[Suggestion] The AA Problem Is Being Handled Wrong

Note: This thread reflects the latest build of Planetside 2 as of 12/19/2012.

Shocking, I know. Let me just compare this issue to the issue we had with the MAX class in beta:

• MAX class was incredibly powerful.
• Anyone could spawn as it freely.
• Fixed by disallowing the ability to spawn as a MAX.
• Fixed by adding a small resource cost.

Now about Anti Air, I disagree with Higby's idea that Air counters Air for "epic" air battles.

SOE's worry about MAXes being buffed was that if there was a mass of MAXes together (like a MAX crash), the rush would be too powerful and unstoppable. I believe this is the same problem with have with aircraft right now, and just like MAXes, we cannot rely on other aircraft to counter themselves en masse.


I do not support the idea that infantry AA weapons need to be better, but I do believe that vehicle ground to air weapons need to be more powerful, enough to actually neutralize aircraft, not 'scare them away.' Just like MAXes, you don't 'scare' away a mass of strong tanky Liberators.

Please post your thoughts, and support if you agree. Thanks.

The situation is indeed similar to the MAX crash.
How do you stop a MAX crash? By not opening the door and letting them sit outside because nobody brought a REK.
How do you stop the current Air issue? By not allowing air combat to come into play in the base fight itself. Outside the base sure, that's where vehicles such as Reavers and Liberators should shine, not so much 'indoors'

You're right about calling for him to be fired, I appended that, thankyou =P

I agree that air should be useful in a fight, but not dominate bases. In Planetside 1, the base turrets were very powerful, as they are in PS2, and could be destroyed. However, in PS1, there were ground vehicles that could actually kill and endanger aircraft (keep in mind aircraft could not dodge things so easily in PS1). This made flying around bases a bit more difficult, and is non-existant in this game.

It needs to be understood that the (very good) aircraft mechanics allow them to dodge things that the game doesn't seem balanced correctly for.

I personally think the Skyguard itself needs a good buff, and flak over all needs to -actually- air burst near aircraft to increase hit probability (it hasn't since beta). As is, all anti-air requires direct hits in order to do damage..with how nimble the fighters are, it makes them damn near impossible to lead because of the ability to take strange flight paths. The idea of AA as a deterrent is flawed, because in order to deter, you actually have to be able to threaten a pilot with death and the loss of their aircraft. I personally think that vehicles should be balanced by how many people it takes to run one in an effective manner..ESFs only take one person, but can literally bomb entire columns of tanks and squads of infantry into oblivion..and its only one guy. There should be a ratio of infantry it requires to reliably take down one vehicle. A single infantryman with the dedicated AA launcher should be able to have a weapon that tracks well and can 2 shot a fighter. If the fighter takes even one rocket, that should be his signal to get the hell out or die. Vehicles like gals and liberators -should- be tough to take down, because they are more expensive, and it should take a lib to easily kill a tank from the air. Not a single ESF and 1 well placed rocket barrage. The fact is, this is not a lone wolf game, and ESF's are powerful enough to encourage lone wolfing.

It's one of the reasons I hate scythes and maggies. I know all air vehicles and juke G2A rockets but damn does it make me rage.
You know what else could be handy, Cerberus turrets. IIRC those things ate up mossies and reavers.

I personally think we actually need more of the vehicles from Planetside 1 that were easily obtained by infantry (The actual Skyguard buggy, the empire specific assault buggys) and are cheap, effective and have low cooldown timers to pull. The problem with the "true" counter to enemy air power is your own air power is that, in real life modern warfare, air superiority is decided very early in an engagement, and when that is secured, bombers come in and paste all the ground based forces shortly thereafter..and that is how it is in Planetside 2. Is this realistic? Yes. Is this fun? Only for the aircraft pilots, as about 90 percent of their targets are left without an effective counter. Only deterrents that don't actually deter.

The thing is: tanks are already the most numerous vehicles. You can cry all you want about air being OP, but there isn't THAT much air out there compared to tanks. You just see a lot of different ones because they move about fast and you have a large area that you can see aircraft in.

I'm sure that many people went to air and rocket pods for the same reason I did: there are too many tanks to do things on the ground outside of bases. Either be in a tank or be incredibly ineffective.

People on these forums seem to think that air will only be balanced if air only keeps fighting air and doesn't touch ground - what the hell would be the point of flying an ESF then? Killing Liberators and other ESF is not a very good way to earn experience. Hell, even killing armor in bigger battles is not a good way to earn experience, because you put yourself at risk to do minor damage (in a big battle there's no way you can get low enough to actually shoot more than one shot in the back of a tank).

What we need is for vehicle exp to be reworked: killing all vehicles should result in more experience. An ESF should NOT give less experience than a kill. Not to mention that pilots are allowed to bail out or crash their vehicle and you only get an assist. Same thing with Liberators.

Increase the amount of experience you get for killing an ESF, Liberator, Galaxy, MBT, Lightning (possibly Sunderer to keep them in line, but that's another story) and I believe the game will turn out much better, because more people will hunt them then.

PS Maxes are incredibly effective at fighting off air and SOE clearly is aware of it: it's just that nobody really has an incentive to get a lot of Maxes in an area to do effective antiair because it provides poor experience gain.

I personally think that the whole EXP system needs to be reworked. A player should get EXP for damaging a vehicle for every percent he does.

