[Suggestion] PS1 Anti-Air MAX weaponry.

For now all we have is NS Burster. It has 100m effective range due to its huge cone of fire. But what about longer range, like 300+ meters? That's where I want to see faction specific AA MAX weapons. These weapons were second to best AA solutions. #1 was Skyguard. We don't count BFR weapons, those were just larger versions of MAX weapons. So what are those weapons:

TR: Errr... Burster. High precision flak cannons which revealed its full potential with lockdown. I mean it had way smaller cone of fire than current Burster.

NC: Sparrow. Missile launcher with "Fire and Forget" lock on system and moderate damage.

VS: Starfire. Plasma missile launcher, you had to lock and lead the target in order to maintain the lock till missiles reach the target. Had higher damage than Sparrow, but less ammo in a mag.

Some of you might cry "oh noes, more lock-ons!". I say during PS1 days we had to deal with this and we had no flares! Only trees. Our mortal foes and best allies at the same time.

So heavy AA guns on Maxes right?
Can it kill a Liberator is my only real question.

Also holy ****, all but TR is a type of lock-on.

* sits down with popcorn and awaits all the skyknights crying and whining *

I wouldn't call them heavy AA guns. Just imagine it as AA equivalents of Fractures/Vortex/Ravens. They do continuous damage at range, but not as effective as shorter range weapons.

Also TR MAXes had no lock-ons because TR infantry had it in form of Striker.

I'm usually capable of hitting with bursters as long as the aircraft is in sight, due to its huge spash/flak. But its a weak gun, should be buffed, so that dual bursters can take down an ESF before its capable of kamikazeing into you.

I think AA max does need new AA options - but not as drastic as the OP.

Something akin to to the G30 walker would be a good option IMO. It should be fast firing and have high damage against aircraft, especially at close range. It could perhaps have an armour piercing ammo option which would make it more effective against libs and gals - whilst reducing it's accuracy or velocity (thereby reducing effectiveness against ESFs and Valks which are a smaller target).

It would be particularly effective against aircraft that hover with impunity or ones that face off at close range - but it's effectiveness against fast moving targets would be limited by it's lack of flak damage.

Only the highly skilled would be able to lead their target with sufficient accuracy to cause significant damage at medium to long ranges.

I agree - the fact that an ESF can face off a Dual Burster Max and win is silly IMO.

Perhaps if the Burster damage model was tweaked slightly - it would make it much more effective, especially at close range, whilst not making it OP at long range.

IMO - all they would need to do is to allow the projectile to continue on it's original trajectory after it has 'burst' and if it contacts the aircraft, then it deals direct damage in addition to the burst damage.


The chances of hitting an aircraft at distance with a direct hit from a burster is negligible owing to it's massive COF, however at close range it would make the Burster a lot more deadly - especially against large targets like Libs and Gals - which under the exiting damage model can just sit there and laugh at you.

It would be nice to see more content- of any type.

Propagating the myth of there being no counter to enemy actions in the realm of a team game and then expressing a hope that partisan bickering occurs as a result isn't a good way to achieve beneficial results.

Well yeah. That's why I mentioned that it's effective range is 100 meters. You can cause random hits on further distance, but that would just annoy the enemy pilot, rather than do any harm.

I don't think that Burster should be buffed, it does its job of fending off enemy aircrafts without creating area of denial on its own. There are other players who should be involved in AA duties to be effective. Well at least overconfident or inexperienced pilots get shredded by Bursters pretty well.

Hell yes. This would also solve the problem of having a completely useless Burster Max once you're waiting for air to make its rounds again.

Nah. Low damage is the price you pay for having a weapon which doesn't require any skill to use. I'm all for re-working flak to require a little more skill and more lethality, but a straight damage buff to an AA unit that can keep aircraft at bay from a spawn room is a mistake.

It's not actually negligible. They've already removed it once because it was inflating damage calculations for the Bursters to a noticeable degree when they had assumed it was already being despawned on burst.

In what universe? The only way an ESF can get the upper hand on that little invisible dot that hasn't even rendered yet is to spot it, make a mental note of where it is and basically pounce on it in a sneak attack, while its distracted. Since flak in its current state is more of a death timer than an actual weapon of skill.

Maybe you can make a video to show me this dual burster max face off that you speak of?

That's what many ESF pilots do - they pop up from behind a hill, tree or building and go toe to toe with the Max at close range.

Rotory canons and lolpods both have a TTK on a full health Max of around 3-3.5 seconds (without headshots). A dual burster max TTK on a full health ESF is almost double that at similar range.

The problem with your G30 Walker idea on MAXes would be that this weapon could damage anything, a job the Gorgon should do already. Also you're trying to design a close range AA variant while OP made this threat for long range AA and while there's the Flak option for close and medium range AA. It's inferior design just needs to change along with MAX survivability which could be achieved if certain weapons would also increase certain resistance values, like each equipped flak type weapon reduces that damage received by air units by x%, each quipped AV weapon would reduce the damage received by vehicle weapons by y% and each equipped AI weapon would reduce the damage received by infantry weapons (including engineer turrets and C4) by z%. Basically allow MAXes to do their job with the appropriate gear.

