Dopplers Air Hate thread

[Cryptica]

Originally Posted by Onizuka-GTO

I just wish there was at leased one useful AA weaponary that Vanu infantry can have.

Dude...I HATE the lancer. I fly over a base and all of a sudden I hear the missle-lock beep and on my radar I have 5 tiny ass blips charging towards me. If I'm lucky I can hit the AB and avoid all but a couple hits. Lancer does not suck (unless you're NC or TR, lol).

[Baneblade]

If
Want to see real pilots = 1
Then
Take out the afterburner = 1
End

[ChewyLSB]

I actually don't mind the skyguard too much. I'm a skyguard driver, and I have a friend who is a great Skyguard gunner. Sure, it runs out of ammo fairly quickly, but I replace all of the machine gun ammo with flak and I have a loadout from an equip term to quickly replace the ammo, even without a dropship center. Skyguards pretty much own any aircraft except for a liberator. Hell, we even get a lot of infantry kills.

[Shalashaska]

Originally Posted by Cryptica

Dude...I HATE the lancer. I fly over a base and all of a sudden I hear the missle-lock beep and on my radar I have 5 tiny ass blips charging towards me. If I'm lucky I can hit the AB and avoid all but a couple hits. Lancer does not suck (unless you're NC or TR, lol).

Isn't that the Striker your talking about?

[Doppler]

I just dont buy this logic from some people that your one man vehicle should be able to take out my two man (or in TR case 3) in one pass. I dont see why reavers need more damage from their rockets when their already a very potent weapons platform. Besides in any given base battle airpower will move in and start killing any defenders stuck outside as soon as the turrets are down. I blame this on laughable base defenses versus airpower. The guns dont angle up high enough and arnt accurate enough to engage at signifigant range. I suppose a good portion of my skyguard frustration is the lack of good gunners, i often take my skyguard out, park it in the corner of the base and sweep the skies. The sacrifice i have to make with this is i cant only cover a small percentage of the courtyard area.

[KIAsan]

I don't think this is really a vehicle balance issue. From what I've seen, this is a vehicle Value issue. Basically, ground vehicles are much more valuable than air, in that they require more crew, take longer to man, take longer to get to battle, have to be manually reloaded in most cases, and have no quick way of repair (requiring support of either an engy/lodestar).

Air vehicles are almost disposable. They don't require any support train, can reload instantly (just fly to the nearest air tower), only need one pilot, and can get to battle quickly (obvioulsy the lib has the same crew difficulty, but can still fight with it's 35mm if needed).

If you balance out the certs and cost of maintaining a tank in the field vs a reaver, the reaver is hands down winner in cost verse combat punch. So, whats the solution? Don't think there really is one. I know reavers are balanced by the abundance of AA out there, where as tanks don't really fear AV/AA weapons as much. So, should they add vehicle repair terms to watch towers? Or just take away the air term benefits from air towers? Remains to be seen.

[Incompetent]

We need:

A. Flak Turrets, very simple, install flak turrets or guided missiles in protected areas at bases and towers. (note: must be manned)

B. Flak Pits, again simple, let us dig a hole and put a flak cannon in it. Let people put them where they are needed, and keep them at least marginally hidden so they don't just become free xp for every grunt with an AV weapon and eyes.

C. An Dedicated AA vehicle not made out of paper, something that can role with an armored column and take a beating along with everything else. Make it nice and slow so Skyguards still have a purpose, but make it nice and tough so it can do what they Skyguard can't.

Pick 2

Now, you might be saying, "wow, thats alot of AA, you must really hate fliers," and you'd be right. Mindless reaver whores need to die slow, painful deaths. Reavers pack massive amounts of firepower, are much faster then ground units, are useful as disposable fast transport, are vulnerable to only a very small number of weapons, have more then adequate armor, can withdraw and attack at will, ignore terrain and only require a single crewman. It needs to come at a price, they should be useless if the enemy is ready for them. To put it another way, Cavalry can't play with formations of Pikemen, it just doesn't work that way, the Cav will lose every time. Someone else has to kill the Pikemen and break open the formation. But we can't field any Pikeman, so the Cavalry is walking all over us.

*Note that these don't neccessarilly have to be flak, high ROF weapons such as linked 20mm cannons (that fire at the same time damnit) or AA missiles could also be used (but only if they've got a good LoS, like on top of a base.)

[Doppler]

I am considerably not a fan of the flak system, i think exchanging the skyguards current weapons system for a lock on missile system or a dual linked machine gun system whould be fantastic, additionaly i'd give it a compass pointer in the hud to mark off incoming enemy aircraft from a fairly good click (say SOI sized) and you'd have something thats not just a detterant but a credible weaposn platform. The other solution i foresee is changing the existing skyguard system, minus the machine gun, and load it on a lightning style plaform, then you'd have something sporty, easy to crew and not something the driver just sits there and plays with himself while the gunner kicks out the jams.

