[Suggestion] Liberator Revisit (Why it is Medicore)

After reading through several negative feedback about Liberator in terms of buffing tail gun and belly weapon, Iet's throw those ideas out the window; however, I would like to focus on scope and hit indicator adjustments as well as why ESF should not have Fire suppression reduce back to 12%.

I will agree with no buffs to the Liberator in terms of the negative feedback towards no buffs to the shredder or tail guns. The Tank Buster, as one pointed out, the damage begins to the drop off from 50m to the minimum damage after 300m+, so no need for change. I am not saying the Liberator is weak which is my fault since I wrote that first post at 2 A.M. It just needs some adjustments to make it more friendly towards new or casual players. When I pilot the liberator, I feel many belly gunners cannot aim worth a damn, vice versa, when I use the belly gun, I can aim very well, but most pilots are terrible (Not able to turn side ways, pitch up, pitch down so I can have line of sight, etc). That is why many Liberators are static or only wants certain types of gunners rather than pug a gunner and go.

The adjustment is to help new or casual players; whereas, it will have little affects on really good Lib gunners.

The only problem I see for lib as a dedicated lib crew member (tailgun mostly and sub belly gunner) Is that the dalton got over nerfed.

It got 3 nerfs at the same time (good old SOE doing all nerfs at once instead of slowly adding them one at a time)
Velocity decrease, Almost complete removal of splash damage, and extreme bullet drop added.

This turned the dalton from a viable medium to medium-high altitude armor combating device to a point blank hope we can take it out in 1-2 rounds after a TB pass with assistance from the TG on sundies.

The dalton needs to have either the velocity or drop nerfs rolled back since it is now treated as an AV round. I would rather it be the drop that is removed since that is least effect I've seen vs Air but is a crippling aspect vs ground. due to the fact that the amount of compensation for drop is constatly changing due to travel and height changes, not including roll which sometimes puts the drop to the side of the retical.

PS: You can tell if your belly gun is hitting already in your vehicle helth Icon, the passanger seat number flashes orange each time they hit something.

I am a lib pilot myself -- and in fact have sunk every cert I ever earned (minus maxing out my rep tool) from levels 1 to 72 into my lib. Hence -- far more than just 10k. I have every gun maxed. All the options. All the sights. You name it, I gots it. The vast majority of my time and exp comes from being in a lib.

And I don't think libs need a buff in any way. A walker on the back is fair for AA. The Dalton performs the way it should considering the ability to bomb from low altitude with only other Air and Flak (skyguards/rangers/bursters) a realistic counter attack. The tank buster requires both skill and exposing of the lib to death by tank round/dumbfire/crashing as it should. No matter how hard I think about it, I can't imagine single thing about the lib that needs buffing.

Edit note -- pilots do see when their gunner hits something. Look at the little arrow on their gun seat. It will flash red everytime they get a hit.

Interesting, I thought that was just an indicator that the belly gunner is firing and not actually hitting a target. You are the first to mention it, so I will need to see for myself.

Libs suck because the game's rendering mechanics suck.

You have people popping in and out and sometimes you gotta fly real close to see what the hell you want to see and other times you can be at the sky limit and shoot down at people.

This however really isn't limited to liberators, but the idea that you can't hurt what you ain't rendering really REALLY gets in the way of everyone.

2. When the gunner hits something, the number 2 or 3 icon will pulse a red circle outward in the vehicle HP bar.

3. ESFs need the nerf, not the lib buffed. Besides you should be running afterburner anyway.

4. The everything buster is already super OP and now you want to make it even more effective VS air units. We'd need to sledge hammer it's A2A abilities before buffing it vs ground. The Spur also needs to be made a proper A2A gun at the same time.

5. The shredder alredy has the 2nd best DPS in the game in it's min damage range, it doesn't need to be made even better.

6. Use the bulldog if you want to farm infantry, and the drake if you want an A2G & A2A gun, and the walker for mainly A2A. The lib can already do everything in 1 load out, it doesn't need to be made better at multi-role.

7. The hyena does need buffing but not anything you're suggesting. It just needs more velocity to give it some more range.

I see so many tankers crying about how they cant combat esfs and liberators and I have to keep double checking that the walker and ranger are still in fact options for mbt secondary. Turns out they are, granted the ranger could use a buff. My suggestion would be combine the kobalt with the walker and make it a feasible AI gun as well as a competitive AA weapon, but no good against heavy armor; and buff the ranger, slightly.


Also liberators are fine as is, only thing I can think of that might benefit the game is makeing the tailgunner spot a tad more attractive/profitable, as it stands a 2/3 liberator is optimal, 3/3 is in many scenarios unnecessary.

buffing Fire Supp to 25% Lib HP would be ungodly OP.

