Where's The Flak?

infantry has to specialize far more then air does. the whole "you cant compare them!" argument is avoiding questions posed. sure air can be seen from far away and it has a higher skill floor, how does this justify air being able to have far more versatile load outs then every unit in the game? it simply doesn't, "period".

I must respectfully disagree. Annihilator + LMG = effectiveness vs air, armor, and infantry. MBT w/ HEAT + Walker = effectiveness vs air, armor, and infantry. I don't see the problem here, so what am I missing?

To answer 1 and 2 together.... Air-Hammer

Though as a general trend, groundies don't need any reason to hate me and will shoot me regardless of what I'm doing. Sometime dueling another ESF I'll get 5-10% dmg done by 1 guy with small arms.

MMmmm, Air-Hammer... At first, I thought the idea of a shotgun on an ESF was beyond ********(or on a tank or Harrasser), but I guess if they buff it up enough, it becomes decently viable. Have to get damn close though. People say they hate them, but watching videos of ESF pilots who fly low through trees, come up out of no where, kill one person, then fly off low and weaving through obstacles really makes me think they deserve that kill. Unlike those damn PPA spammers who spam their plasma grenades at extreme ranges. Things that hit me directly I can live with. Weapons that can spam me around cover is unforgivable. Is the Banshee just as bad or worse?

Banshee used to be the incontested best. Now it's really meh. you don't have to get as close as the AH, but your killing potential is way lower. The damage isn't really there, but it's really easy to use.

I like the SFX for the Banshee though. Sounds kind of what I think a rotary gun should sound like.

It takes less than 5 beamer mags to drop a mossie.

Good luck unloading those 5 mags into it though.

It would be pretty awesome if LA had like a magnetic grappling hook they could use to latch onto low flying planes, action hero style, and shoot their secondary weapons(because they can only use one hand, the other is holding onto the plane) at it until it explodes like in Titanfall. No C4 should be allowed in this situation because it would be OP.(Funny as hell though) The ESF would need to do a hard barrel roll to get them off or scrape them off with a tree.

25 people magdumping would work on that pad

THIS IS NOT THE BLUR TRAILER! (sadly, i want to stab people without decloaking)

yeah see a lot of scrub players never got good at using dumbfire rockets on aircraft, i did, and i did so with the decimator. Every time one of those guys think they can swoop down in a straight line learns that i aint gonna roll over so easily.

Or if you could grab them from behind in stealth, uncloak, whisper sweet nothings in their ear, then execute them. Teabagging mandatory, of course.

Definetly sounds great. Kind of sucks that flying is mostly dead.

F

finally someone who knows what they are doing!

Thanks for a the feedback guys and gals! Also always remember: Big Money, Big Women. Big Fun.

17 shots, 451 RPM=7,52 shots per second=2,26 seconds to unload 1 magazine, 5 magazines fired so 11,3 seconds unload time.
long reload=1,75sec, 5 magazines means 4 reloads means 7 seconds total for reload.
18,3 seconds total, assuming 100% accuracy.

Edit: And please, why don't you prove to everyone that the Beamer can kill a Mossie in less than 5 magazines? I did the calculations for multiple other weapons in the thread you quoted, so just use that template and calculate it. I even did part of it for you in the unload and reload times for you.
Edit2: Some back of the envelop calculations: Beamer has 24 extra damage at minimum range than the Trac-5, but also half the magazine and much faster damage falloff, as well as a lower minimum damage (12 damage less than Trac-5). Seeing that ESF are on average farther than 10m we can assume the average damage is about the same as the Trac-5
The Trac-5 needs about 2,375 magazines to kill an ESF. Assuming the average damage, we can say that you need about 4,5 magazines to kill one ESF. Which means my calculation above is almost right.

I don't really see what's the problem here, that's a loooooooong time, especially against high-speed ESF that can escape the range of almost any small arm in litterally a second, and did the guy use FS? If not, we can add that to the total.

