Last try: An overview of my (unbiased as much as possible) views on AA FLAK balance

it's easy to die to it.
it's also easy to not die to it.
seems like a paradox until you realise that it's a matter of the pilot's decision. Decides that his plane is worth the main attacking sunderer? Pod it, then tank mine it as you crash into the ground (midair, you have time!)

Otherwise, keeping high angular velocity and forcing them to constantly re-guess leading amount = you dont get shot out of the sky.

Uh, unless you're flying directly over them it's incredibly easy to get a lockon with the grounder

as a side note, I have assaulted a base as a burster max and in that assault, I killed 4 or 5 infantry. the rest of my guys cleaned up the base wile I got a good spot and watched for more air / infantry. they are viable 5 - 25 meters for anti infantry and will kill in 4 to 5 shots.

Worth quoting ... fly tangential to (or at least not towards) the AA source and zig-zag up and down. The bigger the screen space on the AA your future positions can be, the better. After an attack run, focus on getting tangential -- turn. The most ESF kills I make are after the attack run when the pilot is thinking "GET THE EF AWAY" at 20% health, and instead he needs to be thinking on how to reduce my hit probability as much as possible. Keep speed during the attack run too. Don't slow down so you get more time to do damage. For every second more you have to shoot the AA source, the AA source is going to have a second more to shoot you back while flying away.

common sense lol

but you're wrong about keeping speed. It's all about making them guess the leading.

When you approach the target, if you're facing tangent to the bursters, they're probably leading your craft a whole lot. Braking can give you those extra seconds of not getting hit + hitting your target harder. Especially if it's a run on a tank's rear, you want to make sure that the tank goes down.

Also, flying straight or immediately banking is circumstantial. Sometimes getting out immediately is the top priority, and banking only provides a predictable trajectory. Other times, banking is needed to throw aim off, then a final jam of the afterburners in a straight line to exit the kill zone as fast as possible.

Burster max isn't as dominating as say shotty maxes, but they are definitely an unfair fight. Headshots are reliable at medium range, and it does take just a light peppering of accurate shots to kill any normal infantry. I'd say they need a slight nerf just so it is doable to kill them with 2 HAs. Right now it is not a good fight to take 2 good HAs against a good burster max.

was talking about flak. lockons don't bother me, I use flares. wait till they fire off their shot, wait a bit till the missile is on its way, then flare. use the time up to this point to get your job done. If there isn't enough time, you still have another 5s of lock-on immunity to complete your job. Lock ons dont do anything to experienced pilots unless they're in a dogfight.

If i sounded like I was trying to say the AA max is better than the AI max, I applogise. I was mainly stating that I was on AA duty and still wrecked some infantry with AA weapons.

While I agree that hard braking throws off their aim, it becomes less effective the closer you get because the lead is smaller -- meaning a smaller area to guess for -- plus there is the splash of the flak -- meaning a larger successful solution area. At long range, it's definitely a good tactic, but inside 150m my feeling is it would probably be better to focus on limiting your exposure: get in, do some business, get out. Never get below about 80 kph. By the seat of my pants, I think usually the guys who spend more than about 10-15 seconds in my view inside that range are the ones I kill. My killing odds go waaay up if they come directly at me anywhere inside of 500M. If I get through my first clip before they decide to jet I am probably going to kill them.

Oh, I was agreeing with you -- I play burster often and think its a little overpowered in infantry fights.

dont worry, I am a very experienced A2G flier. My daily farm consists mainly of tanks at the crown farming Ti, and tanks atop magrider hill and below crossroads watchtower facing zurvan.

getting below 80kph is possible from max speed of 320 within 2-3 seconds with dogfighting 3 (not hover 3, i know the airbrake upgrade is in hover3) by using a little sekret move that doesn't throw off your heading by more than 20 degrees lol

anyway, I actually drop to about 20kph when I want to kill 2-3 tanks while under heavy AA fire. Why? During the slowdown phase I easily get enough time to pod the rear of one tank. I immediately transition to air reverse flight and no burster max will expect a plane to suddenly shoot upwards and backwards lul. that immediately resets their "lead guessing" and lets me come in for a second run. Problem is after that my ABs are burned out, so I'll just circle around to the other side of the tower to break LoS, and i'll have to worry about the other bunch of bursters, but it's less of an issue because they just saw me and they'll have to re-guess my lead again. Easy kills.

don't bother with theory though, just take it that this flak overview is coming from a dedicated A2G pilot.

The main thing I want is better connection and hit detection. I have great internet, so the problem is server side, but whenever I get shot at by more than one burster I get insta gibbed. Literally I am there one moment and the next second I'm dead.

Of you could have gone in as AI and swapped roles halfway to AA, and then switched to AV if a tank showed up, if you had an AMS sundy around.

Honestly I don't think the NC MAX needs a nerf in this game, all MAX units need a bit of balance sanity checking... no switching loadouts at terminals and no medic raising them from the dead. Each faction plays their MAX units, they all do MAX crashes, but actually losing a MAX unit in the field means its out of the fight and has to be respawned again like vehicles puts a lot more balance than targeting any particular faction's MAX unit.

