[Suggestion] Improvements to ESF Play for New Players

No its not another thread asking to nerf 'the reverse manoeuvre' or whatever.

I have 2 suggestions, one of which would probably be pretty easy to add, the other possible but requiring a bit more effort.

1. Add VR Combat and Lobby
Put simply this is the ability to offer a player a 'duel' when in the VR room. This would be an additional option added to the existing set of player interaction menus which already include invite to squad, send message etc... The result of this would be to allow normal damage to apply and let you kill the other player. This would only occur if the other player accepts so griefing does not become a problem.

The second part is the lobby. This is basically a message board in the VR where players would be able to post requests for practice on elements of the game or requests for duels. For instance someone could post "Noob esf pilot wants training", accepting the request would instantly place you into a duel with the owner and highlight them inside the VR.

The upshot of all that is that this creates a good space for people to start learning to fly ESF's properly. This is in my opinion one of the major issues with the game in that there is no good space for people to learn to fight as a pilot. Noobs get obliterated too quickly in the main continents since the skill difference is highly stratified and they don't even have any safe airspace to operate in, often prowling esf's will swoop in and obliterate them even deep inside allied territory (see suggestion 2).

2. Add Aircraft Auto Detection
This would apply above any allied territory. It would only detect aircraft, stealth upgrades will make the aircraft remain undetected for up to 10 seconds maximum. This would have the effect of auto spotting any aircraft for all allied forces on the map only (no in game highlights). Players would get a notification when they are spotted over enemy territory. Aircraft would be detected even when landed, no hiding and popping up when you see a poor noob fly over.

This will create an area of safe space for players to operate in, enemies can still invade and attack, but they will be spotted so can be avoided or ganged up on and killed if they come too far into allied territory. Near the front lines you would be able to pop over the border and attack quickly, this creates an area of combat where players can fight more freely with aircraft.

The air game is extremely skill based and I think it's rather sad that new players get picked on even getting out of the warp gate by veterans. I can't blame them for doing this since it's a legit tactic but it hurts players who may otherwise have played air or improved faster. It also will work as a way of match making, a noob will see an enemy in allied territory and choose to avoid or fight, it's their choice. A pro can fly into enemy territory knowing they will be attacked a lot, so get the combat they're after.

This also lets dedicated air to air pilots be more effective and useful, they can see enemy incursions and move directly to destroy them, the radar would provide them with a fresh list of targets letting them keep allied airspace clear.

VR and Lobby = <3
I'm tired yelling in VR for some ESF training.

First idea is good.
For the auto detection, it's not a bad idea at all. We can often see experienced ESF squad camping enemy warpgate. Which is quite unfair.
But for this auto detection I would had a radar covering range. I mean this auto detection would only work above, let's say, 50m height. So experimented player can still sneak into enemy lines flying very low.

Does #2 supplement Engagement Radar, or replace it?

50m is too damn high. 25 is ok.

Any player should be capable of learning any game mechanic by simply playing the game after an introduction of less than a minute to the game mechanic. The deeper meta and tactics will be learned by playing.

However, RM and hover fighting cannot be learned this way, and your proposal is completely the opposite of what should be done: Open up the air-game, make sure it's not dominated by two maneuvers that are based on bugs.
Sure there's more to air combat, but things like situational awareness, which most of the "rest" of the tactics comes down to since movement is mainly dumbed down to "hover fight or RM", can be learned through simply playing.
There's another thread up right now, where people come up with gems like "you need to surprise them and kill them, if you fail that you need to start RM just like them". That's not a solution! That's not a counter! That's like "don't die, kill them first".

RM and hover fighting are NOT "bugs"

It may be somewhat slightly unintuitive, and it's certainly difficult to master, but Hovering was absolutely an intended mechanic, and skilled pilots learned to master it which led to the RM, which while perhaps unintended, is also pretty logical when you consider the mechanics of hover flight mode.

The only way to "Fix" this IMO is to change the foward/vertical flight mode to change on a keybind rather than only linked to throttle/speed. This would actually likely have the consequence of raising the skill ceiling even higher however, as top tiered pilots would no longer need to slow down to RM, just swap engines with keybind, flip around, and AB then pitch down and engage.

