It almost seems like air is hurting the game.

New player drops in. Gets farmed by:

1. ESF / Lib
2. HE tank
3. Fury / PPA / Marauder harasser
3. Skillsuit

Don't see what's different about air.

In any multiplayer game I newly join, i fully expect to lose to better/more advanced players for quite some time. I expect the same from every newbie.
Don't you?

Hell no.

Almost doesn't count...

Dalton splash was nerfed.

I think if you can't stand that air exists in game or think air should just be flying coffins, then you really should find another game that doesn't have air...maybe the player base is just borderline ******** when they chose to play a game with aircrafts and then do nothing but complain about them "because I don't wanna learn how to fly"...gee I don't go in a gunfight and say "but I don't wanna learn how to aim" and no one is forcing you to fly...as many people seem to imply

OP, your post only applies to 1-12 fights. Unless the base is being spawn camped, then 24+ even fights will most likely be deadly to enemy ESFs (unless and organised air squad takes out all the AA).

The tank, harasser, and skillsuit can all be taken out with the default standard-issue rocketlauncher that is given to every new player for free.

What does the new player have for taking out aircraft? Sweet F all.

Current air game is still way easier to learn than any other FPS out there with aircraft.

Air to Air

1. You don't have to camp an air spawn to make sure you get the vehicle as soon as it spawns.
2. You don't have to team kill other people to get to fly.
3. Other people won't team kill you for beating them to the aircraft.
4. You have real opponents to fly against and learn from.
5. You have friendlies in the air to fly as your wingmen.
6. You have VR to practice flying and can practice with friends.
7. You can have people on the ground with AA help you against enemy aircraft. (I get many hate tells from BR100's cuz I "ruined" their air to air joust with my lock-on launcher)

Ground to Air

1. The threat of air to ground against a new player can be defeated by common sense, like going inside a building.
2. If the aircraft is hovering and shooting at someone else, use this chance to shoot him with your dumbfire launcher.
3. Get in the gunner's seat of somebody else's vehicle and shoot at the aircraft. A lot of people put walkers or rangers on their AMS sundies. From what I've seen, most players aren't smart enough to do this. They just spawn on the sundy and run away.
4. Combined heavy assault small arms fire. The rocket pods will kill a couple of you, but the ESF won't escape. Medics will revive the casualties
5. Against libs and galaxies, simultaneous dumbfire rockets. It's not theory, have done it many times with my outfit when pinned in the spawn room. Just like #5, expect and accept casualties. Medics will get the casualties. We've killed galaxies in a single salvo.
6. Don't ignore the air battle going on above you, help out.

Every time I've gone up against an organized squad or platoon, my ESF or liberator gets focus fired and doesn't survive.

The only reason why ESF's and libs get the most kills is because most people don't shoot back. They all read forumside and were told they shouldn't try, by other people angry at them for not trying. The cycle continues...

I don't think air is hurting the game, but the A2A game is pretty bunk right now and that's leaving a lot air unchecked. An ESF's A2A secondary choices don't make it more effective against air the way pods make an ESF more effective against armor. On top of that, the Liberator can use its A2G weapon as an A2A weapon with a far greater effectiveness than anything in the ESF's arsenal. The Galaxy is about the only aircraft i think is balanced from an A2A standpoint.

If Libs could only have the belly gun shoot at things below the aircraft and ESFs had worthwhile A2A secondaries (esp. against Libs/Gals), I think you'd see a wildly different air game.

A single burster an a spawnroom will deter an ESF. If they can't get at what's shooting them, they wont risk themselves. The majority of my playtime in a max so far has been in a burster max, since that's pretty much the only readon I pull them.

The downside to this is significantly reducing effectiveness against aircraft. If coyotes were nerfed, you'd see a lot less people using their AI noseguns. Plus, the whole point of the AI noseguns is killing infantry- if they were unable to kill infantey, why would people use them?

True, I was just stating how easy it is to kill burster MAXes with them. I use it with AB because I can do multiple farming passes and utterly just piss people off. Record is causing at least 4 people I killed to pull burster MAXes. Its like making people use pyro after backstabbing them as a spy.

I have to wonder if all those infantry-only players will start runnin thermal-reduction once implants come out. The banshee is farmtastic, but only if I find something to shoot, so that gets rid of a lot of their farming worries once and for all.

Shhhh... The less people that are in the know the better. Even so I would just switch to zoom so I could see them better :|

You first stated "A single burster arm max" as being an effective deterrent, it simply is not, a dual burster max 'can' be an effective deterrent. With respect you have very limited experience playing as MAX, 4 hours! That is less than my average game session time, I have 146 hours spent as max so far and pull dual bursters every time air is a problem and know that you need at least dual bursters to be anything near effective as a deterrent.

I admit I have less experience, but from what I've done with a single-arm max against an aircraft, and from what I've learned as an esf pilot (not just against burster maxes) some infantryman flakking me or locking me from a spawnroom will get me to leave the hex, because I know if I screw up, I'd have to wait for my resources and aquisition timer to fill back up. You do need at least a 2 burster max to get a liberator to leave, but frankly if a single burster put fear into liberator pilots, the vehicle would be throughly useless.

You have a better chance of taking out an ESF solo with the standard launcher, than you do a HE MBT.

The same chance, yes.

About 0%

bumping thread due to being relevant again

FTFY, based on multiple threads where you say the same thing.

Thats the aspect of balance that interests me the most. Some like empire versus empire balance discussions but I enjoy talking about a lot more general stuff which can potentially kill the game. I was a beta testing for too long to not see potentially long term issues.