[Suggestion] Range Reduction on Air/Ground AA

K/D means nothing. I have a good K/D as well. Also lot of fliers disconnect just before dying to preserve their K/D.
Score per hour is what you should focus at.

For air ops you need to have everyone on comms. Burster MAXes are zerg's knee jerk reaction to seeing lolpods.
Maxes can be revived, ESFs can't. ESFs are much more exposed than maxes sitting near spawnroom behind friendly lines.

I've been in few air raids and they can be devastating no doubt. But don't compare the level of organization they require to that of ground AA. Skill levels are vastly different and so is the stacking penalty ( 1 ESF will beat 1 Burster MAX but 10 ESFs won't beat 10 Burster MAXes especially if they are scattered and having medic/engineer support. )

Hm I was using same source as you but the API data pull was for previous month. Seems that ESF score per hour rates suddenly improved. I don't know how to explain this. Either author had buggy data pull code or perhaps a wave of newbie pilots tried their hands on ESFs after the vehicle kill XP reward increase and thus artificially reduced score per hour performance.

In any case I stand corrected.

No. I absolutely disagree, good sir. This is a commonly held belief, sure, but I utterly disagree. I'm a strong proponent of the K/D ratio for combat-focused classes. If a pilot has a high k/d, he most certainly is good at what he does. There is no getting around that, period.

And so the pieces are starting to fall into place.

Yes and? Our outfit requires teamspeak to join, you don't play with us if you're not talking, so this isn't a problem. Perhaps you should join a similar outfit.

ESFs can fly away, ESFs don't require another player to restock, ESF's have horrifying anti-infantry and anti-armor capacity, whereas bursters are ONLY good for killing air. The key here is that Bursters are a RESPONSE, whereas ESFs PRESS THE ISSUE. ESF's decide when and where to start a conflict, that is their advantage.

If there are ten bursters, don't fly over them. As an AIRCRAFT, you get to make these choices. That's where the skill gap comes in, a concept you should probably look into if you think aircraft need a buff.

If you want ground AA to have its range reduced, then its dps needs to be increased at close range.

If I can't effectively damage you when you're far away, then I damn well want to make sure you die if you come up close.

I don't fly but I watched a stream a few days back where an NC pilot literally stayed up in one aircraft for like 2ish hours. He was getting kills and all that. Got locked on but he was able to outplay them/used good tactics.....soooo...my suggestion is change tactics maybe? If they did do a range reduction i'd ONLY support it if the damage scaled evenly so ground can't snipe air and air can't snipe ground. But if you throw libs in the mix they will just fly super high and snipe infantry so I say leave the lock on's as is.

One issue with that is simply the bases are too close together. The base you are taking fire that's the next over may only be 300-500m off, if you nerfed AA to not be able to affect you at that range a LIB could easily sit 500m over a base they want to bomb and do so with near immunity. If you nerfed the air to do severe damage reduction at longer ranges you'd have to bring your aircraft into easy dumbfire/tank range to do anything useful, which would be suicidal in larger battles.

just buff the health value by ~20% on esf and libs, problem solved

But this is now, when it's not necessary to get so close, and flak has a long enough range to chase off some of the planes that might've attacked before they even see a lot of the targets down there.

give up lolpods first then we talk.

I don't see a problem with AA how it is. It's neither OP nor UP.

If you are a lone pilot flying into heavy flak, you deserve to die. Just as if you are a lone AA, either Skyguard, Burster, or HA, verses two or more ESFs or Libs, you deserve to die if you don't take cover.

That's more or less what a lot of us are asking for. Rocket Pods are much too powerful for an air superiority unit, and are completely overtaking the Liberator as an A2G platform. However G2A is far too powerful to allow ESFs to fully perform a role as an A2A aircraft as well.

It's not a problem, it's designed to be that way. Get ESF escorts or flying lessons from some of the better lib teams.