Fighters useless without heavy certing

mate I've only put 1400 into mine and I can fight with it fine. There are just lots of aces out there ruling the skys now.

I got the ejection seat ability so I just pull a ESF anytime I need to get somewhere and try and last as long as I can before bailing and joining the fight on foot. I enjoy it as a way of practicing with feeling like I'm beating my head against a wall. (bailing also makes the sky knights rage so even better).

Well, 1400 is affordable, mainly for members. Yet I think there are better sinks for these certs, at least in early stages. I would say certing up ground vehicles is more important. I only mean that default ESF is not viable to use and nobody will invest in them until they really have all the important things. And when it comes to this historical moment when free player buys his first secondary weapon on ESF it's over month of playing - if he stays in game for this long of course. So his first trials of doing anything in ESF will come after a month or something like that. It's not game breaking, but it would be a little more friendly for newbies if they could do anything in ESF from the start. I would rather buff my Prowler with deploy mode, extra armor, gatekeeper and some extra ammo for weapons rather than invest in ESF. In TR you need to buy better sniper rifle, also it would be nice to unlock some SMG etc. And suddenly first investment in air vehicles comes after like 6k certs. And I will do this quickly as I play much, have membership and some nose to farm certs - but free user will wait for it for long time.

Maybe DBG could add the option to pay full price for the game and skip the progression.

IMO, that would remove half the fun.

It's voluntary. If you want the grind you just keep on playing normal. Some of us are f***king sick of progression in every da** game.

If you think the cert cost is the cause of new players struggling with ESFs, you're in for a bad time once you do build up enough certs. That's only the first step.

1. 3000-5000 certs spent
2. An hour or so reviewing how to fly videos
3. A few hours applying knowledge from videos in the VR.
3a. Cut VR time in half if you have a tutor.
4. About a week or two of attrition when you apply all of the above live.
4a. Cut time to three fourths if you have a live tutor.

The time it takes to earn a few thousand certs PALES in comparison to the time it will take so you're not a cert pinata to everything else that glances in your direction. That's not just dealing with enemy ESFs, but lockons from the ground, flak, and other non-ESF aircraft. Libs especially love to prey on noob ESF pilots.

But you're right about one thing. Every other vehilce in the game is pull and go. Even Galaxies and Valks.. and somewhat Libs too. Maybe a couple hundred certs just to get a slight edge. But nothing like the time and cert investment required of the ESF.

But to make the ESF newbie friendly like every other vehicle would tick off about a dozen very vocal people.

I have several thousand certs dumped on my reaver, but I have picked up scythes and mossies when I was trying the other factions and I was able to start being effective with them even uncerted.

The only ability enhancing elements are the secondary pods but these can be unlocked pretty rapidly as a new player, you get 100 certs every rank for the first 15.

I assume the reason you get tanks instead of pods by default is to try to push ESF's more into the A2A role first. It's unfortunate that the default gun is completely useless for noobs to actually kill anything though. It doesn't have the DPS to be a threat against gals or libs (unless the lib is really bad) and it's hard to use against experienced ESF pilots.

have you tried using a fully certed ESF before?,
trust me it isn't much better, the sky is filled with ganksquads of skyknight elitists,
i'd recommend you spend your certs on something else, because you could end up pouring your 3000 certs into your reaver and then realising that it wasn't the state of your aircraft that sucks, just the nature of the airgame.
whether you've spent 0 certs or 10,000, you'll still be airborn nolonger than 2 minutes before the skygankers come along to collect their certs.

Yeah, I'm rank 40 and I still haven't finished basic training because I've yet to get 3 stupid kills with a mosquito. Only getting one cheap kill on a damaged Reaver that had landed for repairs.
The nose gun alone is practically useless, especially since your constant need to adjust altitude makes killing infantry near-impossible, and vehicles just shrug off the few bullets that actually make their mark. In fact, I don't even think I've been killed by an enemy nose-gunner either.

The only weapons that seem remotely useful are anti-air seeking rockets, and air-to-ground rocket pods. The 1st weapon killing me almost 2/3 of the time in my first 20s of flight.

At this point I'd more than likely have enough certs to get rockets myself, but past experience just shows that investing in the light air vehicles just isn't worth it. You're just a cert piñata for everyone, and have little influence on the battle. At least the Valkyrie and "sky whale" are both impervious to light arms, are capable of moving allies around, and have turrets that you can actually aim.