Please buff AA.

A weapon for infantry, that costs no resources to pull (is what i ment by free, cert investment is nothing but a time delay wall), and has air burst functionality making it extremely easy to score chip damage with. A0ir complains enough about lock-ons and they have counters and warnings. As much as I like the idea of a man portable flack cannon, at the same time I understand how crazy it could get if not handled correctly.

but its something that could have saved the game alot of trouble down the road.

Yes, and if he is there for any shorter, he won't do enough damage to any ground vehicles to be effective.

AA would be over powered with a buff. The skyguard can kill an esf in one clip. That's not a long time. Just because the AA can't get the kill, does not mean it is underpowered. It does its job, which is keep the sky clear.

In his mind, if AA doesn't kill aircrafts without a chance for the to run away; it means that AA is underpowered. I've tried debating it with him but.... He has no air experience what'soever... kind of a lost cause.

All I can see SG needing is EITHER (one OR the other) Increased close range damage (50m ish) to deal with A2G farmers. or a decrease in their COF. These ARE supposed to be the top end for Mobile AA, yet they are surpassed in mobility by maxs, since maxs can climb more hills and hide better, not to mention being a bigger target that can't cert Flak armor.

SG lose SO much of their damage potiential at range due to the current COF. Number wise it doesn't seem bad, but when you are firing at targets that aren't hugging the muzzle of your cannon, the spread is bad enough to eventually get you to a 50%+ miss rate rapidly because you can't compensate for random COF

This buff AA is coming from people who basically never fly. Finding a spot where you can actually attack ground is nearly impossible. There is SOOO much flak everywhere and every second heavy runs around with a lockon these days.

The amount of damage AA (burster and skyguard) do up close needs to be much greater.
Something like direct hit damage of XXX that falls of to ZZZ at 300m some minimum.
Flak damage is a flat YYY at all ranges.

So up close they take a lot of direct damage plus flak (this double whammy was removed long ago).
but farther out and harder to hit aircraft (esf) are only taking flak damage that is much less.

It also adds a lot of skill to burster, good burster/skyguards will still do really good damage upto 300m.

Did you guys ever fly? AA can still bring my health down to 1/4 from 3 bases further the **** are you all smoking?
I'm a A2A pilot so I don't even bother ground and sometimes I just get rekt so quickly by AA that I can't even jump out soon enough.

AA is good if not OP, if you buff it you will hurt A2A esf's too wich makes no sense to what your point is.

Imo AA should be nerfed in range atleast, tired of getting blasted from 3 bases further

I am with Merlock,
AA is too good...

I wish, the DEV`S giv Turrets and Skyguards a Bulletdrop, because a Skyguard shoot over 3 Bases....

AA Need a littel nerf, i Thing much Pilots r with me

You already have that option. Every faction has an ES rocket launcher for either ground or air.... it's also a dumbfire that does 1,000 damage. Unlock the G2A launcher and use it as a dumbfire launcher for everything else. Now your HA is always ready for aircraft yet can still take on ground targets like a boss.

By the time you've scared off the aircraft with your skyguard you've likely regained most of the nanties... go pull something else.

MAX can easily change loadouts and so can any infantry class. So frankly I don't buy this whole "we need better AA cuz ppl can't be bothered to swap loadouts" sob story.

To the OP... you obviously never fly. AA is so prevalent that I'm not sure why most pilots even fly. Even if there is no AA in the area and you come in for some kills... people pull lockons and bursters very quickly.

Besides it's only a mater of time before the A2A dudes hear there are some ground pounders and come in for some easy kills anyway.

Well at least you said please.

But...

I call complete BS on your views on Bursters. Unlike armor, MAXes have the ability to switch loadouts. 2 Burster MAXes will scare away almost all enemy air from a battle. As a MAX lover as well as a mediocre pilot I know that ESFs cut like butter under Burster flak. And when I'm done about my business scaring away the air, I switch right over to my Scattercannons (or Mercy or Blueshift etc) for some infantry instagibbing. Or keep in mind that 2 lock-ons will kill almost all ESFs, and that's absolutely free (given you have 250 certs to spend).

