Adding Teamwork to Air Combat

[The Admiral]

In most games with air-to-air combat, such as the battlefield series, it inevitably degenerates into numerous individual dogfights with the only element of teamwork consisting of who has the bigger blob.

To correct this I propose that a customization option be added exclusively to the Galaxy that gives it a medium range early warning radar. Since destroying the Galaxies is already going to be the primary objective of all fighter pilots because of their strategic importance as the only mobile spawn vehicle, it makes sense to give galaxy pilots something to do besides being a flying target.
In practice, escort fighters could be vectored onto incoming enemy squadrons or used to ambush other squadrons that are operating without a supporting galaxy, tactics which closely mirror those used in RL.

[Traak]

Originally Posted by The Admiral

In most games with air-to-air combat, such as the battlefield series, it inevitably degenerates into numerous individual dogfights with the only element of teamwork consisting of who has the bigger blob.

To correct this I propose that a customization option be added exclusively to the Galaxy that gives it a massive antiaircraft capability. Since destroying the Galaxies is already going to be the primary objective of all fighter pilots because of their inability to mount an effective defense, due to slower speed, and lack of effective firepower.

There, I fixed that quote for you.

The counter for Galaxies being picked on by the usual crop of cowards in planes is give them AA guns. Then the pilots will run away shrieking, as they do now, from anything that can effectively shoot back.

[SKYeXile]

Originally Posted by Traak

There, I fixed that quote for you.

The counter for Galaxies being picked on by the usual crop of cowards in planes is give them AA guns. Then the pilots will run away shrieking, as they do now, from anything that can effectively shoot back.

this this one been reaver spammed while foot zerging too many times with no AV.

[Sabrak]

Like an AWACS ?

Sounds a good idea to me.

Something to unlock from the Galaxy's cert tree, and some sidegrades like longer range but longer refresh rate, or shorter range but an ability to spot ground vehicules, maybe.

Originally Posted by Traak

The counter for Galaxies being picked on by the usual crop of cowards in planes is give them AA guns. Then the pilots will run away shrieking, as they do now, from anything that can effectively shoot back.

Not sure if trolling, but...
The Galaxy is a transport/support ship, it's not supposed to fight.
Leave its defense to the ES fighters (and Liberator gunships?).

[Traak]

Originally Posted by Sabrak

The Galaxy is a transport/support ship, it's not supposed to fight. Leave its defense to the ES fighters (and Liberator gunships?).

Leave the protection of a vulnerable ANYTHING to others? You have never actually PLAYED Planetside, I'm guessing.

I will enlighten you: Planetside is a massively multiplayer game where the heavily-armed avoid anything that smacks of teamwork or strategic value in favor of brainless splatter-festing.

I can count the number of times an HA (or ANYONE, but this particular heroic and teamwork-oriented individual was HA) has lingered around my AMS to protect it from incursion in eight years on ONE finger. He was a TR, with an MCG, I think it happened about five years ago. It's easy to remember, because it has happened so seldom. We were near some trees, not far from a base wall, but it wasn't within view. He was also wearing Rexo. If I knew it would never happen again, I would have taken a screenshot.

If you leave protection of ANYTHING in this game to people who aren't directly covering their own butts or padding their kill stats, you might as well just orbital strike it yourself.f

Put AA cannons on the Galaxy, with a completely spherical, resultant overlapping field of fire, and then you will see it protected. You have to make rewards direct and relevant to the players, because most of them can't see past their own reticle.

Geez, expecting anyone else to have the foresight to protect a spawn point? If, perhaps a newly evolved uber-species of human beings starts playing the game who have no ties to the existing human race? I don't know. It ain't gonna happen with the present crop.

Teamwork? Protection of a spawn point by others? You can't be talking about any Planetside game in this universe. Make the direct reward of protecting the Galaxy directly rewarded by YOU NOT DYING because you are inside it, manning the rotary flak cannons, with the added bonus of you being able to score kills, and that will do it.

Spawn points should be like porcupines. You can know where they are, but if you get within touching distance, you're gonna get a hand or face full of quills. Making spawn points have a much, much larger SOI, and actual self-defenses would kill two birds with two stones: They wouldn't be oversaturated in the field, and they would discourage people picking on them for EZ killz, OMG I Totally OMG R000Lzzzzz0rZZZZZ!

Battle should be more focused on "closing with and killing the enemy" and less on "leaping, drooling in glee on the enemy nursery with a machete, to prevent any enemy from maturing and becoming a real threat." This isn't Rwanda, and facing fully-armed, fully cognizant enemies is what this game is really going to have to be about.

[Sabrak]

Originally Posted by Traak

Leave the protection of a vulnerable ANYTHING to others? You have never actually PLAYED Planetside, I'm guessing.

I have played the game for years, thank you.

But yes, you're right.
Random people won't defend random spawn points.
That's where squads and outfits jump in action, though.
Ever planned an outfit raid from the Sanc, using Galaxies and Aircav?
Didn't the aircav actually defend the Gals, or at least tried its best?

That's the whole point of my post.
Coordination between gals and ES-fighters should be done easily via some tools like radars or whatever.
Random people might not try to defend the Gal, yes. But it's a MMOFPS. Make a squad or whatever you want, organise your shit and get your guys to defend your support vehicule.

Giving AA to a Galaxy, that's just plain stupid and overpowered.
Do that, and you can be sure to see a Gal-Fest in the air at every battle, fighting for air supremacy, with no fighters able to come anywhere around.

