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

+1. Looking forward to the day when i can come back to PS2 because it is truly a combined arms game rather than a subpar COD where any HA with a boomstick can counter every unit in the game.

Decreasing the CoF isn't a hard cap on skill any more than increasing the velocity is.

Bottom line: Given the same skill, higher velocity you're hitting more. Given the same skill, smaller cone of fire, you're hitting more. If anything, increasing the velocity makes it LESS skill based. Leading the target is the hard part. With a huge cone of fire, no matter how much skill and velocity you have, at some point it's just pointless to even try and shoot at them.

Aside from that, if the CoF on the burster is an appropriate "cap" as you descibe it, why is decreasing the CoF on the skyguard now an inappropriate "hard cap"? What makes players frustrated is that they spend 1000 certs on a skyguard that can't hit even nearly as far as a burster max can. At long range, as you describe it, no velocity is going to make up for how huge the CoF is on the skyguard.

EDIT: just saw your edit. I agree, I think most people would be fine taking a small hit to the damage in exchange for tightening the cof.

I'm for decreasing velocity of burster max units rather than increasing their CoF.
Skilled players will still be rewarded for effectively landing shots - that reward's having a longer effective range.

Increased CoF will force a strict dps falloff with range, inverse square law, no exceptions, no variation due to skill. It doesn't feel like it's within the player's ability to control how severely it impacts him, while the decreased velocity still feels like it's "his fault" for not landing hits.

can always be a mix of the two, doesn't need to be either extreme.

im talking about the burster, not the skyguard, lulz please read properly before you post

It already is capable of that. A Skyguard is self-sufficient, the AA MAX units need an engineer to baby-sit them and someone to move them around. In the Skyguard, I can stay 100-300m back from the front lines and move around across a large area to stay mobile / hidden. If I pick my battles correctly and the front line doesn't collapse around me, I can keep alive for 30-60 minutes straight and get a ton of kills / assists. Most of my deaths as a Skyguard are from enemy armor breaking through, or some HA gets the drop on me and I can't break LoS fast enough.

Does the Skyguard need a bit of love? Sure. But I think any changes need to be very minor or it runs the risk of becoming overpowered. We're nowhere as weak as we were back in December. Our XP/hr is actually reasonable now as long as you can stay near the front lines. We can defend ourselves against infantry, and hurt enemy armor enough that we can help killing it.

The main change I would like to see is a cert tree that gives us an extra 4 or 5 rounds in our clip per level, with 6 levels of certification. At top-end, that would give us a 75-round clip, which matches the +50% boost that MAX units get.

Secondary changes would be barrel upgrades that let us customize whether we want a higher RoF, a lower CoF, more damage per hit, etc. With each having an impact on one or all of the other attributes. You could spec out as a low-CoF long-range sniper, or a short-range high-RoF damage dealer.

Faster projectile velocity would be nice... but I'm no longer convinced that it's needed and that it wouldn't unbalance things too much.

agreed.

You're obviously misunderstanding me here. When you say decreasing the CoF is a "hard cap on skill" that makes it sound like you're trying to say that that solution caters to the less skilled player more than an increase in velocity would, which is wrong. Increasing the velocity makes it easier to lead, meaning it caters to someone who isn't as good at leading their target. Making the cone of fire smaller, if the velocity remains constant, helps everyone, but the more skilled players will benefit more since leading is what takes the most amount of skill.

But still, increasing the velocity is going to put that field on the target more often, so you're going to be getting more hits, as I said. Of course, given 100% accuracy, it forces a dps falloff, as you describe, but you WILL get more hits if it's easier to aim in the right place.

Umm, you suggested changing the projectile velocity on the skyguard, I said skyguard should get a smaller cone of fire, then you said smaller cof = hard cap on damage, so maybe you should read properly before you post.

you. have. completely. misunderstood. me.

i'm talking about this (false) dichotomy: Increasing the CoF for the Burster MAX, or reducing the proj. velocity for the burster MAX.
NOT the skyguard.

Why I want to do this? Reduce effective range of burster MAX.

i said larger CoF = hard cap on skill if you use it to limit effective range.

TLDR.

OP is a ESF pilot who wants easy pod spamming again.

Read the entire post, and please explain to me what led you to this conclusion.
I'll school you no issue.

Bamp.

My original post clearly in reference to this:

Other than that, we are in agreement, basically. I see what you mean now. Your use of the phrase "hard cap on skill" is a little incoherent.

it's not "incoherent" in the context I was using it in.

Anyway, the skyguard needs to be much more effective as a single unit simply because there are going to be fewer skyguards in general as compared to dual bursters now, simply because not everybody will move over as the burster will still be viable.

As compensation, it needs to be more powerful. Since it's not practical to make turret traversal speed any higher (unrealistic), having the current velocity doesn't really let it extend its reach out into the "long" ranges I intend it for. Any good pilot can make himself impossible to be hit by the skyguard regardless of the CoF, simply by flying evasively.

Since my goal is to make "regional" AA defence powerful enough to warrant being targeted during organised attacks of a base, the skyguard, the "regional" AA no-fly enforcer, needs to seriously threaten, not just be a slight annoyance that flak is now.

It is incoherent, because I don't know if you mean a limit on the skill necessary to "win" with that weapon, or if you mean a limit on the effectiveness of the weapon regardless of skill. Either way, the phrase "hard cap on skill" makes no sense. There's never a "cap" on how much "skill" you can have no matter what they put in the game.

Yeah, I get what you mean by that, but it's incoherent.

Other than that, I'm not sure what you're responding to. I dunno what makes you think AA isn't targeted, because I fly with a lot of people, and for the most part, they target the AA, regional or otherwise.

no lolpoding 1km shouldn't have a counter.