[SurrealBeingXX]

it would be cool if the reaver and mosquito could hold 2 people....

[Peacemaker]

Man, People always bitch about us pilots. Your always bitching how you get owned when your walking all alone in the middle of no where. You always bitch when all your AA got shitcaned and the reavers make a sweep. Your always bitching when that reaver sees the AMS and blows it away. The reaver is a very fragile piece of equipment. It doesnt take much to knock it out of the sky and there are many ways to do it. We have AA maxs, AV Weapons (dont bitch about them, they all do a good job), and we have skyguards.

I hear the Vanu bitch about AA. H-O-L-Y SHIT! Look at the god damn magrider, it can snipe a reaver out of the sky with ease. Look at the Starfire max, you can dodge the rockets, still shoot, and hit every time.

I hear the NC bitch about it. You have a missle that you can park yourself in a door with and shoot at me with, but I cant shoot back with out taking alot more fire than normal. Your AA max's missles are supposed to loose tracking when the lock breaks, they follow you an extra SOI and a half! They are also the longest ranged weapon out there.

Now im a Terran pilot but I know the TR bitches. But we got the short end of the stick on this one. The Burster is so rediculously BAD at AA its insane. Only a noob or someoen caught completly off guard dies to it. The Striker is the easiest missle to break its lock (just hit the burners), all the other missles will out run your aircraft if you dont have full burners and are quite far away, it also does very low damage.

Now lets see what people want to see. A skyguard with guided missles? Great... another impossible to loose missle that will be streaking across the sky at a milion miles per hour. Now lets let infantry biuld hard to see flack nests in the middle of no where. Now lets make a skyguard with lots of armor.

Really the points people bring up are insane. Bing a reaver pilot in a hot combat zone is one of the hardest things to do in this game. Second only to the art of cloaking, flying through an enemy infested base covered in AA and getting a few kills may be the hardest thing to do in this game. The amount of AA that I run into is incredible. I cant fly over any base I want and survive. Doppler, Incomp, Sobekus, and Dead Teddy. Why dont you become a near full time reaver pilot like my self. Then bitch to me about ineffective AA measures in this game. Better yet become a Terran Reaver pilot. THEN bitch to me about it. This game is very easy to play. Point and click, the person dies. The same goes for a reaver, a tank, an infantry guy. It all works the same. If you really think its THAT easy to fly a reaver go do it. Fly a reaver by your self (not with a group of 25 like a buncha noobs) and take on AA, enemy aircraft, magriders, AV weapons, and countless small arms fire. I fly because its what I enjoy to do, in this game I get very frustrated sometimes because I could be a million times better than this guy, but he started turning before me, or he is ducking in and out of a force dome, or he is jumping into the air firing guided missles that will blow me out of the sky with a clip.

Need I say more!?

[Baneblade]

Originally Posted by Peacmaker

Doppler, Incomp, Sobekus, and Dead Teddy. Why dont you become a near full time reaver pilot like my self. Then bitch to me about ineffective AA measures in this game.

Hi

All I stated is good pilots dont need burners.

I like to think Im an alright Reaver pilot...the ammo patch sure helped with the 20mm hehe...

[Peacemaker]

No one can live long in a hot AA zone with no Burners.

[Baneblade]

Well not with the way the game is now no, although in a really hot zone not much lives with em...hehe...

[drsomewhere]

Being a Terran Reaver Pilot Myself, i totally agree with you Peace. Vanu and NC maxes both have LOCK ON missles that can trash you in a clip. In addition, the Burster sucks awfully and there is no AA coming From TR EVER. You are always alone. Until you have stepped out from behind the protective cover of Superior Max Units, Better Heavy Assault Weapons, Better Vehicles, and Larger Populations...SHaddap!

[WritheNC]

It took me a good 5 months to be pretty good with air cavalry.

Get a reaver, fly out, get shot down by Ahriman Corps/Ash etc. Get a mosquito, get shot down by AC/Ash etc. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Doppler, Incomp, Sobekus, and Dead Teddy. Why dont you become a near full time reaver pilot like my self.

It's really hard to argue about air cav until you've tried it. It's much harder than it looks.

I highly suggest you try it. I was a dedicated infantryman for the first 6 months of the game. Then I got Air Cavalry. Air Cavalry, in one word, is freedom...with a steep cost.

Please try it. Dedicate 1 month to play air cavalry. Try everything pilots do in air cav; attacking infantry and vehicles, other aircraft, stopping LLU runs, flying to back bases and repairing gens/tubes, picking off heavily damaged vehicles etc.

After you play a week in air cav, you can almost feel the hate when ground forces fire at you.