The state of AA?

[HenchAnt]

The last patches brought some amazing changes, like a gorgeous new continent with a nice hex layout and fun base design.

There were also quite a few tweaks to Anti-Air balance, so what is your experience on how this worked out?

To me as a groundpounder, when the Amerish patch came live, things felt quite ok. Effectiveness of AA at range was reduced quite a bit. Engaging anything at more than 200-300 was rather pointless, unless you had an unlimited supply of ammo nearby to hope for a lucky hit or two.
But since AA still packed quite a punch at 200 meters and below, there was no easy farming for air cav for densely populated areas like spawn areas.
Overall, things felt quite balanced: Spawns could be kept free form air farming, air cav had a way easier life hunting in the countryside, and air-to-air had an unique role hunting them there.

2000 free XP later (and what feels like quite some composite armor ;) ), things feel worse. Bases are again farmed by air cav, despite quite some AA presence. Some of that is due to improved metagame (air cav finally attacking in packs), some to low AA damage that makes it really hard to bring a plane below 25% health if they don't make rookie mistakes.
And pilots now get away with really bad piloting (like standing in the air in plain few of AA, not moving at all).

So:
- What is the air cav players point of view on the changes?
- What would you change?

Personally, I would wish for reduced cone of fire on AA guns. It would simply help to start landing hits earlier against pilots flying in very predictable patterns (like attacking a base head on, or standing still). At the same time impact on pilots with somewhat advanced manouver skills would be limited (like those hiding behind terrain to limit exposure to AA, doing attack runs at some distance or in bad angles to AA, air-to-air dogfighting).

[thegreekboy]

I agree

[Helwyr]

I agree with the general sentiments I'm seeing on the beta forums that the last change has turned this game into Airside again. I'm just grateful that as a mostly Infantry player that the render distance for Infantry is much less than vehicles, it's the one thing that's keeping the game playable for me.

[xuur]

that and the instantaneous overheating of base mounted AA and artillery batteries. I dont mind heat, but it shouldnt lock out after 2 shots (IMO)

[PoisonTaco]

Still needs work but better than it's ever been. I still think the best counter to air should be Mossies, Reavers and Scythes and AA guns should only provide area denial. I like that ground based AA can scare away enemy air if they get in over their heads, and I like that aircraft can have their fights in the sky.

[PoisonTaco]

Also this should be worth noting: http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/air-balance-and-upcoming-changes.42532/

There's been allot of posts about the recent air changes, so I figured I should make a post about where we think we're at and upcoming changes.

Flak damage
I think we’re close to a good number when it comes to fighter aircraft, so we won’t see a change here next patch. However we think flak is too effective on Liberators and Galaxies (and has been for awhile). Next patch should show a significant buff to their resistance to flak.

Burster damage was unintentionally set to a value that was lower than intended, so there will be a small buff to its damage this coming patch.

Rocket Pods
The buff was made for the wrong reasons and I’ll be reverting the change to something very close to what it was in the previous patch.

The rocket pods ended up being twice as effective as a Liberator belly cannon, which is a problem when the fighter aircraft is more versatile in terms of cost, loadout and crew requirements. So in tandem with the reverting of rocket pod damage, all of the liberator belly cannons will receive buffs to make sure they are more effective A2G weapons than the rocket pods in the correct situation.

Liberator changes
As mentioned in the notes above, the Liberator will receive a damage resistance buff from flak as well as receive buffs to its weapons to make them stronger than rocket pods.

With these two changes, we are hoping to see the following changes occur on the battlefield.


Increased Liberator effectiveness provides a strong counter to tanks and resulting tank spam
Ground options being less effective to fight against Liberators, more aircraft go air to air to counter Liberators as well as protect their own liberators.
The strongest A2G in the game (rocket pods) is reduced, so tanks should feel less like they got instantly destroyed by air

[Hamma]

Thanks for posting that Poison, good stuff. The Galaxy is taken out way to easily as it is.

[Beerbeer]

Base AA guns seem really weak now, maybe unnecessarily so?

Not only do they seem weak, but the bullet spread seems weird, too and it's hard to hit targets, even stationary ones hovering right in front of you.

[Hamma]

Personally as a flyer for me I don't think it's the POWER of AA itself but the NUMBER. Tons of people have AA and TONS of people have Skyguards. When there is so many AA options it's hard to stay airborne. You usually have more than one AA emplacement shooting at you making it even harder.

I'd much rather see fewer AA options.

[Ghoest9]

Galaxies need to last longer - especially when actually delivering troops.