However, it would also SIGNIFICANTLY lower the skill floor and make using both FAR more accessible.


The only other things I'd really change is to make Ejection seat a hell of a lot cheaper, make AB Fuel Pods convey an additional AB top speed and even longer burn time, and promote the use of ESF's as personal drop transports. Ergo most players initial and extended introduction into flying will be the much more direct and easy "Fly to point and jump out before shot down" objective, and require very little investiture to get some intial use out of the ESF.

I'd also like to see the secondary weapon perhaps change nanite cost, so AB fuel pods could be dirt cheap ESFs, whereas lolpods, hornets, and tomcats all carry the standard cost.

Better. No getting out of the plane while it's landing gear is up unless you have Ejection Seat. The benefits of being an LA will be you can control where you land rather than falling straight down.

We'll give Scythes invisible landing gear, or some such thing. I'm sure they'll even land better that way.

I implore people to get an in ESF if you need to quickly get somewhere specific on the map. The only controls you need to learn are pitch, yaw, hover up, and throttle up, and you don't even need to use them all at once. Just turn (yaw) your nose towards the glowy column of goalpost while ion hover (hover up) and you're all set (throttle up, with pitch to control altitude).

They are, they are faulty game mechanics. Otherwise you should be capable of an afterburner-fueled corkscrew, which isn't possible. Currently there is only the "forwards" reverse maneuver, where the player does a circular movement with his nose towards the inside of the circle. The backwards equivalent should also be possible if it wasn't a bug... Oh wait, it's not.

Even if it wasn't a bug, RM and hover fighting are highly limiting the gameplay experience when in the air. With tanks there's a myriad of ways you can trump your opponent by using the right distance, weapon and attack. With aircraft that is all removed the moment someone starts using either RM or hover fighting.

Hovering around and fighting was an intended, the way it works was not. The way hitboxes and aiming works while going up/down is wonky, making hitting an enemy tough especially when he keeps changing direction the moment the first hit marker appears. And the biggest problem is that this is unachievable in any other part of the aircraft game. Do whatever you want, if you didn't go hover or RM while your opponent did, you are dead or should be running, after which you either need to run fast enough and be close enough to a warpgate/group of friendlies, or you need to do a hover fight/RM yourself. This is the problem: There are no real alternatives. Sure there's a lot of other stuff going on around these maneuvers, but in the end you need to be able to do one of these, or you are simply dead to the one who did it better.

Let's make an example: Rocket league.
Rocket League is easy to learn, hard to master. Now PS2's aircraft gameplay is easy to learn, with one exception... RM and hover fighting. If "solutions" are to make instanced battles where people can train for hours on end to learn it, it's a bad game mechanic. It's as if you are playing Rocket League as a beginner and get thrown in against only the top notch best players, even though a top-notch best player will be capable of finishing you off solo against 4 or 5 new players. What would happen to those new players? Right, they leave that game (or that part of the game).
Which is why in Rocket League has skill balancing to keep it fun for everyone. They will often pair up a somewhat higher skill player with lower skilled players so they can learn new tricks. But we don't have that in PS2, so you should open up the game for everyone: Different skillsets, different ways to be good, different ways that everyone can compete.


also, "somewhat slightly unintuitive"? This is like throwing in a highly intricate puzzle game into a simple FPS shooter that hadn't had a single puzzle game for the entire rest of the game.

You're a tanker, not a pilot. Please stop trying to throw your opinions into things that don't regard you.

Am I being a dismissive ******* now?

Yes, but that's just cause you're wrong, and I don't want to argue with you.

Believe W/E the frack you want. Hover and RM isn't that bloody hard to grasp. I was doing it within my first several hours of flying back in beta without anyone ever having made a damn video yet or anything.

I saw someone else do it, and I got to practicing.

Not goddamn hard.

Could be made a little more intuitive (which is the main idea behind my suggestion), but mother fraggers be over exagerating **** like no tomorrow.


The biggest problem with flying is that, unlike say Rocket League where you're matched against noobs like yourself who can't hit an aerial to save their lives either, in PS2 you share the skies with the Aces who make even vets like myself look like handicapped autistic monkeys, and I can dominate a beginner pilot blundfolded myself.

