[Suggestion] Ground-based AA could use a buff.

Now, before you eat me alive and accuse me of being a whiny 'infantrysider', let me just make this clear: I am a shameless ground-pounding ESF pilot, and this suggestion is coming from a guy who thinks that his ground-pounding farm job is currently too bloody easy.

Seriously, it's gotten to the point where I don't even need to run Fire Suppression anymore; I can just effortlessly air dance away from the flak and lock-on launchers, and repair in safety far out of their range. And even if I get locked on, I roll Scout Radar anyway, so locating the offending HA takes no time at all, at which point I dump a stream of ground-pounding rounds into his face, then move on.

The only consistently dangerous threats that I face as a ground pounder pilot these days, is other pilots. The ground, in stark contrast, is an easily-evaded, barely consequential nuisance.

Both flak and lock-ons should not not be this easy to evade and ignore; if my ESF has been hit by 1-2 seconds worth of uninterrupted flak damage, I should be dead. Not 'burning'. Dead.

Like, come on; can't you let the ground threaten me just a little more effectively? I want it to actually mean something in the moments that I manage to survive being targeted by multiple ground-based AA sources.

The problem is very general. There are too many sources of damage for aircraft, but each of them deals a ridiculous damage.

This leads basically to 2 possible scenarios: in big fights flying is a total nightmare due to constant plinking from the ground and endless lock-ons.
In small battles ground forces are instead defenceless against aircraft.
The only decent option is the Skyguard with Engagement Radar as it hits from insane distance. But we all know it's only annoying, getting kills is just a mere question of luck.

It's all designed very very very bad.
And the stupid ESF commands combined with the tons of free perks they got over these years do not make it better.

I would honestly prefer figuring out how to deal with endless lock-ons over being able to just shrug off 'ineffective' lock-ons. At least then, I'd be forced to get even better at terrain-hugging to try and evade the locks. Hell, I might have to start using... Flares! shocked gasp

I disagree Talthos, a concerted effort from a half decent skyguard tanker or a hostile A2A ESF pilot will put you down, they will track you, find good positioning and that will mean you have to find a new location to ground pound.

If you are boasting about how good of a pilot you are, then great, your reward is that it takes a similarly skilled anti air person to take you down and that is how it should be.

The other factor here as mentioned is the scale of battles, as a pilot myself it can be frustrating in larger scale fighters as everyone and their nan will try to shoot at you, tanks will try to take a luck shot or two, gunners will almost certainly be firing at you, bases near by will fire at you, lock ons will come for you, the aa max on the spawn room will go for you, and then you get the guy who pulls a Skyguard to farm those sweet kills, AA certainly doesn't need a buff.

Now, whether or not ESF ground fire weapons are balanced is another question, when the server is a bit more quiet i do like to practice with a banshee, yes sometimes it can be a little bit disgusting, but then anyone who is half decent in an ESF will go A2A and wipe you out.

You also need to factor in nanite cost, nanites are there to prevent people from spamming heavier weapons and bring balance to larger scale fights, infantry with launchers don't cost any, and so even if you do kill that pesky lock on HA, he will be back in 6 seconds to get you again.

I think the only change that needs to happen is AA Max suits sitting in spawn rooms, other than that AA is good.

Edit: Hit reply too early by accident, damn it.

Anyway... I'm not even that good at being an ESF pilot. Sure, I can fly, and I can ground pound, but even with a dogfighting loadout, I suck at fighting other ESFs.

But even before my skill level developed, flying was already suspiciously easy. Ground AA is simply not strong enough, unless the number of platforms is utterly disproportionate to the amount of air units present. Which is just silly.

AA is almost guaranteed to hit. To make sure that aircraft dont get so close and are auto-killed because they got that close, all AA weapons have gotten a damage model that allows aircraft to escape. This isnt fun for the aircraft who feel they have little defense against AA and it isnt fun for AA that feels inadequate (there are always masogistic exceotions amongst these)

The Solution is simple: reduce the chance of a hit from "guaranteed" to something more manageable. If you need similar skill to hit as with other parts of the game you can give similar rewards for thay hit.

To start with, you could give Lightnings access to the A2A noseguns, possibly with some minor modifications to damage vs infantry and aircraft depending on its usefulness. From there you can start introducing more skillful G2A weapons and start adapting current G2A to be more skillful as well.

