I'm back *******.

    Don't see how so. There's plenty of countermeasures, other air, flak, lockons, not being outside, skywalls and so on.


    Not particularly. If I'm getting gunned down by a leetfit heavy and he's been playing the game his entire life with a controller in his hand, no amount of skill you could muster, unless it was equal to his, is going to let you win that trade and even then unless you headshot him faster than he can react (which is generally not fast enough) he can just medkit dance around a safe corner where he was peaking.
    There honestly are not many counters to heavy except be a better heavy, that's ******** logic right there.


    Oh I've actually done the score tracking on this one, I've died less times from an ESF than I have anything else. Less than 1% actually, so 99% of the time it's going to be something else. I doubt you have the ability to look up your stats (no wait, you do) so I'm sure you can pull them up on fisu and look for yourself.

    Be inside? Listen? BE AWARE?

    HALF?! WHAT KIND OF FIGHTS ARE YOU SMOKING? 95% of the time it's going to be a nice large glowy point inside a room, with small connections and possible small outdoor excursions and then back into another room. Hell, we have biolabs that are literally just giant indoor cluster****s.

    Nah I'll grant, that thing is completely useless. Shot at it with an AH and it didn't even take the full mag. Not sure if it was damaged before but it's pretty garbage. Don't mind that thing getting a buff.

    But we shouldn't have deployables that are an instant immortal safety umbrella to every single fight either, mind you. If air can kill you, it should kill you, that's simply the kind of game planetside is.

    That's good, that means you're being a team player.


    No not really. If you're playing infantry anyhow, you shouldn't be more than 10 feet from cover, should have your sound up so you can hear them (they do not take you by surprise, they are giant ******* jets) and take cover inside a building.

    I get, it might be unfun to die to something you can't understand how to counter, but god dammit do not try to tell me I can't counter them. Hawk was the first damn rocket launcher I auraxed with flying colors. It's easy to take down and counter ESFs with just infantry, and if they're running flares, they're more than vulnerable to other ESFs.

    Thats the thing about this game, its' TEAM based. So what if the ESF gets a few nub kills, if they were close to cover a medic can easily revive them, if they were out in the open they honestly deserve to die to literally everything else in the game, like tanks, mostly other infantry, snipers especially but I'm pegged they're the kind of player that would walk into a mine.
    Minirant over, ESFs should be countered by other air, skyguards, locks, burster maxes, there are plenty of things that keep them out before they can even net one kill, and then you continue to storm whatever base you're attacking or defending. That's another thing, flak turrets at defending bases, nearly impossible for ESFs to kill with AI weapons without getting dunked on; and they're free and they're infinite.
    So there's that too.[/quote][/quote]
  15. Blam320


    You haven't the slightest clue what qualifies as good anti-air. The MANA AV turret is even less consistent than the Decimator, and the Deci is already leagues better since you don't need to be stationary to fire it! Do you really think competent A2G farmers linger around long enough for you to hit them with the MANA?
  16. Goodkat

    Shoot it with your gun. It is not that hard. If all the infantry did that instead of ignoring the thing farming them, then the esf would **** off or die right quick.
    • Up x 1
  17. EvildoerNC

    Even if you waste nanites to pull a AA max to counter them and happen to actually kill them, any A2g farmer with half a brain has an esf base so they can simply pull them over and over again. The reality is air guys tend to be the most vocal people on these forums so nothing is going to be done about it. If anything join the party and make a tr banshee alt and have a field day with how easy it is to rack up kills. Another bonus is no striker spam that can easily counter you.
  18. The Shady Engineer

    Never understood this either. ESFs die to focused fire rather quickly, especially the A2G commandos who can't fly for **** otherwise.

    As the saying goes: One guy shooting an ESF with small arms will do diddly. Half a platoon shooting an ESF with small arms will do a whole lot of diddly.
  19. Campagne

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    This reminds me of that joke about the monks in the monastery, where they say the same things so often they just assign them numbers instead. I feel like at this point we could just give arguments and rebuttals with numbers representing the arguments, because I've done this dance an awful lot of times.
    • Up x 1
  20. The Shady Engineer

    Hm. I've been on forumside for a while and have participated in a bunch of G2A discussion threads. I thought a fellow old timer like you would know my stance on it, but whatevs, I'll bite.

    G2A balance is terrible. A single source of AA is ridiculously ineffective but a squad (or even half a squad tbh) of dedicated AA makes sure nothing flies in the hex. The thing is, AA in this game is also incredibly easy to use. Whether it be lock-ons or flak, the most "effective" AA in the game can be done on auto pilot. Because it is so easy to use it has to be individually weak but because it is so easy to use it scales exponentially in groups. The whole dynamic requires a redesign, one that we will probably never get this far into the game's life cycle.

    That said, an ESF farming a platoon of people with impunity royally pisses me off. Very similarly to a single guy in a Lightning destroying a Sundy that has people actively spawning on it. It's the whole "someone else will deal with it" type mindset.

    I'm not saying shooting ESF with small arms is effective AA, but it does scale well with numbers. To use your example, you are grossly overestimating 2 things:
    1) How long it takes to splat an ESF with small arms.
    2) How much killing potential an A2G ESF has per pass.

    It's been a while since I tried, but last time I was testing small arms against ESF, it took me just under 2 magazines from a Cycler to drop that one Scythe in VR from the balcony perch. Lets be generous and say 80 bullets at a Cycler's minimum damage range. Divide by 12 (sq size) and you get less than 7 bullets per person. With a cyclic rate of 750 it's less than half a second to make it go splat. And that's how long it takes to kill the ESF. Any competent pilot (which granted a lot of A2G folks are not) would have afterburned away much earlier.

    Even a Banshee, which is the best AI nosegun atm, actually has very limited damage in its magazine. So to use your example, yes, some people will die but it will most definitely not kill the entire squad in the time it takes them to splat it. At most it will kill 2-3 people before having to run away to reload and repair, and that's if the pilot is good. Your average A2G pilot loses their nerve and disengages as soon as he start taking damage. Even if 2-3 people do die, it's better than having the entire squad killed which is what will happen if you do nothing.

    So when you're getting A2G'd by an ESF and have no AA handy, you have 2 choices:
    1) Shoot at it while also asking your squad/platoon/buddies in proxy chat to do the same.
    2) Roll over and take it.

    If you choose the second option, imo, you lose the right to complain.
    • Up x 1