[Vehicle] Valkyrie Wikipedia Page

valkyries are cost effective small squad transports at best, atg esf is about 10000 times more effective as close air support than a valkyrie, and a 2man liberator so much more than that. Id hate to see the average spm of a player who thinks valkyries are effective at anything outside of spawning more infantry and dropping them on a point.

please buff.

What Ronin is talking about is NOT a skill based issue. Everything you said a Valk can do, one if not all the other aircraft can do way better. Its not even a jack of all trades, but a novice at all of them. As I said before, you can take the uberest player, gods gift to planetside and valks, 3000 legit KDR in the Valk.. and put him in any other aircraft.. and his stats will probably double or triple.

ESF vs Valkyrie

Valk has less maneuverability, less firepower, less speed, and twice the profile at every angle. What has it got for it? Slightly more resistance to small arms and slightly more health, as well as people can spawn in it. I guess if you need a mobile spawn, you could use a Valk over an ESF

Liberator vs Valkyrie

Depending on frame, the Valk isn't much more maneuverable. Lib makes up for it in health and resists. Not to mention firepower blows the Valk out of the water. And.. the lib is faster. Oh but it can spawn people.

Galaxy vs Valkyrie

Finally the Valk gets some advantages... Its more agile, and quite a bit smaller. And that's where they end. Gal has more HP, more resistance, is faster, has more firepower, and can repair/resupply other vehicles.


But the Valkyrie can do a little bit of everything right? Well there's the issue. It sort of can. Which can be useful when you have no idea what the threat is going to be. But by your own admission, a great Valkyrie pilot who knows what they are doing and uses the Valkyrie 'Just Right' can overcome many challenges. So you pull a Valk when you don't know what's ahead... but to be effective with it, you have to know what you are facing. I'm sensing a paradox here.

Basically your taking a square peg with its edges rounded off and pounding it into a round hole. It'll fit, but it'll get stuck.

I'm going to use Real Life as an example for a moment. This isn't a RL to Balance example, but just a derivative of an idea. But there is Three helicopters the US Army uses alot of. The Chinook, Apache, and the Blackhawk. Chinook is a general purpose carrier, it carries alot of equipment and troops. The Apache is a straight up small gunship. And then you have the Blackhawk which is an inbetween, sort of a workhorse.

Here's the analogues:

Chinook is like the Galaxy
Apache is like the ESF
Blackhawk is like the Valkyrie

Cruising Speeds*:

Chinook is 240kph
Apache is 265kph
Blackhawk is 280kph

*Went with cruising speeds due to max speeds are heavily reliant on altitude and since altitude is restricted to cruising altitudes in PS2 I stuck with those. The numbers vary greatly when the aircraft are not in a combat situation. But in Indar, Hossin, Esamir, and Amerish, you're always within range of some sort of combat.

As you can see the speeds aren't too far off the mark from what we see in game. That's why I used helicopters, other than being the closest RL equivalent to jet VTOLs. Speed is life. Speed is flexibility. And Speed is functionality. The Blackhawk, out of all the Army's helicopters, is the quickest. But its a general purpose craft. Its meant drop off a few soldiers and then provide some air support as well. A few rockets, missiles, and crew served machine guns.

Despite being general purpose its the quickest. It needs to be quick to make use of its mediocre payloads. It also requires speed to get it into places you really don't want to take a Chinook. Chinook is big. Its loud. Its easily noticeable. The Blackhawk is smaller, quicker, more agile, and can get people into places the Chinook can't and does so before anyone notices.

Valkyrie needs to be able to do the same. It should be dropping 4-5 poeple at a time quickly and I mean really quickly. Its 180KPH base speed to the 220 of the Galaxy, means it can't do that. It is the slowest aircraft in the game. It should NOT be the slowest, it should really be the quickest.

I don't like using RL very often to show a reason to change something. But I'm just trying to make a comparison to a paradigm that works. I'm not suggesting we use exact helicopter values. But I mean the idea is normally smaller = faster. In this case its larger = faster. And that's hard for us to wrap our heads around. And for good reason.. it just naturally doesn't work.

That's why I recommend a base speed increase to 240, modified by frame. It really should be 255, but I'll compromise for 240. If it was the quickest aircraft in the game. Squads would use it over the Galaxy. Right now there's no reason to use the Valk as a troop transport/CAS. It takes two players to do that. You can have one player take a Galaxy and transport everyone, and another use a ESF for the same manpower cost.

