I made drawings for you guys (air)

The only AA that "cripples" you is Skyguard. Dual Burster is extremely effective and is able to swap load outs. AA Turrets and Lock On Launchers are resource free. Easy AA kills are generated from frenzies (pilots get greedy) or high Air concentrations or both....

Yes cherry pick from the options I gave why don't you.

Also, funny if it was so "powerful" why didn't you use it again straight afterwards? Why don't you use AA more often? Why doesn't anyone use AA more often? People like being powerful and move to the solution that gives them the most ease-of-use and power rolled in one. And ground AA is the easiest weapon group available, yet somehow people don't use it that much. Could it be the power? Yes?

You did not do that by yourself, I can guarantee you that. Also "you can get kills" is the worst argument ever. How about we remove all VS main weapons and force them to use side arms only. Would that be balanced? I mean you can get kills right? It´s just that you are pretty much screwed despite that.

33 kills. That is not `glad to use`. I admit that you have more time with it than I expected: 9H4m on your one burster and 6h5m on your other burster.
Let's look at how many vehicles you killed in that time?
36, across both bursters. Let's be generous and use your lowest burster time: 6 hours 5 minutes. That's an average of a bit less than 0,1 vehicles a minute or 6 vehicles an hour. 6 per hour! Really!
Your Hornets: 16 per hour
Magrider FPC: 13 per hour
Photon pods (A freaking anti infantry weapon): 8 vehicles per hour. your anti-infantry secondary weapon scores more vehicle kills than both your bursters combined!
Lancer, a costless infantry-worn anti-tank weapon: 7,2 vehicles per hour

Keep in mind that a weapon like the Hornet is also scoring around 12x the amount of infantry per hour, the Maggy AP scores 10x as much infantry kills per hour, Photon pods around 20x more per hour and even the freaking Lancer scores 3x more infantry kills per hour.

How on earth anyone can even try to defend things like that outside of joking is beyond me.

Edit:
Just for fun:
9+6=15 hours over two bursters, so an average or 7,5 hours per burster. That makes a vehicles per minute of 4,8 on average per burster.

My Burster killboard is likely missing at least 20-40 vehicle kills from bails.


Admittedly, I am a slightly more dedicated and skilled ESF and MBT pilot (BR 104) than your average player. I like speed and Combined Arms element. I appreciate the compliments.

You are conflating AA kill-ratio expectations with other weaponry classed more specifically with "offensive" capabilities. (Hornets being counters to MBT and Photon Pods providing Close Air Support). This a major flaw in Anti-Air argument/logic. The inherent nature of AA is defensive, reactive, and geo-spatially restricted. You are not chasing ESFs, Libs, and Gals with your Burster Max or Racer Skyguard. Worst? AA can't fend off ground threats effectively (unless you swap Burster loadout). Short of an AA Nest at an Air Terminal (Tower Base) or Warpgate (or within a flight path cone), AA will always be biased towards feeling "rooted, limited, and unproductive." This does not mean that it's considerably weak or deterrent-only as infantry-tunneled players proclaim it to be. It's simply the nature of the speed-spatial game design. You would literally need OHK for a single player to feel "productive" but this would destroy Aircrafts' 350/450 Nanite Cost differential. Devs have built in the expectations of Force Multiplier (2 Dual Bursters or 2 Skyguards guarantee kills) to level the field.

Why have I unlocked both Burster arms (+Skyguard) and spent more than 15 hours using them? I find them effective when I need them and am willing to use Nanites for that purpose. Air attitude (pilots in a frenzy or getting greedy or complacent) and Air saturation plays a role in my decision-making. Many times I also find AA a satisfying altruistic support role whether or not I get "kills." I AM glad to use it but I'm not going to stand on Tower/Tech Plant platforms for the whole Alert. I am also aware of the speed-spatial problems outlined above, in addition to my nuanced views as a pilot, allowing me to be more "forgiving" that I am not on a solo AA farm.

It has been argued ad nauseam that we add AI/AV/G2G power to AA guns. This seems to make the most sense without destroying the Air game.

Well, it was on my newest NC, GundemShotgun, and the run lasted only about 2 hours total, so perhaps the stats haven't registered yet.

Honestly, if you don't believe me, come to VS Connery and I'll pull you a Walker bus myself. When used correctly it takes an entire air zerg to down you, and trust me, entire air zergs will come for you.

Well did you realise I've been telling everyone that this is the exact problem?
It's not just that AA weapons are classed as "defensive" or "deterrence", it's that only ground-based AA weapons are classed as defensive or deterrence. This causes said weapons to be worse off than just about every other weapon in the game.

