When will this game get AA?

As the title says, I am missing AA weapons in this game. Were you planning to bring any? I am getting more than a little sick of cheap liberator ****** and OP flyboys and not have ANY weapon worth a damn to shoot them with. So, did you actually plan AA for this game or is this now Planeside flight simulator 2 ?

... *Gets popcorn and waits for the show*

Troll post?

Skyguard, bursters, flack turrets, ranger, walker, lock ons?

Dumbfires, Basilisks, Tank cannons, small arms for ESF's, the ES rocket launchers, pretty much anything that can do damage hurt aircraft pretty badly. People act like if it doesn't have proximity explosive effect or fire-n-forget lock on then it's not meant for aircraft.

My point being, nothing against you, but that people need to grow up and stop pretending that aircraft are untouchable.

They.... kindof are.

Even when you do touch them they just run away and then come back.

mmm hmmm

I love these guys. Helps me keep my cynical side going strong.

Anyways, @OP, I'm gonna rephrase, your title, and throw it back at you. When are you going to use the AA?

Try flying in anything more populated than a 1-12.

He also doesn't seem to think that magriders, lightnings, or harassers run away when you shoot them.

Oh no no, he'll never use them. He wants to give others the tools so he can keep his vehicle farm going because who in their right mind would use a dedicated AA platform when they're at the bottom of the barrel in terms of versatility. Hell even a 4-wheeler with a fury beats a skyguard, what do you think tank crews will do when they see this cert pinata? There is a reason why everyone runs AP-rounds.

Everybody knows that AA is the most superior weapon in this game. That explains why so very few even pull it. It's because only those few can handle the magnitude of its overpowered abilities.

When it becomes an effective solo weapon that can kill rather than deter.

The OP might phrase it wrong, but he points to the problem of solo AA being completely garbage, specifically against Liberators. The Skyguard is the most powerful AA out there, but it can't hold a candle to one solo Lib with a tankbuster (I've done the math already on this in another thread, even when starting at max render distance and the Skyguard fires instantly with perfect accuracy the Lib can still kill the Skyguard in time with two TB's).

AA needs a change. It has a terrible scaling problem. The developers thought that it was too hard to hit aircraft (especially with the latency system) with normal weapons, so they introduced flak weapons. However, the devs wanted aircraft to combat aircraft so they wanted all AA to only deter, add to it that since flak was suddenly so easy to hit with it would be unfair for aircraft to be killed simply because they came in at a certain range. So they calibrated the damage output of flak weapons so any aircraft could escape it.
They failed to see the obvious: One flak weapon had a nicely calibrated DPS so that aircraft can escape it, but add more and you overcome that limitation. Add insult to injury and leave several unintuitive maneuvers in the game that trump every single other maneuver and you have only a select small group of players doing the actual A2A combat that the developers wanted, the rest is either A2G or avoids it altogether since they can't get satisfying battles in the A2A game.

The solution to this is simple: Make G2A weapons skillful. If you reduce the ease at which AA can hit, you reduce the scaling problem of multiple AA. This would allow aircraft to enter 98+ fights since they will be able to dodge AA fire with maneuvers.
At the same time, solo AA needs to be buffed, you might have a tougher time hitting aircraft, but you get rewarded for it more as well. With the capability to actually kill aircraft solo AA would be more fun and engaging to play with.
Then for the OP we need to add AAA guns, or special anti-big-aircraft guns. These guns need slow muzzle velocities so that Libs and Galaxies can try to doge the shots (at range) but incredible DPS to annihilate them. One of these guns at TB range should be able to go toe-to-toe with a TB Lib.

Anyway, the availability of AA weapons needs to be better as well.
Currently Heavies only have lock-ons, oh and dumbfires for pilots who hover around or fly extremely, extremely predictably. They need some kind of skillful AA as well that has a much higher fire rate and capability to damage aircraft (with a moderation for them being infantry after all). This way, each and every unit type, be it infantry, tank or aircraft (aircraft already got it), would have one weapon available for ESF and one for big aircraft. Preferably all weapons like flak and lock-ons would be severely reduced in their ease-of-use so that aircraft stand a chance of dodging them without simply speeding away, but in turn the AA gets a chance to kill the aircraft if they have the skill for it.

I fly into big fights, that is where the action happens.

I can have 10 different AA sources and I can just fly away.

But see, the counter weapons against them ACTUALLY KILL THEM.

OP, do you play on Emerald? I actually got a chance to run a Dalton for a while last night, it was a lot of fun. I felt bad because I kept finding this same guy in a lightning, but that's how the game goes.

ORLY?



The problem is that no VEHICLE can go to toe toe with a TB Lib, dude, let alone a meatsack.

And for all that your posts are generally well-thought and prepared, I can't believe you fail to see the fallacy in your reasoning here.

On one hand, you complain that FLAK scales too well.

What in God's name do you think will happen when your "skill-based" harder hitting solo AA scales up with multiple people using it?

Do you really think that it would be better? That's insulting to much of the player base who knows how to aim and lead. If your goal is to remove Air from the game, just say it.

Alcoholics Anonymous?.. They're called Drunken Ops.

Or normal NC operations.

There's a guy in BAWC that literally never plays sober. Says no fun in it.

I don't really like the playstyle offered by Liberators or ESFs - I prefer Valkyries and Galaxies. ESFs are... less obnoxious than they once were, but are still annoying. Liberators shouldn't exist as they are now, way too tanky - I did a ~5 page writeup a year or 3 ago, but it was lost when the dedicated Vehicle forums were removed without warning.

The summary is basically this: Take a Liberator, give it tank treads, remove all capability of flight, and limit it to 60kph, a fraction of it's current speed. Place the belly gun on top, and limit it in the same firing angle as the Walker. With a Tank buster, this monstrosity of a vehicle can now obliterate anything it chooses - nothing would be able to outgun it. With the top (belly) gun, it can engage multiple targets without issue, and the rear tail gun, when manned, would be a deterrent to anything approaching from the rear. It's armor upgrades cover ALL angles, and it has no critical-hit zone, making ambush tactics ineffective.

If such a MBT was suggested, the community as a whole would go absolutely mad. Now, imagine a version of PS2 where this MBT had been in the game since release, and someone suggested that it be allowed to fly. You may as well give a Magrider a prenerf version of ZOE, un-nerf the PPA, and toss it into the game with full flight capabilities - Even then, its still slower, more unweildy to drive, takes critical hits from the rear, has generally inferior armor, and has one less gun seat.

I would just like to discredit this.

We got rammed by the same guy in a Scythe twice last night and exploded both times. Third time I managed to kill him with the Walker first, but we died to his Lib buddy anyway.

Discredit which part, out of curiosity? Which statement do you disagree with?