Ramming is also an issue. I've read a few posts that want MAXes to no longer be easy roadkills to Flashes and to deal damage to the vehicle / aircraft ramming them. Reasonable, imo.

In terms of close range AA for generic infantry I'd rather use what's already in the game but uses an inferior design: Unguided RPGs. Currently they're bulky, unnecessarily blocking a huge area of the screen, their ADS mode is anything but helpful for actual aiming, the projectiles are slow and very ballistic, making them the projectile type that's most easy to evade, imo. They can be used to counter stationary, hovering, predictable moving targets but have no efficiency other than lucky hits on medium to huge distance due to their design. I'd redesign them to be like tank shells in terms of ballistics and projectile speed but in return have their damage fall off, just like it's the case for bullet type weapons, outside their intended range.

Currently fine-tuning damage isn't possible due to the inferior damage tuning model the game uses. It's all just about that a projectile deals x amount of damage and that hits a certain armor that may be shared among multiple targets which would all be affected if a change to either the armor type or weapon damage is made that should actually only aim at the one issue to fix instead of broadly affecting many things that aren't desired to receive the change.

So an additional damage type system would be nice for fine-tuning. I'd come up with this:

The generic setting for a projectile, like "RPG deals 1000 damage to all it hits" by applying that to "units":
damage=1000 +units(100%)

If we don't want infantry to suffer 1000 damage but 1500 we could have a syntax like that:
damage=1000 +units(100%) +infantry(500)
-> percentage or absolute values would be possible, even both combined instead of a single armor entry value

If we additionally want MAX units to sufffer 1250 only instead then this could be used:
damage=1000 +units(100%) +infantry(500) -MAX(250)

If we want all of the previous one with 500 extra damage to vehicles, 500 more extra damage to light vehicles (Flash, Harasser) but 250 damage less to Sunderers and MBTs than to all other vehilces then this would be used:
damage=1000 +units(100%) +infantry(500) -MAX(250) +vehicles(500) +light_vehicles(500) -Sunderer(250) -MBTs(250)

A broad setting is made, defining what that weapon can damage and further down the line more fine tuning is made how the damage values look against what while not tinkering with anything else. Negative damage values mustn't be met with this kind of damage design, unless intended (I don't know if they use negative damage values for heals / repairs) but then an override syntax should have to be used.

As mentioned percentage values could also be used:
damage=1000 +units(100%) +infantry(50%) -LA(50%) -HA(250)
-> 1000 damage to everything, 1500 to infantry, 1500 * 50% to Light Assault ( = 750 damage), 1500 - 250 ( = 1250) to Heavy Assault; as it goes by hierarchy: "units" contains everything that can receive damage, "infantry" is a sub-tree of "units", each infantry class is a sub-entry in the "infantry" tree

Such a design would require to add the appriopriate categories to units so that one unit has multiple matching categories and each time a damage value match is detected the damage value is readjusted. It's a design C&C ZH uses in addition to armor classes but only to determine which unit is affected by what, not to adjust the damage value of weapons towards unit categories or unit types.

Keep in mind this wouldn't replace armor but work together with armor as a concept.

Eventually the effective range design shouldn't be limited to only one entry to determine the point at which the damage starts to fall off and if that entry isn't made the damage remains static but instead allow multiple drop off points or formulas allowing not just linear lines but for curves that start falling off less but faster towards their end.

more low-skill weapons? Nope.

The G2A scene is already plagued by the damage output vs speed and capabilities of the aircraft. It doesn't matter if you can hit your target at 1000m if the actual DPS at that range is so low that you can't even finish off a burning target in under 10 seconds. Or that if you engage an ESF, the weakest armored aircraft, that's hovering 1m above you it still has time to escape with it's life unless the pilot makes a mistake.

And that last part, that's the problem. It doesn't matter how skilled you are, the most important factor that determines if you get the kill is the Pilots reaction. How did he chose to attack the base? Does he react within the first 2 seconds? Does he try to finish his attack run? What escape path does he pick? And even then there's plenty of "bad" escape paths that will still allow the aircraft user to escape intact even if the G2A user was godlike in his aim and leading.

Because I love the idea of this video so much, here it is again:

G2A weapons violate everything they say in that video. It's not designed with the opponent in mind. Aircraft basically have two options: Bug out or go into a DPS battle to kill them first.
In the meantime, it's not even designed for the user. Because of the speed and ease of escape of their prey the G2A weapon doesn't even really do what it says on the box.


