Flying has become pure garbage.

OP, I understand your frustration, but there are ways to get kills and help your team in a A2G esf.

Almost every base on amerish you can make lolpod runs by coming at odd angles and hiding yourself in the mountains till the last ridge before the base. In fact ever continent seems too have a lot of terrain cover that promote low flyby bomb runs that let you rack up kills faster than your standard high altitude to low altitude bombing run.

So if you cant do that, then You pop flares when you feel like it will save your life, then you do another run without flares which if done right most of the time the Lock Ons will not kill you.(becasue you were a little bit safer due to the flare cool down.) Drop down to repair and rinse and repeat.
Ive been in huge battles with multiple burster maxes and lock ons and still manage a good amount of kills. You just have to know when to attack what angel and utilize your environment.

In the worst scenarios do you think a single esf should be able to farm a high inf base so easily? Its still possible but some bases are harder then others.

1, Use Mountains, hills, environment to cover your approach.
2. If a friendly lib or esf is doing bombing runs as well let them go first sometimes, It can remove some of the lock on pressure from you.
3. Don't hang around too long. improve your awareness and speed at which you find targets.
4. Don't be afraid just to make a pass to locate targets.
5. Alternate between using flares as needed and then taking a few hits and landing for repairs.

I stopped playing a2a from the moment that my fps were not helping me plus i just admited i was not good enough to take on the flying pros so i just went to find my calling elsewhere.

A2A will either be lock on battles,shotguns etc etc.You dont see too many pilots going for a2a because simply a2a gives an advantage to the best fps and simply because there are just some hardcore players that you simply cant take out alone,but yes i do i agree air mechanics could use improvements but do you guys even know what kind of improvements you want to see?

Other than that all you see its unlimited ppa,shotguns,hellfire raining down to the ground soldiers like me and we stand very little chance once the rockets fall to the ground.

The lib shots require skill,you can't just kill somebody if you cant aim,but i agree that they have a lot of HP and makes them run out of danger easily

now g2a and a2g is another story and since my side is a ground troop i always see ppas,shotguns,hellfire rockets destroy us and the only ones that we manage to kill are those who are stupid enough to stay close even when you get a lock on to them,i mean what else can you expect when you are near an enemy base other than been shot down?i am sure they wont hug you

Cant you fly above the lockon at 500 feet and get a zoom for your gun? (im not sure i never tried to make high altitude air-snipers) Or get the vehicle stealth anti lockon fully upgraded and learn to strafe? Or maybe focus on only fighting air somewhere else and conceede the area with TONS of anti air?

having 20 heavy with lockon may seem op. But those 20 people prolly think that using 8 liberators against them is OP.

As for what i personally want for a2a and think might help ... thats easy.


1. An easy goto baby pilots first nosegun:
What i have in mind is a nosegun that works similar to Flak.
Direct hits do a tiny bit less dmg than the ones from the normal faction specific default nosegun, but close enough hits explode and to a portion of it's original damage still.
To prevent big shots abusing the gun ... add a bloom/cone of fire ... something that makes it clear that after reaching a certain amount of experience you won't get much more out of it and might wanna switch to the other noseguns.

Contrary to tomcats ... which i think originally were intended to help the new guy (but are actually hurting in the long term) ... this would indeed allow the new guy to focus more on staying alive, doing his manouvers etc, while also reinforcing the basics of leading, evading (since you wont trash an arbitrary lockon timer once you started evading) and amo control.


2. ESF's need somethign that's actually effective against liberators.
The time to kill is on the nutty side ... especially once you consider that the lib is almost as fast as a reaver and has long range weaponry and 1hit kill potential.
Important:
It needs to be effective vs libs and galaxies ... NOT vs tanks ... but it would be nice if it was able to cut down on the time to kill for base turrets (especially since they ll just rep themselfs nowadays)


3. Different models:
One of the biggest things that i think cause this hate relationship towards esfs and air in general is ... that from the ground it's impossible to tell if the esf that just flew in has an A2A setup or Lolpods or whatever.
Even in a2a battles it's tough to see ... and i am at hugging distance to my opponents on the regular.

So from the guy on the grounds perspective ... every esf they see is a groundpounder ... and if he doesn't stop to kill you, he surly is just flying to the next base over to unload onto your buddies.