That said were quickly getting back to the PS1 scenerio where fighter craft are awesome anti-inf platforms that can kill any grunt but quickly retreat before they die from any grunt with an AA.

The problem isnt so mych the AA as it the aircrafts balance and durability.

[Helwyr]

With PS2s class system there really isn't a means of limiting the number of any particular thing.

Given that we're stuck with the access to everything class system, I've always felt the answer to Air vs AA was in the range, not the number or lethality of either weapon platform. If you limit the range of both Ground based AA and A2G you can create a situation were Air can get in the thick of things and AA if deployed in the areas attacked can still kill them, but not that every AA on the battlefield can target them.

It also allows for Air to have their high altitude dog fights without being spammed by AA. Galaxies can operate also at these altitudes and just be concerned with air threats.

And puts to bed the terrible idea of normalizing Infantry render distance with that of vehicles, which I can understand pilots asking for in regard to AA MAXes, but if it were applied to all Infantry, outdoor Infantry fights would likely end up in a poor a state as they were in PS1, perhaps even worse if AA remains weak.

Short range but lethal AA, even shorter range A2G.

[Rahabib]

Personally as a flyer for me I don't think it's the POWER of AA itself but the NUMBER. Tons of people have AA and TONS of people have Skyguards. When there is so many AA options it's hard to stay airborne. You usually have more than one AA emplacement shooting at you making it even harder.

I'd much rather see fewer AA options.

I rarely see skyguards, they are sitting ducks. They need to increase the number of rounds on them so they are more effective than a max, but still require precision to hit. If a lib is just sitting there taking shots the whole time they deserve to go down.

Not increase damage, just rounds, so the skyguards just have to hit you more but dont have the disadvantage of having to reload so often. A good pilot can still turn tail and run before they are destroyed and only the dumb pilots should get taken down by a single skyguard.

[Thunderhawk]

The Solution to the Air vs ground problem is simple, yet i don't see them wanting to do that and instead they are tuning damage numbers.

That's whats frustrating for me as a Dedicated full time Scythe Pilot with odd ventures into Infantry land.

1. Reduce range of Hellfire Missiles. That's it, don't need to invite some mysteriously magical way of balancing Air vs ground, just limit the range of Hellfire missiles, so Pilots need to get close to spam something, and in return get themselves into danger by having lots of things shooting at them.

2. Increase armour effectiveness of MBTs and Sunderers vs Hellfires, thats it, nothing else, just make sure a ESF cannot 1 salvo destroy a MBT from behind.

3. Leave everything else as is. AMP Station benefits will solve the turrets overheating too quickly, you need to give us a reason to take an AMP station.

4. Render distance issue can be solved by making MAX units render similar to Vehicles, but leave Infantry as is, that issue solved.

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Stop playing with Damage numbers, you nerf A because of B, and A becomes useless against C, which it should be good at, etc....

Baby steps devs, baby steps.... stop these mass changes all at the same time

[maradine]

I think Helwyr has the right of it - double the flight ceiling and most of this is moot. AAA can own the 500 meters off of the deck, and ground attack craft can decide where, when, and if they want to enter the danger envelope. Provided they have air superiority, of course.

[Hamma]

I rarely see skyguards, they are sitting ducks. They need to increase the number of rounds on them so they are more effective than a max, but still require precision to hit. If a lib is just sitting there taking shots the whole time they deserve to go down.

Not increase damage, just rounds, so the skyguards just have to hit you more but dont have the disadvantage of having to reload so often. A good pilot can still turn tail and run before they are destroyed and only the dumb pilots should get taken down by a single skyguard.

Really? I see tons of them :eek:

[HenchAnt]

I think Helwyr has the right of it - double the flight ceiling and most of this is moot.

I don't think making Liberators and Galaxies immune to ground based AA is a solution. ;)

Planetside1 had this immune-to-AA flight ceiling. And it lead to quite some broken situation where a liberator could be parked above a base or tower for some easy mode bomb farming.

[Mauser101]

Not so. With the slow drop speed of liberator bombs and the fact that they showed up on the mini map anybody paying attention was not hit by lib bombs. A stationary lib at flight ceiling was east bait for aircraft in ps1.

Might not work the same in ps2, though, due to projectiles not showing up on the mini map and vehicles not magically appearing on said map within a certain distance.

[maradine]

I don't think making Liberators and Galaxies immune to ground based AA is a solution. ;)

Oh, I dunno, it might give the ESFs something more useful to do than wander around the battlefield looking for rocket deficiencies. :)