So I'm posting this here first to get some ideas other than just my own. ESF special abilities. Tanks, MAXes, and heavies get them. Perhaps ESFs getting them might make it a little better to fly in these flak laden skies of Auraxis. So let's here them! I'll start: VS: distortion field: warbles and distorts the shape of the fighter, making it difficult to exactly see where it is and leading the target due to its indistinct shape. In practice it would encase the fighter in a bubble that the pilot would see at 1/4th its opacity and would have a cloudy nebula look to it. The 1/4th look would make it a little harder to see targets and completely obscure use of night vision / thermo. Blink: ability to suddenly jump ahead 50-100 meters somewhere in its area. Could potentially blink you into the ground, killing you. Either a long cooldown or does an amount of damage to you afterwards. Or could cause controls to be sluggish due to the effects of the energy wake. Singularity: drops a singularity mine behind the fighter which detonates 1 second later. Obvious when it deploys. Sucks all aerial objects besides original fighter towards it, shifting their vector towards the point of the singularity for 3/4ths of second, then dissipating. Slight damage to affected units due to hull stress. (perhaps 10%). Affects friendlies too, potentially, to keep it from being mass spammed. Nebula cloud: Fighter can now deploy localized smoke clouds, helping to disrupt lockons behind it and providing some visual obscurity for other aircraft. Also makes it hard to see through for friendlies. TR: Weapon overdrive: Exterior air-turbines extend and provide additional power to the weapons. Increase in ROF dependent on forward speed, making speed boost and afterburners increase it more. This would allow the fighter to power dive a target such as a tank, sunderer, galaxy, or lib for maximum firepower, allowing it to dramatically increase it while travelling in a straightish line. Would basically be of little use in circling dogfights as forward velocity wouldn't be that great, but would provide a small boost. Laser Designation: Aircraft now holds a tandem seat 'gunner' that controls secondary weapons and a laser pod. Secondary weapons (IE rockets would get limited angling ability from centerline, and laser pod would enable lock-on launchers to lock on and fire at targets that are not in LOS, hitting whereever the laser is pointing as long as it is within 10 meters of an enemy vehicle / aircraft. Inspiration: replaces secondary weapon with loudspeakers that play (synchronized) inspirational TR music, providing a small damage / health buff to troops within a radius. Kills achieved by affected units give a small amount of XP to pilot. (yeah, I know, goofy. just trying different combination tactics) Exodus Thrusters: small, highly powerful 1 time charge turbo boosters that are reloaded when the vehicle reloads. Provide a burst of speed to near black-out levels. In practical terms, increases the vehicle's speed to 500 or more kps (seconds) but making the aircraft nigh impossible to steer accurately. Great for escapes or for suddenly arriving over a battlefield. Burst lasts for something like 4 seconds. NC: Alpha strike: Activating this causes both weapons to fire simultaneously but makes the aircraft handling characteristics more unstable due to the increased airframe stress. Ionized Shield: causes a limited shield to appear on the aircraft, covering one quadrant at a time of the aircraft (for example bottom, top, front, left side, right side, rear). Shield direction could be queued to keys to make it more of an active defense for the pilot while he is flying. Depending on how hard it is to control, shield health could be as high as doubling the reaver's base health. Perhaps would not allow weapons to fire through it if the shield was facing forward. Instead of a damage shield, could reduce damage taken instead, more like the alternate shield for the HA. Explosive Ordnance: causes vehicles ordnance to have a greater explosive effect, increasing blast radius and damage of all ordnance by an amount. On the downside, the unstable element incorporated into the aircraft's ordanance makes the ammunition unstable, causing a small change of detonation below 50% health. So your aircraft might suddenly detonate. Any other ideas?
Since I'm not a pilot I won't comment on the usefulness/balance of the ideas, but they certainly represent the factions well. It'd be nice to see more faction uniqueness in the game.
... this is well thought out and i like it. but people who want aircraft gone will flame it but you sir are level headed person and have my respect. carry on
ONLY IF SCOUT RADAR & STEALTH GETS COMPLETELY REMOVED AS AN OPTION FOR ALL ESF's. Allow Scout on Galaxies where it belongs. Or just nerfed it to no-longer "pick up" immobile and crouching enemies... ...Stealth armor slot needs a real counter also. IE: Base Radar towers or seomething (preferably hackable by Infils)
Dont like the Nebula cloud because it sounds like Decoy Flares. Im not a pilot but here is my idea for Vanu: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Chrono shift The Scythe teleports immediately to the place it was before 50 seconds and gets the same states as before (speed, orientation, hight, armor & ammo, nitro). If at the place where it teleports is anover objet (like anover esf) the other one gets destroyed by the shift. Except the other esf is another Scythe (B) with chrono shift in this case Scythe (A) doesnt teleport, hear a sound effect and his chrono shift abilitie gets blocked for 5 secs (because the chrono shift modules of both Scythes are communicating to prevent team kills). Chrono Shift should get a xxx seconds couldown like lvl 1 500 seconds lvl 2 230 seconds lvl 3 180 second lvl 4 100 second lvl 5 85 seconds Oh and the chrono shift doesnt sets bag the ability timer ;-) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Ok maybe it sounds a little bit op but it is 48% mobility 48% Defense and 4% Offensive. Give the other ESF abilities of same awesomnes so i would be balanced.
