I made drawings for you guys (air)

So many things that are not stopping anything.

If there's one thing I've noticed about these forums...there is a population of people that can't be bothered to come up with solutions. They seem to live in a world of problems. These people can only be appeased by giving them hand-outs.

We truly live in the dark ages of gaming, where entitlement is worth more than empowerment.

Keep pushing for specific solutions. It forces them to confront the reality of AA. This is their Achilles Heel. Most of the Anti-Air people just come up with inflammatory retorts.

What is the logical end to your "plan"? One-hit, one-kill? OHK? 2 second TTK? Severe air nerf (No A2G)?

I'll make a post about it soon.

But its nothing extreme.

The reality of AA is that you get crippled by using it and then when you are using it for the most part unless your target ***** up you have a low chance of actually eliminating them.

Think you miss the point of it.

Imagine you load up a squad in a Gal, or maybe a platoon for an important drop. But get taken down by extreme AA. 2 minutes it took to set that up on average. Now it takes another 2 minutes. And another 2-3 minutes to go around.

6-7 minutes. What's the capture timer of most bases?

And its not just your group's Gals, but everyone in your faction. What if 3 groups werre stopped? That's about 36-144 people stymied at the warpgate. And you probably just lost 3 bases.

That could win or lose an alert. Theoretical math only of course. But From my personal experience (on both sides of it), it is very effective.

Let's see, I've solved problems I encountered in infantry combat, tank combat, infantry vs tank combat, tank vs infantry combat, but the moment it comes to air I've tried everything. Skyguards, bursters, lock ons. Did a few short stints with Walkers but saw that with their DPS and lowered hit chance they didn't stand up compared to the Skyguard.

So... What's your solution? Keep in mind we are talking about the most lone-wolf vehicle here vs a single dedicated AA source.
Can the AA source kill the aircraft in any way? Well yes, but under one condition: The aircraft makes a mistake. It's the only possible way it could happen.
Consider that every other counter in the game, be it AV or AI, at least has some methods that are solid ways to get a kill. But even the strongest dedicated vehicular-based AA weapon cannot kill any single aircraft reliably before it gets away.
"but you scared it away! You've won!"
No, absolutely not. This is the pinnacle of bad game design. Imagine if every single base had enough AA to scare an aircraft away, then aircraft wouldn't have business, which in and off itself is terrible gameplay if an entire unit type of the game is useless. But they do have business, which means... That aircraft can find bases without AA and fight there uncontested. If you "deter" an aircraft, all you've done it move the problem to another area.

Now because people keep ignoring this or don't understand it I'll spell it out once more:
Either there's enough AA everywhere and aircraft cannot function in any fun way within the game, or there isn't enough AA and the aircraft can fight uncontested, which isn't fun for the players that get caught.

The usual BS aircraft players go with is "it's teamwork, they should pull more", which would basically mean that aircraft would be out of business if they got their way.


change AA already, make aircraft capable of functioning in any fight but at the 'cost' of having to always deal with AA. It's no different than AV or AI weapons being present at any other fight and there's more than enough ways to balance it!

just got mah auraxy armor.
i thank Striker
and a holler 2 dem VS at Ameresh warpgate that sponsored me teh fr33 k!ll$ <3 ya u alien ***** luvers

Didn't read the rest because I'm lazy and I've done this too many times but:

Walkers are freaking brutal against air. If your aim is true, the aircraft has nearly no chance to get away unless there is close immediate cover. But this kind of aim, I don't expect it and it's unreasonable to expect it from anybody.

Now, if you want something that will do wonders in AA, get an AV tank. And simply shoot them down. If you miss? YOUR MISTAKE. Not the aircraft's. You got control over the situation. Now, if you're not good enough to land those shots, that's a whole other problem.
But considering I've got gunners that hit shots harder than almost any shots you can take from the ground - on a consistent basis, I've got no pity whatsoever.

That's an awful lot of theorizing for something that hasn't happened since the glory days of the strikers.