It's not the flaw, this is the core of the problem. Especially since aircraft players do not seem to understand it this has become an even larger problem. I mean here you are thinking this is a "major flaw" even though this was the exact thing that's being pointed out over and over again!
All the aircraft players see is the deterrence part. Yes they can deter, and the way these weapons are set up it means that on the aircraft end the game is very bland. There's no tricks you can pull, no real advantages to be had when you get under fire. Aircraft are based on mobility, agility and speed to attack and avoid damage. It's just that they can't use any of that, even their speed doesn't really protect them outside of getting out of range. It also means that AA scales exponentially, quickly reaching it's "now you are dead" threshold if you come within X distance of multiple AA sources.
Is that a bad way to handle the game for aircraft? Yes! It is a bad way for them!
But what's worse, aircraft players do not understand that their annoyance at AA when they flee is just as much an annoyance for the G2A user that's trying to fight them, not to mention the inability to properly chase after any aircraft because you are either too slow or too dead the moment you leave the protection of friendly players.

They don't have to be, they absolutely don't have to be.

First you need to crank up the numbers for aircraft players. There's a lot of players that try the airgame but stop quickly. After you've mastered the controls to not crash every time you grab one, you either run into AA that you can only flee from or in the A2A combat that takes far too much time and experience to get into for the average player. This heavily hurts the amount of aircraft we have around, even though in an ideal situation there would be at least as much aircraft at any fight as ground vehicles. This can be accomplished by improving the things players can do when near AA and improve the amount of actual working maneuvers you can pull off in the A2A combat, rather than it boiling down to an almost one-trick-pony gameplay of "RM+Hover fight or go home".
That way the average player can have more fun while flying, as he'll be able to feel he can do something in the face of AA or pro players. Sure a pro player will win more often, that's why he's got more experience, but the amount of things players can become professionals in and the amount of ways players can treat both AA and A2A becomes larger as well.

So we've already established that AA needs to change for the aircraft sake to make sure they can join any fight, big or small, no matter the amount of AA around excepting massive ultra-large quantities. Any Tank being attacked by 5 other AV sources isn't going to be happy, but depending on distance, positioning skill and player aim (theirs and their enemies) they aren't necessarily screwed. especially if the 5 different AV sources are at different distances from each other it becomes a lot harder to fight it becomes a lot harder to slam the same target to death. The same should apply to aircraft, only they have distances, dodging skill (as a replacement for positioning with vehicles) and player aim to use.
We already know then that most skill-reducing mechanics like flak and lock-ons need to go or need heavy adaptation, otherwise we keep the exponential power curve for multiple AA.

But on the AA side? Since they aren't deterrence weapons anymore they are going to be killers. Distance and player aiming skill would be the key factor here when targeting and destroying aircraft, and said aircraft can use distance and their maneuverability to stay safe. Especially with the aforementioned improvement of working air-maneuvers this would be a much better mix for both sides.
Because aircraft would be a more omni-present threat the use of AA becomes more fun, because AA has to divide it's attention aircraft can have more fun as well since the concentrated fire we have now due to low aircraft targets will also be reduced.

No you don't need a litteral OHK for a single player to feel productive.
Current cost differential is completely out of whack, a Liberator has more speed, maneuverability, firepower (in seperate weapons across his chassis and even when treating both front and belly canon as a main weapon compared to the MBT's single main weapon), health, and stronger abilities than ground vehicles. ESF have auto-granted abilities, two weapon systems each outclassing any ground vehicle weapon (Hornets deal around 150% more DPS than the Vanguard even before upgrades, rocketpods are godlike compared to any HE weapon both in AI and AV etc etc) and the best defense you can ask for in PS2: Speed and agility. We can even see how a Harasser can already use that speed and agility as a stronger armor than MBT's, and can use a single secondary canon to defeat an MBT. ESF's are faster and more agile, requiring maybe 50% of their speed to match the Harasser.

Anyway, the dev's did not build in expectations for force multipliers, and those same multipliers are a huge part of the problem for both sides. Not to mention that 2 dual bursters is no guarantee for a kill either.
Seriously, the developers never intended for ground AA to actually kill anything at all unless the aircraft decided to stay. They thought it would promote A2A combat if they kept it as it was, never realizing how easily you can "game" the system by using multiple AA sources or how pathetic it would be as weapons for players who dedicated themselves to the G2A scene.

9 hours and 4 minutes maximum. Although considering you probably have 6 hours 5 minutes total time with dual burster. You don't count the times double just for holding two weapons at the same time.