3. Cert payout/nanite cost
For the amount of nanites an esf costs ... a2a is like deciding that you are ok to probably lose them within the first minutes and usually the first few engagements ... all while the cert payout for winning is actually kinda crappy.(and that as an experienced pilot ... new pilots have it a lot worse in that regard)

At the same time you have A2G choices that not only make you stay closer to cover and usually guarantee not only more time spent in the air but also a higher cert payout for the nanites invested.

Something has to be done here ... either make let's say the fuelpods reduce nanite cost by 50 or so or increase the cert payout for a2a by a good chunk (otherwise a2g will always be more rewarding and therefore the goto choice for pilots)


4. Nanites in VR
I can't understand why we don't have that yet ... for a new pilot every minute spent in the air is worth so much ... you need a certain degree of practise to learn how to handle your esf and how to aim while doing your manouvers etc ... it takes quite some time.
And if you try to use the VR you get punished by not recieving ANY nanites during that time.

So getting at least 1/2 would be lovly.


5. practise/duel mode (maybe only for vr)
Sure we can do that now too ... just have to buy the esf for the other guy, switch seats and it works ... but it's a bit unintuitive and certainly not something a new player would figure out on their own.


There is a lot more but those are what came to mind right now ... with the flak gun beeing the top issue imo (the anti lib gun is close 2nd tough^^)

The main issue, you don't see more of those suggestions is ... well the usual forumside reaction tbh.
Asking for improvements for air is a sure fire way to cause a small riot here ... so HF i quess

The problem I foresee with your proposed Dual Walker weapon is that it heavily favors ESFs with smaller frames, mainly the Mosquito. As it stands right now all ESFs have a standardized hitbox for flak which is somewhere around 4-6 meters in radius so 8-12 diameter. I can't remember the exact values, think its more on the 4/8 side of things. Higby posted about this when they standardized the values way back. The standardization occurred because when the game first released they were not. This left the Scythe at a horrible disadvantage to flak. If I could find his original twitter post on this I would but sadly I believe its gone now. By changing flak which regardless of ESF its used on can hit to something that requires direct fire would pose the same problem the game started with, the Scythe at a large disadvantage, the Mosquito with a large advantage and the Reaver somewhere in the middle.

Now some would argue we see that already with the Walker on sunderers but the Walker wasn't intended for ESFs and instead to be an AA alternative for better dealing with Liberator attacks. The Scythe's main weakness is meant to be any threats on the ground due to its wing span but since flak can be used readily at any large base the devs didn't want it to a factor in ESF vs ESF traits as most Scythe pilots were actually avoiding large scale battles due to the overkill of G2A at the time.

I find it hilarious that most the threads about balance come back to one main flaw with the game compared to the original. Which is over abundance of readily available choices. I know people are tired of hearing this but PS1 did it right by having players specialize in specific fields by limiting what options they could certify into. (Obviously this changed with BR 24+ which gave you everything but lets stick to vanilla PS1).

Players were forced to pick what roles they wanted to play and stick with them. This drastically reduced the amount of people playing any one role and made it very hard to be able to fill multiple roles in the field by changing loadouts. This meant dedicated infantry usually had no vehicles available to them, aircraft pilots wouldn't have the best infantry tools, etc..Vehicles also had long respawn timers meaning dying was a bad thing. This whole system promoted team based play and strategy while removing a symptom we see too heavily in PS2; revenge killing.

Although people won't admit it but we have all done this at some point. Most notably being an infil snipes you, you respawn as an infil and snipe him back. Same **** happens with vehicles as some people always have to up the ante.

It seems as the years have gone on for this game people seem to forget or merely turn a blind eye to the over all issue that we as players have too much freedom in a competitive based game.

The other major difference is in PS1 there were a very large variety in vehicles that had specific roles, advantages and disadvantages. Instead of what we have now which is single vehicle platforms we can customize but because we can customize we complain then we can't achieve an all-in-wonder type of weapon/playstyle. Air is a good example as there was the Mosquito; fast speed lightly armed scout that used radar, Reaver; air to ground support fighter, Wasp; anti-fighter that had A2A missiles, Liberator; high altitude bomber, Galaxy; troop transport, Gunship Galaxy; air to ground suppression, Lodestar; vehicle transport and rearm/repair and the Phantom??; slower stealth recon/infiltration aircraft.