I think the trouble with this idea is that ESF noseguns are designed for close pursuit, or maneuvering which is why they are harder to hit with, generally speaking a lightning compared to an ESF is static, it needs the AA blast damage to compete with the speed and maneuverability of aircraft.

My ability to get away and airdance away from flak is my defense against most AA. And their hits aren't even guaranteed, once I start evading; most of their shots miss pretty badly, unless I'm at 'stupidly close' suicidal ranges. But even then, dodging dumbfire rockets and airdancing away from lock-ons is still stupidly easy.

Even in my supposedly 'fragile' ESF, I can shrug off just enough flak hits by airdancing, to allow me to mow down a respectable number of ground targets, before I'm finally forced to fly off and repair. Hell, it's gotten bad enough that I regularly survive long enough to actually run out of ammo!

Now if you have ammo maxed and lvl 5 ammo printer, then that's just the fault of infantry just not being very skilled.

I haven't played for a little over a month due to the server being a mess. Coming back yesterday, it's the same deal during low pop times. (And let's be real, we can't only design the game around Big Fights™)

At least half of my play session was spent on AA duty due to the same few Banshee users griefing small fights with no counterplay. They either get a) deterred to another fight, or b) overextend entirely through their own choice, only to come right back because ESFs have long lifespans or because of an Air Anomaly. All while racking up low-risk kills on any infantry who commit the crime of being outside.

"Pull an A2A ESF" is not acceptable. It's very very basic game design to never make something the best counter to itself. Not to mention, one has to be decent at dogfighting to succeed at this, which is not all that feasible considering the crazy skill curve it has.

The problem with simply buffing AA damage is that it always reaches a critical mass where any pilot who enters the vicinity gets deleted by a wall of undodgeable fire, which is no fun. This is because AA sources are designed around a) near guaranteed hits with little skill requirement, b) sustained fire, or c) both, in the case of flak. This makes them an ineffective deterrent rather than a counter. And deterrents are bad for both sides, as we want to encourage combat and competition. The only notable exception is the Striker, a versatile and effective defensive AA weapon that the rest should take after.

The other problem with AA is that it's so specialized against aircraft that it will pretty much only be pulled reactively. This is why A2G can just relocate as soon as there's resistance, and the AA user(s) are left with nothing to do while holding gear that makes them vulnerable. The rock-paper-scissors/hard counter game design is not fun for people who aren't in it for the milsim aspects. (Though in this case, it's simply a food chain)


My recommendations

Rework AA into lethal medium-skill counters that can be dodged by pilots that focus on evasion, with windows of vulnerability for retaliation. Aircraft are designed around low exposure times; their counters should reflect this:

-Convert AA lock-ons into wire-guided flak warheads with a wide turn radius. This will work as a quick defensive weapon, while still giving pilots room to evade. Bonus: Can be used on ground targets with limited effect.

-Tweak all flak sources to be a burst of damage with more of an accuracy requirement, with windows for the pilot to retaliate: short mag size, very long reload, tight CoF, small detonation radius, high DPS. Keep low velocity so as not to take its range out too far. The CoF improvement should do enough to give it decent AI applications. (Still on the fence about giving all flak slight AV damage)

-Crank up the damage of small arms and the Archer vs ESFs so as to make moderately effective defensive AA present at all times. This will give infantry an opportunity to do something to collectively threaten an ESF while it's making a pass. The Archer is moderately difficult to land shots with outside of close range, so the damage should reflect it (as it did before CAI gave it severe damage fall-off).

Reduce the indirect damage of ESF AI noseguns. They're ridiculously powerful given the already immense advantage granted by the platform itself. Raise the direct damage to make it less awful at AV and A2A (while still being less effective than regular noseguns of course). LPPA is meme-tier for A2A and needs a rework in that regard.


Hopefully my ideas will gain traction one of these days... Until then, I cannot recommend this game to anyone.

When I roll ground pounder, I equip Safe Fall (so I can get away with never using the Ejection System), and Target Focus (so I can pick my targets more effectively). I haven't maxed out Ammo Printer yet, so I don't use it in vehicles yet.

My ammo certification for the anti-infantry nose gun isn't quite maxed out yet, but the rocket pod ammo is maxed out.

sorry but that won't work, aircraft are far too fast even before you factor in afterburner, why is it that skillful counter suggestions always revolve around suggestions that will make any aircraft going at decent speed immune to AA?

a better solution is make instant lock-ons designed for in terms of air, close range, meaning if you are ground pounding infantry they can instantly lock and fire on you. as you said air relies on little exposure time, so the AA weapons should have variants that are designed to take full advantage of that exposure time to counter air at the cost of range.

in addition we already have a wire guided rocket launcher the NSX Masamune, which is in a series for 'high skilled' players.

