[Suggestion] New NS-500 SAM for Sunderers

Moin

I see you have a lot of hate for liberators. I thought about telling you in many words how pathetic this whole idea is but I guess you're not really interested in a serious discussion. You have zero experience with aircrafts either and that would make an objective discussion nearly impossible. Rant on, I don't care, mediocre players of all servers unite. Maybe you get your air-nerf one day. But I doubt it. Balance between air and ground is overall in a good spot atm, no need for big changes and I'm pretty sure SOE sees it this way too.

New render as a NS advertisement!

Oh, for sure I did come up with a ton of other AA options like that link you posted. But those are all medium range solutions. The NS-500 SAM is meant to be long range deterrent.

Essentially you're not supposed to try and go over a NS-500 SAM. When faced with a NS-500 SAM you should (in order of effectiveness):

1) Call in your ground-pounding tanker bros and direct them to take out the SAM site for you. The NS-500 SAM is completely defenseless against even one HA with the default AT rocket launcher.
2) Try to fly low to the ground in order to break lock contact. Even if the NS-500 SAM does see you, it needs to maintain line-of-sight for at least 8 seconds. So you have 8 seconds to break the lock, and then you can travel right at it for another 8 seconds.
3) Get your entire air wing and descend upon it. After the NS-500 SAM fires, it needs to wait a whole 30 seconds to reload and another 8 seconds to reestablish the lock. Sure 2 ESFs or 1 Liberator might die in the assault, but that's what you get for directly attacking the unit that is designed to knock out aircraft.

So with skill, tactics, and teamwork the NS-500 SAM can be overcome. It's just that flying right at it as a single aircraft is probably going to be (and should be) a death sentence.

I perfectly understand everything else you said (and I think you perfectly understand where I'm coming from too), but I just have one question.

What does "moin" mean?

I'd actually like to see this in the game.
In all reality, when I start getting flak, it's more like, time to leave this area for a minute. I can honestly say that maybe one percent of my air deaths were from any sort of flak, and those at only when I was over extending myself. And libs against flak? Lol. A smart lib pilot is going to equip composite to stay on station as long as possible. The ground game does need a counter for air. And this is a perfectly reasonable vehicle. You could even have cert lines for deploying, as well as ammo (example look at tomcat ammo cert). Heck, you could even have it where the slot for utility could either be deploy time or ammo capacity. Better than some other garbage I've seen on here.
Also, I never see any KNOWN lib pilots ******** about the ground game getting a good defense for air.

My 2 cents anyways

If you add up all the ESF deaths from Skyguards, Bursters, Rangers, and AA Turrets it comes out to... about 11.7% of all ESF deaths from that time period.

For comparison purposes, 34.9% of ESF deaths were from crashing into things. 9.1% from crashing into other vehicles.

If you look at the same data from Liberators, all flak weapons account for... 8.6% of all Liberator deaths from that period. On the other hand, 41.43% of Liberators ended their existence by crashing into some non-moving object, so there you go. Daltons kill more Liberators than Skyguards do, which is pretty crazy.

we don't need any more AA thing are bad enough as it is.

this is a good idea but i dont believe it can come true because:
-how much damge that big missile can deal? 2 hit burning a lib that too OP.
-it need deploy cant move, cant rotate, how to lock-on, how can i choice a target to shoot if there have more than two target? So there need a new GUI or HUD in deploy mode?

PS:sorry my bad English.

The design of this SAM system is that it is a deterrent. A deterrent is something that by its very presence will stop the enemy from doing some action.

For example, we can say that the police are a deterrent to crime. Simply because the police are there, most people will not even try and commit a crime because they think they would be caught and imprisoned.

The NS-500 SAM works in the same way. Because it is highly visible (when deployed or undeploying it is automatically on the minimap and its lock has a very distinctive tone), all aircraft should know that there is a NS-500 SAM in the area. And because of the long lock time, they have a good chance to evade or leave the area before the missiles are fired.

So in theory enemy aircraft shouldn't stay in the area where there is a NS-500 SAM. And because of that, the NS-500 SAM shouldn't really be firing at enemy aircraft that much (unless the pilots are incredibly dense). This is why it can (and should) do that much damage. If it did less damage, pilots wouldn't be scared out of the area.

The easy way that I had in mind was to elevate the player's camera about 10-15m above the NS-500 SAM in deployed mode. It would be allowed to freelook. The player would get a lock-on reticule, and from there it would work the same way that other lock-ons work.

im a pilot, tanker, and infantry player and have some experience in all of them, (although I'm a ****** lib/gal pilot and not the best at ESF flying) just like ground needs the ability to kill air, air needs the ability to kill AA with a special setup. my solution is make the hornets do MASSIVE damage against the NS-500 SAM and the lightning AA systems (it pears the to threads are linked) so a coordinated air outfit can deal with a heavy AA position. this will also indirectly reduce the number of rocket pods (and coyote missiles for pilots)

Fantastic idea. Alas most people do not have your imagination (especially SOE)

Also people will shoot down your idea without coming back with suggestions. This is why I hate the suggestions forum.

Ref Balance

With the lock on time suggested this would be much to easy prey for an ESF or Liberator unless protected by a couple of sky guards.

For example: I fly in low with a liberator, pop up and unloaded with my tank buster. The ttk is so fast that even with two missiles the SAM launcher would be destroyed before it could fire both.

With ESF I could pop up unload lolpods, drop down and pop up again until SAM is dead.

This is true, and is part of the intended design.

The NS-500 SAM is a long-range SAM system. It is far less effective at closer ranges. It is not a one-size-fits-all solution (unlike some aircraft). For close-range air defense, it would rely on nearby Skyguards or MANPADS to protect it.

