"The role of MAX AA should not be region-wide denial, instead, it should be point defense ..."

As a pilot (I play AA max too) I never die to flak while flying my esf unless I'm willing to die and tunnelvisioning a target ignoring the max.
Stats reveal how much xp get esfs and the little that maxes gain. The esf just has to afterburn past an object and at range bursters are USELESS contraty to forumside2 beliefs (same as these guys calling the reaver/magrider/nc max up when it's exactly the opposite, they can't see reality).

As a lib pilot with a shredder gunner I NEVER run from AA maxes. They are used to kill bad pilots and never retreat. I hover on them while my gunner rips them in pieces in seconds. I have gotten away even from more than 3 different AA sources past mountains repaired then came back to kill some. All of the people who complains about flak can't even fly properly.

Atleast on VS the dual burster max is only thing keeping us from getting lolpodded and liberated. Afterall we lack the AA-MBT's and lockon&camera wonderweapons.

Skyguard is terrible yes .. buffing skyguard doesent mean you have to nerf bursters. If you were to do that you would essentially screw up the balance in a big way. Say hello to farmgrounds again.

I would like to expand on the OP:s statement
The role of MAX AA should not be region-wide denial, instead, it should be point defense
The role of the ESF should not be all-purpose fighter, instead, it should be a specialzed air-superiority fighter.


I agree that something should be done about AA. However, without repeating the same mistake of what happened back in November, AA can't be touched without also altering air. If the burster maxes are a bunch of cockroaches that keep scurrying about that can't really be dealt with, then the esf is a bunch of flies that are constantly buzzing around you, swatting after them will drive them away momentarily, but then they are right back to buzzing in your ears.

I've said this many times before and I'm gonna keep saying it: ESF A2G is too strong. Because of this, SOE needed to buff bursters to the point where they could deal with any air-threat by themselves. We're sitting at a very delicate balance betwen "Bursters are just strong enough that they can hold their own against air threats" and "Air is just strong enough to overpower AA by their lonesome".
The buffs to AA haven't been that significant, but they were just enough to push balance from scenario #2 to scenario #1.


So how do we solve this? Well for starters we remove rocket-pods. The ESF is just way too mobile to justify the ability to take out armor (there is a reason infiltrators were never given C4) and the nose-guns is more then enough to take out infantry (maybe even a bit too much in the case of the rotary).

This will solve a lot of things. For starters, all air units will no longer be omnipotent. Players can either go with the liberator, which is a major target, can easily be hunted down by enemy esf and requires at lest 2 people to crew. Or they can go with the esf which lacks any real counter, but makes up for it by having a limited presence on the ground as you would be restricted to sniping infantry (which would also require much greater skill then just emptying a clip of rocket-pods into anything that moves), instead being restricted mostly to combat air, namely liberators.

In turn, the range of AA would be reduced. I hear a lot of suggestions about straight up nerfing the damage. This would not work. If liberators and AI ESF could engage AA in a head-on fight and win it would break the game (again). Instead, simply reduce the range at which AA is effective by either:
Increase spread
Add damage fall-off
Or increase spread.

It is vital that AA retains its up-front damage potential to allow it to go toe-to-toe with air, but by reducing range you would give air much more room to work around it and, hopefully, have a role in mid-large fights.

So we've reached a settlement - bursters aren't tuned properly right now?

Dejavu. Are we in the Matrix? Hasn't this horse been flogged to death already?

TO RESUME THE OP POST:

You need to stop splatting that gif all over the forum...

Hey, is this u?

yea i agree a single flak-star is not very deadly . more like a horses tail shooing the flies away lol. i really only die to flak when all of a sudden enemy ground troops see many planes and all go AA . its hard to escape 4 bursters and a lightning ...

Here we go again with the superiority complex of people who use ESF's in PS2. I don't fly in PS2 because it's too easy - not because it's too hard. It doesn't resemble flight and contains rudimentary flight mechanics (at best) to be accessible to the most amount of people. That's fine, it just doesn't appeal to me.

When I want to fly, this is what I play.



Yes, ~10 minutes to get from cold to off the deck to fly into an area where SAM sites can hit you from 30km+ away, kill you in one shot and pressing the flare button to defeat it does *nothing*.

Yeah, completely agreed; my suggestion is for fixing the current Skyguard vs Burster debate, not the overall combined arms balance (which imho needs to shift drastically away from 'infantry are the best thing for every role' and more to 'air>tanks>infantry', as rock-paper-scissors is NOT how to balance combined arms; necessity is - but that's a thread derail ).

I would like to say this... I bought the Max bundle today and........ I feel like a freaking God. Mossie swarms that scare me as a pilot, I can bend them to do what I want with these two cannons handed down from the Gods of SOE.

Really it is better to not fire on aircraft and just let them think it is safe then have at it. Being a pilot and now having these weapons of the Gods it really makes me scared of Maxes even more.

Wow. Flight prep is a fairly complicated affair.