[Suggestion] this game would be objectively more fun for a majority players if A2G ESF's were toned down.

So? Can't any class or vehicle encounter that? They might not be instagibbed, but there's tons of times you simply run into things that will kill you without any option of escape. From a bunch of Heavies that surprise you, to meeting a few tanks, to getting backstabbed by one AP MBT, to seeing one ESF/Lib that wants you dead... What you might mean is that there is an incredibly low skill ceiling there. You have a big COF that you can barely do anything about and flak pellets that don't need to get a straight hit to damage, meaning it becomes a "just aim in their general direction and fire". As long as the aircraft is 100% inside the COF, there's an equal chance to hit it regardless of you having it in the middle of your crosshairs or not. Personally I would like to change that to have more skillful AA, such as reducing the flak-range and COF simultaneously so that leading and accuracy become more important, but because they are skillful they need an increase in power as well.

I do see lots of locks, but you don't need to do a lot to provide any protection against lock-ons. Half the locks disappear immediately after firing (missile hits something), the other half you can avoid by diving to the ground, equipping a flare or just tanking one shot and going away. And there's not really that many AA units around anyway.
The difference between Tanks and ESF is clear. ESF don't have a rotatable turret and need to face their enemy, which determines their flight direction as well. That's about where their disadvantage stops, as tanks have bullet drop to compensate for and the terrain they are driving over messes with their aim and ESF barely have any drop to speak off and the terrain can be used to their advantage more times than it stops them. The fact that ESF can fly and are extremely maneuverable means that they can find an angle to attack ground units most of the time. Usually you'll hit the weaker side or top, and with some effort you can hit the back for more than 70% damage easily. And AA is so non-prevalent that the most used combat tactic is... hovering around while unloading! Even with a Skyguard nearby I see so many ESF still try to hover and fire because they apparently don't like to do high-speed attacks to avoid AA.

Oh my god! No kills guaranteed for every attack run? How's that with tanks...
Oh wait, tanks don't get guarantees either, and ESF have a lot more guarantee to actually kill anything than tanks. And again, AA is not as prevalent as everyone keeps complaining about.

Yes, AA is the most powerful force multiplier in the game and something needs to be done to that. A skill-based system perhaps that means that highly-maneuverable pilots can avoid AA but at the cost of shorter attack runs? In return the AA gets a power boost to be able to kill aircraft if they don't maneuver enough and the AA is skillful enough?
But regardless, AA does not equal shutting down the air gameplay. I've rarely every seen a base that was so tightly AA that you couldn't approach it or do any attack runs. It's actually funny, as I've seen people complain "there was so much AA that I could only kill one tank and a few infantry before they got me". If you can kill one tank alone despite AA around, aren't you powerful enough? You don't complain that you only got one tank when you go one AV tank vs a bunch of other AV tanks do you?

A2G might not be as easy, but it's still much easier than using actual tanks in the same combat scenario. Oh and the fact that aircraft can equip multiple loadouts capable of attacking aircraft, infantry and tanks simultaneously with relatively little loss to power. Where every tank and almost every infantry can only choose between either anti-infantry, or anti-tank, or (and here's the kicker) AA deterence. You can mix it up a bit, but anyone taking an HE/Halberd tank or any other cross-loadout will be able to tell you how much power you pay for the ability to attack multiple unit types at once.

They are skills, but they don't take that much skill to pull off. And ESF have the option to choose attack vectors etc, where tanks are so bound by the environment that they either need to attack head-on, or try a flanking attack hoping they don't get spotted by a single aircraft or another flanker who notices them first. Just about everything you can name that makes ESF "bad" actually counts for his ground counterparts as well, but more so.

Lock ons, some of the worst AA available just looking at it's stats, and riddled with bugs that make 50% of the missiles miss and 40% of the locks magically disappears when a teammate's pinky passes your vision, or a teeny tiny treebranch is in the way for just that millisecond. Oh and most lock-ons appear on the same spots and can easily be bombed to death. It's only saving grace is the amount of damage it does, even then it takes 3 missiles and enough time for the ESF to escape six times over.