Sounds good, anything to remind the Air Chavs that they are flying around in something that is fragile, that relies on speed etc to do the damage, not sit 250m above camping the spawn room killing everything that leaves, only to spot a skyguard and kill it as well knowing that they have the most effective armour in this game....

Yeah, Liberators have way too much armor at the moment. I just finished updating the armor and resist values in the wiki, and here's how the armor of a Liberator stacks up to a Skyguard:

The Liberator resists 32% of Medium Ordnance, while the Lightning takes an extra 50% damage from it.
The Liberator resists 10% of Lancer fire, while the Lightning takes an extra 100% damage from it.
The Liberator resists 10% of Heavy Ordnance, while the Lightning takes an extra 10% damage from it.
The Liberator resists 86% of Air MG (ESF nose cannons), while the Lightning resists... 83%. Weren't ESFs supposed to be the counter for Liberators, not Lightnings?
The Liberator resists 75% of Rocketpods damage, while the Lightning only resists 40% damage. Again, aren't ESF weapons supposed to be more effective against Liberators than Lightnings?
The Liberator resists 75% of AA MG (Walkers and Rangers), while the Lightning resists... the same 75%. Seriously?

I mean yes, the Lightning gets directional armor, but given how the Liberator gets to run around with more HP than an MBT (5,000 versus a 4,000 HP MBT or a 3,000 HP Lightning), it's completely ridiculous.

People say, "oh, the Liberator is a dedicated A2G unit like the A-10 or Mi-24 Hind... so it obviously it should be heavily armored!" Well that's just bogus. The A-10 can resist 23mm projectiles... and in our day and age 25-30mm AAA is the norm. The Hind is even weaker, and can only take 12.7mm/.50 cal rounds. The point is that they are heavily armored... for aircraft, which essentially means that they're about as armored as a Cold War light APC (like the M113). That's what is completely ridiculous about these gunships that have higher resistance values and HP than actual tanks.

I skimmed the post, but I liked what I saw. I do think Gals need a better ground counter as right now, they are very tough to take down before they drop their troops. And what I see most of the time when they die is that the troops all get to their target, the pilot bails too, the gal blows up but now you have 12 dudes per gal in your base that never had to fight their way in.

I think vehicles should be more about supporting infantry rather than be there to farm them. I think these changes would make a much more exciting game with more teamwork and options for squad and platoon leaders other than waypoints. It would make intel more valuable as well.

Air should have much less armour and HP, they should be more like a glass cannon with much much more firepower. So they dont turn into farming machines they should very inaccurate. To make Air usefull to a fight they should have ground targeting support. This can be done in a number of ways, infil laser, squad and platoon leader command console, tank commander command console that uses a drone to designate.

MBT should have much more, HP and resilience against all arms. They are there to give infantry cover to advance and to counter enemy armour. They should be effective in open ground but their turrets should only have a maximum rotation of 60 degrees on either side of the forward facing reference point. this and a slower rotating turret limits their ability to fight in close spaces. Their weapons should be excellent at medium to longer ranges but useless up close.

These changes would make the game much more fun with diversity and tactical options. It encourages greater teamwork and give leaders a reason to be a leader. squad and platoon leaders should have access to more powerful weapons. Platoon commanders could be the only ones with access to carpet bombs where as squad leaders could be restricted to a single jdam or something like an A10 tankbuster run whereas infils may only get access to lightning tank with a mortar barrage. These weapons will have to have a limited range due to rending issues but the target assist allows aircraft to duck in and out much faster.

After a target has been marked, either by device or on a command console map and the ordinance selected, then a mission is given to near by available aircraft with that ordinance. They can then accept or decline the mission.

lightnings could have more light support weapons, the skygard gets boring after awhile. turning it into a missile system to lock on to aircraft would allow it to deploy hydraulics and allow it to do a rocket mortar barrage.

More open maps with more space for tank battles, then make the larger bases even more urban for infantry with 6 outer bases rather than 3. make it into more like a city. vehicles only enter at their own peril.

Counters for these new weapons could be things like laser detection warning. If a air strike is ordered by a CUD then a smoke marker for where the air/mortar strike will land etc.

I think you might need to tweak the fundamentals of this. Sure, it'd be a great deterrent, but if you're flying a full gal to a hot zone, and see this SAM notice pop up, what does it mean? Well, some guy decided to pull a sundy and sit out on the ridge 1000m away to scare the figurative crap out of anything in the air. It doesn't really seem justified.

That's where teamwork and combined arms comes into play. Once you see/hear the NS-500 SAM, mark down its location and get on platoon chat to call in your armor column to blow that SAM to pieces. Or use a pair of Harassers to deliver a C4 special delivery along with the Harasser's AT weapons. Or any number of ground-based solutions to destroying air defenses.

The point is that air shouldn't be able to operate independently of ground units (and ground units shouldn't be able to operate independently of air units). When air and ground are forced to rely on the strengths of each other, then that's true combined arms.

Just think of any RTS game... it would be suicide and foolish sending in a bunch of air transports if the other player had a ton of effective AA set up in the area. How would you solve this in a RTS game? You'd take out their AA first, and then send in your air transports. That's strategy.

As another variant of "putting AA weapons on a Sunderer", here's a counter to air that does absolutely zero damage to it! Nada. Not one point. You wanted an air deterrent, so here's one that is perfectly balanced because it is incapable of killing air by itself!



Essentially flashbangs air out of the sky... and if that doesn't give them enough of a hint to fudge off, then after repeated hits it shuts down their weapons... and eventually their engines.

Still doesn't kill aircraft... that's gravity doing the job.

Yet another high cost deterrent, that fails to kill the enemy. It will be extremely unpopular. Rather than this, skyguard cost should be reduced drastically to 250 certs instead of 1000.