And don't start about "but if everyone fires..."
There's usually more than enough Heavies walking around to one-shot 2 MBT's from the front simultaneously, and there's often even enough of them with a view of the tank to do it. Why doesn't it happen? Because people are busy, they are busy with judging distance, chance of a kill, their own safety, judging their own accuracy at that distance, trying to predict movement of the tanks as well as the possibility of enemies about to blow your brains out... This all means that, no matter how visible something is, no matter how much OHK they can throw at it in large groups, it is far from an automatic balancing factor.
Same for ESF. The ESF can nearly OHK almost any infantry. They actually can OHK infantry by throwing enough hits in that they are dead before they get the first hitmarker. People have to look up to see them, whereas 90% of their enemies is not up but on the ground, where they are looking for 90% of the time, etc etc.
ESF can be hit by small-arms. This is not exactly a big weakness. It's like 10 guys with a pistol going up against a sniper at render range. Sure it's possible, they have the option to OHK the sniper if they all hit, but nobody expects that to actually happen.

ESFs have different resistance values to small arms so you cant just take small arms raw damage.

I would go into VR but im not near a pc that can run planetside and i will be in a few hours, ill upload VR footage then.

Theres enough heavies there to lock on or magdump. Shooting its a pain in the *** and not the fastest/most effective means of blowing it, but it works.

Yes, that's why I used an estimated effective health against small-arms. 75% damage resistance against a 3000 health vehicle (according to almost every resistance sheet I can find, I still don't get where people get the whole "only 1750 health for ESF" from).
Hey, I estimated 12000 health, you deal 1/4rth damage against ESF with small-arms, which means you need 4 times the shots, which means you have 4 times the effective health against small-arms, which is 12000, so my estimate was perfect, and my calculations are correct.

That's possible. Or you can now calculate it.
12000/167=71,85 shots or 72 shots.
72/17=4,23 magazines you need to fire within 10m
average damage is 133,5.
12000/133,5=89,88 or 90 shots.
90/17=5,29 magazines you will need at the 35m mark.
12000/100=120 shots
120/17=7,06 magazines you will need after 60m.
with FS, which adds 6% to 25% (I thought it was 24%), you add 180*4=720 up to 750*4=3000 effective health.
720/167=4,31 or 5 extra shots which puts minimum range magazines to 77/17=4,52 with the lowest level FS
3000/167=17,96 or 18 extra shots which puts minimum range magazines to 90/17=5,29 magazines with the highest FS.

You understand how bad this gets at farther ranges and better FS.

There's enough heavies to OHK any infantry or tank around, but that just doesn't happen. You are talking about every player simultaneously turning and firing at a single target, which just doesn't happen. Even if miraculously 3 people aim and fire at almost the same time, the ESF will always have enough time to get away. Also, small-arms is so hardly used against ESF anyway for all the obvious reasons: Why shoot it if it can get out of small-arms range in seconds? Why shoot it if it can kill you at long ranges your weapons aren't designed for? Why even look up if 90% of your targets are on the ground?

Edit:
Yes, it is the wisest option to always, always shoot it if you have time for it. If you don't do it to pester them and force them to go away/use FS, do it for the off-chance that they ram themselves into the environment while they are at it. It happens all the time, ESF goes and attacks a large group of enemies, get's so tunnel-visioned that he doesn't look at his surroundings, and when he wants to go away he rams a lonely tree or even the ground and you get a kill.

For all of that, you're still only throwing numbers around. Your stats tell me a whole other story....
The only point I'll concede to you is that you've at least spent time in an ESF. If you haven't performed, that's something else; but at least you actually spent time in the vehicle.

So I came to a particular conclusion... you tried becoming good at flying and lost your drive mid-way and it turned into resentment against air. Now, this is just a hypothesis but I wanted to let you know what I actually think.

So a tl;dr would be:

You can't support what you're saying with your own stats
But at least you've spent more time than the average groundie. So for that I commend you.

I still think most of what you say is like trying to look at a painting through a microscope. You only see a tiny part of it.

Irony.

Shooting ESF's with your small arms is NOT pointless - your defeatist BS attitude is. I've led RANDOM SQUADS around and ordered small arms fire on ESF's coming in for a streak, and the combined fire has dropped ESF's inside of a few seconds. Fact of the matter is, evne if you have 12 heavies with lock-ons, it's often more effective just to shoot the ESF's with your LMG's.

It's all about the volume of fire. One trooper shooting is hardly dangerous to the ESF - everyone shooting low-flying ESF's by habit is an effective way to deny ESF's their fun for all eternity.

@OP I won't even entertain your video with adding to it's viewer count. PPA farmers don't deserve attention or recognition - what you do is nothing special and can be done from the longest range possible. I have more respect for Airhammer users.

And I F'in hate Airhammer users.