There are people calling for both buffs to air to ground and nerfs for air to ground and buffs for ground to air and nerfs to groud to air and here is what I think the main problem is: Cheese - Something very lethal that is nearly impossible to avoid dying to (source: totalbiscuit) No side, ground or air, should rightfully be happy with the current setup because of cheese. Ground - Unhappy because rocket pods or zephyr are very hard to avoid being killed by. There's basically nothing someone who is outside can do to avoid them if an an enemy pilot flies nearby and that means that these people feel cheated/angry. They lost their life/time to something completely unavoidable. I'm sure 99% of the forums has experienced this with Air>Ground Air - ESF pilots are killed often by skyguards, flak maxes, lock-ons, etc. and all of that is almost entirely unavoidable. If a skyguard is in a region, it becomes basically a no-fly zone. The exception to this is liberators and galaxies, and liberators can freely farm enemy infantry without having to worry about being killed unavoidably. Still, as far as ESFs are concerned, death can come at a moment's notice and be completely unstoppable What do you guys think could be done about this, and do you agree that this is what the problem is with the Air vs. Ground situation?
I'd like to address the Skyguard for a moment. One Skyguard is not much of a threat - they need to land the majority of their magazine in order to secure a kill, assuming no other AA on duty. Two Skyguards can be lethal to the unwary ESF but a competent pilot may survive and henceforth be able to decide: stay in a hazardous zone, or move on. Three Skyguards make it a largely no-fly zone for ESFs. But flip it for a moment. One Skyguard drives along - an ESF is not much of a threat - they need to a lot of work in order to secure a kill, assuming no other ESFs (or tanks, or infantry) on duty. Two ESFs can be lethal to the unwary Skyguard but a competent driver may survive and henceforth be able to decide: stay in a hazardous zone, or move on. Three ESFs make it a largely no-drive zone for Mr Skyguard, as they can hound him to death forever. The balance of G2A vs A2G is a delicate one. The Skyguard does ONE thing 'well' - discourages air targets. ESFs do everything but capture buildings and points well, depending on the loadout. So please, remember. A Skyguard is for Life, not just for Christmas. Thank you.
Not much can be done without massive overhauls. I've proposed making ESFs A2A only fighters, and libs A2G only. Then make it off-limits at a certain distance behind enemy lines to prevent gank-squad domination, and remove a lot of AA(though keep destructible base AA turrets) because that largely becomes the role of the ESF. But doing this would make a lot of people who bought things like rocketpods and AI noseguns with cash pretty upset. I also know a number of A2A lib crews who would probably just outright quit the game if that were to happen. The problem with making AA more lethal is that it only makes the air even more inaccessible to people, and even more denied from participating in high-pop fights. Some have proposed making AA take more skill, but with more damage, and giving ESFs the ability to dodge it with their own skill. That's just something else to make the air harder for new players to get into. I'm sure that would make it less frustrating for the people on the ground, but in the game's current state, A2G farming isn't nearly as big of a problem as people make it out to. Most ESFs who do it are taken out pretty quickly with a decimator or AA, the libs get a handful of kills before having to run off(and likely be killed by an ESF, because they are already so low). There is no easy way to fix it.
A2G could be balanced without touching it, but it needs a rebalance of the amount of G2A in the game and how it works. Current G2A has skill reducing mechanics such as flak and lock-ons that you barely have to aim at the aircraft to achieve a lock. Because you are guaranteed to hit at least something the developers couldn't give it a high enough DPS to actually kill aircraft, or they would never be able to enter any area with flak weapons. This is easily defeated by pulling more flak weapons, increasing the DPS and the amount of guaranteed hits until the aircraft simply can't escape. So these skill reducing mechanics need to be heavily nerfed, or completely removed. Funnily enough I've been advocating this for a long time, but in a recent thread no one was against the complete removal and replacement of flak. Not a single word against it! In return for skillful G2A weapons, their damage can be buffed to a level that it can kill aircraft. Now we still run into another problem: Large and (relatively) slow aircraft. Liberators and Galaxies can't really dodge G2A or make it that much harder for them, so buffing all G2A to be able to kill them easily would be incredibly unfair. Therefore G2A needs to take two forms: Small aircraft killers and big aircraft killers. The big G2A weapons would have a slow muzzle velocity and have a tough time hitting small aircraft (but if you do get hit you are screwed). Big aircraft would have the ability to avoid it unless they get in close. On to the amount of G2A in the game. Currently there's just not a lot of G2A because it's unrewarding. Either you are successful and make yourself obsolete, which no other weapon does, or you are unsuccessful and aircraft keep surviving and coming back, possibly to kill you. So almost every infantry class and vehicle in the game should have some form of AA (and AV), preferably non-lethal AA. Smoke-screens that block or reduce the effect of thermals for instance. Weapons that temporarily reduce aircraft maneuverability to make aiming harder. Weapons that leech afterburner fuel from aircraft to reduce their escape abilities etc. Some vehicles could have light lethal AA options. Like MBT's getting access to a turret slot for either a co-axial machine gun (anti-infantry weapon) or a top-mounted gun (light AA). This turret slot would be accessible by the tank driver by simply swapping weapons. The light-AA variant could work either with Kobalt-like damage. The second variant would deal more damage but in bursts: Long reload but great damage in one short burst.
Massed air power or massed AA are both lethal - nothing to be done about that it seems. It seems like being outnumbered is the problem rather than anything else. Whilst aircraft generally don't turn up in the same numbers as ground troops in a large battle and are therefore likely to be at a disadvantage. On the other hand , infantry on their own or in small groups are vulnerable to to a strafing esf or other aircraft but lack a credible deterrent. If I play unsupported infantry it is just as unpleasant running into a Max or a tank as getting caught in the open by an aircraft............ Kobayashi Maru scenario (Trekkies will explain that reference if necessary). Short version - you gotta pick your battles more carefully if you are not part of a larger unit.
