Flying has become pure garbage.

I don't think either the COF or the detonation range are too wide at all.
And I don't think there's a problem with the RNG.

And how will that change when in the presence of a such a system, one or multiple? will the aircraft(s) get destroyed? or fly away to repair? or just turn around and pommel whatever it was that was trying to deal damage on them when that AA source is deemed "not skilled enough?" We already have those situations. Aircraft complains it has to fly away because anit-Air is overbearing; anti-Air complains because Air doesn't die and maintains the right to pick and choose its fights, or dodge in and out of engagement, whichever terminology is less appealling to you. Those situations will remain the same.

That's irrelevant. We are not having this discussion to justify how much power Air has or believes it should have. That's backwards.

Poppycock. Your skill-based anti-Air system changes nothing. As soon as it begins stacking, Air will just go back to feeling like it's being marginalized away from large fights and resume lording over small fights, if it's successful at least as much as flak currently is.

If aircraft aren't dying "enough" now but they're still complaining about being "inconvenienced," why would they complain less about dying more often for certain? If anti-Air is complaining that Air isn't dying but they're still landing shots, why would they complain less about it being just about as easy to hit when the aircraft is not trying to dodge but harder to hit when it is (and still only dying about as much)?

Edit: I'm happy the word filter didn't false-positive that.

on Cobalt, you have more chance that an enemy ESF jumps on you, then an g2a will kill you, and lets count how many pilots tired of lock-ons, and how many not pilots tired of "pilots"

PS2s' flight experience submarine battles in the sky have always been subpar.

I do doubt the system would allow air fights at much higher speeds and I also do doubt many flyboys would enjoy more squishy craft. Also, removing hovering would send a certain crowd running.

Then again, there is a certain lobby based game which pulls of high speed dogfights with a semi-realistic flight model and even combined arms battles with relatively balanced AA units. Now if only it hadn't been so grindy, I'd still play that game.

The air game can be a bit frustrating at times. And there is a lot of annoying little things and pet peeves that develop. But flying into a 96+/96+ and escaping the trail of lock-ons, bursters, and skyguards can be a bit of an art and kinda fun. Not to mention other ESFs and instagibing liberators.

At the end of the day, the OP is expressing the opinion of everyone who flies whether they admit it or not. They feel they should be "viable" even if extremely outnumbered. They feel pulling a vehicle gives them the right to farm kills no matter what the situation. And they feel they should never be countered ever.

Yeah it's so horrible you can be locked on by 32 other players and still escape? Air units are the only thing in the game where 32+ other players can be directly trying to kill you and you can still survive. Oh boo hoo!

The very definition of entitlement. And why not? The Devs have given them everything on top of having the only unit with expressed "deterrents" and no hard counters.

A good tip for people who use ESF's fly low on approach to a base with lots of AA turrets, you want to minimize the amount of time the enemy can see you. So for example a amp station take the long way around to the side the ground is not assaulting, pop up over the wall hit them then use the afterburners to just get away and back low to provide cover. Your biggest threat at that time will be tanks and stray rockets. Not lock-ons or AA turrets.

Hopefully this helps some of you. It helped me a lot knowing that tip.

As someone who almost never uses A2G, and who used to fly a lot i agree with the poster of this thread.

Flying is rubbish these days.

I'm flying with a nosegun and afterburners 500 meters off the ground. Nothing is rendering down there, i'm not equipped to attack the ground, nor have i any intention of doing so, and im constantly getting locked, flakked hit by walkers sundies, fired upon by tanks and harrassers.

I have no problem with ground pounders getting killed. But every hex is covered with flak or turrets or locks. Even when you arent near a battle. You get in a dogfight 2 hexes from a turret and its shooting at you the whole time from 1km away.

I too have had times when i have 15+ g2a missiles launched at me at the same time and its insta death from ground targets who arent even rendering to me while im near the flight ceiling trying to fight enemy aircraft.

