AA, dogfights and farming

[Raymac]

I haven't read the whole thread, but just wanted to drop my 2 cents.

As someone who loves and spends most of their time in a Reaver, I fully believe and support the idea that AA should trump air and be able to essentially create "no-fly zones". This makes air-to-ground combat much more tactical as well as balances aircraft.

I hate using real life comparisons for a video game, buuut in real life, the first order of air strikes is to take out the enemy's anti-air capabilities because once you establish air superiorty, you have a major advantage. I like that concept for Planetside as well.

[Knightwyvern]

Originally Posted by Raymac

I haven't read the whole thread, but just wanted to drop my 2 cents.

As someone who loves and spends most of their time in a Reaver, I fully believe and support the idea that AA should trump air and be able to essentially create "no-fly zones". This makes air-to-ground combat much more tactical as well as balances aircraft.

I hate using real life comparisons for a video game, buuut in real life, the first order of air strikes is to take out the enemy's anti-air capabilities because once you establish air superiorty, you have a major advantage. I like that concept for Planetside as well.

Agreed. Air power is always a very strong advantage, and it should be in PS2 as well. It should have decent counters though. Effective AA, and perhaps a longer vehicle timer for Aircraft than for ground vehicles?

The problem a lot of people are having here I think is thinking of the Reaver and Mosi in PS2 as strictly fighters. They are meant to be more than that. They handle like fighters at high speeds, but can somewhat hover and behave like helicopters/VTOL at low speeds. They are meant to combine Air Superiority (one loadout) with Air Cavalry (a second loadout.) Air Cavalry is supposed to be a powerful anti-ground option, against vehicles as well as infantry. I'm of the opinion that infantry should be somewhat vulnerable to a friggin Apache gunship. Meaning, having to rely mostly (not entirely) on other aircraft or ground vehicles to fend the Air Cav off. This is the RPS aspect of PS2 I feel. However, stick a AA weapon on your lightning or Vanguard and it should be a pretty effective deterrent against air. There is nothing more satisfying that beating a skyguard in your Reaver. I want that challenge.

Sorry about the WOT, lol. TL;DR: Aircraft are powerful, so have powerful counters, but not excessively so.

[Traak]

The power of single-person aircraft should be countered by equally powerful single-person AA vehicles.

If the AA vehicles require 2 people to be fully powerful, then the planes should also require a gunner and pilot to be fully powerful.

Balance.

[Whalenator]

Originally Posted by texico

Imo PlanetSide 1 didn't do a good enough job of preserving dogfights between airchav, and I hope PS2 can improve on that without jeopardizing ground battles due to farming.

TWO WORDS:
FLARE SPAMMING

[ratfusion]

I was very impressed by how well balanced air combat and air to ground interaction was in PS1. I can not imagine a better solution. PS1 gave all skill levels a role in that fight, and didn't make any other role obsolete.

Be careful with what you ask for, it'll be very difficult to improve on PS1 in this arena.

[Traak]

Originally Posted by Dov

Simple: Very very high max altitude. Let the fight get out of AA range as well as air-ground attack range. I hope they make the sky A SKY in PS2.

Yeah, if they make it a glass ceiling, then career women might feel uncomfortable playing.

[Warborn]

Originally Posted by ratfusion

Be careful with what you ask for, it'll be very difficult to improve on PS1 in this arena.

It will actually be amazingly easy to improve upon it and you can look at basically every other game on the planet which features multiplayer involving aircraft and infantry to see how it could be done better. I believe PS1's hilariously bad aircraft implementation was at least in part due to the fact that the engine was so limited, which meant they couldn't have anything really resembling enjoyable flight mechanics. As that won't be the case for PS2, they immediately change the game by making aircraft function vaguely like aircraft.

[Forsaken One]

Originally Posted by Warborn

It will actually be amazingly easy to improve upon it and you can look at basically every other game on the planet which features multiplayer involving aircraft and infantry to see how it could be done better. I believe PS1's hilariously bad aircraft implementation

lol.... have you ever played a battlefield game? PS1s balance of air Vs everything else even with the door camping is 10,000% better then anything the battlefield games ever did.

If the battlefield games did Planetside air this is how it would go.

#1 everyone has to be air, airs too overpowered not to be air so wait in line at the vehicle spawner to get air.

#2 Airs so overpowered that if there is a long line to get air proceed to teamkill everyone in the line, the overpoweredness of the air is a fair exchange for all that grief.

#3 learn to fly and keep your air in the sky, grats you just gained any and all "skill" you will ever need, oh, don't forget to press X to spam your flares for god mode should anything even try to take you out, pressing X takes a LOT of skill.

