If an ESF picks you out there's little you can do and being too advanced will make you stand out. OTOH if an ESF attacks a group from the rear being advance may save you while lagging behind won't. If you see him you can turn... Tee hee a tank dogfighting with an ESF. I find it difficult to criticise. Driving a tank has a risk / reward thing which I approve of. The only thing I'd ask is to be given more infomation over where threats are coming from . .... rockets that you can't see on radar so you don't even know the direction of the threat are the thing I don't like.
Then all pilots must be Bad. If a ESF swoops down to pod someone for 2 seconds an alert Phoenix toting Heavy has a easy kill. I all ready got like 100 ESF kills. Aim Pop Boom, only takes about 1 second and its over with. deflection is just that, deflection. That Scythe has no warning its coming also so he has no reason to panic. Well until he has to bail from his soon to explode Scythe. Phoenix is not AA only in the Hands of a bad ( very bad ) user. The New API proves this as the Phoenix is killing more Air than the other two RL's.
Why does it even count as the back side when the fire comes from an elevated position? *kicks topside armor cert in the balls* #frustrated
Do you get a lot of kills on BR 70+ Pilots with the Phoenix? These are typically the good pilots who have heavily invested time into ESFs. I already know the Phoenix is the best ESRL, and I already knew the slight nerf/big buff they gave the Phoenix was going to be a bigger threat, but hey if it's even better than the striker for AA now it just shows Higby's bias even more.
Im sorry, but after so many nerf ESF threads I maybe get a little defensive already. I fly all 3 ESF out there and I can tell you out of my perspective, from the Ceres Server, there are not to many possibilities to get a fast easy tank kill. Not to get me wrong. There are the times i fly to my platoon waypoint and I spot a single tank on the ground and i normally will make short work out of it, but to do the same with a combined arms zerg is a totally different story. On our Server, a zerg moves with skyguards, sunderer with AA plus burster MAXes inside. Guarded by their own ESF. You can make suicide runs on the tanks, and if your lucky you can kill one before you explode, but thats it. There are moments, where we can pick on small groups that try to ghostcap. Some of them will have tanks as taxis and to guard the sunderer. They run without to much AA cover and there you can make some certs. Out of my experiance, if those small groups would just take a little AA with them, we would have to disengage and fly somewhere else. I still remember some days ago when i saw 2 vanguards on the street with a sundy, i already was counting my certs. Came in low just around the mountain to open fire and exploded before my second rocket left the pod. 2 vanguards with rangers and the sundy with a walker made short work out of me. Even a single tank will survive easy if you park your rear against a rock, let the secondary do his job and the driver jumps outside and repairs.
because the tank doesn't actually use a hitbox. It uses the position of the attacker to determine the damage. .You could hit the very end of a tanks primary weapon barrels and still do back side damage as long as you are firing from the back in otherwords, the whole thing is poorly implemented and thus stupid.
They have a very low ttk with rear armour, under 2s. It can feel almost instant with latency. Rear armour is way too weak on tanks, the more I play the more I am convinced of this. They should not be a very easy boss fight in a metroid game imo, they should be tanks. Amazing how pod damage has evaded so many nerfs as well, especially since multiple nerfs has reduced the splash radius on these rockets to such a small size.
Yep.... and the flyby that is necessary to be less than 10m and with low altitude happen soooo often....
You speak as if the ESF was bullet proof. You speak as if AA didnt exists. The deadly mobile dual burster The hard to use but highly damaging lighting AA platform. The numerous infantry lock on G2A missiles. You speak as if there where not other ESF's hunting down the rocket pod spewing death machines. You speak as if flying and surviving was easy. You speak as if the ESF's where not already nerfed. Rocket pods - nerfed twice A2A missiles - nerfed You speak as if AA and G2A missiles where not already buffed. You speak as if a flight path that leads you thru deadly flak and brings you to the rear of a MBT is easy and without risk. You speak as if every pass doesn't guarantees a moderate amount of unavoidable damage where the slightest delay means death. You speak as if ESF are easy mode. I think i see someone who has not done much flying.
anyone that claims ESFs are underpowered are either trolling or just dont have the skill necessary to use them. In the right hands ESFs are the most powerful thing in the game, they do insane amounts of damage vs all types of armor, air and infantry and are practically immortal.
Rocket pod damage vs armor is fine. Rocket pod damage vs infantry is fine. However, rocket pod damage vs armor AND infantry is ridiculous. Rocket pods need to be split into AP or HE. Unlike tanks, ESFs also have their primary weapons, so they don't need a HEAT rockets.