What we need is new G2A weapons that don't function as deterrents. This means getting rid of ultra low-skill weapons. Lock-ons having a much narrower angle in which they acquire the lock, requirements to maintain lock or even doing away with locking altogether and making the missiles laser-guided. Flak would still have a place in the form of heavily reduced detonation range. Currently it's 8m, meaning even if the aircraft hitbox was a single pixel you would still be able to hit it if you got the flak shell anywhere within a sphere the size of 1,6 Sunderer lengths. Flak could easily be used to make hitting aircraft a bit easier, for example by introducing a 0,5 to 2m flak detonation range so that ammo that barely misses the aircraft still counts as hits.
This instantly reduces the effective range of the weapons. Since it now relies on skill to hit the target while you are aiming at the fastest targets in the game with on average the longest ranges in the game even if the aircraft is "close". This instantly solves another problem: One-role weapons. The reason why tanks sport almost exclusively AV weapons is because AV weapons have the most roles to fulfill to some effect. They are good enough for the infantry targets you encounter and don't leave you hanging in a straight up vehicle fight. G2A weapons are designed against the least used unit in the game and have an incredibly low success rate. So players only pull G2A weapons reactively, if at all. But with these changes G2A weapons could fulfill either/both a light AV or AI role, and this can be distributed to make each weapon unique. Lock-ons could easily fulfill a light AV role and even become the primary weapons to deal with Harassers for example. Flak or bullet-based G2A could easily fulfill an AI role, both reducing the complaints about C4 fairies and fulfilling the currently empty role of long-range vehicle AI.


Then, when aircraft actually have a chance of avoiding G2A weapons, you can up the damage. If you surprise an hovering ESF you should be able to absolutely scrap it, just like the aircraft can scrap you if it encounters you. If you manage to get a few hits in you should be rewarded for a kill. And hitting wouldn't be automatic, it would depend on the skill of the aircraft user vs your skill. This also gives players a different way to approach battle. An MBT can remain operational even after it receives damage because getting hit isn't guaranteed and it has the time to react or possibly get behind cover.

That's fine.

No. We do not need to get rid of something to add something. That's the sort of thinking that drives this game down the ditch its players believe it is stuck in.

I think such conjecture attempts to reach far too broadly about weapon assignment roles and moving things around to appease roles.

Chronic repair disorder rarely has anything to do with the source of damage but more to do with the aggravation that carrying slight damage between battles is typically fatal.
Also, experience points.
Also, IR Smoke.

I wasn't suggesting actually giving maxes G30s - more a weapon that fires in a similar manner (rapid firing with a small COF), but which is primarily AA and does massive damage at close range. This would be used primarily as a counter to A2G infantry farmers.

But going back to the Gorgon - could another answer be ammo options for this weapon?. Perhaps a high velocity anti aircraft round that buffs damage against light aircraft at the expense of damage to other units, standard rounds that damage as they do now - and AP rounds that does in creased damage to armoured vehicles and aircraft and Maxes at the expense of damage to light aircraft and standard infantry.

Here's the thing:
ESFs are hard to hit, so you'd think flak is the "dedicated counter". Except for some reason all flak is designed around sustained fire, and ESFs are designed around low exposure time.

My proposition? Make flak weapons match that; low clip size, long reload, high damage. Maybe a little more velocity and/or accuracy since it's meant for a small and fast target. Detonation range needs to be toned down to 2m at most to make it less no-skill, as the current 8m is super easy but ineffective in terms of damage output (needs to be the other way around).

Smart pilots can time their strikes during the flak user's reloads, but those who don't stay sharp and on the move will get one-clipped in a few seconds.

Normally you wouldn't need to get rid of something to add something else. But in this case we have to. Deterrents as they have been used so far in the game have been a constant source of unenjoyable gameplay for both the user and it's opponent, with few people actually enjoying their experience from any perspective. Unless an alternative is created that solves both ends of the problems at once, deterrent weapons simply have no place in the game and need to be removed or better yet rebuild to fit the lethal state of G2A weapons that all other weapon types already experience.

Why do you think that?
Everything in the game suggests that weapons that have only a single role do not perform well or aren't used much. An accurate, skill-based G2A weapon capable of engaging high-speed aircraft across great distances would very very likely be capable of engaging infantry effectively as well, assuming the damage model is good enough against them. It would almost be harder to introduce one that wouldn't be able to engage infantry, for example by introducing a COF and compensating that with a larger flak/coyote-style range, than a skillful G2A weapon that wouldn't be able to engage infantry to some extent.

Considering that aircraft are the least used unit in the game that leave the smallest time to prepare for them, you can't allow G2A weapons to be pulled reactively. They have to be present when the aircraft attack. That also prevents aircraft from looking for fights with less or no G2A to keep them off. And really, any game design where you can look for a fight where no one is effectively countering you is bad.

Not sure what you mean here.
What I meant was that when an aircraft is engaged by G2A, it has to start plotting it's escape route or engage the G2A source and kill it. A tank can remain in an engagement for longer even when damage is sustained, and is even capable of taking a risk by staying in a fight to take out a specific target and then get back to cover, because getting hit isn't an automatic act like with deterrent G2A weapons.

Dude, spare me, I'm russian, I can't digest wall of text in english.