[Suggestion] Range Reduction on Air/Ground AA

As we can see from score per hour tables, ESF is at a really bad place. Rebalance is in order.
All aircraft and ground AA units need range reduction. For example: burster MAX should do full damage to ESF up to 100m. At 200m damage would fall to 50%. At 400m it would be 25% etc...

Similar logic needs to be applied to ESFs and liberators.
Way to do this is to increase the projectile spread.
So for example ESF shooting AA MAX with nosegun will do 100% DPS on burster MAX up to 100m. At 200m it would do 50% dps damage because half of the bullets would miss due to projectile spread at that range.

Liberator belly gun will have slightly different numbers for apparent reason but the gist of idea is same. Longer range, less damage.

Reason why I'm suggesting this is to create more dynamic ground/air battles and to solve the issue of ground AA interfering in dogfight battles. If you wish to create no-fly zone then AA units need to be adequately distributed over the region. If there is only one huge burster MAX nest sitting at the base then it will be able to protect that base but it wouldn't be able to cover entire region.

No

Why not?

The issue is more that:

- MAX units are indeed slightly too good at long-range AA, larger CoF might help with that. We're talking very minor tweaks here.

- Aircraft defense against lock-on launchers does not stack like lock-on launcher stack. The whole sensor / countermeasure needs to be redesigned. There should be three different sensors (RADAR, LASER, IR) with corresponding countermeasures which are chance-based and affect all seeker heads which can see the countermeasure. Aircraft would have to choose as to which countermeasure type to pull, with the bonus that their countermeasures could help others in the area. The current system is too binary and when your wing-mate pops a counter-measure it does nothing for protecting your aircraft.

Good ESF pilots that use the terrain to their advantage or sneak in from high altitude are still deadly. You need to keep moving, keep situational awareness, travel in packs and use the terrain to reduce missile / flak threats. Vary your speed, vary your approach, constantly change directions (just like when faced with a sniper as a ground pounder).

I don't necessarily disagree with aircraft and AA being less immediately lethal to one another, but at the same time you're still requiring that they be within 'extreme pain' distance of each other in order to function. Further, aircraft suffer much much more for population density than AA does. You won't often get a bunch of MAXes or SkyGuards crashing into each other and dying, for instance, and even if they would (I mean I guess an SG could run over a MAX) they can do their thing quite well with minimal movement most of the time. The benefit (less time in AA range per attack run) may in the end be outdone by the detriment (there are now fewer of you in range to choose from, and this proximity to the target makes you a hazard to each other).

From my experience ESFs usually crash into each other when there is no AA and everyone is hovering around the base trying to get free kills. If there is AA then nobody will want to hover around but will get in, get a quick kill and get out of danger zone as soon as possible.

That said I believe these changes would mostly benefit liberators. ESFs can evade flak by flying low but libs on the other hand are real flak sponges. You will absorb flak from neighboring regions, not only base you are attacking and that is one of the reasons I think we need engagement range reduction on both air and ground AA.

Indeed. I mostly had liberators in mind while I was writing this because they have hard time evading flak the way ESFs do.
Also I think burster maxes should be point-defense weapon rather than suppressing entire region airspace. Way to make this happen is by reducing effective range.

if you want to distance A2A fights, from Flak, I would suggest something like increasing the flight ceiling 300m or so. Maybe if possible, only increase the flight ceiling for ESFs.

Some places like Scarred mesa, the flight ceiling isn't much more than a few hundred meters above the ground.

I like you're ideas however what your asking for is to drastic you want AA maxes to be effective not be aa shot guns.

Because the ranges are short enough as it is. Flak velocity is fairly low, so the only way you are going to hit someone is by leading them by a lot, and sudden changes in direction will waste half the magazine or more....and this is for Burster MAXes, which are the best AA around. The skyguard has an even SHORTER effective range, but makes up for it by being more maneuverable and a larger magazine size/ammo count. As far as turrets go, well, they dont move.

So no, you dont get to nerf AA because when us flak gunners arent out there, you have 20 airplanes farming infantry kills with lolpods and thats even worse than too much AA.

Hell, the only other thing we can kill is an infantryman if they are really close and we're lucky, so we better be effective vs. air and provide some area denial for our tanks and ground-pounders.

Boy, I cant wait to see the whines when TR gets lockdown. Thier bursters are going to OWN...its almost enough to make me switch from NC.

Add a cloud layer. Put 500 meters on top of that, AA cant see above the clouds, air cant see the ground through clouds if the Liberator is having trouble avoiding AA then they just fly up. Lock-on missiles will still follow through the clouds until they have reached max reach.

Allows the dog-fights that every ace wants to have. Allows air to be relatively safe from everything bar other air. Makes galaxy transportation much more viable long-term.

You can nerf AA all you want as soon as rocketpods are removed and ESF are mainly used to hunt enemy libs.

AA can get a nerf if you give up on rocket pods.

Deal ?

I'm saying that CoF increase should be applied to all platforms not just ground AA. Both sides will have harder time hitting the targets and they will be forced to reduce distance or suffer DPS penalty.

I don't like lolpodders dominating ground battles but I think that having 5 burster maxes sit near spawnroom and create no-fly zone in entire region is almost as bad. We need balance. And damage falloff might be the answer.

PS: We will see but there is a good chance that TR lockdown might limit the MAXes ability to turn so it will be vulnerable to flanking attacks.

How about we nerf both and keep their current power relation?

I like this.

Not until Dalton sniping of vehicles from high up above any lock on and AA turret effectiveness is gone.

As someone who spends a decent amount of time piloting a Lib, I see no problems with ground-based AA. The biggest problem is that ESFs utterly dominate Gals/Libs and they have almost no way to get away from them.

Refer to post #15

Refer to my post above, Cloud layer will be perfect for those who have problems like that