Now Skyguards, on the other hand, loses a lot of its infantry after it does its job. It reinforces an age-old feature request regarding the ability to switch vehicle loadouts. That I would support since you don't want to bring HE rounds to an armor battle...

In respect to Liberators, ESFs with rocket pods do less damage and are killed much more easily than a Zepher Liberator. Zephyrs exist for farming infantry and no other reason, and that's fine as long as there is a worthy counter. Maybe a longer reload time and slower ROF? I don't know how they can nerf it, or even if it should be nerfed, because in the end it gets the same criticism as HE rounds.

So my conclusion? Burster MAXes are perfectly fine. If you don't have resources for one, pull lock-ons. Vehicle loadout switches would make driving/flying one so much more worth it.

I probably should've been more clear; I wasn't talking about rocket launchers. I was talking about ground vehicle-mounted AA. Take the Ranger for example. It's utter trash against anything that doesn't fly. It's too specialized to be worth much of a damn when its natural enemy isn't around. Same goes for the Skyguard, to a somewhat lesser extent.

The Walker is the only ground vehicle-mounted AA weapon I'd say is right about where it needs to be as far as effectiveness vs ground; not completely helpless vs vehicles, decent vs infantry.

While I do wish the rangers had more utility it is a weapon I only equip on a support sundy when I'm with a large armor column and have little to fear from armor or infantry. As for the g2a always reacting to the air. Why don't you have lockons equipped on your heavies. I can understand if its a low br and you just haven't gotten the chance to earn enough certs but I got mine around br20. Unless you have a specific need for a different rocket launcher default to your g2a rocket launcher. I can dumbfire against ground targets so it remains effective when there are no aircraft to shoot.

And stop worrying about actually getting the kills when running anti air. You are there as a deterrent. Remember this is a team based game. Sometimes that means someone else gets the kill and sometimes that means forcing someone to pull back and heal/repair to force them to leave your allies alone for a few seconds. Remember if that esf tries charging head on into a skyguard he last less than 5 seconds. I have had idiot pilots try coming in low and slow behind me pelt me with rockets and then die immediately after I turn the turret to face them. The skyguard is not underpowered and any change, buff or nerf, will break the balance.

And that would completely and utterly remove all Air vehicles from the game...Anyone that even makes such a suggestion is not looking for balance and is simply being completely unreasonable or an idiot and I do not take you for an idiot.

What you and many people fail to take into consideration is the population difference between the different units and how that factors into their relative power and survivability vs the more populated units. Infantry easily out number ground vehicles on a continent at any one time by a factor of atleast 5:1, air vehicles by a factor of 10:1 and ground vehicles easily out populate air vehicles by a factor of 3:1.

The difference in the number of units is something we must also take into consideration in terms of balance. If a single infantry unit or even a ground vehicle unit had the AA capabilities of an A2A ESF or even the ability to kill Air as soon as it gets in engagement range, they would absolutely dominate the lower populated Air units. Because, there would always be the potential for 10 "A2A ESF" Infantry units or 3 "A2A ESF" Ground vehicles for ever Air unit at any and all times.

This is one of the reasons why when we talk about balancing Infantry and ground vehicles in terms of multiples of Air units. for instance it takes 3 Infantry Lock-ons to kill an ESF in a single volley or a single burster, for infantry that is an easy number to reach because of the population of total infantry. Since, there are 10 Infantry units for every Air Unit balancing it means requiring multiple Infantry at a time to reach the same level of Anti-Air power compared to an A2A ESF unit is justified. The same is true for ground vehicles, they outnumber Air units by at least a 3:1 ratio at any time, therefore you can not give them the same level of power or else they will too easily & completely dominate the Air units.

If Air Vehicles matched Vehicles in a 1:1 ratio on the continent, then I would agree a single G2A unit should be able to kill an A2G unit on equal terms, but because there are 3:1 or more ground vehicles and 10:1 Infantry compared to Air units, then we need to require more ground vehicles to match Air units.

