Now as you all know, a recent group of changes have been made in attempt to respond to the numerous complaints on the power of Aircraft, particularly in relation to ground units. These changes effected multiple AA measures, attempting to make them more capable of deterring or destroying aircraft. However, I feel that the point has to a degree been missed by those seeking to correct the issue. I feel that while raw damage for AA units is all well and fine, we've lost sight of the route issue behind multitudes of the Air complaints. Namely, that air to ground units are simply far too devastating in their offensive capability. Furthermore, I feel it's necessary to point out that curbing said A2G crafts offensive abilities is paramount if we're to get to the route of the problem. In attempts to keep air from simply grinding infantry and ground armor into paste, the current direction of the measures taken has been to promote the idea of quick kills. I feel this is flawed for two reasons. If you're still with me, then let me say that I actually feel the ESFs are now a hair too fragile to fulfill their primary function: Hunting Liberators. And the second reason I feel this is the incorrect way to address the issue, is that Liberators have such an extreme degree of armor, that they are drastically less affected than the ESFs are. Now, my proposed solution revolves around curbing Aircraft offense, not making them any easier to shoot down. The details are as follows: 1) A2G Rocketpods will have their Magazine capacity cut by 50% 2) A2G Rocketpod damage will be increased by 100% (Therefore keeping their relative damage output per magazine equal to its current level. 3) A2G Rocketpod reserve ammunition pools will be slashed by 50% 4) A2G Rocketpod fire rate will be reduced to 66% of its current speed The idea behind these suggestions is to keep total rocket capacity much lower, and to slow their fire rate enough that they do not promote any degree of "spamming" them. The rockets should be precious resources that you would like to save for enemy armor, and will only use on infantry if the circumstances are sufficiently desperate. Now, as for my proposal to help keep the Liberators from continuing to dominate.....pretty much everything, I suggest these changes: 1) Reduce Liberator Armor values by 20%. 2) Reduce the Zephyrs Magazine size by 50% 3) Increase the Zephyrs reload time by 25% Now, an alternate to my proposal, was suggested in another thread by fellow forum member,KAHR-Alpha. His suggestion is as follows: I would like to pool opinions, both on my proposal, and to encourage us to state exactly WHY we feel air units have things too easy.
Doesn't that increase their DPS? That being said. Balance seems fine now. AA can kill air and air is effective in absence of to much AA. And since AA will soon get points for damaging Air more players might fill that role anyways.
I wouldn't mind at all if rocketpods are removed completely and I fly ESF's pretty much all the time. It's been nerfs are nerfs and they affect all playstyles, mine included (dogfighting) - the farmers can go play libs if they want to and leave my damn ESF's alone!
No, it should keep their DPS equal. An example: You have rocketpods with 4 rockets in the magazine. Each rocket does 100 points of damage for a total of 400 Damage per magazine. Now implement my changes of 50% less shots per magazine, and double the Rockets damage. You now have Rocketpods with 2 rockets in the magazine. Each rocket now does 200 points of damage for a total of 400 Damage per magazine. The idea was to keep pilots from carpet bombing large swaths of the battlefield, and to be more selective about their targets. And I disagree. AA now is not only a counter, now it absolutely demolishes ESFs, but it still isn't strong enough to deter multiple liberators. I feel that ESFs and Liberators should have their damage rate curbed a bit if we're to actually achieve the intended effect of them not completely dominating any battlefield.
Pilots can't carpet bomb anything. You need to focus fire to damage anything. Also i think while you were talking about damage per shot i was talking about damage per second. Your 66% fire rate would diminish the latter. Also I still think air is pretty much fine now.
Wrong, it's not due to the air vehicle weapons being OP, it's due to the air vehicles having IRNV (night/day vision). It should never have been implemented on air vehicles, fullstop.
Another reason I see, which is much more critical, is that buffing AA is just fixing the "current" state of things. But the issue is that not everyone has unlocked good AA capabilities yet as the game is still not mature enough. This means that once every HA and their dog carry a AA launcher or can spawn burster MAXes, the skies of Auraxis will just become empty, as even taking off will mean having 10 missiles flying at you after a few seconds. So it will either stay that way or require an AA nerf. Hence my proposal (thanks for remembering it), and yours, which both more or less redefine ESF role as fast anti-vehicle aircrafts (way more in my case though), while still leaving them the possibility to hunt infantry with the dedicated gun (seriously, I've yet to be killed by those, and yet that their purpose).
Most things in Planetside 2 are too powerful. Stuff just dies too fast, including aircraft. The issue with vehicles and particularly aircraft is that they're basically impervious to anything except dedicated anti-air. So you either pull (enough) anti-air to kill or deter aircraft or you outright die horribly to them because you have no response. On the other hand, absolutely everything can kill infantry. And it's not a matter of "easy" and "hard," but rather "can" or "can't." Practically speaking, no amount of skill and effort is going to ever take down a Liberator as an infantry unit, even a whole army of infantry, even possibly an army of infantry and tanks and sunderers, until you have anti-air specific weapons (which are both expensive and useless against non-air). That may seem realistic but it's not especially fun to have a vehicle that's invincible in plenty of situations (even AA maxes can't hit them if they fly high enough) yet kills absolutely everything. Easy solution: Start by making aircraft repair slower. That could increase the amount of downtime for ESF harassment or cause pilots to be a little more careful about flying into danger in the first place (though as it is now, it may be a little difficult to avoid). You could even take it a step further and require that aircraft land at faction-owned landing pads in order to repair at all. This way aircraft would remain powerful but could also be forced out of engagements a bit more effectively. Next, nerf both aircraft weapons and AA, so that aircraft pilots could stay active in engagements longer without being overly effective (and would also help address that pesky issue of being randomly insta-gibbed by unseen foes in the sky). Net result is aircraft that don't insta-gib everything, but also don't get insta-gibbed in unlucky situations, plus have the ability to stay in engagements for a reasonable amount of time while also having the penalty of having to take a bit more time off the attack if/when they do get themselves battered up. Smells like balance to me.
Honestly, I don't see a whole lot of issues with aircraft in their current state. It takes only a handful of AA maxes to lock out large quantities of aircraft. 3-4 AA maxes and you can rip through just about any small or moderate incoming airforce, in my experience. The issue is that people don't want to be dedicated AA that often, otherwise we'd see a lot more of it. That's the issue. Make being AA more rewarding, and you solve your issue. Nerfing air over and over again to the point that air becomes ineffective, or buffing AA to point that it becomes unbalanced against aircraft, is only putting a band-aid on the issue. Air is a whole section of combat in this game. If you ignore air, then sure it will dominate. But if you take into account just a few AA units, it really isn't hard to be a deterrent to aircraft.
