Skynight Bushido Nonsense

The great thing about all of this is that Tomcats are in the game, whether the grand Skyknight council has approved or not. I plan on continuing to use them, despite all the QQing over them.

I'm also glad that this thread has encouraged others to use them more often.

By the same token. people should start abusing the things that annoy you most and are the most cheese because "It's war". Let's be clear. This is a video game. And, it's not an Esport video game either. It's not war. It's not real life. It is whatever you make it. It's a sandbox where you can decide how you want to play.

If you want to be the person that uses the cheesiest weapons to win in the cheesiest way possible, so be it. But, don't pretend you are doing it because of a "war" where your actions have some meaningful impact. Nothing you do in this game matters. Nothing I do matters. It's a game. At the end of the day, it's about having fun and seeing how good you can get.

So, I will continue to boycott air locks and so will damn near every other decent pilot. They ruin the fun and lower the skill cap for pilots every where. You may see that as a good thing because you are not a pilot. But, for the people who are pilots, it is ruining the game for them.

Hint: Notice the drop in dedicated pilots by about 80% over past year. Yeah, the increase in g2a effectiveness coupled with the beginner model flight control changes did this. Not to mention the buff to a2a missiles to make them god mode. Every single pilot would be better off flying with a2a missiles in their secondary for a2a work. That doesn't even fall into game balance. All secondaries should be equally effective in their intended roll. In this case, Coyotes/a2a missiles and afterburners should be close in effectiveness for top pilots in a2a work. But, in reality only a2a missiles give a large advantage. While coyotes can increase dps at close ranges, they give up speed. Afterburners literally provide no benefit in comparison to a2a missiles for a2a work.

And the point is still to win.

I will use Scat MAXes in corners on points.

I will use Lancer squads to completely shut down enemy armor

I will use GK Harasser turrets at 700m

I will use Ravens, Striker Valks, lockdown HE, LPPA outside lock range

and yes, I will use TomCats in gank squads.

If I feel like it, and if I want to dominate air.

It's rock, paper, scissors.

If you want to run an A2G ESF, then prepare to deal with A2A specced pilots.

The only REAL change needed is to make AB fuel pods MUCH better. More top speed (much more. Scythe with AB should be significantly faster than Reaver w/o) so that if you want a "pure" A2A dominator that can't be touched, you can run with a different option.

They should also fix coyotes. Tighten lock range and turn radius but remove stealth hardcounter. Maybe just fix turn radius and have stealth reduce lock radius but not prevent. Longer reload to maybe.

If you run lolpods or hornets, you have absolutely zero basis for complaint.

AB fuel and Coyotes should be viable options however.

Hahahaha. They already do.

Anyway, back to this.

Because play VS. We are reasonable people and actually fight instead of showcasing how macho we are.
And let my signature be the answer to the thread

This is exactly the problem though the inaccessiblity, mostly not due to lack of "skill", but simply due to having to burst through the awkwardness wall.

I'd actually be very interested to see a graph of player Air hours ranked by BR over the time of the game, I suspect you'd see that a lot more people became Skyknights earlier on, and much fewer later on - DBG should have access to this sort of data I guess.

This is exactly why so many people (many who have simply quit now) have been asking for the Air game to be made better (pure A2A fighter) and more accessible to newbies since basically Beta.

Although the irony of the one thing SOE did to try an encourage newbie pilots being used as the object of your wrath should not be lost on you!

This is exactly why the Air game needed to be seriously changed years ago, but it is both probably too late now, and unlikely to ever happen.
To a large extent Air more than any other part has probably almost hit the point where it attracts no new players (the whole game itself probably isn't that far off that point - if it had been subscription rather than F2P we'd already be past it).

However THE biggest opponents of such changes have historically been (and if you look at this thread still are) the skyknights who would genuinely rather the game die than have to face people that had better accessiblity into Air...... it is maddness.



I mean take away A2A missiles today - who does that help and/or hurt the most? The skyknight or the clueless newbie?

This is what I'd said about why they are disliked, it is because it tends to shift the dynamic of Air (and especially ESF Air) which is that so long as you pay attention, play conservatively, it is very easy to always be able to survive and get away (something that isn't remotely the same in a ground vehicle or infantry).

Now it is not remotely impossible to do the above against A2A lock-ons, but it is much harder

I wouldn't say that is true, it is perfectly possible for a good enough A2G pilot to fly through reasonable AA and attack, get kills, and get away - hover farming isn't going to work well, but then I don't know why it should in that case.

It is, of course, actually quite hard to die to AA so long as you don't over extend, because AA is designed like that (to be area denial, not a hard-counter). Certainly you can be unlucky (everyone gets unlucky and dies in PS2 - just again Air is the least likely to encounter it regularly) or you can misjudge a situation and fly into a VAST amount of AA and die (which is entirely the pilots own fault).

This is almost impossible to achieve with A2A and A2G on the same airframe (as balance changes to one are balance changes to the other).

Conversely with a pure, specialised, Wasp-type A2A fighter it is almost impossible not to achieve.

Not what i meant ...

I meant that even the nanite free versions of G2A aren't something you can fight against ... for the most part sticking around in the hopes of killing that AA turret that is blasting you for example is a certain death sentence.
Same goes for pretty much all G2A options ... as an esf that is ... Liberators are different here.

So one of the reasons why G2A users get the frustrating feeling that their weapons don't do jack vs aircrafts, is because we simply have no other choice than to run. (yes even vs heavies with lockons/swarm bs/strikers ... at least if they aren't complete idiots when it comes to positioning/repositioning themselfs ... it's basically impossible to see where the lock is actually coming from ... even with the implant, only after the missile is in the air you see the heavy on the minimap)


So if running is all we have against g2a then ... well you either get damn good at running or you stop playing esfs

I dunno that is exactly true.

ONE A2G ESF can certainly kill ONE AA infantryman.
ONE A2G ESF can certainly kill ONE AA MAX.

ONE A2G ESF can kill ONE Skyguard if they get the drop and are good enough, although with equal skill the Skyguard should be able to force them to disengage (and it is pretty easy to do so with any terrain).
ONE A2G ESF can kill ONE AA base turrets, although againt not by just tanking them, but by using cover and using flight runs (or theres a couple of angles you can hit an AA turret where they cannot hit back).



Where as conversly if 6 AA infantrymen are in an area is it is almost always possible to run, and if you're a good enough pilot you can easily fly into an area with 6 AA infantrymen kill 1 or 2 and still get out.

So it is not remotely true that "running" is all A2G has, just you cannot solo fly into a 20+ MASS AA situation......... if you were in an Air Platoon you can, of course.





Every tanker (for example) gets VERY good at running and playing conservatively if they want to survive for longer than it takes to rebuild their nanite outlay, having to play like that is not an Air thing, certainly Air might run more, but then equally Air is very much capable OF running more (being much faster).

Which yet again goes back to what I've said about how ESF pilots become SO accustomed to their solo power and surviability that anything that stop its or blocks it somehow becomes "unfair" - when the reality is it is just.... well..... Planetside.

When the truth is you've a much better chance (both 1-on-1ing it or getting away from it) against an AA base turret in a A2G ESF, than you have a AV base turret in a Lightning or any solo MBT other than the Prowler.





Although essentially what you're complaining about goes back to the inital problem of having A2A and A2G on the same airframe, rather than two seperate airframes as in PS1 (or 3 really).