You cant even outmaneuver these new striker, i mean swarm missiles. They go around hills and buildings and bridges, round and round and round.

I've found there's a sort of escalation of arms that takes place when I do A2G (which is rare, my stance is to just use the ESF until it's dead and then join the infantry fight, but sometimes that can take a while).

First 5-10 kills will be free or near-free, assuming I'm the only aircraft in the area doing this. The next 5-10 will come with some resistance, dumbfires flying in my direction or a lockon or two trying to get me to (understandably) **** off. The next 5-10, flak maxxes and mass lockons. This is roughly when I join the infantry fight :b

So what I'm saying is maybe it's an issue of your timing and the fight you're participating in is in the late stages of air-immunization... IE, air in the area has annoyed the population to a critical mass and they're in the process of dealing with it, which includes you.

Clarification: your cockpit altimeter says 500m or you estimate the difference between the altitude of the ground and yourself to be about 500m?

Takin a stab at the game you mentioned:

War Thunder?

Confirmed: You're a bad.

Is it really that hard to ask the people on the ground to take out the AA for you instead of trying to be a one-man-army flying into a 100-player fight and thinking that none of them will shoot at you?

Oh god, This would make the Skyknights **** glass encrusted bricks.

Try it out. You'll see that even on hovering targets you'll miss shots despite a dead-on aim. The flak detonation range it something around 4m, so any shot that lands within 4m of the aircraft will count as a hit. But this extends to both sides. So in total, a cross-section of 8m is added to aircraft where you can hit them. That's almost as big as a Sunderer is long added to the hitbox of every aircraft!
Does this need to be there? No. Would it change if we had different weapons? I think so, you think it would stay the same. What if it was tried out in PTS or something? I think that within half an hour of attacking/being attacked by this new G2A you would see the benefits.

It would change more into how current ground vehicles deal with it. Ground vehicles have to deal with AV all the time from infantry and other vehicles. While some things are different, like vehicles can use terrain for cover and use high ground to obscure most of his frame for an advantage while aircraft need to use their speed and maneuverability to gain advantages. A tank being attacked by 3 other tanks isn't guaranteed to die unless he's out in the open doing nothing to protect himself and/or the 3 tankers have bad aim due to range etc. The same should apply to aircraft, and by changing it to have no flak I think it could easily be achieved.

So no, we will not have 'those situations'. Because current flak barely rewards you for increasing your skill, and the power gain for your skill quickly stops completely, preventing you from killing any aircraft.

It's part of the discussion. Aircraft have a ton of power, and almost every weapon or ability on an aircraft has more power or advantages than similar counterparts on ground vehicles. So it's not irrelevant, but yes it didn't really come up so far in the discussion.

But that's the point, it won't be as successful as flak currently is. It will have bigger extremes of success. Sometimes you won't score a hit at all, which is completely different from the current "flak will hit you anyways so get used to it", and sometimes you will nail an aircraft, which is also completely different. And sometimes you will deal damage to it but they can escape or still fight back. But an aircraft under flak fire will not instantly turn around simply because he's being attacked, he will gauge the situation, try evasive maneuvers and then find out if he's good enough to survive or not. It's quite similar to being attacked by another ESF, only you have the option to flee from them rather then having similar speeds.

Because you are rewarded for improving? Because people can actually do something about the situation?
Because currently aircraft die a lot to other aircraft and maybe less than 1/5th to any G2A weapon, yet they complain about the G2A weapons. In reverse, infantry and tanks most often die to other ground units, yet they complain about aircraft being OP because... They can't really do something about the situation.

That's the point. Even if G2A suddenly started being as lethal as aircraft weapons, aircraft would have the option to do something about the situation. They can feel "yep, I did something wrong". Right now they feel "well, I couldn't have done anything against that flak" or "I couldn't have defended myself against those aircraft". This means (most) people stop complaining about it!