TLDR there's not enough vehicle diversity and not enough limiters imposed on player growth.

A problem that can be settled by changing the ESF's resistances compared to each other. Or by changing the directional armor ratings for each ESF since aircraft do have different armor ratings it's just not used atm.

Scythes are the easiest to hit... From below or above. So it would make sense that they have more armor there (at least against G2A weapons). They are much harder to hit from the front, side or back since they have a slimmer frame. So their armor value's from the front, side and back could be (slightly) lower than those from the top and under armor.

If you don't want to make use of the directional armor which is already in-game but just doesn't offer any different damage resistances yet, you can simply give each ESF a different resistance to G2A. If Scythes would be much more easily hit overall they could get a standard increase in damage resistance against G2A weapons, Reavers could stay the same and Mosquito's could get a lower resistance than right now. This is just an example and this doesn't mean that the Scythe suddenly has twice the resistance of the Mosquito. I would think that the resistance changes could start with 1 or 2 % differences and the move up and down the scales until all ESF have about similar death ratio's to NS G2A weapons.

First time I heard of that one. Why would it have high-speed bullets if it was for the large Liberators?

While a legitimate concern, I don't think the differences between ESF will be that large even if you let the damage resistances stay the same. Flak is extremely easy to hit at least some shots because the COF will randomly get pellets in the way of aircraft, and the flak detonation range is so incredibly lenient that even shots that seem to go wide will generously explode and deal damage anyway. Walkers need precise aim, if you have that precise aim you'll hit, and the few extra hits or few extra misses depending on ESF type will be small. Maybe not negligible but small. Then there's the difference in attacks: Scythes will get a lot less hits when attacking an G2A weapon directly, while the Reaver with his huge frontal hitbox will be tanking stuff all day long.


As a side-note, I would love to give all ESF maybe some more unique traits. We know from Valkyries that you can have 5 different hitboxes (the Valkyrie with directional armor and 4 infantry in the rumble seats, each with different damage ratio's for head, chest and leg shots) and that each can separately be hit or together with AOE (which was disabled for infantry in Valkyrie Rumble seats since flak detonations were too powerful). So imagine if we changed ESF to carry 3 extra separate hitboxes on their frame: A cockpit and two turbines? This way you could destroy an aircraft turbine and cause it to spin out of control to crash on the ground below or destroy the cockpit for quick kills. The only real problem I see with that system is that you need some kind of triage-effect to repair all separate modules in one go when you use FS, nanite auto-repair or a repair tool.

IMHO the A2A locks are the biggest problem with flying right now.

Realy?

Don't get me wrong ... i have a deep hatred for a2a lockons ... but mostly because they tend to get used by new pilots who spend a ton of certs on em just to hinder their chances of getting competitive in the long run.


Here are my suggestions for biggest air issues atm:

1. Liberator speed:
For the amount of HP and the one shot potential libs have ... them having roughly the same speed as an esf is just a cruel joke (not sure if the esfs fuel pods got nerfed but i don't remember this beeing as much of an issue a while back ... but right now even with fuel pods it's almost impossible to keep the lib you are fighting at range)

2. Complete lack of newbie weapons:
What we have is a broken lockon mechanic that activly punishes any new pilot by forcing them to stay still (evading will usually break the lock-on timer) and doesn't help in any way when it comes to learning how to lead.

3. Ridicolous avaliability of "immortal" G2A Weapons:
This is different for liberators but from an esfs perspective all G2A is almost immortal and most is free.

*Base AA: Almost every base out there has a few of those suckers ... they repair themselfs and have a real nasty habit of overlapping each range wise. While an unmanned one can be killed with a few clips and hornets, a manned one will kill you long before you have a chance to kill it.

