The ugly truth: Fighting Air is Boring.

Esf pilots: we can kill libs easily
Lib pilots: esfs can kill us easily

Bad players then come on forums and make several threads about "liberator OP".

After blowing a half dozen mozzies out of the sky with dumbfire today, I have to disagree. Fighting air is pretty fun in my opinion.

I love being a AA flak max i protect my squad its fun getting hate tells from skygods and i can punch troops with my robot fist...... what were you saying again? i can't read it having to much fun.

If by Bad players you mean players that don't fly you have wicked definition of bad players.

Air should not be only real counter to the air.

Everything should be countered by everything.

Downsides of air -

Cannot easily fire from cover
Cannot reverse
Easy to crash
Highly visible
Difficult to use in large numbers
High value target
Flak reduces visibility
Can't repair while in operation
Can't see behind you without turning around
Lots of cheap, low accuracy required counters
Takes practice just to operate at all
Can be completely shut out of a fight by its hard counter, at any engagement range

Unless they equipped an AA weapon, or a basilisk. A dual basilisk skyguard also works wonders against libs and close flying ESF's. Bring a couple basilisk sundies in a repair chain, and you can take on just about anything, actually. The dedicated AA weapons for the sunderer are also good choices, but less versatile.

Fair point, though if ESF's get wrecked by bursters and lock ons, then why pull them at all? Again, powerful AA existed before, and there was no air game because of it. The only thing air could do was pick off lone stragglers far away from bases and spam spawn rooms at bases where the enemy had already lost. Now, air is balanced so as to be usable in larger battles, so long as there is enough present. Change it significantly and it can't function in large battles unless the other team has been beaten already.

Out of all those, only 5 don't apply to Magrider. 4 if you are in any other MBT which can look behind without turning around.

My initial point was a lone MBT vs a lone ESF. ESF pilots insist that everyone must be in a group to counter them, yet they are quite happily skitting from battle to battle on their own picking stuff off as they please.

Tell me what AA weapon on an MBT will bring down a decent ESF pilot, and then tell me what AA weapon on an MBT will bring down an even semi competent pilot. Neither AA option is worth a damn on an MBT, they do nothing but scare off in all but the BEST case scenario.

In groups, anything that is able to point up and actually hit the enemy whilst also being chain repaired is always going to be effective against solo pilots or low skill groups, but if you bring in some solid pilots (I'm thinking JEST, BLNG, CHI to name but a few on Cobalt) with multiple Liberators then even that really isn't going to last long. MBTs need a dedicated AA platform to meet the threat head on.

Because ESF have a place and a function where they excel, but that isn't hover spamming at battles, or engaging in battles where there is a clear AA deterrent or serious threat.

Due to the nature of their design, Libs won't ever be countered by anything but air. If they were, it would mean ground was damaging enough to essentially shut down all air automatically.

So instead, ESFs counter Libs, and Skyguards counter ESFs, and the only problems are aircraft are generally too flexible (not enough specialization sacrifices) and Libs generally beat their ESF too well.

Also yes, it actually is safe/accurate to say that people who refuse to use Paper (ESFs) to counter Rock (Libs) are bad rock/paper/scissors players. A player who only uses Scissors (liberator targets) can't really have a reasonable discussion on the balance of Rock/Paper/Scissors, because he's playing the game wrong. The game shouldn't change for him, he should change for the game.

If by you definition bad player = no flying player.
Than we have nothing to talk. You just are skygod that hate ground peasant and want force them to play game just like you.

Disadvantages of air - Addendum A:

Cannot strafe
Wide and tall profiles (excluding ESF)

As for the ones that are 'shared' by MBT's, it's not really the same. If you pull a tank, it might be a while before someone decides to come after you. If there are many tanks and you're in a decent spot, with an ammo sundy nearby, you can farm to your hearts content, for base after base. If you have a platoon of people, doing stuff like this is not difficult. Getting any amount of air up, however, generally takes some training on the part of an outfit and lots of practice in the air before you're even competitive, and that's true with another 20 friendly aircraft in the sky too. In the air, once someone wants you dead, you basically have to focus all of your attention on to that thing until it is dead, or leave. You have no other options.

No, that's not true. We just insist that you bring our counter to the game. If you have a walker gunner, I guarantee you he will beat any ESF that tries to engage you (so long as you don't just sit in one place like an idiot the whole time). Even a basilisk can be an effective deterrent. Air just manages to take advantages of blind spots in the enemy's defense, and hits it as hard as it can until it forces it to defend itself from another direction. When things get too rough, air leaves.

Basically any of them. The problem isn't that the weapons aren't good at what they do (deter aircraft from attacking your vehicle and those around you), it's that they are completely useless at everything else, so nobody wants to use them. And yes, all G2A weapons are mostly deterrent for air. That's a feature, not a bug.

I keep trying to tell you, you need less than 1:1 ratio of AA to aircraft to effectively provide deterrent to a base, as well as vaporize a good number of aircraft (they will eventually stop coming). If you stack repair sundies on top of that, you only make that ratio lower.

Liberators need to be able to counter AA, because AA can be deployed in places that cannot be efficiently assaulted from the ground, especially without air support. If you've ever gotten gate locked in SE Indar, this is an example of why.

A rock/paper/scissors player who plays Paper when it makes sense is not a "Paper God" at rock/paper/scissors.

He's just a player.

1)Wich percentage of players are able to fly in ESFs correctly? Not as taxi.
2)How many percentage of those players are able to 1v1 the best lib crews of the game?
3) How many percentage of lib crew are able to1v1 an 2/2MBT without effort?

