Liberator changes {suggestion}

Hyperbol have its limits.
A Striker magazine deal up to 100x6 damage to airplanes. Due to ESF vulnerability to flak detonation (-180%) the damage are increased to 1680.
ESF's OP fire suppression repair 750 health over 5 sec.
About flare, don't wait to see a fire blast or a lock-on warning to use it. If you're diving a TR HA nest, use it on the middle or at the begining of your dive.
Also, about striker specifically, it take 2,4 sec to fire all 6 rockets, so if you use flare at the moment you take damage/you receive lock-on alert, then you'll mitigate a lot of damage then if you had fire supression equipped.

ESF fire suppression isnt OP. ESF are incredibly fragile and already pretty much un-flyable. Without fire-suppression it would be even more pointless to fly them.

Wasnt it you in the other thread saying that racer libs were faster than ESF? If you get chased down by a lib, run racer frame.

Every racer ESF is significantly faster than a lib with racer. Extended afterburners will allow you to put 450 meters in between you and a racer lib.

You arent going to be able to be perfect in every situation. What that means is that one load-out might be better vs libs than the one you would use vs other ESF or the ground.

If a lib is killing you by chasing you down, then you just put racer and extended afterburners on and hes not even gonna get close.

Let's agree to disagree then.

Buffing the walker so it look like a needler is actually a good idea. IMO, walker just need at long range are a better CoF and tracer that are visible on a sky background.

For the cockpit obstruction removal, why not add a gun-camera scope ?
Scythe maybe has a clear cockpit, but its wings are blocking the view.

I'm not necessarily against the idea of a gun mounted camera, although its nice to see the instrument panel when you are shooting.

I'm not a programmer so i have no idea what problems if any might arise from such a fix. If they just deleted the silly bad metal work and gave us a fully glass canopy there wouldn't be a mechanic problem.

I guess i would be in favor of whichever solution is the easiest to implement.

The tailguns are kinda crap. It doesn't seem fair to the person in back that their gun is far less dps, usually less accurate etc. It creates a situation where the belly gun is preferable to most players and when they reach a high level of skill they no longer want to tail gun.

They end up having to take turns at the crappy gun. Imo an undesirable situation, all the guns should be fun.

I agree, the final goal is to see what's we're shooting at, the way to do that isn't important.

The solution could be to buff the tailgun a bit, or to reduce nosegun/bellygun effectiveness to increase tailgun effectiveness (so globaly, lib won't be more effective).
IMO, the solution could be quite simple to make tailgun more desirable, at least against infantry targets :
Add 25@0,5m-5@3m splash damage to the walker
Add 50@0,5m - 25@3m to the Drake.
Buff Hyena min CoF.
Move the Duster to the tailgun to replace the bulldog. Buff bulldog (liberator bulldog is the more effective bulldog of all, and it's still a crappy weapon)

I do agree with some of the original proposals. I definitely think that hitting the optics key should switch to a gun camera view while piloting, as proposed by adam.

As for the walker... I don't know. In the hands of a player who can hit reliably with it ( which I realize is rare AF, and requires suicidally short distances) its an absolute nightmare. Unfortunately, its potential is kinda out weighed by its lack of reliability, which the hyena has in spades, hearts, clubs, diamonds, and a royal flush. I think the better fix would be to tighten up its base cone of fire, since its currently atrocious, or just in general improve its hit reliability (velocity, fire rate, etc), since that's the part about it that I find most problematic.

The tail guns are all good weapons already, every one of them. Hyenas are the only weapon that's incredibly specific, but sadly also the only weapon on the Lib that's almost mandatory to have. The Bulldog is great against infantry and armor, you just don't see it because it makes you helpless against ESF. The Walker and Drake could use more accuracy, but that's really about it. Overall I think the Lib is almost perfect, nose guns aside.

Air doesn't need any help farming ground with more splash damage, especially not on machine guns. This game has enough HE spam as is. Better accuracy would be all those guns need, plus it would make the Lib get dangerously close to use them, which gives infantry a chance to fight back.

