Restore balance and sanity to air power

I'm a pilot.

Drop my rocket pods , afterburner tanks or A2A lock-ons for something that makes it really really hard to lock me ? Yes Please.

The rocket pods should have been a AV weapon from the start with a little or no ability to harm infantry.

Two distinct groups of AA which need balancing are
1) Flak based
2) Missile based


-Balancing flak would be best done by nerfing AA burster max and buffing skyguards.
Currently ground units simply need few people to switch to AA burster MAXes and voila - air threat is neutralized.

-As an ESF pilot I generally do not care about lock-on missiles because ESFs are very mobile and can simply use terrain as cover.
Liberators on the other hand are having much harder time dealing with those but since I don't fly liberators I don't feel qualified to give suggestions on how to balance this. I know that libs are either very deadly or completely useless depending on how much G2A is present so balancing them should be done with extreme care.

Let me take a wild guess:

1) you never flew anything in the current build
2) CoD is your favourite game
3) this game would be better off when vehicle haters like you would be given a 10x10m knife only arena so you would finally shut up on these forums and the devs could stop nerfing every fun and unique aspect of the game into oblivion (so they can say they listen to "the community" - which is infact mostly a vocal minority off cod crybabies)

Will merely move the problem.
ESFs will start hunting vehicles instead of infantry, still be too good against isolated targets, and still useless in large engagements.

The single best way to fix them is to reduce their individual efficiency while increasing their ability as a part of combined arms.
In other words:
Laser guided missiles (from the ground) and EMP bombs

I'd like that. Would make it a choice worth considering versus flares.

i like the idea but having bought a nemesis ,annihilator,hades
i would have to have a refund on 2 as annihilator would just be a lock on av weapon same as hades.
would love that to happen.

One of the coordinated problems I've seen ground-based AA have is the you can't always properly define which target in the sky people should be shooting at. Tracing does help, but when there are many planes in the sky, it's difficult to call out "focus on that one" where that one is a single plane where there could be five or more. Every ground unit painting doritos on them just makes it harder because a dedicated AA spotter would make it eaiser to indicate via the existing IFF system which targets people should focus on. Another reason I wanted Flak buffed damage-wise is because pilots didn't take it seriously until their personal level of damage passed a threshold and, until then, they just puttered around the battlefield doing whatever. Denial of the sky doesn't exist where pilots aren't afraid to get shot down, even if the balance goal is to not outright shoot them down.

Buffing AA like this, even if only for a short run, is hopefully enlightening. If you are trying to promote a tactic, it has to be taken seriously by both the people implementing it and the people it opposes for it to work. The problem is this back and forth would not even be an issue if we didn't have render/existence distance issues, or if Flak had the same level of existence on the map as an AT Mine does. Then pilots would be able to tell where it's coming from even if they can't see the unit firing it.

As someone pointed-out in another thread, the imbalance started when ESFs were given rocket pods and proceeded to use them to farm Infantry, the classes that were not originally intended to hard-counter Air. ESFs were designed with Liberator countering in mind, but it was more rewarding to attack ground targets, and it got worse as more pilots began practicing miserly denial of experience tactics that Infantry couldn't. The gunships, meanwhile, no longer as fearful of enemy ESFs, moved closer to the ground and began targetting Infantry too. Even if they did attack gunships, now both sides of Air were frequently pounding the Infantry, and the only reliable solution being offered was more Air to counter the disporportionate amount of Air attacking the Ground, something that was not viewed as core problem resolution but could only lead to further escalation.

I think you have the right idea but it definitely needs some changes.

I wouldnt mind giving up rocket pods for AT rockets, if only to stop the forum crying from COD kids. If that is the only way to un-nerf ESFs out of uselessness then so be it.

Where i disagree with you is the buffs to AA. Skyguard is a little OP but I can live with its current form considering it's cost, timer, limited spawn locations, and inability to resupply outside a base. AA MAXes, on the other hand, are crazy OP. They cost very little, have a very short timer, can be spawned from/transported in sunderers, resupplied endlessly anywhere on the map, can't be locked onto, and do ridiculously high damage.

I remember even before the buffs, all i had to do was spawn an AA MAX and that entire hex would be clear of enemy air within minutes. I might only get three or four kills before air became a ghost town, but every pilot in the area either died or immediately ran. And that was BEFORE all the buffs. Now it is just insane. Not only do they do more damage, but more people have unlocked double bursters, so pilots are usually dealing with 2-3 MAXes, if not more at a base. This creates a situation where air is very effective if there is no AA, or completely absent from the battle if even one person decides to pull a MAX. I'm sorry, but imho i do not think one person should be able to shut down the entire enemy air force in a hex with something as cheap and easy to obtain as a MAX.