Look at tank battles, losing one side's tanks is quite painful... lose a MAX? Just keep raising it. Seems way way OP. There should be a greater penalty for the death of a MAX.

don't derail this thread...
MAX balance is a touchy subject. Refuse to comment.
I'm not that against reviving either, because it gives the medic a very large responsibility to play.

There are so many erroneous comments and holes in the OP's post, it's a shame he went to all that trouble to make it pretty.

The glaringly obvious faults and outright lies:

1) He claims bursters "can hide very effectively from all threats", no burster in his right mind has charge certed in place of ammo storage. AA MAXes are instakilled by libs and good ESF pilots more often than not, because of their extremely poor ability to avoid incoming fire. If there is a tree in the way, the ESF pilot has the advantage. ESFs can fly low or around one of the many hills/buildings to avoid damage, it is ESFs that are THE MOST effective unit in the game at hiding effectively. The sky is the limit.

2) He claims Burster MAXes have high explosive resistance. Well, Perhaps he needs to look at the actual figures, Burster MAXes have extremely low explosive resistance, and indeed even at full rank flak armour, have less than regular infantry with fully specced flak.

3) This one made me laugh the most: "requires overwhelming infantry to effectively suppress". Like, one HA with a rocket launcher, or, say, a medic, whose rifle shreds their flak armoured shells easily at a distance, or a single LA with C4, who is almost entirely impossible to HIT, let alone KILL when in the air. While they did increase effectiveness from zero to "a chance" against close range infantry, that claim of yours is hilarious.

4) After his worst point, he then claims that Bursters are too effective at RANGE. Only bad pilots will die to a burster at range, the damage output in the hands of a good aim, and good leading is absolutely tiny at range. Bursters at close/mid is all they are good for and they are very, very unlikely to get a kill beyond that, unless the pilot travels in a straight line under sustained fire.

This seems like troll bait, but I'll indulge, just in case any crazies are gullible enough to believe such utter bullcrap.

I'm sorry I tried to make it easy to read for others. I'm not your typical selfish forumsider.

Well, that's a little far, saying that I lie.

You don't need ammo storage simply because of your friendly neighborhood engineer buddy. Unless, of course, you don't play in an outfit. THEN, you have to sacrifice it. Also, a burster in an enemy base isn't really vulnerable to enemy vehicle fire. The occasional LA might get him with C4, but there are medics around. And an ESF can't hide inside a building while being repaired by 4 engineers operating the "health" kiosk that most outfits have. Also, please post a video of a coordinated AA nest being "instakilled by libs and good ESF pilots" thanks. Or at least give me an example scenario - how far the planes are, how many shots, how they're flying, how many friendlies you have, etc.

It's high, relative to infantry. Maybe not "resistance" per se, but more of "survivability". Sorry I wasn't accurate with my terms. ._.
Stop nitpicking, jeez.

Uhh? Okay... how do you, for example, eliminate the dual burster teams atop Crossroads Watchtower? Air is obviously not an answer. Armour can't hit the pads, because they're elevated. Infantry/LA that DO get up there and DO kill a MAX unit, die quickly. And the MAX unit gets revived. You can KILL the max, but you can't KEEP HIM DOWN. That's the difference.

Read my definitions of range in the post labeled as important at the top.
Also, they won't kill the plane if he's actively avoiding, but if the plane tries to attack anything, he's toast.

Um. okay. answer my points I guess, we can have a nice civil discussion. No need to be a jerk about it.

BTW, I use Charge. It makes a big difference in staying alive. It makes a burster much more effective against infantry, and faster overall during the occasional slog -- like the occasional ammo run. Usually I'm next to some kind of terminal though. One good thing to do is to deploy your own Sundy on a hill back near an enemy tower and kill ESFs coming back for ammo.

never solo as an AA max...

I like your post and it makes good points. My main issue with AA after its buff has been the question, "Why is the burster max more effective and useful then the Skyguard". For all that the Skyguard sacrifices (being a vehicle over a exo suit and the maneuverability that comes with that) it isn't nearly compensated enough vs the other AA purposed role (bursters), leaving it feeling lacking with the only roll that its better at is protecting armor movements while traversing in between bases where a burster would have to hop out of a Sunderer to provide AA and would not be able to keep up.

I'd say make the COF worse for the burster (especially while moving making them either plant themselves to provide decent AA fire) and bring the skyguards COF in a little bit.

I would also like to say that you didn't equate the G2A Infantry AA (lock on launchers) and their ability at area denial and killing potential, I would love to see your thoughts on these as well.

Why?

edit: let me clarify ... why when it's very hard to be killed by any thing besides a vehicle, and switching to double falcons can often handle that. One can also hop into a gunner seat on the sundy for instant full health ... it takes a squad of 3-5 ESFs to kill me when I'm doing that. Two ESFs at a time are 100% toast.