This goes for all tail guns (Drake/Walker/Hyenas). Daybreak needs to look at how ESF currently kill Libs. The engagement range by decent pilots is 202-400m with pinpoint accurate stock noseguns. The Walker and Drake just don't stand a chance at that range. Racer/Hyena Libs charge and anything else runs, it's a boring meta. Or the other option is halving the accuracy on stock ESF guns. That would do two positive things. Lessen the dps of pros while letting noobs get some hits instead of none, and bring air fights closer, where piloting is more important, which is fun.

Its not obvious to some1 who isnt permanently looking at the thread......
When you reply to some1 it tells the person they have a reply, so that person can log into the forums and continue the conversation.
If you dont press reply i cannot see youve replied, and tbh dont remember half of the threads i post in so im not going to check back, escpecially for an ignorant poster who cant be bothered to press 1 button before typing.....

One considers whether you actualy want a conversation, perhaps thats why you dont click reply?

Not sure i understand your comparison?
Is the sniper the hyena or the walker?
Are we talking bolt action or semi-auto?
A sniper doesnt get a steady stream of bullet tracers to follow to their target so i struggle to see how it compares to a walker. Also with the exception of the Railjack all sniper rifles have a slower muzzle velocity, so will require more lead and more drop than a walker, which is at the least 170m/s faster.
Id also argue it depends on frequency of the kills with a long range deci whether or not its skillful, anyone can get any kill with anything out of luck, if some1 consistently kills many with a ranged deci every play session then its skill.
ADAD spam infantry suggests that the infantry can dodge the rocket when seeing it, just as an ESF can with the hyenas. So as i said previously, you now have to trick the infantry into going 1 way as you shoot the other, not possible with a deci at 300m, but defo possible with a hyena at 200, i do it all the time.
I think a better comparison would be a deci or an LMG at 200m, what takes more skill?


Again you seem to be exagerating my point, or taking it too far, ill again clarify.
I was not suggesting the walker was 1 and the hyena 10 in effectiveness or the opposite.
I was not suggesting the walker was 1 and the hyena 10 in terms of skill ceiling, or floor or whatever (or the opposite).

I simply disagreed that the hyena is a skill-less weapon, it requires a large amount of predictive shooting & target leading, especially at range.
I have explained why i think this, youve chosen to disregard that saying range is all luck based and therefore meaningless in this discussion. But id argue that you cannot control your engagement range on all air targets while being in a lib, especially being the tailgunner of said lib, its quite often youll be facing an ESF with the long range high capacity nosegun, or trying to get a chasing ESF to bug out, a walker is easier for this you cannot possibly argue that.
TBH id argue range is the only thing that does matter, if people are missing with either weapon at 50-100m its not the weapon, there is no skill needed for hitting at that range. After 100m its easier to hit with a walker.
In other words your skill in either weapon is not tested at close range, its tested at long range.

Again, just to perhaps get through to you, they are not 10000000 miles apart from each other (not sure how much more i can emphasize this) which was my point to begin with and was what i countered in the OP. The hyena is not skill-less when comparing it to the walker.
Additional power is always welcomed from the rear seat, but tbh i dont think the walker needs it, especially not if the reasoning for it is 'the hyena is skill-less' because its not.

I agree with adam that the Lib is in a pretty good place atm.

The canopy thing is more quality of life and also a bit more realistic as who would build such an ugly cockpit as we have now?

The walker is clearly underperforming compared to hyenas. While i dont like the hyena mechanic i feel as though the hyenas are working pretty well atm. They are scary but not impossible to defeat or run away from.

The walker has 14 kills per hour vs 17 for the hyenas. And it has the accuracy i previously posted something like 22% for walker and 32% for hyenas.

The Walker is great against ESF that fly close or in straight lines, but the only pilots that do that are the inexperienced.

The walker is not good at the 200-400 meter range because of the cone of fire causing you to miss shots, the damage drop and ESF resistance to walker damage of 50%.

The velocity of the walker at 850 is already high, it was once 1000.The cof maybe needs tweaked, or the ESF resistance.