What on earth do you mean with speed-spatial? Just "leading a target"?
Also, why should you be "forgiving" for a solo AA "farm". First of all, what on earth are you farming when you can only be effective in select scenario's, and who or what is going to be forgiven? The fact that you use AA? The fact that some people try to use G2A effectively? Are you thinking that G2A players use AA to farm and need forgiving for that?

Which "this" makes the most sense, the current system? The current system is one big flaw, nothing more, nothing less. It consists out of frustrating mechanics for the users and the one's it's used on. Every objective when creating a mechanic or feature for a game is to make it fun for all parties involved. A medic needs more tasks than walking behind players and waving a healing staff around, the one being healed shouldn't need to go AFK for 5 minutes while another player is healing him up. Any weapon needs to be build with both the user and the one it's used on in mind. The one shooting needs to be able to use it in multiple situations and in various ways. The one getting shot at needs to have options and multiple ways to execute them, from using cover to dodging to shooting down the projectile to running away. Aircraft do not have that when faced with AA, it's either flee in a straight line to the nearest place where you can break LOS or try to facetank them and kill them first, which is pretty damn hard in the case of vehicular G2A. The players handling the AA on the other hand can't improve either, the best they have is "wait until a target is closer, stand nearby it's flight path". There's not a lot of positioning skill you can do, no way to really flank, and everything is mostly a reaction to an aircraft getting in your range. That's bad, bad bad bad game design for all, regardless of it "being effective for it's purpose". Pistols are effective for their purpose but you cannot rely on them to win anything except with one specific class with one specific loadout, and only then because you are forced too.

I think that AA is in a decent spot at the moment.

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Ranger?

Who uses a ranger when you can use walker....

To be fair, if I have a good gunner, I'll easily average 40k exp per hour (unboosted/no membership). But that's with some of the best gunners on the server(game?).

I think people often get mad because their less than average skills doesn't get as much as some top players in their fields.

Was you driving or gunning? Gunning get's a lot more EXPs than the driver, namely because the assist EXP is messed up and you don't get any air deterrence at all.

Liberator weapon-specific resistances: 75% vs anti-air machineguns (Walkers), 40% against flak explosion (all flak weapons that have shells detonate).

We know that the raw DPS of a Skyguard is slightly lower that a Walker assuming 100% hits. So with these damage resistances a Skyguard dominates a Walker damage output vs Liberators.

You are either lying or have no idea what you are talking about.

Well since the subject that you brought up was AV tank weapons how about I reply about Daltons?

Of course I'm talking about AV tank weapons!

Yeah that's called "leading", also if you look closely (or from a distance, doesn't matter) you see that it's a montage. Also what on earth does an AV weapon on the Liberator to do with dedicated ground-based AA weapons?

Let's look at your previous post about... "Practiced gunners". Yeah let's say that ground-based AA is OK because of things that the average player does not have the time or thinks its worth the fun to learn and is actually air-borne or not dedicated AA.

Look, AP weapons on tanks are great and all, but let's assume they were effective AA weapons. Why would we leave the rest of the AA the state it's in anyway? Why leave these appendages in even though they are heavily detested and nerf the fun for most people involved? It doesn't matter if AV weapons are effective AA or not (they aren't), it matters if the G2A weapons are fun for both the users and the people it's used on.

Now demi, I love you just as much as the next one, but I know where this is going, and I don't have that kind of patience anymore. I've resigned myself to the stupidity of this forum on so many levels. I'll read your reply if you reply, but I most likely won't reply except to wish you the best.

There is no way we will make constructive progress when our worldview and assumptions on this debate are completely different and diametrically opposed. I see Anti-Air's expectations as an inherent flaw in their perception and logic. You see it as a flaw in the system.

The fact that you define "speed-spatial" in terms of "leading the target" and "Harrasser speed" shows that you perceive the game merely at battle mechanics and not as an overarching philosophical design. AA is simply designed to be defensive and reactive. (I don't concede that AA is not effective against Air - you are putting words in my mouth). AA exists on a 2-dimensional plane so it's going feel "unproductive." Want 3-dimensional response? Pull Air. That's just how it is and how it's going to be.

Your experience is bad. Looking at the amount of unique's there's about as much walkers as any other AA type. Considering there's equal sizes of other AA also available you are both wrong and the Liberator weapon-specific resists reduce the amount of damage Walkers can do against Liberators.
You might have a biased reaction because a Walker Sunderer is one of the few (or only) things that can withstand a Liberator run, and those situations are therefore burned more in your minds. But that's because of the Sunderer, not the Walkers. And therefore it's also a biased opinion.