Anyone that actually wants to get around an AA nest camping a warp-gate can do so pretty easily, making the AA nest fail at this supposed job of deterring an entire factions air-power.

If it was so effective the warp-gates would be camped all day everyday, but they aren't because it's a waste of manpower. The only reason people do it is to troll or have a laff about it, not because it's this super effective tactic you think it to be. Hell having a roaming pack of Sunderers is better than a static AA nest that can only sometimes deter air.

Do infantry players really have a problem with air? I play infantry 90% of the time and air is the last thing that annoys me. When a fight has a good population (30-60 players per side) there is bound to be enough guns pointing at the air to deter them. ESF will come in unload their rockets and fly away or die. Nothing special. For every one death to air I die 100 times to infantry.

They are a lot more annoying when population in a fight is 15-30 per side.

They really don't. The exception is on 5 bases (out of 70-80) per continent where the control points or gens are exposed to aircraft fire.

The complaints are from the ones who have their 'farm' disrupted by something on the 3rd dimension. Its the same complaints vehicle drivers have about LA's and C4... even though LA's are the weakest class in the game.

They didn't look up and boom they got killed out of 'nowhere'.

I killed 3 Mosquitos and received around 9 AA Assists running my Dual Burster just two days ago for 10 minutes. (You can look up my killboard). It's not difficult in mid to large size battles to get AA kills. Small battles are the problem (in which case it's the delay in Lock On Launchers or cost of Max/Skyguard). Though if someone or some squad decides to "ghost cap" a hex they kind of deserve a quick Air response.

I had a Dual Walker bus run recently where I made over 11k EXP in less then 30 minutes.


And they say AA isn't rewarding.

it can be but most often when i pull a skyguard thers 2 scenarios:

A. have some fun get lots of hits maybe even some kills and then the air is all gone and my skyguard is FKN pointless.

or

B. quickly the air coordinates and stomps me because i cant deal any significant damage to any one air source before it hides, and yeah i was prob the only one dumb enough to be out there in that skyguard that even with top armor and firesup can be gibbed rather easily. air forces return to their bombing runs.


if more than 1 skyguards come out the air vanishes before you even get decent xp

so yeah either Quickly boring/pointless or HOW DARE YOU PULL AA dead

neither are super exciting but im not sure of how to fix the problem other than making a skyguard Slightly stronger armor wise maybe? i mean i realise if we make the AA too strong the air game will die, a lot of things can hurt an esf . but. i dunno

just know one way or another i usually regret pulling a skyguard

Impossible, just do the math. It's barely better than the Skyguard in DPS, and it's lower hit chance make it worse in every case but CQC. Sure it's "brutal" in the sense that the Skyguard is brutal and has enough DPS to make sure aircraft have to start fleeing shortly after getting under fire, again because you didn't read it: "deterring" is useless in PS2 because all you do is move the aircraft problem somewhere else, you do not stop it.

"you got control over the situation, as long as the aircraft remains in your elevation and you are using a single highly specific undedicated weapon that's absolutely not designed for this type of combat".

Yeah not going to work.

I have no idea what kind of sentence this is, but just go ahead and know that it's BS.

So you were lucky once. Why don't you keep using them? Try and keep up that score? Without any background we don't know if the pilots were extremely stupid, if you were just giving the last hits on some pilots that were flying over larger concentrations of AA etc etc.
Seriously, one single lucky run does not prove anything. Considering you were using the Nebula before and don't have any listed stats for the Bursters yet (or any other type of AA!), this was an extreme target-of-opportunity you made use of, nothing more.

You don't have any stats with Walkers nor do you have any Walkers unlocked on any of your 3 accounts. Please tell us how you did this magical feat?

Yes, minimize the opposition's arguments (stupid pilots - 2 above BR 100?).

My point is: You can get kills and it's not merely "deterrence" as you so generously claim.

I am actually glad to use my Dual Burster Max. I have more than 40 Burster kills if you look at Planetside 2 Players weapon-specific stats.