Why are ESF so fragile to little bumbs now?

GU2 seems to have made ESFs into fragile glass vehicles where your ESF gets severe damage from bumping anything. One of the big side effects is now it is even easier for Gal pilots to just ram ESFs knowing that even a slight tap will lead to the ESF exploding. Did Hamma pay some dev so he can play chicken? Seriously its is at the point where you can loose 1/2 your health from just tapping a building when taking off with zero forward momentum.

Collision damage seems to be extremely high right now for air. I've lost a half a dozen mossys lately in minor bumps during landing or takeoff, bumps that seemed like they should have done no damage at all, let alone 100% lethal damage.

I'm thoroughly puzzled how collision damage works right now. I might land my ESF at a 10 degree angle and suddenly explode... but then I've seen ESFs ram other planes and survive & win the collision!

(Not that most ESF pilots need more incentive to kamikaze, but I really don't know how that works. [edit: well, I guess it's not really a kamikaze if the ESF survives, but it's weird to think of "ram jet" as being tactically sound.])

I have crashed into the ground and spun/spinned around in a crazy way to come out undamaged and other times I have crashed and burned.

/confused

Frankly, I fail to see the issue with Galaxies destroying ESFs if they collide.

If anything, Galaxies need to have their 250kph cruise speed back. (Even if only with Racer 3)

They were out of their normal paint used for adding the team colors, so they decided to take the nitroglycerin-based paint normally used on Flashes and thus painted the ESFs with it. The results are quite spectacular (from afar).

The PS2 developers do NOT want fighters to survive long.

Forum tears is why.

Ramming mechanics are messed up now too. It used to be ram = 2 dead esfs, now I've rammed them in my mosquito and lived with a good amount of health, and been rammed, died, and the other guy is barely damaged. No idea whats up with that.

But they make dog fighting hard by making ESF take a lot of A2A bullet shots.

I find more pilots trying to ram me, even in ESF, then fight me these days. I can understand it a bit if they are about to die but straight away?

The landing mechanics are way too sensitive. I come in for a landing with red bar health. I nudge the ground and I commit suicide.

I noticed only the opposite. I've survived enemy esf wreckage falling on me twice since the patch, never before. Hitting the ground/buildings seems the same as it was.

There is NO dogfighting in PS2.

Ground AA forces will see to that.

Yeah collision damage may need to be toned down.

One of the few whines I will agree with. I noticed this too, it seems to be much like the problem infantry had(touching, or standing on vehicles would kill you more often then not), which they fixed. I hope they will fix this too.

Bacause in the future, material technology isn't what it used to be. Trolling boffins have degenerated materials into some sort of porous explosives.

Yeah, I get tired of lightly tapping objects in the environment and blowing up spontaneously.

A similar issue is render distance with terrain objects. I can't tell you the number of times I've died because I'm making a low pass/escape, and a radio tower or ammo tower renders literally half a second before I'm past it, and I die.

I was flying in a reaver yesterday and came across a vanguard some guy had gotten stuck. Veeery carefully landed next to it, edged toward it, and tapped it with the wing. SUDDENLY, ALARMS!

What's funny though is after I repaired like 85% of my plane's health, I noticed I'd actually thrown the tank like 3 metres. But the driver had become impatient by then and vanished, so he didn't get it back anyway.

I have noticed it is a bit more unpredictable (or at least it seems) than it was previously.

Ramming other ESFs and getting out alive is a combination of factors (speed, angle, where you hit them and some luck). If you are travelling directly towards each other it is usually death for both of you.

As for ammo towers, those have always been a problem. I don't think I've hit one in a long long time though, as I remember where most are. Still hit rocks and trees more than most other things.

Seems like the NC need to get off that strike and get back to work on making good planes... See, labor goes on strike and the victims are always the pilot customers. Tsk tsk tsk

P.S. I had to start it over again to see JUST what happened and I LOL'd so hard. You sure you didn't have like A2A cruise missiles duct taped to your wing tips?