Example: Say an ESF is worth 100 points to kill, a player does 50% damage to the ESF, give him 25 or 50 EXP on the spot. Say someone else finishes the ESF? Give him 50% of the EXP for the rest of the damage, and another 50 exp for the kill, and the other player who assisted gets 50 EXP. Now, apply this across the board Infantry, Tanks, whatever! (obviously infantry shield damage would have to be weighed differently) Suddenly, all the kill whoring stops, and it becomes more about getting damage than actually murdering the crap out of people. Damage forces a player to take cover and recharge shields, HP damage makes them seek a medic or be easy food for the next opponent, damage to vehicles makes them have to back off or repair, or the engineer get out of a tank and put himself in harms way to repair. It makes an aircraft have to leave the combat space and seek repairs. We should actually reward players for the actions they perform in reducing overall enemy strength, even if for a short time. I also suspect it would ease the current grindy-ness of the game slightly. Obviously the numbers I used may need tweaking.

"...The idea of AA as a deterrent is flawed, because in order to deter, you actually have to be able to threaten a pilot with death..."
It is, fly alittle and find out. As a pilot, when engaged with AA, you got 1 choice. Move out ASAP or die in the next few seconds.

"....ESFs only take one person, but can literally bomb entire columns of tanks and squads of infantry into oblivion..."
ESF's don't have bombs and would require multiple passes

AA hits are about right, XP for AA needs some love, like XP per hit or something... again move out or die. Air is and always will be the counter to air. Unless you make a tank fly, there will never be balance.

I think the base turrets power should be upped 2x. It should be risky and messy to attack a base with vehicles.

Maybe not 2x, but 1.25x or 1.5x I could go with.

I agree with most of your comments so far. I don't have much time to quote each person, so let me just blow by:

I think, personally, that the problem isn't the amount of air vehicles, nor their offensive power, but their defensive power. Aircraft have incredible staying power, which allows them to figuratively dominate a fight. Yes, I do believe aircraft should be able to counter ground vehicles. However, it seems like ground vehicles are powerless to do anything about the aircraft at all.

Imagine if an armor column consists of 5 main battle tanks. If they choose to get rid of 2 tanks to take 2 skyguards, that decreases the ground power in return for anti-air power. I feel like this balance is not correct.

Yes! I was thinking exactly this the other night. I can get tons of points in this game by playing an engineer and flying an ESF around. Not only do I kill crazy amounts of things with my OP ground rockets, but when, at the first hint of danger, I bug out to save myself and repair, I get XP from repairing the damage that was done to me. The person who did that damage got absolutely nothing!

We get points for restoring people, we should get points in equivalent amounts for doing damage. Get rid of the XP per kill and make it a function of the amount of damage you do.

Comments more to the topic... I think Air is too powerful in this game. Those rockets are just too strong and too hard to counter, except by more Air. MAX units seem to do a decent job of deterrence and that's great, but the real problem I think is numbers. In other games, they balance really strong air by only allowing there to be so much of it. Case in point, BF3 generally limits you to two jets and one helicopter of each type at most. In PS2, Air is straight up more powerful than ground, and because everybody can pull air if they want to, it kind of negates ground. So then everybody ends up in these massive air-vs-air battles, but because with aircraft certs/SC provide such extreme advantages, balance gets thrown out the window.

Since there's no feasible way to limit the amount of aircraft that exists at any given time, I think the only real solution is to just reduce the effectiveness of aircraft. I know, aircraft are supposed to be strong, but they're also supposed to be rare.

Being a pilot as well as a squad leader, I do believe that the latest nerf to pods put them in a very fair range, but I agree that when it's too difficult to scare away LOTS of aircraft, there's really not much that can be done. However, I don't think this is the fault of rocket pods, as this effect might occur with any weapon an ESF has.

"...If they choose to get rid of 2 tanks to take 2 skyguards, that decreases the ground power in return for anti-air power..."
!?!?! What... you want your ground power AND your AIR killing power all in one package?

Thats the hole FRICKING POINT! You must decide, do I want all ground power or do I want to protect myself from air....
Thats the concept of tactical decisions. But nooooo I want all..... lets just make a huge tank with 10 cannons and 10 AA guns on top....

"...this balance is not correct..."
you are in the wrong game. with that ideal of balance, one would need to remove aircraft completely.

I'm not sure that nerf really did anything. All they did was reduce the damage at the extents of the splash range, they still do a lot of damage. Using them, I haven't felt like their effectiveness has been reduced in any way, and being on the receiving end feels much the same. I lost a tank last night in a single volley of rockets to the rear, from an attack I had no way to know was coming. The rocket pods are still exceptionally strong

That said, I could accept them being strong if there was some way to limit them. Like, if there was only a handful of ESFs running around using them, then no problem. When you take them out you know that you won't have to deal with them for a while... good job, you've overcome adversity and now you can push your advantage! But you can't... for every ESF you take down, it feels like two more take its place. Because of this, ground units feel like they have no effective counter. Sure they can chase off a few but while doing that they're going to get taken out in a single volley by the others. Your only option is more air, which means the ground units (infantry and armor) and kind of negated, because when one side loses that air battle, it seems the ground units are now just fodder.

I believe the idea is to play it your way. You've missed my point. If the squad of 5 vehicles choose to replace 2 tanks with skyguards,it does not mean they should win both fights, it means that they have a chance to fight against the ground force and the air force, but not the best they could.

The contrast is a group of 5 main battle tanks that can fight easily in a ground fight, and then get instantly *****ed when aircraft come in.

"...I agree that when it's too difficult to scare away LOTS of aircraft, there's really not much that can be done..."
Sure is, get off the ground and get into a fighter. Or just whine here and hope for the removal of aircraft.

In my opinion, the nerf to the rocket pods make it much more difficult to kill infantry with the pods, spending more ammunition in the attempt.

Read the thread, or please do not post here. I am primarily a pilot.