The shared XP system is kinda bugged, but in the good way: I got twice assist points while in the warpgate for a kill my gunner did whereas he just logged in. Other lib-related bugs remaining: Landing gear stuck when you hover a few meters above the floor for a while (see ammo refill) then go back to the sky. Third seat gun dependent from lib yaw after switching seats with the 2nd seat gunner (seems not the case for the 2nd seat gunner though). You must then get out and back in or switch with the pilot so that it becomes independent again. Then, not a bug but since nearly two or three weeks something was changed regarding the handling of the 2nd seat turret. I dunno if it is intentional. It's really slight but rather annoying. The view performs 180° rotations that it did not used to do, especially during escape maneuvers when the lib is on its side to give the gunner a shooting angle. Seems like the crosshair has become dependent on liberator roll, at least much more than before. It's not the case for third seat I guess (or I don't use it enough to notice it). The nose and 3rd gun are good ideas, even though Tank burster and walker are IMO much better in the good hands. The new belly gun is totally useless: pointless again air/ground vehicles and zephyr/shredder are better at AI duty and offer more AV capabilities. The Dalton nerf is annoying but justified and makes the Zephyr at last interesting for AI duties (Dalton performed nearly as good before the update + offered a lot of survivability/offensive solutions against vehicles the zephyr does not offer). Last, the new third seat firing angle makes it really worth it to have a 3rd seat gunner: he's involved thanks to shared XP, he participates to the bombing/air defense without any need for the pilot to do fancy maneuvers to guarantee him a firing angle (was especially annoying in A2G). The cons is that the combo belly + bulldog is nearly OP IMO in A2G bombing. AA turrets get shredded even faster, Bulldog thermal + shredder zoom is a slaughter (two assist machines combined). Did not test zephyr + bulldog yet as it offers too few survivability against ESFs I guess. In the end, as an experienced player the only real revolution for me is the third seat firing angle and shared XP. Ammo watching was not that of a problem thanks to Mumble. I guess this is a very good update for rookies as it makes the liberator much more accessible. The question is: did we need more libs in the air ? I don't support this new SOE politic that consist in taking every player by the hand (as opposed to the "we drop you in the middle of a battle, you keyboards aren't configured, you're not in EN keyboard ? too bad ! you're on your own"). I hope PS2 won't turn into a massive scale CoD. TL;DR: nothing really revolutionary for veretans in this update but makes the lib much more accessible to rookies. Dunno if it's a good move though. A few elementary lib-related bugs are still not fixed =(
bend over. (kidding, relax) on a more serious note- solid analysis. I LOVE the new nose gun, the optic swivel is AMAZING. Even if I dont kill things with it, it improves my ability to Q targets for the belly gunner situation immensely. The belly gun is a carpet bomb thing.... I'm sure there is a use for it on some zerg... but in all you are right, it's useless atm. *they really should have done the camera cannon* The new angle on the tail is also great, i didn't know it works on all guns, thought it was a thing of the new tail missiles (which need a buff imo) which don't seem to lock-on to anything at any range yet- hope they fix that soon.
the new tail gun is a bit like the coyotes I guess, you really have to nearly hit your target for the projectile to lock. Plus I guess server lag has strong influence there too: I got missiles rather far from my target still lock it when I shot in the same direction my direction was traveling in whereas some missiles simply went through the target and did not lock it when it was moving 90° from me. Dunno if I was clear enough. Regarding the targetting with Q, you could already do it by using free look (default key: middle mouse button). Even though maybe you can look a bit further with the optics than with free mouse look.