I would love to see abilities that allowed the ESF to park on the sides of mountains or hover under one of the many arches on Indar. It would be awesome to see the scythe be able to park itself under an arch on Indar or see a skito attached to the side of a mountain face. It makes me think of all the space movies and shows where a fighter is hidden on the side of an asteroid waiting for an enemy to get close enough to ambush. It also has uses for dog fighting. Say you are being chased down by an ESF. You weave around a mountain to get out of LoS and then do a quick landing to set yourself up for a counterattack. The enemy might not expect a parked vehicle lying in wait. Call it improved landing gear or hover landing gear... That being said.. maybe we should have another cert category/line for landing gear?
I'd prefer to leave tactics up to players, so that the ones who put in the practice benefit from advanced tactics. I can't park on a mountainside, but I have a few times bedazzled my pursuer by slowing down behind a peak mountain on Amerish, turn and hug the side of the mountain slowly climbing up it flat against it, while they whiz on by wondering where they went (I have to do these crazy tactics to set myself up to ambush them, cause I lose most dogfights ) Know what I mean? I am saying I like the reward practice and skill gives, rather than providing a specific thing a pilot can do.
Hrm, thought of a different one for VS: Phase shield: Allows the Scythe to phase partially out of the normal plane of existence, causing it to take a % less damage but also deals less damage. The further from the target the Scythe is, the more damage its weapons do (up to normal damage) as the ammunition phases back into reality. In practice this would allow the Scythe to weather more long-range fire such as lockons and flak, and do some damage to targets, but less so at close range (dogfight range), making it better at long range sniping (something it's airframe is good at) but conferring a substantial damage reduction for close range targets. Passing through mountains and such would also be possible, but every second phased into solid matter reduces the health of the unit by a high percent, such as 25% damage. Max level decreases damage to 15% per second. Potentially, due to the phased nature of their thrust, phasing would cause the aircraft to slow down by a percentage as well. So with everything combined: Vehicle would be partially translucent, possibly enabling better stealth. Level 1: Damage taken reduced by 25% Damage dealt reduced by 25% up to 200 meters Damage dealt returns to normal at 500 meters. Meaning that at 350 meters, damage dealt would be reduced by 12.5%. Terrain objects (not the ground, you would bump across that) can be passed through, but suffer 25% damage per second at least partially in object. Vehicle slowed by 1/2 the percent of the damage reduction, so in this case, 12.5% speed reduction due to exhaust thrust being partially phased out. Level 5: Damage taken reduced by 50% Damage dealt reduced by 50% up to 200 meters Damage dealt returns to normal at 500 meters. Meaning that at 350 meters, damage dealt would be reduced by 25%. Terrain objects (not the ground, you would bump across that) can be passed through, but suffer 15% damage per second at least partially in object. Vehicle slowed by 1/2 the percent of the damage reduction, so in this case, 25% speed reduction due to exhaust thrust being partially phased out.
I don't think 50 seconds would be viable. In 50 seconds you could fly across the map, and that would be a lot of data to store (as they would have to record every variable about your aircraft once every second and constantly update it. It would either have to be a "mark and use" type of effect such as you trigger it once to mark your "save point" and then you use it again to alter to it. OR You would have to make it something like 6 seconds, maybe 10 at max. That way they are still relatively close to where they were. However, since it would basically reset your ammo and health, it would need a substantial drawback. Like it has a charge up time to initiate it, during which you have to fly straight as you open a temporal field, and you would incur a reduction to armor for 15-30 seconds as the quantum state of your vehicle is in flux. Or a downside would be that the field is really unstable, and you have a 50/50 chance of just exploding. Then it would be like rolling the dice. ZAP... for a moment I am either OK or dead.... which will it be...
Reaver ability- Dual-mode: Vehicle partially transforms into something like the Guardian (Gerwalk) mode from Robotech. Enables Reaver to perform ground-travel at high speeds without having to worry about crashing, better ground support options, ambushing from ground positions, and escaping pursuers by turning into a mode that is more nimble at low altitudes. Upside: Increases Reaver armor overall and provides more forward thrust (beefier engines) Vehicle can transform into ground skimmer, enabling alternate combat methods / tactics Dowside: Reaver gets a bit bigger, to account for the beefier hardware and additional bits necessary to transform. Vehicle costs more (say 50 more resources). Potentially slight decrease in normal speed and acceleration at lower cert levels.
I tried to think of more "power of many" type abilities for them. Force multiplication abilities that enable them to take advantage of their established military traditions as opposed to the spandex scientists and blocky rebels.