A2G shouldn't be removed, it should be altered. An A2G ESF should not be able to properly kill infantry, tanks and aircraft with one loadout. ESF should suffer the same problems as Vehicles.
I would say: remove afterburner when you don't equip fuelpods. This requires SOE to make things like Dogfighting frame viable so they need to create more viable flying techniques to avoid someone. Currently hover-fighting and reverse maneuver dominate any aircraft battle and there's no other tactics that work as well, and both of these techniques are best done with hover fighting. Add in that hover fighting is the number 1 A2G loadout and you know which frame you need to pick 100% of the time.
Then remove the ability to equip both a nosecanon and secondary weapon, or change the way they work. An HE tank can only win from an AP tank with skill and luck, so an AV ESF should have the same limitations as well. They already have the option to avoid 95% of the weapons in planetside, where AV weapons are much more available and used.
Then update AA so that it has a higher skill-ceiling, and upgrade it's power. Aircraft shouldn't have to deal with no-skill AA anymore, but it should still fear AA to kill it just like a tank will fear AV weapons. Because this AA will be better against slow-moving ESF and ESF have their weapons limited, there is no reason not to up the damage on ESF as well.

That's the point, there are no good anti-air secondaries. the anti-air primaries are already just deterrents that can be survived.

Friendly AA is usually not even around. What AA there is are usually lock-ons and AA MAX's, who stick to the Sunderers they spawn at and the Spawnbunkers, hardly people who are anywhere near any flanking operation in the history if planetside.

Do you believe an ESF should be able to wander out alone away from friendly support without having to worry about AA? You can hardly repel one ESF with any secondary or "the right gunner". At best you can make an ESF think there's a skyguard nearby with your Ranger and pray they leave, or as someone else once remarked, hope they lag out due to flak and ram a tree. That's not how AA should work.
Again, single AA primaries are already no guarantee you are either safe or get a kill. You really think that one AA secondary works? I want to see a video of how good your AA secondary works, please show me how you stay "safe" as one ESF attacks your MBT and you/your gunner mans an AA secondary. I really, really want to see that.

Calls for "equality" are calls for balance. Yes, tanks have 10x the armor, but they have also much more AV weapons that can be aimed at them and much more weapons that are actually used against them. Tanks also don't have the maneuverability and speed of ESF, which means that a tank can be locked in combat. He can't retreat because the enemy would push up and kill him. He can't attack as it would reveal him to lots of enemy fire. Tanks can compensate this partially with their armor and repair-while-fighting capabilities, but they still are stuck in a fight. Leaving the fight for another fight opens you up for attacks from aircraft while in-transit. But ESF can escape any fight they want, with the exception perhaps of air battles. Is there more AA there than you would like? Afterburn away to another area with less/no AA. It takes half a minute to get from base A to B, where tanks need a whole scale of questions (what routes are there, where are the enemy forces, how can I avoid being seen by any aircraft, where is it likely I'll encounter another enemies, are there mines somewhere on the road that can instakill me, if I park here for repairs will I get an LA on top? etc) before they can even start moving to another base, which takes minutes at best.
So yeah, ESF are a different breed, and in general they have the better options available to them. So you have to worry if there's AA? Well a tank doesn't need to worry if there's AV weapons, they know that there will be AV weapons there that they need to deal with.

Score in vehicles, especially for one person, doesn't say anything. My SPM on some weapons must be near 0, the amount of times I AFK'd with them. Many of my favorite weapons would have a much higher SPM simply because they are my favorite weapons, which means the likelyhood of me needing to go AFK while holding one is much larger. And that's just one reason why single, personal stats are not what you should use for statistical analysis of an entire game.

Actually I have way more fun when flying trying to close support infantry. Having rockets and flak in your face while trying to nosegun infantry is not easy at all.

I have flown several hundred hours in my ESF. To put give that number perspective, I've logged over fifty days in game. I've spent a damn lot of time in an ESF, but I've spent much more time as infantry. I play and am kinda good at every class and vehicle in the game (besides maybe the valkyrie, which I've spent less than half an hour flying). Most often you will catch me playing a support class, either as a medic, or as that one engineer who is bothering to advance a sunderer. Yes, I am quite familiar with this game and how it works.