Just think: Imagine if snipers didn't OHK anymore, but worked with a flak system. You change the DPS so that all infantry has a chance to escape. Suddenly you have a problem with groups of infiltrators doing OHK's on players without them being able to escape, and solo infiltrators not being able to feel effective because they can't really kill anyone.

I know how the detection range of flak works.

I don't even need to do math to tell you how the benefit of that "large" hitbox vanishes the further you get from the point of engagement. (Okay, so I actually did math. The best way I have to present it is: at 100m the angular distance between the edges and the center of a 20m target is 5.71 degrees, or about 11.4 degrees across the whole target, and it roughly halves every additional 100m, e.g., 5.72 at 200m and 3.82 at 300m. Very slightly modify that value based on how you have your FOV configured. The detection range isn't a significant issue working against Aircraft, nor is it overly-benefitting AA, at the more common engagement distances.)

I don't know what awkward scenario this is but, out in the field, one tank without backup actively being engaged by three of the same generally ends with the first tank dying and only rarely with one of other three tanks dead too.

These is probably the biggest problems with the argument at hand for me. I see no no reason why we need to get rid of flak to introduce this system.
Tying into that, you also won't win me over with "skill" arguments. In general, I see "skill-based" as an empty modifier that attempts to justify an "it may be powerful, but it's difficult, so it's fine" design mindset that's counterintuitive to building things that are useful.

No, this the point. Aircraft already have as much power individually as people cite, either honestly or in exaggeration, and I see no reason to throw more bones at their feet. In the end, this system isn't to the benefit of the people on the ground trying to protect people on the ground; it is only to the benefit of the people in the Air. The people on the ground have trouble killing; the people in the Air already have no trouble getting away. That'd be the only reason we'd be considering their strengths and inconveniences as a design paradigm for the counter system. It's an appeasal that plays far too heavily to the side of the engagement that doesn't need more help.

Of course, Aircraft die a lot of other Aircraft than to AA. Infantry also die a lot more to other Infantry than they do to armor or aircraft. Armor -- eh, I'm sure it balances out. Regardless, it's not unrealistic to think that the kind of targets that encounter each other often, occupy the same playing field, and are most adept at engaging and pursuing one another, will end up butting heads far more often than targets that exist outside of that common realm and appear as each other's victors on a scoreboard. From the very beginning, Air was the best way to engage Air and there is little that is going to change that.

Ground-based anti-Air is not another ESF and will never approach the same level of finesse that can be applied by an ESF.

Destroy Air with flak? It can already be done.
Escape flak? It can already be done.
Judge the situation before trying to re-engage? It can already be done.
We're changing very little about the situation but gaining less from it.

Stop for a moment and think about what you said. You removed the concept of OHKO from the hypothetical but then said that a group of Infiltrators can OHKO. That makes no sense. By definition "one-hit one-kill" means that only one person is necessary to hit the target, so it remains an agency of a single person and a single shot. Saying that "groups of Infiltrators [are necessary to] OHK" is to describe a nonsensical situation. Ignoring the whole, "individual Infiltrators can not OHKO," I see nothing wrong with a group of Infiltrators working together against targets if it's to their benefit. If all Infiltrator weapons worked on a DPS model and none could OHKO that would just weaken the appeal of BASRs. Everything else about how the class operates would stay the same.
(I don't even need to point out that Infantry can escape being killed by sniper fire and do so on a daily basis in what can be described as a "skillless" way - walking in less than straight paths.)

I don't accept it. Aircraft survivability needs to be nerfed into the ground and balanced more toward 1 vs 1.

There, problem solved

Let's do it in simple, simple terms:
People heavily dislike flak. Because it can't kill aircraft solo, unless the aircraft pilot makes multiple mistakes.
People heavily dislike flak. Because aircraft have a tough time finding it and can't escape it unless they fly away.

This is evidenced by the people that have been complaining about it since launch.
Changing the system to something different, like more skill-based so that we don't have to limit DPS, would increase the playability of the game for both sides.
I'm not trying to change AA to be skillful for the sake of skill, I'm trying to change it so that both sides can enjoy the game better, preferably in a game where G2A weapons are always present and capable and aircraft can fight everywhere they want.