*Heavy Lockon launchers:
Yes they are immortal too ... in a way.
Usually even tough the pilot gets a lockon warning, there is no way to tell where it's coming from an which of the guys on the ground is the one with the launcher ... heck with the swarm launcher and the striker you don't even get that time.
Only once the missile is in the air, you see who actually fired it ... and then you usually are out of time and have to try and evade the damn thing (btw the swarm launcher missiles are impossible to avoid ... they simply keep circling around obstacles until they hit you)

*AA Sundies, Harassers, Skyguards:
Well harassers are actually a bit different and how i feel it should be ... meaning they pack a punch but are actually defeatable, given the right situation and depending on the pilots/drivers skill.
But Sundies and Skyguards will always win in a straight up fight (given that the sundie is manned and that the skyguard isn't afk)

*Burster maxes:
This one is tricky ... in the right hands they are absolutly devastating ... and at the same time they can be easy pickings if the burster max has no clue what he is doing or hasn't certed the 2nd arm.
The biggest issue here is the ability to just shoot from the spawn room door and only leave once the esf is on a flaming retreat.

*Any infantry primary weapon:
Seriously try it in the vr. Any fight with more than 4 people ... if all of those would aim at the esf and fire a clip it would vaporise within seconds.

This is btw not a rant on sundies, harassers, skyguards ... or any of the options that cost nanites ... it's me venting frustration about how little choice those fights leave to a pilot.

It's run or die for the most part.

Add to that the fact that for some reason nanite cost free options are not only extremly effective but also for the most part basically immortal and well it gets frustrating sometimes.


Add to this the points i made a few posts above and you should start to see that a2a lockons only are a very very small part of the problems esfs (especially a2a ones) have to face.

And quess what ... as soon as the construction system hits, we will see a much higher density of bases and therefore base aa ... so fun times ahead i quess

I agree with everything here X 100.

Good post

Yeah, A2As have always been dodgeable, and the lock-on changes made it even easier. They also have the lowest DPS of all A2A weaponry. They suck to fight en masse, but that's several versus one. If you lose to another pilot 1v1 with A2A lockons, you deserve it. In a chaotic fight? Well that's what they are for.

Whats sad is on console they decided to make running gank a2a squads a serious dedication. Its almost like they dont want an airgame and just want all the pilots who take flying seriously to quit.

At some point devs promised a reduction in infantry AV power to correspond with repeated reductions in vehicle efficiency. Vehicles still exist almost solely to farm infantry, and they are still too good at it so infantry AV capabilities cant be nerfed yet.

IF HE rounds did nothing to armor and AP rounds did nothing to infantry then the AP tanks would slaughter the HE farmers and not sit back sniping infantry with OHK tank rounds.

The infantry farm would mainly go away and the game would be more fun for the majority of players.

Maybe make the damage based on what types of weapons a tank is running. A tank with HE rounds would be unable to equip infantry guard, which would be an ability that a tank running purely AP rounds would be able to equip.

The same could be done for ESF. Those that are running A2A loadouts can do no damage to the ground and in exchange will be able to equip armor that negates or greatly lessens damage taken from the ground.

I could be wrong these days as things have iterated quite a bit from beta but I remember from beta TRay talked about ESF hitboxes and how they don't use directional armor like ground vehicles. Instead they were going to be like infantry with specific hitbox areas that do more or less damage. He originally designed the ESFs with 4 hitbox types in mind spread around the ESF. Sadly this didn't become reality as they went with only having 2 hitbox types for performance and game balance reasons. The 2 hitbox types are "critical" and "everything else". I can't remember the location of all the "critical" points but the scythe as an example is supposed to have them as its underside thrusters along the wing, the side portion the back of the wing, the direct back thrusters and the top vents/thrusters of the wing/main body. Critical points work like head shots on infantry. Flak explosion was made to avoid critical points and technically just hit "everything else".

I know for sure Liberator has only 2 hitbox types split evenly along its frame as merely top and bottom because when they did a repass at the Liberators model for performance reasons (old model caused crashes) Higby made a note of mentioning it. Valkyrie i'm pretty sure is the same as the bottom of it takes 50% less damage from most sources.

Your idea of multiple hit boxes is sound but it requires redoing the hitboxes on at least all the ESFs meaning time and energy(money) for the devs which at this late a stage in the game I don't think they are willing to or even could do. The best they would probably attempt is as you said change resistance values to specific weapons types. Ideally I'd like to see the devs take a more active approach in changing values 1-2% at a time but sadly that isn't how DBG works. They usually change things by 5-10% ranges, wait for new data and sit on it in house for months at a time meaning a very slow and long process instead of what could potentially just take weeks.