Now, the ratio's I mentioned above are not accurate or drawn from a direct source, but they are in the ball park or at least on the low side and we can see this in the cause of death for Infantry and Ground units and just from experience in the game at any fight. For all of the complaints about Air vehicles killing ground vehicles, try and find an Air unit as a major cause of death for any Ground vehicle, there aren't any. The reason is because there are so many more ground vehicles, then Air units and for every ground vehicle an Air vehicle Kills 3 or more ground vehicles are killed by other ground vehicles.

Are things we can do to tweak the Air / Ground game, yes, but increasing AA is not needed, as it would force Players out of the Air and ruin the Air game. Biggest changes that would impact the game without buffing AA, would be to allow vehicles to swap out load outs, increase the Vertical Rise of MBT & Lightnings and give the skyguard a secondary non AA function. None of these things increase the power of AA, but they would give players more flexibility when they pull an AA ground vehicle or a a tank for engaging Air.

Lemme get this straight.

Currently a Skyguard is strong enough that the act of pulling one and opening fire chases off aircraft because if they don't they die...


so you just want it to vaporize aircraft IMMEDIATELY just by looking in their general direction or.......?

The answer is 2 fold

#1: Let tanks/ground vehicles change loadouts. Now you can pull a skyguard, chase them off, and then swap to an AP variant to hunt down their sunderer or w/e

#2: Increase rewards (XP) for being an air deterrent. (just BEING AA near allies in a combat zone should reward XP like Objective Defense does, and also increase Air damage xp to 100xp per tick instead of a measley 25)

TTK of skyguard to ESF is one of the shortest vehicle TTKs there is (short of what a titan round can OHK, incidentally including the ESF)

As such you lack the comprehensive understanding required to actually create a balance.

Instead, you have a strong bias.

Yeah, because a single AA vehicle should be able to instagib an ESF with 1 volley by itself.

First of all... Flak does not tickle an ESF. It demolishes it. You're either spooking them too early, or missing shots as they pass laterally by you (meaning they aren't hitting you directly).

Next you don't need to run nanites. You've got G2A launchers. Three heavies and poof the ESF is instagibbed. Libs are heavily damaged as well and a second round from each will finish them. Flares? No one runs those anymore, its all about the fire supression nowadays.

But the real issue is the scaling. AA scales exponentially. Air scales linearly. What this means is to a certain point they are equal. But once that point is passed (usually around 6-8 AA sources) the area is totally denied. Buffing AA moves that number down to 4-6 or lower.

This means all it would take is a squad sized element to deny air an area instead of a platoon. Is that what you all want? Well of course it is. You're not looking for balance. You're looking for vengeance. Lets be honest with ourselves. You all want your happy gunplay to be uninterrupted. Because this is true about those who want AA buffed:



Lets look at one fact:

Air cannot win alerts. What? Yeah that's right. They cannot win alerts because they cannot take bases. Try it. Get in a ESF or a Lib and try to take a base with it. Its physically impossible. Hell most control points (with the exception of 3-4 per continent out of 70 bases per continent) are indoors. Meaning you cannot even fire upon those defending or attacking (meaning you can't really help defend either other than sundy hunting).

So to simplify it, the purpose of air is one of two things:

1. Cert farming (not really winning)
2. Sundy hunting (only works for defense)

We need to buff AA because of how -good- these things are at Sundy hunting? Seriously? I mean that's the only legitimate reason. Sorry Cert Farmers, I'm not entertaining balance issues around your playstyle, eventually you'll be done and you'll be playing properly or quit out of burn out.

I liked that post with a shredder mounted upside down on a lightning. Looked damn good too. But tbh, the skyguard should be able to do that job. Maybe give it more short range direct damage to counter lib's trying to tb-gib them, and let that damage be replaced with the flak damage when range increases. That way it would be an air deterrant at range, but able to seriously mess up a lib going for it.