[Effective]

I always found there was a bit of teamwork involved in flying in planetside, sure just flying around randomly in a massive A2A fight and shooting at anything you see seems like it works. But the system we used in TRx for our A2A dogfights (and I imagine prominent outfits such as DT/FC/AC/etc used something similar) was extremely efficient. You don't chase 1 target down, you shoot stuff sure, but you focus on enemy aircraft attempting to shoot down friendlies. This is all communicated via voice coms (mumble, TS, Vent). We've killed large groups of pilots on multiple occasions without losing anyone.

What do most pilots do when they see an enemy almost dead? They commit and attempt to kill him, as long as the guy who's almost dead can avoid him for just a little bit, his teammates can bring down the enemy pilot.

[Figment]

The only thing I would have liked to see in terms of bringing teamwork to aircraft was two seater Reavers instead of solo Reavers. As in multicrew vehicles being required to be effective against multicrew ground units - which would only be fair. Pilot vs pilot can be one guy. Pilot vs infantry, same. But why should a ground unit, regardless of its crew content, always be at the mercy of a solo pilot, let alone a group of solo pilots? :/

Clearly that's not happening, far from it sadly.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by Figment

The only thing I would have liked to see in terms of bringing teamwork to aircraft was two seater Reavers instead of solo Reavers. As in multicrew vehicles being required to be effective against multicrew ground units - which would only be fair. Pilot vs pilot can be one guy. Pilot vs infantry, same. But why should a ground unit, regardless of its crew content, always be at the mercy of a solo pilot, let alone a group of solo pilots? :/

Clearly that's not happening, far from it sadly.

I bet you that none of the three ES fighters will be as tough and devastating as the PS1 Reaver, at least not compared with the rest of PS2's infantry and vehicle weapon damage output.

PS2's NC Reaver will undoubtedly be the most durable and deal the most damage, but I imagine that all three eaircraft will probably be more like the Mosquito from PS1, only with a little more versatility.

Hopefully the new Liberator, being a gunship instead of a bomber, will perform like the multi crewed Reaver that you want.

[Erendil]

Originally Posted by Xyntech

I bet you that none of the three ES fighters will be as tough and devastating as the PS1 Reaver, at least not compared with the rest of PS2's infantry and vehicle weapon damage output.

PS2's NC Reaver will undoubtedly be the most durable and deal the most damage, but I imagine that all three eaircraft will probably be more like the Mosquito from PS1, only with a little more versatility.

Hopefully the new Liberator, being a gunship instead of a bomber, will perform like the multi crewed Reaver that you want.

This is what I'm thinking as well. ES fighters equipped w/ AV will probably be effective enough to hunt down injured MBT's and support vehicles, but they shouldn't be able to wtfbbq a 2-seater MBT at full strength like they can in PS1. Tank busting should be the role of the new lib gunship.

And Effect is right, teamwork over TS is already essential in PS1 if you want to come out on top in dogfights that involve any substantial number of planes. And the key is to concentrate on maneuvering to stay alive while still maximizing your chances of using opportunity fire to hit enemy aircraft that are not focused on you but have their attention directed elsewhere.

Over-committing yourself when chasing an injured foe is one of the surest ways to get yourself shot down by the foe's teammates. And flying solo without coordinating w/ your fellow pilots and being mindful of their vectors will often give the enemy the opportunity to isolate you from the pack and tear you up.

That said I love the idea of giving gals an AWACS system that lights up all enemy aircraft for your platoon to help facilitate coordination amongst pilots. This could bring about a small minigame within air combat where enemy air add stealth sidegrades, activate countermeasures to jam the radar, etc. It could also help you to pursue and engage enemy aircraft that are trying to lose you in the existing cloud cover or in the cover of darkness.

As for dedicated AA for gals... I'd be okay with it as a sidegrade. Gals already have machine guns though, so they're not completely defenseless like AMSes were in PS1. Hopefully vehicle-mounted machine guns will be more effective in general in PS2 than they were in PS1. I'm prertty sure they won't suffer from horrendous damage degradation like they did in PS1 so I suspect they'll be better at AA anyway.

[Zulthus]

I don't know about completely defenseless... I've found that AMSes have a pretty nice capability for rolling over softies...

[inigma]

Originally Posted by Erendil

...I love the idea of giving gals an AWACS system...

For a second there I was thinking you were talking about a hair removal product for ladies.

[SKYeXile]

Originally Posted by Effective

I always found there was a bit of teamwork involved in flying in planetside, sure just flying around randomly in a massive A2A fight and shooting at anything you see seems like it works. But the system we used in TRx for our A2A dogfights (and I imagine prominent outfits such as DT/FC/AC/etc used something similar) was extremely efficient. You don't chase 1 target down, you shoot stuff sure, but you focus on enemy aircraft attempting to shoot down friendlies. This is all communicated via voice coms (mumble, TS, Vent). We've killed large groups of pilots on multiple occasions without losing anyone.

What do most pilots do when they see an enemy almost dead? They commit and attempt to kill him, as long as the guy who's almost dead can avoid him for just a little bit, his teammates can bring down the enemy pilot.

^this
prettymuch how dogfighting is IRL..or how i expect it to be after watching top gun...

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by SKYeXile

^this
prettymuch how dogfighting is IRL..or how i expect it to be after watching top gun...

Like you ever watched anything other than the volleyball scene in that movie

[Raymac]

I really like the idea of being able to cert Galaxies into more of an AWACS role. One of the most fun times I've had in PS1 has been flying in organized squadrons, and working together to call out targets. Also, I've been on the receiving end of Effective and his TRx crew. But it was often rare to see 2 well organized squadrons going head to head. A Galaxy like this might make that easier to accomplish.

The reaver was very much a glass cannon in PS1 if there was any AA around, and I'd like to see that continued, and in fact enhanced in PS2. The more AA options there are, the better.