I made another thread yesterday suggesting an aircraft revamp and one thing I said is that liberators and galaxies should only be able to be pulled at what are currently galaxy terminals (changed to "heavy aircraft terminals") and that flak should be changed to largely miss light aircraft and not do a lot of damage to them and still damage heavy aircraft as it does right now, and lock ons should continue to not do a ton of damage to large aircraft but flak should do damage to them. Lock-ons would be for light aircraft, flak for heavy. Despite this being backwards - realistically missiles are for heavy armor, flak is for light - it is balanced in planetside because flak requires pulling a max or skyguard, and lock-ons can be carried by a run-of-the-mill heavy assault. Also, basically all this requires is a change in the amount of damage flak does to scythes and valkyries (not a hard change) and where liberators spawn (also not hard but not even necessary, honestly, I just think it outlines the difference between heavy and light aircraft.)
1) Add Perma Air Radar that makes any Air flying over uncontested enemy territory light up on the MIni-Map and Big Map. This will allow Ground to see the Air lurking, and for Ally A2A to see them and come take them out. 2) Add a dedicated Air Chat Channel for each Faction on each Continent. Air can use it to coordinate with each other and warn about heavy AA. Ground can use it to request Ally Air support. 3) Reduce Airhammer effectiveness vs. MAX and ESFs. 4) Allow default Dumbfire to OHK ESFs 5) Give each Faction a "quick fire" A2A like the Striker 6) Drop XP for Infantry killed by Vehicles to 50% of current levels 7) Boost CP for Vehicles killed by Vehicles to 100% of current levels 8) Drop Directive Credit for Vehicles kill Infantry to 1/2 what they get now (except for AI Weapons) 9) Boost Directive Credit for Vehicles Destroyed to 4x what they get now 10) Boost G2A XP for partial damage 11) Add Vehicles Destroyed Stat, use this stat on A2A, A2G, G2A, and G2G Ace Killboards 12) Add Air and Terminal only Repair Tool to Light Assault as a Tool (also, add an optional 2nd Tool for LA that is more Infantry focused) 13) Add an auto-bounty on any player getting on a massive killstreak ("Infamy": Red Baron). Allow Bountines to be purchased with Certs. Provide a icon variation to identify each tag type
So the answer is allow vehicles to swap loadouts like a MAX. People will pull more skyguards and A2A ESF's because if they get to a point where they have no targets, they don't lose their investment. Hell, I'd grab MBT's with AA secondaries a LOT more often if I can swap it out to face armor and infantry zergs when needed. Having an AA gun out in the field is incredibly useful, but not at the expense of never having AV or AI when I need it.
One simple change that will reduce air's ability to farm infantry, remove thermals optics completely or greatly reduce its range. The difference between having thermals optics or not when using my light PPA to farm infantry is day and night. This will let ESF retain their effectiveness against armor but greatly reduce the frustration they cause to infantry.
Imho the reason why esf are so effective at killing infantry is they are allowed to hover like helicopters. They shouldn't be able to do it. They should just fly full speed like supersonic jets. Only Valkyrie and Liberators should be allowed to hover, but the second shouldn't have afterburners. But I believe the fastest way to fix this is just to add more covers in the ANT menu.
I don't really see a problem with aircraft in most inf fights, its actually very rare that I get killed by an aircraft in a fight for a base and often its because im sat with my av turret on top of a hill if I do get killed by them. Sure an aircraft can terrorise a small group of inf if they have no cover and no anti-air, but that's kind of their fault. The number of times I see HA's trying to shoot missiles at my reaver while standing gormlessly in the open I can't even count. If you use the cover well while putting damage down, an esf is going to be driven off and may be killed. You aren't going to get the kill on it unless you have a significant amount of AA though, just the same as you wont kill a tank without a fair amount of AV power. I would like to see some more AA options for the other classes though, an AA turret for the engineer would be good, full 360 degree motion and accurate high velocity machine gun but leaves the engineer very vulnerable with no shield. Perhaps a universal deployable which acts as a several hundred meter radar would be good as well, so at least inf can take a means of better seeing the aircraft coming instead of say their C4. The radar would have to be visible to enemies on the map the same as the infiltrators one already is though.
To the second point: Why... would a skyguard move on? Skyguards are almost useless against all targets that aren't ESF/Aircraft. IF he moves on, he is useless somewhere else as there is no air there, and the long drive time will get boring/ineffecient fast. If the Skyguard had a built in Engineer Mana turret (AI) I would be all for the Skyguard moving on, but as it stands, a skyguard is only useful when air is present. When air is not present, it exists to be farmed for certs by everything else and to waste user nanies. Whereas an A2A or A2G ESF can always shoot both air and ground targets (to some extent) regardless. And it can quickly traverse whole continents in under a minute or so. The time it would take a Skyguard to cross a single hex. That said, the G2A game is fine against ESFs. I'd be down with ESFs getting a little bit faster flares cooldown, or 5-10% more flak resist if they would nerf (Or remove liberators, and buff Valkyries about 20% more) liberators to the point they are killable by a single AA vehicle, one on one. There is no single ground weapon in the game that can kill a lib before the lib kills you. There is nothing even close to a liberator's firepower. The only credible threat to a liberator is a lockdown AP prowler with gatekeeper IF THE LIB is flying straight into it for about 20-30 seconds.
