Stop AIR complains, boycott it

dont say things like this, its makes the elitists all hot and bothered that a new player might be able to fight them without spending 40 hours in the air first.

roger that.

I frickin laughed out loud

the subterranean nanite analysis chopped into the corner is what got me.

There aren't enough +1s in the world for this.

Because it is a Goddamn chore. If I wanted to do chores, I'd go scrub down the baseboards in my kitchen or finally fix the inlet valve in my toilet, and I'd likely find either one more pleasant.

I don't hate pilots in PS2. (Maybe I have a bias towards believing them to be elistists who like to trash-talk whoever they're farming, but that's on me.) I'll support my side's flyboys/girls whenever and however I can from the ground. But I do not see any point in battling my vertigo, having to learn complex three-dimensional maneuvers, and spending dozens if not hundreds of hours getting shot out of the sky and feeding the "skylords" more certs in order to learn to be semi-competent in something I don't want to do. I'd rather spend what little time I have to play the game actually playing the game the way I enjoy.

Besides, I hear plenty of complaints from competent pilots that SOE isn't doing a very good job figuring out just what air's supposed to do anyway, so why should I spent all that effort to be as upset as they are?

Well certainly it's an undeniable point if you have vertigo issues with flying. There are enough non-flying roles needed that if everyone who can fly does fly (when it's needed) that you won't be holding your faction back at all.

How are they unclear on air's role?

• Air kills ground targets
  • Especially those with heavy ground cover (like base walls.)
  • Even more especially those which have neglected AA.
  • And by pressuring ground enough for them to field G2A vehicles, that opens opportunities for ground-based AV pushes.
• Air also kills air (instead of merely deterring it.)

So.... kill everything? Sounds a lot like the "role" BFRs had.

ESF's only kill those who are cert farming.

They can't kill anyone who's on a control point, aka those trying to take a base and win an alert.

Actually, it sounds a lot like any HA loudout.

I bet they can't sleep at night because of that... oh wait, no. They wipe the tears of despair with all the certs they are printing and that 1337:1 kdr they are padding.

Well, how can we make Air easier for new players to get into? Is a flight mechanic change needed? Make that Air to Air radar an integrated ability?

Not much is needed to be changed actually. Just set it up so when you press Shift (Afterburner) the jets point horizontally immediately and boost you forward instead of up. Also reduce the amount of thrust that you get from spacebar (vertical thrust) whenever they are pointing up (upside down) and to the sides (sideways).

That should make 'dogfighting' a little simpler and more dependent on initiative and situational awareness.. like every other aspect of the game (vehicle and infantry gameplay). I'd like to see ESFs control like more Agile Galaxy/Liberators as those aren't too terrible for new players to get into.

Air to air radar isn't really needed as a default passive ability. Remember it helps elites too. New players don't have an issue finding targets. Its the fact that when they open up an attack on someone, that person flips their aircraft in an odd physics breaking angle and come at the poor newbie from a hard to react to spot.

Another thing I would like to see done to vehicles is the removal of third person. But.. that would be a much more drastic change and would require balances to vehicle survival. The above changes to ESF wouldn't be as bad. It would require adjustment, but more in their weapon lethality and role change (with role changes being something every vehicle needs).

So there's nothing wrong with Air combat?

The fact that hover frame is better than Dogfighting frame for air-to-air combat isn't a problem? Even though the Hover frame is also better at close ground support?

The fact that all AA is viewed as "deterrents" (which has been advocated by the devs for so long), meaning that all aircraft have an option to simply escape from all AA sources, unless you spam AA?
The fact that when done right, aircraft can defeat a hard counter against them, while keeping the option to engage infantry, aircraft and tanks effectively? All the while the hard counter can only effectively engage aircraft, and becomes extremely vulnerable to every single ground unit out there?
The fact that nobody begins with any AA source, and needs to buy it? There is no cheap, easy AA option available for anyone, while you start with multiple AV sources available to you and a dozen AI sources. Oh, and the lack of AA sources. I once took a count for all AI, AV and AA sources, there's about double or triple the AV compared to AA, and there's more than 100 different AI sources that can be equipped.
For those people shouting "a single AA unit prevents all aircraft entering a base" and "there's AA everywhere". You fly across 8 enemy bases, and at the ninth you encounter AA. You remember that AA since that was the time you got damaged, but you don't remember the other 8 bases that didn't sport any AA. AA is a terrible job, you are weak against everything but air and with bad luck the very aircraft you try to destroy can kill you anyway.
I'm not a very good ESF pilot, but you know what I like? Attacking AA sources in my ESF. I circle around and ram a large amount of rockets in their ***, gives you a one clip on Skyguards. AA MAX? I surprise them and blow them away with an air hammer. AA missile launchers? Please, I usually have flares and just blow them up. Usually it's just one guy, if there's more I kill them in the same run, or come back later. AA sucks, big time.