The thing about taking any of the secondaries is that you're really, really hurting your survivability unless you have some way to compensate for your lost mobility, including favorable terrain and friendly air/AA cover. The tendency of 'pro' pilots to use no secondary honestly has less to do with fun or honor than it has to do with longevity. The secondaries are undoubtedly powerful, but all but the most cautious A2G ESF's are very short lived. A2G is made powerful when it is allowed to make a clean escape on the first pass, which it is designed to do. If it were not designed to be able to reasonably escape one pass, ESF's would all die on their first pass. Going with an A2G loadout means constantly brushing against AA, which means you're going to spend about half of your time in the air in an incredibly vulnerable state against air, which can chase down your smoking chassis. The other half of the time you will be somewhat vulnerable state to air, which at the very least can keep up with you. Ground has the option of covering themselves with nearby AA, as well as engineers, repair sundies, and necrobuses. If an aircraft wants any of these it has to make a run for it, and they don't have much time to do it, especially if they've already been damaged by AA.

An A2A/AI ESF has similar drawbacks. The AI noseguns are good for making quick passes (or spamming from a distance, if there is no AA) on infantry, but the loss in mobility by taking a secondary means you tend to spend more time being shot by AA, which means more time flying away and repairing, rather than flying around and letting auto repair finish you off. Taking a secondary means limiting yourself to one safe pass before having to repair (and by 'safe' I mean, 'won't get killed by AA at your target, if you're not dumb', not 'won't get killed by that unexpected skyguard/ESF). The numbers you're gonna get doing single passes with an AI nosegun are not going to be spectacular, again, unless the conditions are in your favor. Furthermore, putting an AI nosegun (thus sacrificing what is typically the primary damage dealer against enemy ESF's) against any other nosegun will probably make you lose, unless your opponent happens to be alone, significantly lower skill level, or using an A2G secondary. This might not sound so bad from the ground, as you typically ONLY encounter A2G ESF's. As it stands, the majority of aircraft you will engage as an ESF run with external AB.

TL;DR ESF is balanced by ESF. If AA is made stronger, then the ESF has no role in A2G. If ESF A2G is nerfed further, then it ceases to be cost effective in any situation other than the typical farm, ie a battle with heavily favorable odds. If ESF A2G is removed altogether, then you're forcing a MAJOR rebalance of all of the vehicles, as well as removing one of the most fun roles in the game arbitrarily.

Why not, instead of trying to buff the skyguard against air, reduce the damage against aircraft somewhat, slightly increase RoF, significantly decrease CoF and CoF bloom, and increase the bullet velocity? The skyguard is already a killer against ESF's. If it is overly specialized against air, why not give it some versatility against infantry?

Except Emotitron is (presumably) one of the best pilots on Connery, and he has about the same SPM.

Man, please try out air for yourself. Your comments are so incredibly hyperbolic that I have no way of telling you how off the mark they are. Do you play on Emerald? I will let you fly in my maxed out reaver in whatever loadout you want. I will personally give you flight lessons until you are half competent at both A2G and A2A in a reaver. It's the best thing ever, but it's not what you think it is.

I'm hyperbolic? people come with crap like "one AA clears the skies" and "you can't operate inside large battles" and I'm hyperbolic?
Seriously, I try to get some truth in here, adapt the completely wrong feelings and expectations that a lot of people have and get a discussion going about fair and balanced air gameplay rather than the completely imbalanced crap we call "air game" here. I don't need your lessons, since if you listen to the complaints here I would be better than 99% of the players in A2G, which I'm definitely not.

Edit:

we are actually pretty like minded to the goal. Since something like you proposed for the Skyguard would be similar to my ideas of creating skillful but powerful AA. I would change two things though, instead of lower damage and higher ROF, I would keep ROF the same, increase damage and decrease Flak range by a very large margin so you need shots to land closer before they explode.

I can see a lot of your points, actually. I just want to clarify that I was not complaining in that post but merely highlight, from my perspective as a pilot, some important factors of ESF A2G that are often ignored by people who never tried ESF A2G and complain about it.

That said, I actually do agree that a restructuring of A2G and AA interactions would be beneficial. However, instead of going in the general "nerf A2G/versatility" direction, I'd go for a complete restructuring of all A2G interactions. For starters, the hover-unloading thing. I'd just like to eliminate hover-based A2G entirely, to be frank. In my opinion it is the cause for most complaints about ESF A2G being OP. People see helpless infantry being repeatedly slaughtered by lolpods, this happens because fighters can just hover with impunity as long as no flak is around. Currently the way that a lot of A2G weapons (and AA systems) work encourages hoverspamming and farming in smaller fights and discourages strafing runs and participating in larger fights where farming is harder.

