The great G2A nerf!!!!

So a lot of people are grieving or praising the G2A's loss of lock on. As someone who uses the G2A rocket exclusively, I saw a nerf coming a long way away; however, I do believe that a straight deletion of the dumb fire option is a mistake.

I understand that Higby and developers are attempting to make a more specialized launcher. I think that this is a GREAT idea. The problem with this idea is that the launcher can no longer be used to take out hovering aircraft in a pinch. Waiting for a lock on will almost always result in the ESF just after burning away and coming back when safe instead of being destroyed for farming kills. I know that people will say that HA's can always equip the dumb fire rocket in order to take out such ESF's ; however, this is not always a viable option.

My suggestion is that the developers place the dumb fire option back into the G2A launcher but make the damage against tanks go WAY down. This would allow the launcher to take out aircraft in almost any condition the way it was supposed to do but not allow it to be a "all in one" launcher. There is no reason that an anti air rocket should be able to 2 shot an MBT or lightning.

With that said lets address the community that will still complain about the changes. This game is 1) brand new and 2) always changing. The weapon that you want a reimbursement on WILL change again at some point in time for the better or the worse. If there is one thing that cannot be said about this dev team it is that they don't listen. They have listened since day one, even if their decisions are not what you personally wanted. I spent real money on the hawk. This hurts my pocketbook as well but I have faith that statistical data coupled with continued bickering on these exact forums can and will get the G2A missiles dialed in in the future. They want to sell the launchers more than you want to keep them viable so let them learn from their mistakes as every human does. Be forgiving and understanding and don't jump to harsh conclusions. We will get our launcher back

- reload time to make up for the lock on time

They already cut the AA launchers damage against ground armor once, dummies keep using it as an all purpose launcher though so here we are.

Sorry, could you give some context on this? Is this about a recent patch and/or changelog detail?

Im happy i dont care if my AA launcher carnt shoot tank's.
i will use my Hades or s1 to shoot tanks.

Ah, nevermind, I found what you're referring to.

I'm fine with it. I use the Nemesis as a poor man's HA snipe rifle, and do take out a lot of tanks and turrets with it, but I'm fine with only being able to fire when I'm locked on aircraft. I can get other AV weaponry for my HA to handle tanks, and infantry aren't really an issue.

I need those aircraft to fear and respect the fact that I have a rocket launcher dedicated to AA. No more bombing my comrades with impunity, now its payback time. I'm planning to do a lot of AA. I'm looking forward to how the Walker and Dual Bursters will be.

I suspect when Higby mentioned the buffs to "flak" that he was only talking about the flak turrets. Or do you think he was also referring to burster and skyguard flak?

Most probably referring to all, but remains to be seen.

Well the grounder just became useless.

I'll simply vote "no" with my money - won't buy G2A without dumbfire mode. Unless it will have damage boosted so I'll be able to kill ESFs with 2 shots instead of just providing them additional xp for repairs.

So basically ill be using decimator for when fighting the tank zerg, its not hard to hit a tank column even with slower rockets, with flak armor buff and rocket pod radius nerf rocket pod deaths should come way down

AA rocket is all but useless now, atleast a max can poke some infantry with bursters

Insert QQ because the reload time was reduced, lock on range increased, and various other forms of aa buffed, because I can't use one weapon in a way that was not intended. Idiots.

i think the g2a rocket changes will accomplish the opposite of what they intend.
making them useless against ground means less people will roll whit them and this in turn means a boost to air, not a nerf

Bursters, Skyguard, and AA Phalanx, are all going to be improved. If he meant one specifically, he would most definitely have said so.

Alright folks let's try and keep this thread civil...

That being said, I feel the need to point out the new "balance" changes incoming are a little under-whelming and perhaps a bit disheartening. There really is only a few points that need to be made, and I intend to avoid the G2A missile discussion because frankly there are plenty of threads about exactly that.