Btw inb4 "MAXes cant win if there's more than one ESF, its so easy to kill a MAX with rockets blah blah blah." I'm sorry but if you can't kill/chase away 5+ ESFs in a MAX single-handedly, you are bad at leading a moving target. I am not trying to be rude, there's no other way to say it, this is just the cold harsh reality of the situation. Weapons in a game should be designed such that they are only extremely effective when used by an extremely skilled player. As it stands now, AA MAXes are extremely effective when used by even below average players, but game breaking when used by skilled players.

Two possible solutions:
1. Nerf AA MAX and G2A launchers. I don't like this approach as it's just too difficult to balance two weapons that hard counter each other. One side will always think the other is OP.

2. Severely nerf AA MAX and G2A, and put bubble shields around all major bases effectively creating infantry only zones. Vehicles rule smaller bases and open area in between, ground rules base fights. Simple as that.

I'd like to see things taken further and have damage falloff added to esf weapons in regards to infantry while buffing their survivability to ground damage, this will bring the fighting in closer which would make the back and forth between air vs ground much more exciting.

http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/...e-make-lockon-missiles-appear-on-radar.83195/

Alot of the reason for the AA/AV being as powerful as it is is due to the fact that they are just far too plentiful. When you have a swarm of aircraft or tanks just steaming through area after area, you need those powerful weapons to eliminate them. Instead, why not limit vehicles but make them more survivable? My anti-Spam proposal;

http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/anti-spam-proposal.94325/

Yeah, no. 1) There are still liberators and 2) call the rocket pods what you will, but with no infantry AA ESFs will still farm them.

ESF's are fine as they are now. They're still very capable in good hands, while giving infantry a good chance of defending themselves.

All of the ESF pilots are so used to killing 10's of people at will with no issue. Now, they can't just fly into battle and do as they wish, as it should be.


ESF's in the first place, should have never been given pods at all, and in my opinion, no hover ability either. They should have been treated more like jets, and kept as anti-air / possible fly-by tank busters.

This is a very good observation. As far as rest of your post is concerned it makes little sense. G2A units don't focus fire where there is much aircraft but then again neither do air units when there are lots of ground targets. And I don't really want to list number of reasons why G2A has the upper hand when the number of combatants on both side increases.
You should try flying before suggesting flak buff.

Why bother. If ESF want to kill tanks the best way is to invest in an ejector seat and drop land mines on them. But I suppose an AP cannon secondary would allow the ESF to take out a liberator before they jump out to drop land mines on sunderers. Real PS2 talk.

Real men use the nose gun to shoot infantry anyway

I'm not sure why everyone is complaining about Rocket Pods. I've only been killed ~30 times by them with over 160 hours of gameplay. If you put yourself in a vulnerable situation of course you're going to get killed by them. Maybe I'm just too smart to be playing this game.

30 times? I'm pretty sure that's how many times I've been killed by them just after spawning / being revived when I didn't even know they were there, add on another 10-15 times when I knew they were there but thought I had a chance for what ever dumb reason, add on a good 80 for when I was in a tank, another 30 for times hunted while driving a flash... another 100 for times they managed to spam infantry fights, a good 20 for tk's by friendly pods (they'll happily spam at the one dude you're having a toe to toe with with no regard for how much damage they are likely to do to you also), a good 10-15 while in an ESF, half a dozen while in a Lib, same again for Galaxy, a good two dozen while in a Sundy... yea I get podded a lot =/

While in a tank the majority of my deaths come from pods, while infantry it's probably second to other infantry, while in an ESF it's up there, no where near n.1 but it happens fairly often. I've said it before, take off TK's and Pod deaths, I'll be happily rolling around on over 2-1 k/d.

Brilliant, really. Especially if you consider right now the biggest argument that was employed against Annihilators was they created a one-stop shop to be able to kill EVERYTHING in the game. Anti infantry, anti air, and anti ground all wrapped in one. This should NEVER be an intended design in a COMBINED arms game.

As a pilot, I found myself feeling like a huuuuuge hipocrit when I realized that this all-in-one result of the annihilator HA was equivalent to an AA nosegun/rocket pod combo ESF. You have your nose gun to kill ESF perfectly well, and EVERYTHING else dies to rocket pods, even Libs and gals. The rotary is literally only NEEDED to kill ESFs, all else is just rocket pod fodder.

If rocket pods were changed to be only AV, then you have to choose whether you want the AA nosegun, stock gun, or AI gun. Plus, making vehicles and maxes only threats to air helps nullify rendering issues, with maxes having render distance of vehicles.

Tradeoffs that need to be taken into serious consideration depending on the threat at hand. This is what this game needs! Otherwise, don't even use the combined arms argument.

Furthermore, I would also like to put forward that it makes no sense that infantry and maxes can switch out their loadouts on the fly, but vehicles cannot. Imo vehicles should be able to switch as well, but maybe require it at specific bases or only WGs. Just food for thought.

I'd be happy if PS2 simply restored DOGFIGHTS to the game.