ESF was buffed because they're lower health makes smaller #'s useless (it's a bit too good currently, I'd drop it to 20 and see how it goes)

^Everything he sed is 100% on point

I spent good money on the Spur and its a piece of garbage, maybe they should look into that.

The fact plain and simple is such a powerful and tanky death machine shouldn't be allowed to be so fast that it can run away get repair and come back. At least... this shouldn't be so easy!

If you're going to cover an unpopular topic and lobby on behalf of it to a group that is typically not sympathetic, you have to:
1) show you know what you're talking about (competent)
2) appear to be talking with the full and accurate information (trustworthy)

Average Air Kills-Per-Hour: All BR
=========================
NC C150 Dalton.........................................11.7
VS C150 Dalton.........................................10.9
TR C150 Dalton..........................................11.4
NC AP30 Shredder......................................4.6
TR AP30 Shredder.......................................4
VS AP30 Shredder......................................3.5

Why would you say "Shredder for Anti-Air"?

That is 50% the gunner's fault, and 50% the pilot's fault. As a lib pilot, your job is to provide a stable firing platform for your gunner while making it as easy for them to see (and thereby hit) the targets on the ground.

Communication is huge -- if pilot gunner don't have communication they will not be able to kill even 1/4th what a communicative crew does. Dodge maneuvers are cool -- but make it so the gunner has no reasonable shot -- so you have to balance them out and position the lib so that the gunner literally can't miss what you want them to shoot. That means point different parts of the lib in different directions sometimes to compensate where they tend to look at (something you can see by their arrow on the vehicle icon.)

This is part of the balance of a lib, however. It is a vehicle that you can almost never run a PUG on and cannot effectively use without voice communication. Otherwise it would be too easy and liberators would block out the sky like locusts.

What if we changed the Dalton to the following stats:

2000 damage
550 before .35m indirect damage
120 RPM
Laser Guided
125m/s muzzle velocity
4s reload speed
2 round per mag
40 round pool

Green is buffs, Yellow is new mechanic, and Red is nerf.

Sounds OP right. Cept.. thats what a Hornet is on a ESF. The exact stats. Point here.. I think the Dalton is actually lacking. It wasn't until recently I realized that the Hornet was more damage PER missile than the Dalton. The difference is its half as slow a round which means even though its laser guided, its not a very good AA weapon system.

So here's my idea. Change the Dalton to a laser guided rocket. Same stats as a Hornet, but one missile per attack with a 2.5s reload like it has now. And increase its starting ammo pool to 40.

That would be a reload speed nerf to the dalton as it reloads in 2.5 seconds or 2.125 seconds.
I believe the daltons splash damage also hurts vehicles. It also has "liberator cannon" damage resistance so it gains more damage against certain targets. For example MBT's resist it -50% so it's damage goes up to 3000 damage. Whilst sunderers resist 28% so it goes down to about 1400.

I suggest you familiarize yourself with damage and resistances before making any balance suggestions.
http://planetside.wikia.com/wiki/Vehicle_armor_and_damage_resistance
This is a mostly accurate list, although some things are missing.

Currently, the Dalton has no appreciable splash. You can hit right next to a vehicle or person and do 0 damage to them.

This is a blatant nerf to the dalton disguised by lowering the skill floor and skill ceiling while weakening the overall effectiveness of the weapon by a large margin. No thanks. Lowering skill and making weapons weak is not how you balance a game. Higher skill should be encouraged and higher rewards are a natural result.

I have no idea why you are linking that page, obviously you didn't familarize yourself with it yourself as you'd know Hornets are not listed there. So we can only assume that its 2 mag capacity makes it do more damage than a Dalton. And if you read my entire post, you'd see that I'd keep its reload speed and damage profile. Only lowering the velocity to give the firer greater control.

Nerf Tank Buster, it's way too powerful against everything and too easy to use. I've had liberators leisurely fly up to my in my skyguard while I was shooting them and Tank Bust me.

Also what's wrong with the spur? It looks meat and I was going to pick it up but everyone seems to think it sucks.

Haha exactly
Bought it for the same reason and yeah, it really does suck: quirky aiming mechanic and super low DPS. The way they have made infantry nearly immune to any bullet based AV weaponry is also extremely frustrating, especially for a weapon that mimics something that would seem highly accurate.

BUT

It is actually really fun to use at times. I have a powerful zoom on it and if I can't find any gunners, I will hover low and far away from a fight and snipe with it. Hardly ever get a kill but it makes tanks and ESFs bug out.

If you have certs to burn, and you love the Lib, give it a shot