So for a small background on my experience thus far in PS2 / PS1, I've been flying, driving tanks, running every infantry load out from the get go in the early days of PS1, and all through beta / Release of PS2. I've played all three factions and have a good feel for how they operate, my K ratio in the air is averaging 20 - 50 kills to a death and on the ground on foot about 5:1. I'm not gloating just pointing out that I'm at least average or above average in player skill and grasp how to play the game.

Before you scream "see see! look at the ratio for air, nerf!" realize that playing very conservative and kill focused in the air can net you a lot of kills certainly, but you as an effective force on the grand scale of an average battle is quite tiny. In general the most effective ESF pilots are getting far less kills and dying far more often focusing more on important targets (AMS's, tanks, air...).

The real problem isn't some magical imbalance in the G2Air interaction, but rather a failure of people to properly identify and use the already available and quite effective AA tools provided. As much as I respect the fact Higby is a dev and does fly, you can't hold players hands by trying to tweak a fairly balanced system even further in favor of G2A.

Inherent flaws with most PS2 gamers in regards to AA:
(their ability to read a situation and adjust properly)

My fellow PS2 players, I feel it is time to point out a rather simple issue that has clearly eluded most of you for quite some time now. Air should never gain a superiority over your battlefield so long as you properly deter it from the get go.When you start to see ESF's show up, deter them immediately, get any form of AA out you can use and use it. Do you know how effective those fragile little AA turrets are if more than 1 person is inside one trying to single handedly fight off multiple ESF that are otherwise bored and uncontested? There are literally like 8+ of them on an average non - bio lab base.

Get a few (5 will do) burster maxes out, there are 100+ people defending / assaulting a base pretty sure you can spare 5 people to run AA maxes, and a few Heavies sporting some lock on missile launchers. 1 Skyguard inside a base can really tick off any ESF who've strayed too close, I agree it needs a buff but at closer ranges it'll rip air apart.

Run counter Air to help clear the skies before they get swarming with enemy air. When you run effective AA your friendly air won't have as much issue coming home for re-arm and repairs because ESF will not risk the cool down chasing some one into flak filled skies.


The bottom line is the only time air dominates a ground force, is when the ground force makes the HUGE mistake of letting too many ESF get a substantial foothold in the area. This opens the door for Libs to come in, and at that point you're pretty much screwed trying to dig your way out of that. This is exactly the same for tank columns, and infantry zergs (aka max crashing).


As a pilot I can assure you, if there is too much heat coming from an area on the map I will be very hard pressed to do any damage to that area. My options are very very limited in how to deal with a lot of AA, and become virtually non-existent when there are enemy air also in the area.

This is falling on deaf ears I am afraid. We have been trying to tell the "other half" this for weeks. But it's clear that whiners are going to have their day and ruin air battles, yet again.

Hehe well I do remember the days when air ceased to exist in beta... those were sad days indeed. I think it could easily slip into that again with minimal tweaks.

The funny thing is, I'm pretty sure even the AA fans were bored to tears and sad as well, I'd fly out for fun and see about 10+ skyguards parked on hills half of them afk watching tv. One of them would be awake and I'd nearly instantly pop and they'd all go back to being bored out of their minds heh.

Pretty much. Probably a good thing as I need to take a break from PS2 these days anyway. This is just a good excuse to do that.

I think it's a majority rule kind of thing. I'm neutral on this subject because I frankly don't die to air that often. I do die to air, but I die to infantry a lot more so death don't bother me. But since majority of the players are infantry still, even though the forum like to exaggerate the number of tanks & aircraft, the majority of the infantry would obvious dislike air dominance. And no 10 tanks 10 aircraft is not the majority when compared to 150+ infantry foot soldiers in each given battle.

So again, while I agree the situation with air dominance is overblown, I see why devs have to do what they have to do. They have to tweak according to the majority, otherwise they chance losing more people in favor of the minority. I'm one happy to call out that if we're over-run by air, we need more air support. But I do have to say we should wait to try out the changes before we all exaggerate the other way about how flying is all ruined.