#4 don't worry about dieing to anything anymore, you see you're in a fighter jet that has mach 3 speed, (faster then even a guns bullets in the game), but you also have the roles of not only a fighter jet but a bomber comboed into one. but don't worry, your bombs have the size of a whole PS1 base just in case you miss.

#5 don't worry about effective AA, as there will never be effective AA in the game, ever. The pilots will also bullshit that flying takes skill and so will also bullshit that the air is not overpowered and so should be very hard to kill.

[Eyeklops]

Originally Posted by magnatron

you know i never liked how they handled hovering in ps1. i fully feel hovering should be there but id like to see it work kinda how it does IRL.

basically aircraft that can hover (vtol jets/helicopters) can not stay in the exact same spot hovering. it basically cause's the air to begin to circulate around the aircraft forcing the aircraft to apply more and more power to maintain the hover. eventually the air will get moving at the top speed the aircraft's engines are capable of overcoming and the aircraft will fall from the sky and crash.

Wait..what? You got some references for that? I would think the In Ground Effect would negate that, if the effect your describing exists at all. The main reason a Harrier cannot hover too long is overheating of the turbofan engine.

Reference

[Eyeklops]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

Question: Why are aircraft so special that they deserve a place they can be immune to ground fire? I'm sure tankers would love being able to have vehicle fights without aircraft interfering.

1. If an aircraft is so high up you can't hurt him, and he can't hurt you, why would you care?

2. On your logic: Why are infantry so special that they deserve a place they can be immune to air fire? (Hint: Infantry can go indoors)

[Ragotag]

Aircraft ought to have the ability to take on Infantry effectively *if* equipped accordingly, but not both ground and air targets at the same time; role selection should be heavily enforced.

Regarding hovering aircraft, just make Infantry AT weapons highly effective verse aircraft that hover within range -- doorway camping problem solved.

Regarding Infantry AA, a single Infantryman should *not* be able to take out aircraft with a single AA missile IMO, but a small group of Infantry equipped for AA who coordinate their AA attack verses a specific air target (volley fire) should be made highly effective. This would encourage more coordinated team play on the ground.

[Eyeklops]

If people are really worried about hover spam

1. Make flying dual mode. Your either flying, or hovering, and everybody can tell which is which.
2. Create a time based transition between states. Hypothetically say, 3 seconds for an aircraft to ramp up/down between states.
3. Give a bonus to ground infantry against hovering air. A few examples:
   • Increased lock-on speed
   • Increased damage
   • Higher velocity for projectiles locked-on too hovering targets

You won't see too many pilots that will want to hover spam if you balance it right.

[RovingDeath]

Originally Posted by Firefly

Ever met a jet pilot?

Ugh... Too many. The C-130 guys are so much cooler.

[JHendy]

Originally Posted by Warborn

Pretty constructive post you got there.

The point is that not everything needs to be good against everything else. Should everything on be an equally viable target for everything else? Is it a bad thing if some vehicles aren't good at killing infantry? I don't see it as a bad thing if MBTs aren't good at killing infantry at all, but are good against ground vehicles. Or if infantry aren't good against aircraft, but are good against other infantry or vehicles if they can get close to them.

It's about synergy. Combined arms. Relying on team mates to fill the gaps. That's the point of them axing the supersoldiers of the original game and making classes with distinct roles. That mentality should extend to vehicles, too. If you want to kill infantry, X vehicle(s) are good at that. If you want to kill aircraft, Y vehicle(s) are good at that.

It's hardly a novel concept in other games, I don't see importing the idea into Planetside 2 as something to be avoided. On the contrary, requiring people to use an array of vehicles to be well-rounded, or exploiting a lack of capacity in enemy forces by using a certain type of vehicle or whatever, sounds like pretty good gameplay to me.

I actually agree with this, pretty strongly.

Start giving every individual class and vehicle the ability to counter every single possible threat that it may encounter and you'll end up with homogenised roles and uninteresting gameplay.

Different classes and vehicles each need to have their own, very obvious strengths, weaknesses and niche abilities.

I'm frightened by over-customisation.

[Warborn]

Originally Posted by Eyeklops

If people are really worried about hover spam

The worry isn't that we can't think of a solution, the worry is that the developers won't view it as a problem requiring a solution. It would be an easy thing to fix, but if the PS1 developers thought a half-dozen aircraft camping doorways like a bunch of cats waiting outside a mouse hole was good gameplay, who's to say the PS2 developers don't see it the same way?