But in that situation the Galaxy is better suited because you can use it as an AA and A2G platform if needed, simply pick up or have 1-2 people redeploy to the Gal. Even if the ESF is equipped for A2G, the Gal's dual walkers will chase off most aircraft on its own. And even if it cannot. Burster MAXes can... which it can carry. Valk cannot.

And I'll say it again. When used in the ideal conditions with a great pilot. You can get results. Like Ronin said, its a blast to fly. But you will see much better results if you use a Galaxy in the same way. And you have far more options.

Increase the speed and the flexibility of the Valk, its agility, and its Jack of All trades will begin to shine over that of other vehicles.

Galaxy - Large whales, they are slow and cumbersome to use. The only major advantage they have is the carrying capacity and, obviously, they can ram any bloody thing and get away without a scratch.

Valkyrie - Small mother birds, they are agile but slow which makes them easy to handle and get through tight spaces unlike other aircraft. They also have the capability of squad members deploying on it.

I'm not gonna read all that wall of text, but I will reply to you anyway. Like I said, Valkyries are good at close air-support. Their very good hover stability, small size, and front weapon which can shoot in multiple directions are the reasons for this. This makes them be able to attack ground targets very precisely and stick very close to the terrain. If you can't see this, then I can't help you there.

Their firepower may not be that strong, and they may not be as fast as ESFs or as tanky as a Lib, but you can attack very precisely and sneaky with them, get very close to the enemy, and this even with a whole small squad in the back. That's their strength. They are basically air-ninjas, because you can fly low so well with them, aim so precisely, and play with the terrain.

That only very few people of this playerbase are able to draw advantages from this strength doesn't surprise though...

I've survived just fine

The damn thing has little enough firepower though for the exposure time you get.

I play CAS ESF all the time in high AA areas to far greater effect, and without relying on some gunner

AB would at least help let myself get into riskier positions (ie; better firing positions) and have an out when they try to do something about me.

You mean you have no argument to debate what I said. I highly recommend reading it and coming up with something, or recant your position. Because you're not doing your argument any favors by stating that fact.

You know yourself that this isn't true. I honestly don't care about this enough to start huge discussions here. I stated my opinion and gave examples and reasons why I think this way.

You say the Valkyrie sucks. I think it's just you who sucks, because I'm doing just fine Valks. Let's agree to disagree. Good day.

Galaxys and even sunderers have that ability too.

So you cede the argument with an ad hominem attack?

Wonderful, congrats to me for proving you utterly wrong.

Not sure why you picked the Chinook to represent the Galaxy. I mean why not choose the actual C-5 Galaxy transport craft to represent that?

In my mind, the Galaxy is far closer to a fixed-wing heavy transport plane while the Valkyrie is closer to a rotary-wing aircraft.





In which case, here would be cruising speeds:

C-5 Galaxy- 919kph
Blackhawk- 280kph

The important thing to realize though is that there is a strong difference between a Galaxy and a Blackhawk... the two are far from interchangeable. You cannot use Blackhawks where you use a Galaxy, and you can't substitute a Galaxy for a Blackhawk.

Once you figure out the IRL differences between a Blackhawk and a Galaxy, you might have an easier time figuring out how to differentiate the Valkyrie from the Galaxy.

Take that as you want. I'm just saying that you probably can't handle Valkyries. That's nothing to be ashamed of. I also can't handle ESFs for example (not yet at least).

However, in contrary to you I won't start ranting about ESFs because of this and force on everyone my opinion about how sh*tty their handling is, how weak their armor is, and how horribly you can aim with them, etc.

I've ridden in a C5 Galaxy.. there's no way you can compare that to the Galaxy we have in game. Its not a troop carrier, at least not into combat. Its used to transport equipment. And has no armament.

I used the Chinook in the example because its as big as the Galaxy we have in game. About the same speed and similar armament.

Funny fact about the C5.. it has very comfortable passenger seating. Probably about three times the leg room of normal airliners. The only downside is the seats face the rear of the plane instead of the front. In addition you have to wear earplugs during the flight. It gets pretty loud. I listened to music on my PSP with earplugs in and headphones over the earplugs, slept the entire flight.

I think you've "accidentally" uncovered how to differentiate the Galaxy from the Valkyrie.

1) The Galaxy should be relatively poorly armoured.
2) The Galaxy should be extremely lightly armed or unarmed.
3) The Galaxy should be the heavy lift transport, made for moving vehicles and tons of infantry between uncontested areas.

Meanwhile the Valkyrie should be the one for "going in hot".