Something ANYTHING needs to be done to make Air less powerful vs infantry

1 AA max is a joke at least for me. I 1 shot nubbie flak maxes all the time. Sneak up from behind cover or come in at high altitude straight over, 2 Hornets to the body and no more nubbie max. Anyways I don't think there is a problem with air vs ground. Flak is way Op and has ridiculous ranges, lock on spam, practically every gun in the game is AA for ESF. Learn 2 fly or pull a nubguard (skyguard) or several AA maxes.

Most pilots are just as bad and incompetent as ground players anyway so they are easily shot down. It's the skilled ones you got to watch out for and most of the time we are more focused on air domination (nosegun + AB pods) than A2G. I personally only switch over to hornets if the air is nearly empty and I need some excitement.

Nope... I went 1 ESF v 3 burster maxes last night on Esamir (Connery). Destroyed them multiple times. Of course if it is done in the area that offers no landscape protection or advantage for surprise attack then you better not touch them. Skyguards are particularly useless with their slow bullet travel that makes taking down ESF hard. Even bursters are not particularly good except medium and close range.

The major issue of Aircraft Assaults vs infantry or seen from the other side Infantry versus Aircraft is that you have absolutely NO INITIAL DEFENSE against aircrafts as infantrist (e.g. LockOn Missles, etc.) and a by far too high resistance against regular infantry guns.

Yea you might say - you do not have access to rocketpods or guided missles on ESF neither right from scratch but as soon as you got them - you can kill any infantry with half a salvo of explosives BUT you can not attack ESFs with every infantry class to anything which comes even close to half way effective.

Additional Suggestions here:
Lower resistance of ESFs to Infantry fire
Decrease the price (cert / DBC) for anti air

Bursters are your best option Skyguard is meh if you have the resources to spare but if the aircraft decides to just relocate your skyguard becomes free certs to any enemy but you can always swap bursters out for other max loadouts.

Your are 100% correct however keep in mind ESF costs certs and tho annoying every infantry class can damage it to some degree some more than others and this stands with force multipliers. Think about it tanks also costs certs and every infantry class cant just turn and deal with them.

The solution is to pull that freaking Skyguard.

Skyguard is the weapons no one every uses because it's hard to get kills, but nothing makes ESF run away like that.
Liberators are instead a completely different story, you might need even 2 or 3 Skyguards, that thing is heavily armor and it often has afterburner.

Against Valkyrie just anything should do the job.

Air also dislikes basilisks and walkers on sunderers. Heck a single Sunday with 2 basilisk packing halfway decent gunners can put some hurt on aircraft, walkers or kobalts are good too.

But the Sundy comes stock with two basks and if you've got 2-3 of them around a base that can majorly deter air.

Anyone mentioning either of the following as a method of fighting back please leave this thread unless the post has the prefix "the following are fracking useless in their role"

Skyguards
AA Max
G2A launchers

The only true AA is called ESF and Liberator

Now maybe if the Lib wasn't more tankier then a fracking tank...

Aa max and g2a launchers are quite literally designed to be used in groups or to deter not kill alone. If they were designed such to knock them out of the sky the sheer possible prevelant nature and simplicity of them (especially launchers) would completely remove air from the game.

Heck if people actually worked together instead of zerging blindly a 4 man G2A squad would make it a no fly zone for ESFs and a danger zone for libs due to damage output but again teamwork is hard in this game. The skyguard is similar to some degree that it is ment to supplement others or to deter air not just overpower it.

Best AA is Titan AP rounds

G2A missiles are pretty cheap at 250certs

1st Burster arm is free... I know it's not ideal, but everyone has it. If 3-4 guys pulled one they'd be pretty effective

Finally, it only takes a few people with AA to protect a wide area. If EVERYONE had fully effective AA immediately at BR1.... the game might be comepletely devoid of any air.

Presence of AA is quite strong

G2A and G2G rockets are now 650 certs.

Seriously??

What the hell for??

Probably that whole free 1500 certs from BR 1-15 On top of any you earn normally.

oh that's true....

Cert gain really is so much higher now than launch I guess some things had to give.

This.

Any ESF too far out of range for effective rifle counter fire isn't going to be able to constantly pound rockets accurately into a moving target. The rockets will simply take too long unless the target is moving predictably. If they're in range where evasion is difficult provided the pilot knows how to work their craft, then multiple infantryman can really put the hurt on an ESF.

MAXes.
ESF.
Harassers.

These three vehicles are vulnerable to small arms fire, yet people would rather opt to turn and scatter like insects instead of mag dumping into these targets en masse like an army of Rambos. It's amazing how fragile they are when even three guns are focus firing upon them, let alone 10.

Meanwhile, people are dumb foundedly NOT scared of MBTs and WILL fire their assault rifle into them.

Oh very much so especially with things like squad boosts floating around and everything that amps up people more. Heck in one alert the other day I netted around 300 certs that I didn't spend during the alert, the total was probably closer to 500ish.

I've seen that! I watched like 3 people charge at a lightning before unloading a chaingun and other normal bullet fire and promptly get run over. I was like "what the heck"

Also seen a infiltrator dancing around a vanguard shooting it with his pistol like it would do something.

And how are we supposed to pull dedicated AA to run air units off when that dedicated AA gets devoured by ANYTHING on the ground?

My suggestion would be to make a single lock on deal 75% of the ESF's health (50% after firesuppression abuse). This would allow the pilots to keep abusing their fire suppression, Though I am sure flares would finally start getting some use...

Walker Sunderer > Skyguard.

At least you have something to do with a Walker Sunderer when there's no aircraft, as long as you're not crazy enough to run dual Walkers.

The better durability, lower nanite cost and defense slot options that can rake in more certs don't hurt either.

The only buff I'd like to see is more spawns with better ability to shoot straight up out of them, as this would get rid of the most annoying type of lol-hover Air spawn camping.

No weapon buffs needed though really (other than either making lock-on fly straight up for 50m or fly straight for 10-20m before tracking).