You seem of the opinion that these AA weapons wouldn't be powerful enough, and that aircraft would benefit. Well you didn't think it through then. There's tons of options you can explore. Think a 10-shot weapon, 4 shots is a kill on an ESF. Fires it's magazine quickly... And then has a long reload. Aircraft can dodge if they have the skill for it, then use the reload time to do whatever they need/want to do. Good AA players can kill 2 ESF in one magazine if they have the skill for it, bad AA players might end up getting killed.
Other such burst-fire weapons can easily be created as well. We could even keep current flak but with burst-capabilities. A limitation on the magazine size would be in order then of course.

Stop for a moment there and try to read what I mean. Ofcourse it can't OHK anymore, that was my mistake during writing. But any child could know that I meant "if enough Infiltrators fire simultaneously at one guy, they will kill him in one salvo". So not a OHK but still basically an instant-kill without the player having any chance of stopping it.

Now look at the example again: Infiltrators have flak-based snipers that go off near infantry. Now they barely need skill to hit, just fire nearby the player. DPS has been reduced so that they can't kill infantry before said infantry has a chance to get behind cover. But, the moment a group of infiltrators comes along, they can easily kill infantry in salvo's and prevent infantry from entering any terrain where the snipers can hit them. This creates imbalances: Current snipers can't function as they would solo, small groups can lock up entire bases. That's not "the benefit of teamwork", that's "the benefit of having wrongfully balanced weapons".
Because where you think that adding "skill based" is not necessarily a good thing, I am seeing increasing rates of people saying "teamwork ftw" even though it wasn't teamwork that did it, but an OP weapon combination.

I don't understand how you can not grasp this concept about G2A, you seem better than most people on here about different subjects.

Well that was mean.

You're just wrong here on this last one. It IS the benefit of teamwork. Plus, if what you say was true, then every base would have a cadre of VS Lasher heavies just ruining everyone else's day, because that weapon already exists too. And if 3-5 INFs must focus on 1 infantry opponent at a time, it is a poor use of resources and easily overwhelmed with a rush, or artillery.

The main problem I see here isn't with your idea of weapon balance, it's the idea that 5 people combining force multiplying weapons shouldn't be so good...but that's exactly what that means. Numbers in this game mean something, otherwise the zerg simply wouldn't exist and be so cried about.

If you can coordinate a number of players, you gain a benefit. If you do that AND choose weapons or combinations that give you exponential returns, you're just playing smart, playing to win.

The problem with air vs AA vs ground starts with air.

Aircraft have a very high learning curve compared to every other aspect of the game. This means only dedicated and patient players can use them effectively, and only rare players can get the most out of them. That, in turn, leads to comparatively low numbers of aircraft in any battle. The devs now must balance against low numbers of highly skilled players.

Unlike with tanks or infantry, the devs cant rely on masses of lower skilled pilots to help offset the elite pilots because there simply aren't enough of them. The extreme learning curve keeps low and average players away. This means they must balance air with tanks and infantry.

Giving heavies AA missiles seems a no-brainer for a sci-fi game...
Giving MAX suits AA weapons is a must because it was in the original game...
Making a dedicated AA tank is necessary cause we cant make it all about the infantry...
Bases should get AA turrets too...

Devs, "Oops that is a lot of AA against only a few aircraft. Hmmm, AA needs to be a "deterrent". That should fix it."

Result: Pilots complain about AA everywhere and lack of good dog-fighting. Ground complains about Aircraft and feeling ineffective against them. Nobody is happy.

If you want to fix Air vs AA the only real solution is have a serious go at lowering the learning curve on aircraft. Once aircraft are easy to fly and hard to master (or, even, easy to fly and easy to master) and you have plenty of pilots in the sky of varying skill levels, then you can make AA more effective and more expensive skill/resource wise.