Just watched the FNO 33 Esamir change sneek peak and have some concerns regarding the shown dome shields I'd like to share. The build that is shown does not allow any projectiles, neither friendly nor enemy, to pass thru the shield which is basically a good thing. But my concern is about Liberators and Galaxies with Auto-Repair equipped. I can imagine that it will be the new tactic to: hover above the shield, spot your targets, lower altitude, spam untill your armor dropped below a certain level, leave the shield, autorepair, repeat. Imo the dome shields as shown will not decrease the amount of spawn camping by Libs but might actually promote it by giving the bombers a safe spot directly above the base. Honestly I'm not sure what a solution for this might be appart from allowing AA to pass thru the shield. Opinions, ides?
Call in air support. SOE might have to disallow vehicles to pass through if it gets really bad and it will, because, well, people. No one really wants to go back to another outpost to pull a VTOL that might get shot down ASAP when it arrives to swat some libs, but lib teams will abuse this tactic until the end of time because farming infantry > setting up to engage anything else. This is why the vehicle game and infantry game have to be largely separated: most people were packing HE rounds in their tanks, and liberators were spending most of their ordinance on softies, not tanks as intended.
I have no idea what the purpose of these "domes" are meant to be since right now AA can deal with air very, very easily. Got a problem with aircraft harassing you? Spawn 3-5 AA maxes and watch them disappear in a puff of explosions and debris. I've constantly seen AA lock down entire hex's with no aircraft being able to get close, no matter how many there were. It's like the Devs are trying to make this game as idiot proof as possible by removing any need to think. I can just imagine this at a Dev meeting: Dev1: People are being killed by something there is an easy and effective counter for and they are not happy about it, what should we do? Dev2: Well we can't force them to use their brains and you know, use that counter, so lets just nerf whatever is killing them. And for those who "hate aircraft interrupting a really good infantry fight"; in my opinion if you don't like aircraft then go and play a game that does not have them as one of the 3 major combat options, like CoD or something...
When i was fairly new to this game all my hopes of flying an ESF were crushed as soon as i reached enemy territory This is suicide for planes and now they have nothing to do
Shield damages vehicles that pass through them? Makes them go out of control? Disables their guns? Outright destroys them if they touch the shield? There's many possibilities out there to avoid air from simply dipping in for a few kills before emerging victorious...
Any time you bottleneck the outflow of a base people are going to spam the bajebus out of it and melt anything coming out of that bottleneck. Some ideas. Allow the shield to collapse via a gen system. Tunnels to diverse turrets outside the shields capable of attacking incoming zerg / hoverspamers.
Libs don't even need to get really low, the zepher/daltons barrel is long enough to be under the shield when they are aiming down.
Actually i think the hole Idea of those dome shields is terrible Idea. Instead of protecting from aircraft it will give aircraft the oppurtunity to just dive into the dome get at a kill and then easily escape. Especially well trained ESF Pilots will farm kills easy that way since the AA which is under the dome got no chance at all to shoot the aircrafts. Now someone could argue: why dont´t you place your AA outside the base - well outside you are never safe from incoming enemy MBT´s or other stuff. Anyway if a base is camped by enemy vehicles and air then it would be the best to spawn to the next base and try to clear the base from the outside. You said you wanted to create a infantery pure zone (thats something i have posted in the past many times - and thank you for listening) but that is the wrong way. I really don´t understand why you are not going into the underground maybe start by adding some tunnels in the outpost like we already have them at bases to give people an extra route to leave the spawn room.
Folks who are still operating under the assumption that the shield is going to do as stated, and "Separate infantry from the horrors of aircraft" really need to realize that the main thing the dome shields will do is actually protect Aircraft. It's got nothing to do with Limiting air involvement in the ground war, as much as it does, limiting AA involvement in the air war. Now if your going to pull AA, you have to run outside the shield, or get on a high point, or something that doesn't involve sitting in the base. People in the base focus on that, people outside focus on AA and AV. The defenders will -have- to start pulling aircraft to deal with other aircraft to avoid the kinds of things that are being mentioned above, with Air peeking in and out of the dome shields. This is one of the main reasons people are pushing for generators and terminals to control the Dome shields.
