Increased afterburner activation cost while hovering

I'm curious what other pilots think about this. On live it currently takes about 4 bars of fuel to activate, on the PTS it is 7 (About a third of your entire fuel bar), so we're looking at a pretty significant increase here. It just seems like another thinly veiled attempt by SOE to remove or severely diminish the vertical thrust aspect of PS2 air combat to me, and wholly unnecessary when combined with the nerfs to default afterburner regeneration.

Images for Comparison:

Live:


PTS:



Hopefully the images aren't too large, but it's hard to make out the pips for fuel if they're small.

I think the changes to afterburners for non fuel tank ESFs is completely unnecessary. It's barely enough to do a full reverse in the first place and even then that is all you could get from it. Why Does default afterburner need to be nerfed? The incentive to run fuel tanks should be in their own cert line, not in the inadequacy of default values.

As far as the increase in cost for using it in hover mode, eh, I am not sure it will change hover dogfighting too much, but maybe the change is a bit too much. I'm less worried about that than I am the default afterburner changes.

These changes are a massive hit to ESF in my opinion. Though I am not sure if this was another jab at nerfing VTOL combat it does show SOE lacks understanding that using AB while in hover is not just for A2A combat. As a player that focuses a lot of my flight time engaging ground I will use my AB while in hover extensively for survival and positioning. This nerf will drastically lower pilots chances of survival due to the hard hit when AB is active and much slower recharge delay. I was all for the cert line for AB tanks as that will be a great addition to the game for A2A combat. But I just cannot find a good reason on why they must nerf stock ESF fuel tanks as it will only damage game play in my mind.

What if instead of automatically increasing AB activation cost when hovering the game somehow "detected" that a reverse maneuver was being pulled off and only then subtracted the extra activation cost?

A way to do this would be to create a new fixed version of the flight engine that does not allow the reverse maneuver. Then when a pilot engages AB while hovering, the fixed version runs a simulation of the flight path but does not apply it to the ESF, that instead uses the ordinary version of the flight engine, thus being able to perform the maneuver. After AB engagement, the flight path data generated by the fixed engine is compared to the actual flight path that the ESF took (using the ordinary engine), and if the 2 match (IE the ESF did not perform the maneuver), no fuel is subtracted, but if the 2 don't match (IE the ESF did perform the reverse maneuver) fuel is subtracted.

Not sure if I'm being clear enough here, but the point is, never subtract fuel on hover afterburning if the ESF does not actually perform a reverse maneuver.

If SOE actually wanted to improve the air game, instead of making it worse, they would have lowered the Afterburner activation cost while in hover mode.

It's been discussed in depth for months. If SOE still don't understand the issue, I don't see much hope for them, or this game

I think the goal is to get A2A pilots to use fuel tanks instead of rocket pods (or Hornets, Coyotes, or A2AM) which will get the A2G hate off the ESFs that actually don't deserve it.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the point of this is to make it more difficult for people to hover spam Rocket Pods and then escape by afterburning away from basically a standstill.

Any effects this has on A2A combat is probably not particularly intentional.

Honestly, AB isn't necessary to reverse, only to escape or rapidly change position. That said, if AB is that super important, get the fuel tanks and put some certs into them. This is a minor change in the grand-scheme of the air game. This would require a change in how an ESF pilot works with A2G for sure, but IMO, you can escape going forward almost as fast as the current reverse zoom anyways.

The external tanks basically completely negate the increased cost and offer a LOT of speed. I feel like they had the pro "only pure nosegun combat will do" pilots in mind with these changes. I'm actually expecting the AB tanks to make the aces even more deadly, as they'll be able to RT more AND chase down anyone who tries to run with ease.

Precisely, sir.
I think this, along with the AB cert line, is an excellent change, it further defines the roles of A2A and creates different viable loadouts via different strengths and weaknesses.

The (PTS) nerf to reverse-thrusting (much higher activation cost for activating afterburners in hover mode), and thereby to the overall usefulness and effectiveness of stock ESFs in general, is outrageous and incomprehensible to me.

Why? Because it's not a flat buff to ESFs in nearly every aspect?

I'm confused about what point you're trying to make here... Do ESFs have a history of receiving flat buffs? Are we considering -15% Regeneration on default afterburners a buff? Or are we talking about Extended Fuel Tanks finally becoming a more viable secondary, beyond just being used by those of us that simply don't want to use Lock-Ons or Rocket Pods.

I neither share your opportunistic sentiment nor lingo. Nor do I want the air game to be catered toward the 1% of the player base (ace pilots) at the cost of the remaining 99% (non-aces).

PlanetSide 2 is combined arms game with a massive player base. Any player needs to be able to jump into an ESF and believe that they can be useful beyond ferrying you from point A to point B. The worse you make the stock ESFs, as with the (PTS) nerf to reverse-thrusting, the less this will be the case.

The main purpose of the ESF update should be to make the air game, which has reverse-thrusting as its sole (but most potent) fundament, more accessible to a wider audience, not the contrary.

I'm assuming this is meant to A) make fuel tanks more attractive (which new pilots get by default at rank 1), and B) make Hover spamming more difficult / easier to counter.

How does it really punish new pilots, who will be getting fuel tanks automatically? Or are they not the default secondary slot item anymore?

Also, will someone explain to me how this change impacts dog-fighting, specifically?

Stock AB tanks on PST = an ESF WITHOUT AB tanks on live

So they're kinda NOT default anymore. You need to cert them before they really help, so a stock (new pilot) ESF will have more of an effectiveness gap with an ESF using any secondary weapon. Not that new pilots are really going to be reverse-thrusting all over the place, though. Pilots normally have to be told that the maneuver exists, how to do it, then practice it.

I liked the change. It is something I actually wanted to see done, though not in the exact same way that SOE did it. ESFs with extended afterburners should have much more maneuverability than those with other secondaries. They sacrifice versatility for that boost in maneuverability.

So what comes default in the secondary slot for an ESF on the test server? Is it empty?

What's the cert cost of the first rank?

I'm all for boosting AB tanks. I just don't see the need to nerf everyone who doesn't use AB tanks. It's simply not necessary, many people will switch to AB tanks for their anti-air game. We don't need SOE to kick us in the balls to "encourage" us make the switch.