Air combat was broken from the start. Weapons started out OP as hell, you could defeat Skyguards with your nosecannon, wipe out entire squads with rocket pods. And weird imbalances have been following air combat continuously. Liberators being better at AA with Daltons than any other vehicle, while capable of annihilating tank columns and infantry Zergs in a single pass, ESF being capable of using bugs to perform weird, illogical maneuvers that cannot be learned through ordinary flight, but must be taught to you by people who know of the weird physics involved in airflight.

And the biggest problem is the elitist air-jockeys. They think that air-combat is a game inside a game. While the game should be about combined combat. Any time a single group should never win from a combined group. A single group of tanks should not win from infantry supported by air. A single group of air should not win from infantry with tanks. A single group of infantry should not win from tanks with airsupport, unless you completely overwhelm them.
The game needs to support more options for ground units to communicate with aircraft and give them targets. Aircraft in turn should get communication to point out tank columns, infantry attacks and request help against AA. No more "but aircraft should be able to do 1v1 without interference from any other source". Tanks have to deal with infantry, mines and aircraft all the time. Infantry can sometimes avoid tanks within bases, but always have to deal with aircraft (even in biolabs, aircraft can shoot you down while you move to the teleporters/jumppads).
Aircraft? Fly high enough and you don't have to deal with any of them. You are fast and maneuverable enough to move across 5 bases and find a spot where there's no fighting, and engage aircraft moving from base to base. Aircraft are the only one's that can avoid the ground, even when directly above a base the only way ground forces really interfere is if they equip AA, which few people do.

So please, stop protecting your broken, moronic system. fix the damn air game.

The OP does have a point. Personally I'm pretty much exactly halfway between elitists and not flying at all- I fly A2G loadouts only. I don't know how to dogfight, I personally don't care or don't want to know how to dogfight, I'm perfectly happy to fly my Banshee and Hornets into an enemy base and clear the way for my team, and harassing enemy gals and libs to an extent. If someone gets their boat afloat by fighting other ESFs - who am I to judge, I only know that I wont be touching it with a ten foot stick. Just like the dozens of different aspects of other games that I found unenjoyable, no matter how beneficial they are. If you have an OCD about mastering every part of the game, well, come prepared that you won't be enjoying all of it, and don't blame the game if it happens.

On another note, the airgame will never be as accessible as ground game. Never ever ever, stop dreaming about it. Unless you change the flight model to the one used by flying mounts in WoW (aka same as ground movement, just with an indefinite jump) there will be people who can't get behind it, because they dont like simulators (as arcadey as PS2 is). You can certainly make it easier, but you can't make the different modes equal.

You are wrong. There are many bases where the control point is open to the sky. See, point B at Indar excavation.

Furthermore, if you atempted to defend a base by sitting on the control point rather than moving out from there and attempting to prevent people reaching it, you would fail to defending the base.

And even more important than that... When you move from spawn (a spawn room for the defender or a sundy/whatever for the attackers to a control point) there are many places you have to pass through where you will be exposed to attack from the air.

Your post is incorrect, and fails to understand the idea that to get from A to B you need to travel through the space inbetween... Which I assumed was commonly understood.

With any specific loadout, no. Across all possible loadouts, yes.

Is that why people are confused? Because they can't handle one unit being able to be set up for a variety of roles?

I assure you, it's not rocket surgery.

Air combat as it is now is just boring. Boring duels, no team work with ground troops. Then when big battles are on the air can't get anywhere near it due to all the AA. I would happily swap the air farming in smaller fights to make a difference in larger fights.

I farm with sky guard. I just sit at point behind the enemy lines where air is most likely to return to repair and just finish them off.

I'm protecting the air game?
Forgot that I'm targeting a crowd with attention span of a goldfish. I'll try to add a tl;dr summary next time I'll write more than two sentences but for now just read the whole bloody thing before replying.

Given the current state of the airgame (maybe except the latenight airgame ) I could either pull one of my well certed ESF's and turn it into some flying nasty MLGoyote thing that I give to new players or I could pull some HE Lightning / HE MBT that allows them to join the HE-Spamming-R34LpRoLandcrabberZ-Federation for a while to get those tons of Certs needed for getting their own ESF's up.

We could also place a collection plate somewhere for donations to new pilots so they can get their own MLGoyotes a bit faster since new players won't stand any chance in the air right now even if they would already own a complete dogfighting setup including full certed abtanks, full flares, full firesupression, full airframes, full stealth, full nanites, full certed stock nosegun and full certed rotary.

Even with using MLGoyotes or Bobcats they are pretty much dead as soon as the first 3l33t-pr0a1m1ng-gangsquad figures out that there's some even easier target to "fight against" with their superior tactical approachs that the one they where after before.