You must have me confused. I might have done that when the Dalton was a stronger AA weapon than any other in the game, but not anymore for a long time.

Aand... What does this do than show that G2A weapons should get at least similar results if someone of similar skill uses those G2A weapons?

\

If someone is willing to learn the million things in PS2 except for AA isn't that a signal how bad it is? Seriously stop making these kind of arguments in favor for change and present them as if they prove yours, especially while you are putting words in my mouth. I'm not asking for homing AP, I'm not asknig for homing bullets, I'm not saying that players aren't willing to aim I even ******* tell you that they do want to just that they aren't rewarded for it the moment it touches upon "dedicated G2A weapons".

And just for good measure, I was pointing to the difference between an "practiced gunner" which you also claim to be some of the best in the server. You cannot expect every player to put as much time and dedication into everything as these players. A game needs to be build around the average player otherwise you have an empty server with a few pro's, who will leave if they have no one to prey on.

Thank you for being a dick about it. Yes, 100% of the G2A population is blatantly bad and can't use them, really that must be it. It has nothing to do with the weapon. Moron.

Maybe the stupidity is you? And your annoying ways to reply which make it a lot more trouble on my end to reply? You have already proven you don't know anything about balance in just this post. You ignore DPS and damage resistances, you try to pass off high skill gameplay as if it is something every player should do to be capable of enjoying the game. You have no credibility, no knowledge of how a game works, none whatsoever.

No I don't see the game as a purely mechanical design, in fact I start with the core of any game: Emotion. You want a game to elicit an emotion that keeps players coming back to the game. How to achieve that is through the mechanics in the game.

You can go ahead with your "world view", but the moment you say that AA's perception is wrong you instantly disqualify yourself from the discussion. First off because no player's perception is wrong, their idea's on how it happens or how to solve it are often wrong, but their first emotion is.
And no matter what you say, every single part of the game needs to be fun. There's no "overarching philosophical design" if one part of the game is simply not fun to play for the largest amount of players, and G2A fills that spot. Basically, "overarching philosophical design" is just a fake argument to say "well I like it so it's part of the blablabla design now no matter how bad for the game it actually is".

Look, I've always made clear what I'm about, so if you suddenly come now with "gee, I had this entirely different world-view all along" you can go home. Either you react to the arguments given in a proper way, or you don't do it at all. Don't come with this kind of crap.

So you are now countering with the "fun"/utilitarian argument. I won't argue the minutiae of who's having fun and who's not having fun. I literally never see anyone rage quitting because of A2G (myself included as MBT pilot). People have greater gripes with C4 Fairies and ES AV Secondaries.

AA and Air ecosystem are part of an overarching philosophical design - strengths, weaknesses, and all. I don't see any evidence that it's destroying the game especially compared to Gatekeeper fad. Do you want Flying Burster Maxes or Skyguards?

I think you're starting to take this debate too personally. Good lawyer's rule: Never link your ego to your position.

Then start looking better.

They are part of a broken, bad design. You know, the reasoning you use was the exact same reasoning used by many of the pilots defending the original launch-design. You know that design? The one where Rocketpods outdamaged even Hornets? Where nosecanons could kill a Skyguard before it killed them back? They tried to balance that out, they failed and still haven't found a good spot. The reason for that is because the initial premise if flawed and neither fun nor engaging. There's a million different pro video's about solo players using Liberators, ESF, MBT's, Lightnings, different infantry classes and even damn Flashes! But G2A? At best you'll find one or two video's of team-oriented play or a single good run against an air Zerg while backed up by more AA.

I do not want flying burster maxes, I do not want flying skyguards. I never said that, you keep bringing up stuff like that, making assumptions that are completely and utterly the opposite of what I keep vouching for. So you are doing nothing but lying your butt off to "prove" your point.

I'm fed up with lying posteriorheads like you, trying to pass off things that simply aren't true all to the detriment of the game. I'm emotionally invested because people like you, with standpoints like this, ruin not just this game, but every game in existence.

You have called every opposing poster a liar at this point. It's a cheap statement now.

I remember you made a post telling Reclaimer77 that "he's not helping" with his attacks. I think you should follow your own advice.

Demigan is... special... to say the least. You'll never win an argument with him. You always end up stupid, incompetent, or he'll start saying incoherent stuff. I admire him for his persistence, but; as a friendly advice: just tell him you'll stop replying, and do so. It'll never lead anywhere, I've threaded that road more times than I can count.