That's not the case at all. Strikers work just fine at a reasonable range. It's all about tuning velocity, gravity, and burst radius to let the average player reliably land hits. Wire guiding is icing on the cake. Remember, we're not talking direct hits here, but a burst mechanic when you get close.

Striker is pretty much the exception given its speed and agility and no "early warning". It deals moderate damage but it tends to really scare pilots.

The Masamune is too slow and lazy turning to be remotely useful against aircraft - Moukass made a nice review of it some time ago and pointed that out as well.

Then you have lock-on launchers, whose main issue is the long lock-on time and the fact it gives a warning to its target.

I believe AA damage should remain the same but aircraft (and vehicles in general) should be modeled as complex systems so hits won't kill immediately but progressively weaken it: lower speed, sensors and weapons damage etc.

In this way AA should be real "deterrent" causing mission kills (forcing the enemy to RTB) instead of hard kills.

I think very differently to your solutions, but then I think the problem is only when one faction has a serious air squad. I'd propose the same solution I suggested with tanks, I think vehicles should be relevant but nanotech regain is too fast, I think improve the effectiveness of lol pods but decrease the ammo, putting a whole clip of lol pods into an anti air Esf should matter, not to mention should give a chance against other Libs and galaxies. But increase the effectiveness of the rocket launcher to one hit other infantry cause god damn whenever I'm on anti air duties the irony is infantry kills me for free. These changes though sounding like a buff to some would make each aircraft take longer to respawn and have to resupply ammo at the bio lab so I think it would be enough.

that's only for the TR and it takes time to unload the clip and only does more damage then a standard launcher if all shots hit.

an NS launcher with instant lock time and shorter range will assist infantry attacking A2G in their moments of vulnerability.

If you leave the area even temporarily, the AA on the ground has succeeded.

I mean that's partially the point. Guaranteed hits is what makes AA unbalanceable. I want a bit of back-and-forth to the exchange, possible misses, with a skill advantage granting success. For example, the Striker can feasibly defeat an ESF with creative positioning and landing all shots, which isn't as much of a lottery as going for Decimator OHKs and isn't as hilariously ineffective as deterrents.

This falls into the "any air entering the vicinity gets deleted by a wall of undodgeable fire". No good.

Okay, imagine a single shot Masamune with a small flak detonation radius and maybe more velocity. Medium skill requirement.

Why wouldn't this work with a bit of proper leading?


Right now we only only have mininum skill (flak, lock-ons), and maximum skill (Decimator, tank shell). Only in-between is the Striker, which of course is faction-specific. We need more universal medium skill AA. May as well rework the bad ones instead of doing content creep.

This is why the weapon would need some modifications, but not much. The Walker for example is already similar to noseguns but it uses high velocity and spray&pray to still fall under the deterrent category of AA weapons. The modifications could be small, such as a slightly higher velocity, a 0.5m flak detonation range (as opposed to the 7M range of ridiculous that current flak weapons use) to make the weapon useable against aircraft without it needing it's damaged modeled in a way that aircraft can always escape.

Which ia why I say that there's little defences. Flying away is low-skill and often can be done by simply pointing your nose away from your opponent and the ground and just flying away. It's not engaging or much fun for either party.

Yes, G2A is worse off than the aircraft, but that doesnt mean the situation is great for those aircraft. The entire G2A vs A2G system needs to be changed to make it more fun for both parties. Just by making sure aircraft cannot pick-and-choose their battles based on AA presence you can already achieve a lot, and by making G2A weapons viable against more than air and simultaneously rewarding skill more you can make it more fun for them as well.

Thats like saying "Hey if infantry moves behind cover to recharge their shield you've won!"

"if vehicles move back for repairs you've won!"

"if aircraft leave for repairs, you've won!"

See? None of those make sense. You need to finish off your target or make sure they are unable to return to the area in a short time. An ESF that flies away to repair can afford to go "aeay" from the battle due to it's speed while a tank/infantryman has to stick around and repair/heal on the battlefield. It is by no means a victory, especially if that same aircraft returns a minute later and lays waste to something as if nothing happened...