And there's NOTHING you can really do about the skill gap, unless you just want to remove skill

which is of course the entire point and design behind Tomcats. A half dozen ******** monkeys could clear some skies if they all had tomcats.

I'm fine with that, I never bail anyways.

I always go down with the ship.

I've got a repair gun and all I need is about 3 sec to land and get beam on my craft.

Never did master that midair repair trick but it's always seems a tad bit exploitive (it's strictly not, but it certainly kinda feels like it)

It's not a question of belief.
RM and hover fighting have been killing off the air game since the beginning.
I have never said that the skill gap should be lowered, I've always said that there should be multiple ways to achieve the same skill. Currently you can be as skillful as you want with any other aircraft maneuver, you could be 50 times more skillful than the best RM/Hover fighting pilot, and it will not make a lick of difference because the RM/Hover fighting pilot will win because those maneuver simply trump everything.

Add more ways you can be skillful, add more ways the air game can become a competitive scene, and the air-game will thrive. I don't care about the "elite" air jockeys that dominate the game, I care about the game. If they hate this change, too bad for them! It's like every single other moron in this game asking for their advantage not to be removed. ZOE was defended, the original ESF power was defended (Do you remember? Nose-cannons that could face-tank a Skyguard, rocketpods that were better than current Hornets vs tanks and could clear out everything around a Sunderer in one pass?) and so was every other crutch. Sure, this is one that is tough to pull off, but that's the whole problem, you give extreme power to a few, and the game punishes anyone who can't do it as well.

It's a moronic game design to keep it like this. Infantry and tank combat has a ton of ways players can excel or improve, but aircraft combat basically only has RM/Hover fighting or go home. It's bad for the game, it has been from the start and it will stay that way.
And what kind of comment is it to say "You can't do anything with the skill gap without removing skill"? You could, oh I don't know... Make sure that you get the same power return for doing the same or other skillful maneuvers? You say it wasn't hard to learn, so why the **** should it dominate the airgame if it's not that skillful.

I learned how to RM in about 2 hours and now using it all the time. But I still suck at dogfighting against those mossie-nolifers, who, I think, live their lives, eat and sleep only to be able to dominate the sky of Auraxis.
RM is NOT equivalent of skill.

PS2 actually offers every pilot a chance to fight back.

Lets compare to some more traditional flight models shall we? Where if given 2 identical capable crafts, if someone gets on anothers six, there isn't FRACK ALL that the person being tailed can do about it (unless the chaser is incapable of basic maneuvers)

The ONLY hope a pilot who gets a bogie has is to rely on allies (or that his tail is incompetent)

Of course then there's WoWP where different craft have differennt capabilities to the point that if you're lower tier, you're just fragged.... but we'll try to ignore that.

RM and hover fighting is the ONLY THING that actually makes PS2 fighting unique, and not just that, but also allows every pilot to defend against their aggressor.

Also, if you'd fookin read some of my suggestions, you'd note that I almost always propose higher top speed and longer AB burn time for AB Fuel Pods, which would at least allow "Interceptor" loadouts of a sort, so you can hit and run and keep out of hover duels.

The CORE gameplay in the air though must stay the same. They can improve it, but they'd best not cripple it.

Doing the RM is easy honestly

It's dumping a full clip while both you and your opponent are moving in odd patterns that's difficult AF and something I STILL have difficulty with (do better than most avg pilots, get stomped by aces)

Ok.. Back on topic of the OP and reason for the thread.

While I think the First idea is a good one, I feel it could use a few changes or maybe and alternative. As to the second idea I would have to say no. Now let me explain my reasons.

1: A enemy free area to train pilot would be a very good idea. However instead of 1v1 instances which could eat up a lot of server capacity. How about a flight only VR in addition to the normal VR. This would be a simple flat plain of 2km by 2km with the normal flight ceiling, greif would be disabled in this area. There would only be 2-3 airpads to pull. This would allow and obstacle free evironment for new players to learn the controls and be a good place for experianced pilots willing to train, to camp in for the newbie pilots. As this would be only a single instanced area it would require much less server capacity as well as allow groups to train.

2: As to the "territory radar" This would ruin assaults, tactical ambushes, and the overall air game as air combat is a fairly large area thing and not confined to only contested hexs. And trust me radar plays a large role in Air and AA combat.