What I'd like to see, is speed-based AA. Basically, the faster the ESF flies, the more ineffective AA becomes, but if it hovers, it becomes ever more effective than it is now. In addition to that, a second major change would be good - change all ESF A2G weapons to make them less effective when hovering (IE over long periods of time) while creating mechanics that encourage strafing runs.

On the first point, flak could do greatly reduced damage to ESFs that are far away and flying fast, medium damage to ESFs that are closer but still flying fast, and extreme damage (extreme as in, 1-second almost-instagib) to ESFs that are hovering. New infantry AA weapons could be implemented, designed specifically to swat hovering ESFs out of the sky. Disabling AA would also be cool and add some depth to the game - things like EMP missiles that explode in mid-air and kill your HUD and cockpit indicators (including lock warnings), "ink" flak that blacks out your screen if you get hit too much, cover-smoke flak that bursts at a predetermined altitude to create a black smoke curtain that also blocks thermal visors, and the likes.

On the second point, I believe that the number one weapon that encourages hoverfarming are AI noseguns, and the light PPA in particular. With a long TTK when factoring in orb travel time, short reloads and a large magazine (for its fire rate), this weapon actively punishes you if you try to do strafing runs (you won't kill anything) and rewards you for farming smaller fights where infantry is undefended (the large mag and fast reload allow you to keep up a barrage of glowy orbs of farm going for way too long). The other 2 AI guns suffer from this less but are still too geared towards hovering IMHO. What I'd like to see is a massive nerf to reload speeds (up to 6-8 seconds) and possibly mag sizes (especially the LPPA), but an increase in burst damage and a better indicator that the aircraft is mounting a gun that can instagib you if you're infantry. The idea is that strafing runs would be easier due to the higher burst damage, but hovering would be greatly penalized. Secondaries would get a similar treatment, but less extreme. Lolpods would be replaced with CCIP-enabled bombs that inherit your vehicle speed. There would be different flavors of bombs, such as single-shot AP "torpedoes" for use against tanks, cluster bombs or even bomblet dispensers for infantry. They'd all share a common characteristic though - inherinting your speed, strafing runs would hugely help in putting them on target, while to bomb a target in hovermode you'd need to carefully take aim using your minimap and be vulnerable to super-powerful anti-hover AA in the process.

Holy crap I'w written a lot. Well, people will hopefully get my point though - rather than nerf this nerf that, I believe that changing mechanics entirely, by strategically nerfing and buffing important aspects of different weapons, and enforcing strafing runs that only let the pilot farm for a tiny mount of time is the way to go.

I don't deny that many of the arguments being made by less experienced pilots are also hyperbolic. If anyone said one piece of AA clears the skies, they're really only 20% right. The same is true about not being able to participate in large fights. Once AA has reached a certain level of saturation, ESF's lose their ability to safely make one pass. Though they may still be able to make a pass and get out, they are just as likely to be cleared by AA on that pass. One would not ask a tank to try to cross an open road in front of several AV turrets, so that that tank can get the opportunity to land some shots on an enemy vehicle, it would be tactically unsound. Though air is never 'locked out' from a large battle, it's pretty easy to have your combat effectiveness reduced to near zero.

I suggest you try out air for yourself and get a good idea about it. Air is fantastic, but it is not what you think it is.

Nerf A2G -> nerf AA -> longer TTKs => skill matters more (can actually do responses) = better fights.

As a maggie driver myself, I refuse to change load outs just for air... I also refuse to run from ESF's... come at me bro's. I'll snipe you out of the air while rolling your tank columns. And Hi Fleech!

Sincerely,
Phatalend.

Yes and there are tons of videos of tankers shooting libs and ESF out of the sky.

Those videos are made by people who have spend literally hundreds of hours practicing to become good at what they do.

Skill isnt overpowered. It is what is supposed to determine fights.

Good players dont die to air very often.

Bad players do.

So if you die to air a lot...

Well... There is the thing with the Magrider Main gun angles and whatnot.

Yeah, but the only time you are vulnerable to air is when you are solo, so thats pretty much when you should die in a tank.

There is no other way of killing tanks with Air except to find them solo.

Thats what ESF do in this game. We are forced to the fringe to find people who arent in the middle of the zerg.

We would rather participate in fights and help make a difference to our empire.

I have driven magriders a lot, and im a lone wolfer and i have died to air a lot, but never when im with the armor column.