Something to make this gun a viable alternative to hyenas. Currently a walker is only usable by a highly skilled gunner and as i have said most of them dont want to run a weak tailgun.

My point is that using a short range easy-mode weapon outside of its effective range doesn't make it a skill-based weapon at that point. Pegging someone with a sniper at 300m is skill (Walker). Hitting someone with a Decimator at that range is luck (Hyenas). Sniping at 10m is still skill, but spamming Decimators at 10m is cheesy, same as the Hyenas.

I finally flew against a great Walker tail-gunner on Connery about an hour ago. I couldn't get close enough to use my rotary so I switched to the default gun. I could barely start to whittle him down before he scared me off. Another decent Reaver joined me and we were able to reliably chase him back to the warpgate with default guns. There's no way someone with lock-ons could get close enough. Anyway, I've been trashing that gun too much, mostly because my gunners could never hit **** with it and I never came up against a Walker that I thought was as effective as Hyenas. After that encounter, I don't think it needs any sort of buff at this point. I guess gunners aren't pilots and don't know how to lead? I'm still so impressed with overall air balance though, there really isn't much to complain about.

Silken was in the air, if this is the same Silken, but this gunner was in a different Lib.

As an occasionnal liberator taillgunner I can say that the main thing that gun need are tracer I can see on any background, including airbackground. I think it's a fair buff that will help occasionnal gunner a lot without making good gunner out of control.

That's a great proposal. My ground drivers are always impressed with my Walker gunning, but that's only due to my dogfighting experience. After getting hit by the Lib-Walker by a pro, I don't want to buff the weapon, as in the right hands it really is powerful. But your tracer proposal would help noobs way more than pros, who already have a great feel for lead.

You know this is a good point, the tracers are hard to see. And another thing ive noticed is that when gunning the walker its very hard to tell the difference between my bullets and those of the shredder so that also adds difficulty.

Maybe give the walker rounds a different color. I would say lets eliminate the shredder gunners tracers from the tailgun position, so that the tailgunner only sees his own tracers but that might be harder than just changing the color so that the tailgun tracers come out red or something.

Exactly i can shoot ESF down fairly well with shredder or walker while others cant due to extensive ESF experience, but you shouldnt have to have 45k ESF kills to be able to use the walker well.

Another problem i have is that with zoom you can be right on a target at say 400 meters and you can see bullets missing wide.

This same problem exists with the Drake. At 600 meters up firing on ground vehicles i see a fairly high percentage of shots just missing from cof.

Tighten up the cof on the guns so that they are effective at the ranges which they are designed for. Otherwise they are just garbage imo. Im precisely on target but i miss half my shots due to cof on a sundy? I'm sorry but thats trash imo.

From my experience, unless the liberator is completely immobile, your shot will never come from your crosshair. Most of my shot are missed because the pilot use spacebar or crouch key and I'm not good enough to compensate for. (and also because I can't see those wite tracer past 50m)
For the tracer being the same as shredder, I don't think it's a problem : make walker tracer red (sorry TR) and shredder purple (sorry VS) will be 2 birds with the same stone.
Devs idea to make tracer faction-color was a bad idea for NS weapon on airplane.

Yeah im talking about full stop and shots are missing wide due to cof.

As a player with reasonably strong colour blindness, I can barely even see the tracers for weapons to begin with. I mean, I wasn't even entirely convinced the walker had tracers for the longest time.

I think one thing to do would be to make tracers more visible to the player firing those tracers. A lot of people have mentioned making tracers more visible, which I definitely agree with, but then there's the issue of tracer colour. This is just a thought, but why not make it that tracers work normally, but tracers you fire appear as being a much brighter and easier to spot colour for yourself alone.

This helps avoid confusion over who's tracers are who's, keeps the stealthy aspect of the current tracers intact, and makes them much easier for gunners to use. Plus, I would also advise adding more tracers in general to firing to assist in tracking.

My personal pick for the colour of personal tracers: either florescent lime green, or a bright orange.