Actually, traditional flight models usually have much higher maneuverability speeds. By suddenly swerving one way or another you can dodge someone's aim and be out of their screen before they can react, then try to keep out of their aim or vision until you can do a maneuver to get them in their sights. This might not exactly be the case in some of the more realistic milsim aircraft games but in most of the games that I encountered aircraft in this was possible.

But as I said, I have nothing against the additional combat maneuvers that the VTOL part (and shoddy game mechanics behind it) offers, I have something against it being so good a maneuver that nothing else can beat it once one side can pull it off better. I also have something against the fact that VTOL combat maneuvers are the only viable option. Any other maneuver will most of the time give your enemy an advantage rather than you.

As I mentioned, I never said that current RM or Hover duels should be removed. It should be made an actual feature alongside the expansion of other maneuvers that should have been viable from the start.
The air-game would have been so much more vibrant and hectic if players would alternate between hover fighting, high-speed chases and intricate maneuvers that are in between a VTOL and normal aircrafts capabilities, rather than stuck in hover fighting techniques or being chased around the map looking for salvation in the warpgate or a friendly AA/aircraft group.

Just to bring the thread back on topic since I didn't intend for it to become a comment on the mechanics themselves. I want to see changes that make practicing air (or anything else) as accessible for new players as possible. Irrelevant of what the mechanics are those challenges will remain. You need to learn a lot more than just how to fly the plane to be good at air, just as tanking is about more than being able to drive in a straight line.

I'm not keen on having a minimum detection height, the main reason being that it will let people camp outside warpgates still undetected. Someone could pop up, get a kill and return to the ground before enemy esf's could find them.

Probably a better approach would simply be to extend the time stealth keeps you invisible from detection. That way, someone could sneak in to do 'whatever' but they would have a time limit. Alternatively you could have a trail of ping warnings be left behind the aircraft, so that the exact position of an aircraft remains unknown but you know there's something in the vicinity of the ping.

@FateJH, I think it would supplement, the detection would only place aircraft on the map, the engagement radar gives you hud based highlights showing you exactly where to turn to see the enemy aircraft.

I like both suggestions. I have advocated Air Radar for a LONG time. I think it would greatly improve the game:
1) get pilots onto battlefronts
2) create risk for Incursions into enemy Air Space
3) allow greater ground logistics within ally territory due to less Air Incurion

That said, instead of "stealth upgrades will make the aircraft remain undetected for up to 10 seconds maximum", I would suggest breaking Stealth into 2 new Certlines:
1) Jamming: Lockon delay currently on Stealth
2) Stealth: reduced auto-detect currently on Stealth. Certain level of counter to Aircraft Auto Detect: could be for 30 seconds, could be below a low altitude, could be entirely if it test out fair enough, etc.

This would also address Stealth having become the dominant Loadout. Make players make a choice.

And yet Tankers can hop out instantly?

I think pilots SHOULD BE LA, and LA should get an Air and Terminal only Repair Tool. It just makes sense that in the future that pilots would have jetpacks instead of parachutes. It does not make sense in the future that pilots don't have parachutes. If it's important, make them give up C4 option in Loadout if they go the Air Repair Tool route.

Players should get stats for killing Vehicles: Aces, etc. Killing the people inside is just a random XP bonus at most. I think Vehicles should also get an XP reduction for killing Infantry.

I fly now as Engineer. I don't care about K/D or dying enough to make me go LA. But it bugs me that scifi pilots don't have scifi parachutes.

Well, Ronin's post wasn't talking about tanks so I didn't volunteer my opinion.

Since you brought it up, however--
We need strict entry and exit animations for all Vehicles, with all applicable hitboxes active during the transition.

We do. It's called "safe-fall," but the considerations of it only apply to Galaxies and any Vehicles with Ejection Seat. And Valkyries with Squad Logistics.
For ESFs, which are designed for both combat and transport, the balance was placed at Ejection Seat for any other bailing class other than LA and LA can use their jetpacks. This is actually not far from your "LAs as pilots" sentiment expressed above. If that is the case, why would the jetpack not be comparable to a "scifi parachute?"