ESFs are only lib counter for this 0.1% of players that spend 99.9% of them playtime in ESFs.

Libs should relies on AA to stay alive like tanks relies on AA to stay alive against libs.

Combined arms don't mean the 3 weapons of the same vehicle right?

Getting any amount of tanks up also has troubles involved, just like it does for aircraft, good job ignoring that one since it didn't fit your argument. If you pull a tank, you never know if some random aircraft comes along and spots you. You also don't know if someone like me threw down invisible Tank Mines in an unexpected spot (something I enjoy doing, simply because I can). Such ways to die aren't terribly fun for ground units either, but I guess pilots don't consider such things.

So for an MBT to even stand a chance against aircraft, you need to have a person (two people in total to counter 1) in a weapon that isn't terribly effective at doing anything but annoying aircraft, for the sole reason that your tank might be attacked by an aircraft, while simultaneously gimping your tank towards the role that was intended. While the aircraft roam free without having to consider having a 2nd person manning an inferior turret in the vehicle, while not having a terribly specialized load-out and can pretty much engage everything and win (using the skill and experience). I can really see the fairness in a 1-man craft being an all-superiority fighter, which can effectively counter any threat it comes along without being hard-countered by anything. Whereas any ground vehicle faces a number of hard counters (where you cannot do jack-****) and has to survive against threats you cannot even see coming (like my aforementioned Tank Mines, and C4-drops from >50m altitude, so you can't see it coming on the Radar, just to name a few).

The Walker/Ranger will barely scratch the paint of an ESF if it isn't within hugging distance, and the TTK of the Walker and pods+nosegun on a MBT isn't much in favor of the Walker, at least not if the ESF got the jump in any way or fashion (which is what ANY vehicle should strive on doing). Another thing, if you equip these weapons where most people would actually want to use them (when you are flanking the enemy, away from friendly forces) such a weapon is in no way a deterrent, and is usually just another way for aircraft to spot your vehicle. The usual from pilots just goes that ANY ground vehicle and person playing on the ground, much stick to large groups of friendlies, that MUST have people looking up at the sky, spending a lot of time doing practically nothing. If you are in a tank, you better have 7-9 friends ready with AA right? Whereas the aircraft can just fly off on their own, not having to consider teamwork or anything resembling that sort of thing, as of course Sky-Gods shouldn't have to rely on such primitive peasant-stuff . And the aircraft don't have to specialize to a very high extent either, at least not anywhere near the extent other aspects have to.

The problem is how accessible Rock, Paper or Scissor are, and today ESF isn't even close to be, what makes pick up an Air Unity to combat Air Unities have no fun.

I pointed what I think make this happen here, but independent of what SOE do to change the air game today, something has to happen. Today you can see an enemy armor block and even without certs invested pick an armor and try help your faction, and you can be useful despite this. You can even change for some other class which you never use to help. But with the air this is impossible. A main infantary, who never use certs for vehicles, can't help in the air, and this is so wrong which I can't believe everybody accepted this for so long.

Add to this the investment needed to G2A and the attention which it consume during a battle. Again, it's wrong. While you have the ground unities having to fight ground and air, air unities almost never have to fight air, because the air game base is so "exclusive" which is very easy for a group dominate an area, and you need other "exclusive" players to free the ground from the sky attack for...some seconds.

Well if you want to change it the only change needed is providing rocket pods and flares by default. This and several other certs across the game should become default anyway because the game should be about good PVP, and too much vertical progression (playtime = power) makes a game have bad PVP.

How much respect would you have for someone who told you they "main scissors" in rock/paper/scissors? Yeah, that's about the respect I have for players who refuse to use the other tools of the game.

Of course you do and you're not alone in that.

The problem exists I think in the smaller fights and at off peak times when 1 or 2 liberators simply sitting over a spawn has a disproportionate impact on the fight. This is compounded in the 3 minute hack bases where there is not enough time to chase him away and then respond to the hack.

Some say that it is impossible to baloance the game around large fights and also small fights. I have to reject that opinion because if it is true then there is no hope for good smaller fights and small fights are the ones that grow into larger ones.

The answer to my mind is (again) in base design. We've all seen how the towers have evolved over the months to gain more and more protection. This meant that the defenders weren't little more than easy kills to tanks farmers, and believe me I've done enough of that.

Those changes made the overall game better.

A similar thing needs to happen for outposts and bases with regard to protection from lib farmers.

How about this

Bolt the Skyguard turret onto the Harasser with a secondary 12mm Basilisk style weapon then we get a mobile, fast, vehicle that has a separate driver able to concentrate on the actual driving rather then parking up becoming bait for everything whilst trying to keep enemy air away.

Roll 45-90 degrees and hold the space key. Makes it slightly harder to shoot. This isn't rocket science, this is a simple hover fighting maneuver.

Even I use this thing... It is like the Skygod's make those argument up to defend there privileges.

That's the way it's supposed to be.

Air counters:

Potentially deadly
Double burster max
Double burster sunderer
Lightning skyguard

Annoying (ergo: high priority target)
Single burster
Lock-on launcher
Tank AA secondary

Useless:
Everything else

Lolpods are effective against libs, tanks, infantry, galaxies, turrets, sunderers, maxes, higby's hair, engineer turrets, deployables and everything else EXCEPT flashes, harrassers and other ESF.

You intrigue me with this one. I have a walker that I never use on my Magrider. I'll kit it out tonight and see if anyone from the outfit fancies gunning - it will make a nice change actually.