Couple thoughts on MAX's and Air Vehicles...

[CutterJohn]

Originally Posted by opticalshadow

yeah they said hovering wasnt going to be a possiblity as flight will follow amore realistic method.

I do not see wheels, meaning they have to be vtol. Hell you can explicitly see the downward thrusters on the models.

Now, they could go with an unstable hover, but this is a game. Gotta be able to take your hands off the controls now and again.

[Aractain]

Hopefully AA systems will be skill based meaning hovering = quick death for the VTOL aircraft.

[Talek Krell]

Originally Posted by Treerat

a weapon called the NARC

Flails are already disliked due to their ability to camp doors and instantly kill infantry from across the map. I don't think making their shots home in on moving vehicles will help.

[Hamma]

Where did they say there was no hovering at all? I don't remember hearing that mentioned I'm not sure we know for sure.

[Talek Krell]

As far as I can tell people are making the assumption because the devs have said they're using a "realistic" flight system. Considering that there are a variety of perfectly real VTOL aircraft using a variety of methods, I don't think the assumption has any merit.

[Haro]

I think the reaver could fill this roll perfectly, if better designed. Reflecting back on PS, while I love the reaver, there was nothing really interesting about it. Dumb-fire rockets and chainguns? Kinda boring. Now that they seem to be making it two person, I think we can see some interesting directions taken with it. Not saying that we can't have dumb-fire missiles, but definitely have turreted chainguns and maybe laser guided missiles.

On another note, I'd like more variety of bombers. I'd like a larger bomber, that has some additional kick with carpetbombing. For a liberator type, I'd rather see a faster, low-flying fighter bomber. Has a bit more damage and resilience compared to the reaver, but harder to use. Basically like the A-10 and the reaver like an Apache.

I'd like to keep maxes at the smaller, more powered-armor level, but I'm always open to large mechs, as long as they are far better balanced than BFRs.

[Malorn]

Just because they are making flight physics more realistic doesn't mean there isn't VTOL. Just look at BF2142. The VTOL aircraft in 2142 were a lot harder to fly than PS and they they fit nicely. I hope the PS aircraft are more like that. I had fun flying the transport ships in that game; they handled quite differently from the gunships and played a lot more like how I hoped a galaxy would be. I thought they should have had lighter air transports for that reason in PS2.


Also, I believe the Vulture was intended to be like an A-10 in Planetside. It didn't really achieve that role very well, but they clearly designed it that way. It has no cluster bombs and was a faster more manueverable Liberator intended to go after mobile vehicles (i.e. tank buster). The nosegun was also designed for that it had a burst of high damage vehiciel-oriented rounds but had a long reload time. It was a precision bomber designed to kill vehicles as opposed to the general-purpose strategic bomber that was the Lib.

I expect the vulture will make a return as an upgrade option for Liberators. I hope this time around it fits better as a tank buster. I think it should probably drop a streak of bombs and be a bit faster so tanks can't easily avoid it.

I also hope Libs are 2-seaters as opposed to 3-seaters. Just allow the bombadier to switch into tail-gun mode. It was never worth the manpower to fill the tailgun spot and always better to have the gailtunner fly a reaver, mosq, or wasp instead to escort.

[Sirisian]

Originally Posted by Malorn

I also hope Libs are 2-seaters as opposed to 3-seaters. Just allow the bombadier to switch into tail-gun mode. It was never worth the manpower to fill the tailgun spot and always better to have the gailtunner fly a reaver, mosq, or wasp instead to escort.

I'm hoping it's a single seater. I found myself more often using the nose gun to shoot vehicles. It would then be a Reaver with bombs instead of rockets which sounds perfect. I prefer bombing more than launching rockets and hated basically assisting in all my kills. I think when they decided not to make the Reaver a two person jet they discovered the same thing. Definitely makes more sense having the pilot fire the rockets/bombs.

[CutterJohn]

Originally Posted by Malorn

I also hope Libs are 2-seaters as opposed to 3-seaters. Just allow the bombadier to switch into tail-gun mode. It was never worth the manpower to fill the tailgun spot and always better to have the gailtunner fly a reaver, mosq, or wasp instead to escort.

Plus it was just damned boring to be stuck in the bomber spot with nothing to bomb.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Sirisian

I'm hoping it's a single seater. I found myself more often using the nose gun to shoot vehicles. It would then be a Reaver with bombs instead of rockets which sounds perfect. I prefer bombing more than launching rockets and hated basically assisting in all my kills. I think when they decided not to make the Reaver a two person jet they discovered the same thing. Definitely makes more sense having the pilot fire the rockets/bombs.

It should definitely not be a single seater. Single seaters should be avoided in Planetside with a few exceptions.

Planetside has a 1+1=3 teamwork model where two players in a vehicle coordinating should be significantly more powerful than two single-seaters. This was obvious with the tanks vs lightnings, ATVs vs buggies, etc. Aircraft were generally the exception, but the Liberator was not. For having a 2-3 man aircraft you got a lot of firepower (far more than a reaver) which made the Liberator what it was. If it were a one-seater it would have to be far more fragile and have far less firepower. Were it to be so it would actually overlap with the reaver in role. That's lame. A bomber should be something that makes people go "oh shit, gtfo inc!" It should be able to take out any vehicle in a single pass assuming most/all of the bombs hit their mark. This was true of the Lib in PS1 and there really isn't much to change with it. The concept and implementation was pretty darn good. Just needs a few tweaks.

[Raymac]

Just a reminder, Reavers melt to AA faster than you can say Jackie Robinson, so don't start comparing them with tanks. It really doesn't take much AA to totally deny a large area to aircraft. Also it takes a full salvo of rockets, without missing, to take out 1 infantry now. The rocket spam is nowhere near as powerful against infantry as it was.

#Justsayin

[CutterJohn]

Originally Posted by Raymac

Just a reminder, Reavers melt to AA faster than you can say Jackie Robinson, so don't start comparing them with tanks. It really doesn't take much AA to totally deny a large area to aircraft. Also it takes a full salvo of rockets, without missing, to take out 1 infantry now. The rocket spam is nowhere near as powerful against infantry as it was.

#Justsayin

As a self confessed AA whore, I would actually like AA to be a bit less dominating. AA should be all about direct fire machine guns or flak pouring a lot of lead into the sky, with the accompanied loss of effectiveness as range increases. AA doesn't need to be a 400m overpowered area denial weapon.

Using weapons like these would also give AA vehicles lesser secondary roles as direct fire ground AV/AI, so you're not so bored/useless if there is no air.

Non AA ground vehicles and infantry should also share a greater burden of their AA defense. Didn't care for how 2 units were the only real land based options vs air. Turreted machine guns should be pretty effective against air that hangs around. AA should be great to have, but not guaranteed death if you have none.

TL;DR

Less overwhelming AA.
No/minimal tracking AA, so damage falls naturally with range.
Greater reliance on various ground vehicles with turreted machine guns for self defense, as well as infantry AA, and small arms.

I love playing AA, but I can see how it was far too frighteningly effective at driving all the air away from the battle. Air deserves a chance to dart in and out with a decent chance to live.