I know flying an ESF is not easy mode, but I think the people who are truly good at flying the ESF, dominate everything in the game. When ever I see a good pilot, I always think "weeo weeo weeo, the fun police has arrived". AA exists only when it's pulled. (Bursters are not mobile, and Skyguards are weak) And it's usually never pulled because it's boring for most people. Dual Bursters are only mobile in a base, if you try crossing an open area as a dual Burster, those good ESF pilots will eat you alive. The CoF on Lightning is so bad, unless they're right on top of you the flak won't kill them in 1 magazine. The Liberator takes 3. Every vehicle in the game suffers from this. Try getting within 500m of a TR base as NC, or Vanu. I've seen ESF ignore each other so they can carry on podding ground units, I don't place much faith in allied aircraft coming in to assist. The same could be said of every vehicle. I haven't seen the nerf affect anything Rocket Pods were used to farm Infantry, it was a point and clicked weapon, coupled with how NV show everything up, it was OP as hell. Pods are still OP. My tank can't fly, I don't know what you want me to do with that. AA, and G2A were buffed because you ******** kept farming Infantry with those goddamn Rocket Pods and Lib guns. That's what happens when you dominate 2/3rds of the game and the only thing they can fight back with is a 1 armed Burster. I wish we had flak just firing everywhere my tanks go, but ammunition is finite, and so is attention span. If I get caught from behind by an ESF, the first thing I do is pop Shields. The second thing I do is jump out to start repairing. If there's a lot of ESF I'll just abandon my tank and hit redeploy while the jostle each other for the kill. ESF aren't Easy mode and have a higher skill cap then anything else, which is why the good pilots dominate everything else in the game. No other vehicle can do this, no other vehicle has so many options available to it, that it can dominate in every encounter.
That is the reward for a well planned flight path. A good tanker knowing his MBT's weakness will do much in maneuvering and parking as to make it hard to approach its rear unmolested. A pilot that can maneuver into position and take out a MBT in amongst AA and a zerg has in My opinion deserved the kill. Its one thing to kill the solo foolish tanker out in the open, but completely another to pick out a MBT in a enemy zerg and get away with it.
I think you are being disingenuous, nobody is (or should be) saying this is easy for the ESF pilots. I love flying the Reaver, not because I am any good at actually killing anything (I get lucky sometimes killing pilots who don't know what they are doing at that time but then I feel bad) but the challenge of flying really close to stuff at high speeds without crashing is fun, pretty much has been pretty fun for me in games pretty much since Crimson Skies. There are some good videos on youtube for helping to learn how to fly better too just so you don't take as much damage all the time. Its just that in the right hands with pods, ESF from everyone else's perspective who isn't a part of the ESF illuminati for a growing number of pilots appears to be Doom (on Dickie) god mode. Sure, you can argue this view point needs perspective but I am trying to tell you, even as someone who isn't a complete nub as a pilot, even as much as it is a display of awesome gamer skill, it quite literally can result in me effectively not being able to play to achieve any of the game's objectives ... unless spawning inside the protective bubble of the warpgate and trying to shoot them from there is an objective.
I'll take that deal, so long as Infantry have no way to hurt me, I can still shoot them with my Secondary.
"what situation requires an esf to need anti-ground support to protect him from ground forces?" In the role of attacking. And or Defending a complex from an enemy zerg. Both of theses roles requires an ESF to fly into and out of the enemies effective AA zone. Where shear volume of AA makes it almost certain death. Now to be an EFFECTIVE attacker/defender, You need to take out there offensive ground power ( MBT ) But any and all AA makes this hard. As an ESF pilot, I need my ground forces to kill and harass enemy AA units. This will increase my chance at surviving the run and repairing. "your example must be one that the esf cannot simply fly away from using speed and afterburners." In the example, the ESF has to fly into the enemies primary zone of AA protection. Those that hover and stay in this zone die. But the good pilots not only know their route in but also their route out. It only looks easy. Each and every target, one has to spot, plan, maneuver , and execute. If you plan this right, it does look easy. If you have good enemy AA, you will respawn.
" it quite literally can result in me effectively not being able to play to achieve any of the game's objectives ..." I would argue that this is precisely the point of the ESF and the games objectives in general. If its your objective to take this complex, it becomes my objective to deny you this for as long as it takes. Rear armor weakness rewards a good pilots abilities while also serving a larger purpose of tank spam control. Some say the tank spam is bad now. Imagine it if the tanks did not have rear armor weakness. They would indeed become viable solo killing machines. Rear armor weakness forces tankers to group up and seek AA coverage. I say this is a needed game mechanic. It would hurt the game to nerf this.
It's a game mechanic, MBT receive extra dmg from top or back shots and the rocket pods have been nerfed so they hardly do any dmg to infantry but can still dmg armor. Which makes them useless in large battles with lots of infantry esp when they play AA max but an occasional ESF with rocket pods can take out an occasional MBT. Do you complain when Phoenix kills u with 2 shots from the back or any other launcher? or when a LA drops C4 on u and blow up? It's by design these weapons destroy MBT with a few shots.
Right now, ESFs have the lowest experience per hour of any vehicle (except probably the Flash). I'm okay with a "rocket pods to rear armor" nerf, but they'd need something else to make up for it. Part of the problem is that ESFs are so damn fragile - if they can't kill a target in one pass, they have to either hover (which is just begging to get shot down these days), or come back for another pass (which is also extremely risky, with the added issue that the target has been healed/repaired or escaped).
