Air is very annoying. I hate how they kill sundees at bases and run away without being close to death. I hate it more when people look everywhere besides up to find what is killing our spawn points. In order to fix this, the engines of esf and libs should be increased, so infantry and tanks will know in more situations what is attacking them. Tbh, I think AA is in a good spot. 1 AA squad can pretty much make a no fly zone. Increasing the sound of esfs and libs will make more ppl aware of what they are taking dmg by and encourage them to pull AA.
the game itself needs better mechanics at making players aware of the AA game. skyguard should be its own vehicle, that name in players faces every time they hit a vehicle term and doesnt cost mass certs to add to a vehicle, you got nanites you got AA. having an AA lockon(admittedly i wish there was a better choice) or Using that skyguard should be part of the basic training popups .
Tripod mounted Ranger AA turret for Engie - yay! But to give a serious answer, I find air tends to cause havoc in small battles but is vulnerable to ground fire in larger ones. It seems quite realistic and reasonable that you need a certain volume of flak to be able to counter air attacks.
right, which why running AA needs to be better incentivized/more fun and new players need to have easier(cheaper) access to it(mobile AA, base turrets can be soo boring)
Get in an esf, or lib, and then tell me AA needs a buff and air engines need to be louder. At the moment, while flying, I'm constantly listening, since on PS4, due to the miserable render distance, I can often hear enemy air shooting before seeing them on the map or in front of me. As far as I know, engine noise is only while moving, not while hovering. ESF's in particular are actually quite squishy, while they can escape fire, their engagement window against even a few heavies with lock ons is very short, compared to a tank, which can eat rockets and heavies for lunch. AA is not fun. If you want to counter enemy air, pull air of your own. All buffing AA does is kill the air game entirely, and heavily discourage A2A, which only makes the problem worse.
People know there is "AA" in this game. They also know it sucks, won't get you kills, and can die to every other unit in the game. We've been over this a zillion times.....
i mean the new guys specifically . and yeah i dont really disagree, its not fun getting lots of Assists and Air deterence. and lord knows i suck donkey cleggs trying to do AA in the air (without lockons)
Vehicle Stealth should be removed entirely from vehicles. Damn sure shouldn't be an option on aircraft. Remove thermal sites from air-based weapons as well. And yes aircraft should be audible from miles away. Even the Galaxy is inaudible to ground forces, just absurd. If AA isn't going to be buffed, it's time to adjust air to fit the current meta.
while it may not dispute your point(s) i will say that almost all of the time i get killed by an air something there were probaly 10 people who could have saved my life had they only hit Q while watching whatever fly past/over them. i Q spot air like crazy no matter what im doing if i see them i spot them but my map H expanded and zoomed out all the way is more often than not empty while a lib/mossy/reaver just Chills behind me in plain sight of multiple vanu
When I'm flying, I don't seem to have any trouble running into heaps and mounds of AA and hostile aircraft. If air is 'effectively nerfed' anymore, people will just stop playing it. Anyone who likes playing AA should be careful about the nerfs they ask for, or AA will no longer be needed. AA is not supposed to be 'raining metal' from the sky. The air game would dry up, and a chunk of the player base would quit and move on to other games. I play both. Flying takes a good (to huge) amount of skill. AA takes virtually none. Base turrets and lock on rockets are free. Spotting air is 100 times easier than aircraft spotting ground targets. Maxes and Skyguards can take cover much of the time, while air is just "Flying Meat" (Lexx reference). Time spent running away and repairing is wasted time, while AA can simply move on to the next target. In another thread, I suggested some additional reward types for AA players to make it more attractive and reward the deterrence work that they do. I think that would help a lot. I know I would personally like it a lot.
I also spot like crazy. I enjoy doing it, and you also get a small reward for a subsequent kill so you can kind of track your value to the team. It's also frustrating, because while I spot a ton, so many players don't, and not only when I'm working on the ground is that unhelpful, but as a pilot, I desperately need those spots, and they are so rare (whey flying), or perhaps I'm just out of range for the com system. I'm not sure how close you have to be for spots to show up.
That lie is getting a little thing. We have the stats. We KNOW AA isn't used in heaps, and it does not get heaps of kills. Rewind and try again.
You misread and misinterpreted. I never said it got heaps of kills. I said that I run into heaps of it when I am flying. I also implied the opposite of "heaps of kills" when I suggested that AA get additional rewards that aren't related to kills, since deterrence is very valuable, but it's not rewarded directly.
I have no problem increasing the sound Air makes to other units. It ruins the ability to moderate speed to close on a target without screaming ESF sound, but ESF is OP so I think it's fair for them to lose this. I'll go one further: I'd also like to have Air perma be on the Maps unless flying over uncontested Ally Bases. Perma Air Radar. But I'd like to also request that the noise an ESF makes to its own pilot be radically reduced. It's far too loud and makes playing very difficult in a totally negative way: I drop out of mixed-unit-Squads (ones that have non-Air) because the chatter + ESF noise makes hearing properly, near impossible in an ESF.
Bk to original post, I understand how annoying air can be...when I started playing, everything that rained from libs and esf's was more brutal...it's actually been nerfed quite a bit. If there are no other ambient sounds, I believe you can hear enemy air at 1000m...200m before an esf renders, probably valk also, you can hear them before they render. Think gal renders at 1000m, not sure of lib. I'm not actually sure of weapon sound distance, but think from experience it's at least render distance, might all be 1000m. Every weapon sound is fairly loud and distinctive, except for hornets, which are a kinda woosh sound...and the preferred weapon usually for av esf. But go out with esf and try to use them, u have to guide them w/f'd up reticule, following a fairly predictable path as they fly, or hovering stationary, and can easily end up as AP insta-gib to the face as I did 3, maybe 4 times last nite. I flew over one sundy and 4 infantry had me to 1/2 hp with their light arms before my hornets could even hit....try it against 2 people shooting basilisk, nope. Not even gotten to real AA yet. And unfortunately, I would think THE priority target is enemy spawn points and the directive which requires quite a few sundy kills...lol. In large battles, just a lot of loud sounds, and harder and more dangerous to start gawking. Sometimes, like an animal herd, as you rush for the building doorway from the sundy, u just hope u make it. I remember one of the log in screen "tips" is even to shoot aircraft with your light arms, u can do significant damage. If everybody just looked up regularly, it might already be impossible to fly low around bases.