The Liberator was intended as a high altitude bomber but when it came out render culling issues mixed with performance issues and the air balance issues of the time put it in a bad spot and the best players could do with it was use it as a low altitude fast hit and run bomber. By the time the dust settled on the ESF vs AA issue the devs barely got the Liberator in a working state which they improved upon over time by adding to its low altitude capability through the Tank Buster and upping its resistances to many threats including ESF nose guns. The Walker and Ranger were already nearing the end of the development process when the Liberator came out and since at the time the devs were already swamped with various balance and performances issues, re doing nearly done assets probably wasn't worth the time. I should have mentioned this in my previous post, the Walker was also meant as a Galaxy deterrent since Galaxies can fly to the sky ceiling and drop troops safely. Since at the time ESFs didnt have engagement radar nor did many bother to check radar often enough the devs probably thought its easier for ground to watch for galaxies and take them out/deter themselves since the spotting of high altitude flyers was something left to ground in PS1 then relayed to air.

Only issue with air directly going at the G2A sources is that if there is more than 1 and they are at different firing angles (much like base AA turrets) it leaves the ESF way to vulnerable just to deal with 1 source. Which I suppose goes back to many other peoples issue with flying which is being able to identify where the source is. Mosquitos usually use their high speed with slim frame to attack targets in fast hit and runs much like modern jets. Reavers usually use their thrusters and terrain to pop tart out and hit their target hard enough before they can react. Scythe..well to be honest i'm really not sure if Scythe pilots have a specific style or if they merely use both but in a half ***** capacity as the Scythe's bonus is maneuverability through not having drift while turning which really doesn't help your A2G game plan. But still this goes back to my above part on having to redo hitboxes on ESFs as currently flak hits all ESFs relatively equally as they all share the same sized "flak hitbox".

I too would like to see a revamp of the entire flight system in the game but I doubt it'll happen as people in beta (including myself) brought concerns forward about future air balance and nothing was done. Instead as the game progressed the devs took the (pardon me but its the best metaphor I have) NC approach and just welded fixes on an ailing system until it was functional enough that at least the entire community wasn't in uproar. But we are kind of left with this barely functioning messy heap of game mechanics on a poorly balanced see saw which has the highest learning curvy of anything in the game and rarely attracts new players to it.

But also keep in mind the stability of the game as air has always been the biggest contributer to instability due to aircraft physics (movement speed) mixed with model/hitbox complexity. The Galaxy and Valkyrie(cause its newer) are the only aircraft that have not had their model and hitboxes redone for performance.

The biggest contributer to the infantry farm are prowler tanks as their dual shot system with fast reloads allows even AP to easily farm infantry since missing isn't a potential death sentence. But even then this behavior is nothing more than a byproduct that become ingrained in TR tank driving since PS2 lacks one fundamental mechanic PS1 had; rearming vehicles. Since vehicles in PS1 had long cool-downs they needed to be able to adapt to situations evolving around bases. When PS2 started vehicles had cool-downs albeit shorter ones but since vehicles couldn't re-equip players found they died immediately when facing counters to what they pulled (because they too were trying to counter 1 thing) leaving vehicles with a very short life span and little flexibility at least when compared to infantry play.

In most cases it turned into this: I grab Magrider to counter tanks, tanks are destroyed, enemy fields only air now, I die cause I can't even deter air with either of my AP based weapons, I then pull anti air based, air is gone, enemy fields infantry. It went in similar cycles all the damn time. Although you can argue I could use Ranger/Walker as a secondary but the Magrider relies more on its gunner position than main gun. Also what if I was using a Lightning? During this time players figured its better to make vehicle load outs solely counter 1 thing as it meant guaranteed rewards compared to trying to be flexible by having a mixture of equipment.

But anyways to alleviate this the devs decided to not listen to the community in letting vehicles re-equip but instead came up with removing cooldowns and added the current nanite resource system. Which barely added a few more minutes to vehicle life spans anyways unless you are a very invested and skilled driver/pilot.

Now how does this relate to prowlers? Prowler AP can be is abused (looking at you Bloodthorn1 ) to farm infantry as well as it serves its role as the best anti armor MBT primary while leaving the secondary as more of the originally intended option although most prowlers just run anti armor anyways for absolute AV supremacy as it doesn't mean death if they face another tank (like Magrider versus AP lightning or Lightning vs Vanguard) without an anti armor secondary. Only reason they use gatekeeper right now is because its an all-in-wonder weapon as it can deter all types of targets fairly well (even air as TR doesn't have to worry about trying to hit a Mosquito). Ugh... vehicle balance...its all a mess anyways...

