Ground AA is boring and unrewarding

LOL, yeah, but it's not happened yet

I do generally wait until there's a couple or three mozzies, definitely poking around to cause some grief, then I pull my DB's and give em some stick. If the air dissipates quite quickly then, yeah, I've got a useless MAX on my hands, but most of the time a Lib or Gal will pay a visit too. Or even if not in the same area, I can generally cause a few annoyances to enemy air pestering a neighbouring base, until at least my Nanites have recovered and I can redeploy somewhere else. Or sometimes there may be some Infantry/Armour in the area.

Never a dull moment (well... I lie of course, but it doesn't take long to find something else to do).

Those are the smart ones!

I don't mind playing a MAX AA and do agree that the game is not rewarding much in certs as far as the kills of ESFs go. I am not sure if this is because I am not a paying customer and can't stack XP boost points? A few shot down planes bring 2-6 certs?

After watching the play video of a pilot using thermal vision and hovering around Hossin bases killing everything in sight, I stopped playing there. As a ground infantry I felt sometimes like poking my eyes out trying to see through that nasty Hossin haze. I have a beefy PC and don't want to play on low when the game offers such eye candy visuals.

Back to the point - thermals offer a nice range display of a battlefield for planes hiding in tree branches. I just started playing (July) and could never get it why I got sniped by ESFs shooting out of nowhere. My AA MAX doesn't last there long enough to call it a pleasant gaming experience. On top of that weird angle of bursters doesn't help picking libs/gals right above your head.

I think it was the SOE's developers intent to make Hossin an infantry paradise, however trees, hills and obscured visibility created a pilot's wet dream there.

I do wish more players did the AA 'deterrence' to coordinate the air kills. Mostly because of that I joined an outfit with TS. Otherwise it was too frustrating.

Lets put it this way I could hit most of those same Aircraft with a LMG, so MLG pro (whatever that is) no, but ok, yeat. However if is utterly pinpoint then it's likely to just be useful for aimbots.

So it would still dumbfire if no locking? Only a minor nerf then (as you can sometimes get a hit with a dumbfire instead of trying for a lock).

Interesting fact i keep discovering and forgetting every time i log in / off: it doesn't matter if there's anything flying in the air, the burster max / skyguard / phalanx turret guy is present there waiting. It doesn't matter if it takes them 30-60-120 minutes to finally see something flying, they just camp. Of course it's seen as boring.

It is absolutely worth it, I can feel the seething rage seeping through my monitor when a banshee user thinks he's going to get 50 kills but instead gets lit on fire and crashes into a mountainside. Alone it's a nice deterrent, which is all it's supposed to be. One guy crouching behind a rock 300m away should not be killing every vehicle he looks at. There is certainly a metagame to it as well, which separates a good user from a farming target.

Is it balanced? A lone launcher gets 5 shots and most of them make a beeline for the nearest wall or friendly if you aren't paying attention. It's kind of a cat and mouse game. You know as soon as you're exposed and they get the warning there's a flying death machine with exploding rounds looking for you as hard as it can. The numbers game works out as well. One pilot should not be taking a prepared army of soldiers head-on, and an organized group of pilots will have no problem hunting down a few stray heavies with big glowing trails leading back to them every shot.

Make skyguard flak explosions trigger on all targets not just aircraft. Makes it double as an infantry killer. More fun.

Isn't the explosive radius 6m or something? That would be pretty deadly to infantry and probably OP as hell. Still wouldn't allow it to kill tanks (which is good). Unless you meant only explodes on contact with Infantry/vehicles. Then I guess it would just be a great sunderer suppressing weapon.

Cut down the radius for infantry then. : P

This mentality is one of the reason I keep my Grounder as standard for my Heavy, when that's being used. Also the reason I always give hovering ESF's a few rounds of my main weapon if I'm not Heavy, and why when the skies choke with aircraft I go for the dedicated AA work. Meaning dual burster MAX with dual extended mags. People love to complain about air being OP and what-not. From my perspective, there are two kinds of air-targets. The one's who are very good and therefore needs to be deterred, and that's usually what I manage to do, and the one's who are not so good, those tend to die. Fast and hard.

If there is a full squad of ESF's over your head, you pull AA and shoot away, because if you don't they will farm you relentlessly and you don't want that.

I didn't know about the damage table(thanks for pointing it to me), though i had guessed that the burst themselves were unaffected by range, but when i have a direct shot at an ESF, it does feel more potent, so the direct part does account for a little something.

Absolutely not denying that, by that remark i didn't mean i wanted AA MAX to be a potent vehicle destroyer, far from it, just that i'd like to contribute to overall damage a little. I mean, from the moment i've commited myself to AA defence, i want to do right by it, so i'm obviously going to try and attack air in priority.
But if i get infantry to shoot at in-between 2 aircrafts passage it's a little variety, even if ineffective, i'd just like the same kind of thing against vehicles if i have neither infantry or air to shoot at for a moment, rather than getting back to a weapons counter, change to dual AV setup, get back to the front and find that i now have AA duty again or that said tank is dead, and go back again to switch to AA loadout.

I don't know maybe 5%~10% of direct damage to ground (with no flak explosions, of course), just enough to get those little red crosses appear when you shoot.

I CAN TASTE YOUR TEARS!!!

That's what ESF pilots say when they cry about them xD