If i stay with the armor column air never EVER bothers me.

The game shouldnt be balanced around solo tankers.

As infantry i die more to tanks than anything else. 100 times more than to ESF. I would love to see friendly libs overhead dealing with those enemy tanks, but they cant get close enough to do their job.

I would like strafing runs to be effective against tanks like they used to be. Now you have to fly 10 feet off the ground 10 meters behind a tank to one clip it.

You will get shot down instantly by any good tank crew doing that, and if you try to do strafing runs on a tank it will be repaired to full before you can get the second pass in.

So basically in the grand scheme of things, ESF are only effective in small fights which make up probably less than 1% of all fights, and completely ineffective in all other situations relative to ground.

In exchange for your solo vulnerability as a tanker vs ESF and libs, you get to participate in large battles and make a significant impact. Nothing else can reliably kill a good tank crew.

I dont get the hatred by infantry for air when tanks have always farmed them more than ESF. Even when ESF were at their height, even when libs were at their most op, they never came close to tanks.

Armor columns rule the game now. Especially since lightnings can be pulled at any base. In every large scale battle im in i see dozens of lightnings shelling everything in sight. Not an ESF or libby in the sky.

So i just dont understand why something that has absolutely zero impact on the real combat of the game needs a nerf. Something that is useless needs to be made MORE useless?

To the point that ESF and libs cant kill anything?

I can't even get past this. There are plenty of secondary options that punish ESFs hard for trying to solo you. Now if you are up against 2 or more ESFs and you are flying away from friendly support... of course you are toast.

And ESFs get equally schooled for 'wandering away from support'. It is called overextending and it generally gets you jumped by a vastly larger number of enemy ESFs. Again if you put the same number of hours in to the airgame as you do the ground, you would be well aware of the challenges of flying.

Very true. Most vehicle kills are just cleaning up the edges of a battle. Air does occasionally make hail mary passes at the tailpipes of tanks in columns, put that is ridiculously high risk for the reward.

The normal flow of a zerg battle as far as air sees is:

• Fly at the edge of the flak wall (sometimes behind if you are daring)
• Pick off any strays you can find
• Plink at range to help ground thin the defenses
• Make occasional suicide runs if you are getting bored and have the resources for a replacement vehicle
• Wait for the ground offensive to push the defenders back into the spawnroom
• Farm the stubborn defenders once the ground battle basically has been won

This all being said, I would agree that tanks are far less effective during low pop hours, as they really are going to be food for air without support. I would never pull a tank on a near empty server personally.

Been reading through this thread. . . Sigh

When a lib flies by it should be an oh SheeT take cover! moment.
I'd like to see a minor buff in armor.

When an Esf catches your tail alone AA or not (except maybe max with aa and flak armor) your tail should be roasted. I think there fine.

I'd like to see a fuel mechanic added so they can't buzz around for an hour.
I'd like to see gals supply fuel in the air for exp.

Then I'd like to see a interceptor added with hover mode engaged to take off(weapons locked) and disengaged to fly at maximum speed. Mechanics would be like a contemporary jet. Also unique ones for each empire! ns is foolishness.

As for the skyguard there flak should hinder vision more with the flak exploding. Maybe even add empire colors to the resulting burst. I wouldn't add it for maxes or AA turrets.

Air is suppose to be more of a calvary charge hitting hard and quickly. When an air zerg comes rolling in it should wipe the field of infantry and armor with little AA.

I find that the major drawback of armor and vehicles is the fact that there all glass cannons. Which could be fixed by less gank and more tank.

With air your just a helicopter of your choice with little use supporting large armies and very limited roles.

Of course by all these post I doubt anyone would agree. I restarted all my characters so there not going to tell you much. I don't fly air. I love all infantry roles and a tank occasionally. My Player skill 9001 out of 1BILLION which is fine since my power level is OVER 9000! Also play all empires.

I look, but I can never find you in game.

I wish this was the case, but the reality is that you can be attacked by air at almost any time.

The exception is an area with so much AA that it is impossible for an ESF to sneak his way into the hex.

People are satisfied with being able to get in, launch a volley of Hornets/Rocketpods, and then get out. Although what usually happens is an ESF flies in quickly and hover farms until a Skyguard/Burster specifically starts shooting him. Unless you specifically stick with a huge zerg, more often than not you won't always be protected by a dedicated flak source.