Most of the issues we see today are nothing more than symptoms and byproducts of larger design flaws.

I think you have some wrong information.

The valkyrie originally had a similar hitbox as all other aircraft without any additional resistances anywhere. However they gave Valkyries additional armor at the bottom while the rest stayed the same, which was a simple change of the resistance stats of just the downward armor direction.

2 hitbox types? I've never, ever heard of that and if it was an idea it never made it passed beta. I've also had multiple different resistance models for all vehicles and ESF never have had any critical hitbox that I've seen. Feel free to add a link to your link with proof, but I'll be using this one for now (not the best I know):
http://www.ps2calc.com/#vehicle1=ESF&weapon1=Lightning AP

I think I've found the problem. You heard that they changed the armor of the bottom and assumed there was only a top and bottom hitbox. It's still directional with front, back, top, bottom and side armor available.

Well duh, any change will cost time and money. But looking at for instance the ANT system we know they aren't exactly afraid to spend some time and money right now to try and save the game.

Actually, DBG has been showing a very good judgement in their changes recently. I admit, there's still some crap in between, but seeing the extreme changes they've had with I think pretty good results It's actually very well done.

You seem to have a lot of strange notions.
Engagement radar for instance was implemented for new pilots to achieve better situational awareness of their biggest threat: other aircraft.
Liberators did not "barely got in a working state". You weren't there in the beginning were you? Daltons being able to annihilate entire tank columns as well as infantry Zergs, Dalton shots had a massive AOE and that AOE worked like C4 so even without direct hits you could hit tanks. The same for the Zepher, meant against infantry it was still extremely powerful against tanks, and capable of eliminating everything around a Sunderer in one single pass. Then came even more unwarranted buffs to the Liberator out of nowhere that created a massive imbalance: Liberators were the best A2A weapons of the game due to the massive shell size making it easy to hit aircraft, and the lack of almost any drop meant that the weapons were practically airborne snipers. Whaling reached it's peak back then, and during that time I've gunned for some libs where we could fly up to 4 Skyguards, take one out and survive (barely).
Walker isn't designed against Liberators or Galaxies, why else put a freaking 50% damage reduction against Liberators on the Walker? (I just checked, it's 75% according to this source: http://planetside.wikia.com/wiki/Vehicle_armor_and_damage_resistance). Also, in the beginning Galaxies couldn't spawn infantry on them and safe-drop had to be certed in. Most Galaxy drops I've joined were of the kind you see right now: Fly low, drop on the ground and let the Galaxy suicide. Back then you had more Galaxies fly low because players would be hesitant to jump out from high altitudes as they couldn't be sure if they landed safely. To create a weapon specifically for "high altitude Galaxies" that barely existed... Is just weird.

Wait, you actually think that an ESF should be able to face-tank a dedicated G2A source that sacrifices all his power to be able to effectively engage them? Even though the ESF has almost exclusively multi-functional loadouts capable of attacking different unit types without sacrificing a lot of power?

I have no idea where you get these idea's. All ESF work the same despite their differences. Most of them ground-pound with hover-techniques. When there's G2A it changes to quick dive attacks until there's enough G2A and they just move somewhere else if they don't move there at the first sign of G2A resistance.

From where are you coming with this? Liberator and Galaxy were in since Launch, and I've seen the game develop since then. I heard that before launch that the Skyguard was thought of as in a good position, only when Launch came it was suddenly scrap that ESF could defeat with their nosecannons (although those nosecannons were massively more powerful back then).

Nice salt. OK I'll pull A2A ESF more oftenly.
And don't worry I'm a bad pilot (like REALLY bad) so if you can't deal with my A2A then better uninstall

Lemme guess... Indar?

No that was Esamir.

What almost annoy me is the Dodging of Lockons. Thee hit by 90%
I tried to fly about 10 meters height on esamir (andvari) but the still hit me.

that were possibly those swarm missiles ... for whatever reason they don't give a **** about cover and can pretty much circle around anything.

Exactly what every pilot wished for