Higby on Air/AA balance.. Is it the fast track to Airside?

[Soothsayer]

When I agree with Figment, I'm all-in, on-board with what he says. This topic is a time where that is happening.

The teamwork issue is moot because the ESF's aren't required to use teamwork.

Cost is negligible in some arguments as it relates to skyguards because they also cost resources. With regards to G2A infantry weapons, the fact that they don't cost anything doesn't really have any bearing because they are just so bad. The most effective scenario for a grounder is when the ESF is flying away, otherwise there's too great of a chance for the rocket to be dodged (which is fine, skill is not a bad thing, but infantry needs to have a fighting chance).

Basically if you have spent the certs/SC to specialize into something, equipped that specialization (to the detriment of effectiveness in other areas) and get put in a situation where the specialization is geared towards you should BEAST whatever you're geared out to take out.

That is not the case with AA. Then to add insult to injury, ESF's completely ignore that design decision and are very capable, effectively gaining specialization grade effectiveness without the drawback of sucking whatever they have not specialized into.

[boogy]

Originally Posted by RobUK

Liberators die very quickly to ESF's

At one point that was supposed to be the food chain.

Liberators kill enemy vehicles, enemy ESF's kill Liberators and protect friendly vehicles from Liberators whilst killing enemy ESF's that are attacking friendly Liberators.

It was the perfect role for the ESF and would have made for a lot of fun.

Now ESF's just kill everything

That would be some good gameplay for the sky. I can see how nerfing rocket pods would open this up.

[GLaDOS]

I know balance is a little screwed up at the moment, and this definitely won't singlehandedly fix it, but it would probably help a little with evening out the difference between vanilla and upgraded aircraft. Right now, rockets aren't much of a sidegrade, as they're infinitely better than the upgraded afterburners. So what if we removed afterburners completely for rocket (A2G and A2A) users, and buffed them a bit for people without rockets? That should help a little at least, right?

[Captain1nsaneo]

Air does counter air but the talk is about their AA missile pods which aren't default equipment?

It's been said before that missiles of either kind are pretty much the only direct upgrade with no downside.

Prefer the AA v A dynamic to be more skill dependent rather than written off as simply deterrent.

Hmm... Effective against everything, 1 man vehicle, 3 variants... HMMMM

[CrankyTRex]

Originally Posted by KaskaMatej

No, one lone AA will get destroyed in seconds when it open fire, even if it is only one ESF with rocket pods, AA gets destroyed.

Really? Because I spent a half hour last night killing planes from the ground in a tower's AA turret almost entirely unmolested. I think I died once, to a tank, no less. I don't know how it is for your faction on your server, but it's very rare that I hop in a turret and have somebody with rocket pods instantly kill me.

As far as 1 AA vs 1 ESF with rocket pods, if you've allowed the ESF to see you and aim at you, then yeah you're probably going to get killed. Just like if you run out in the middle of the road and shoot a rocket launcher at a tank, it's probably going to kill you.

Originally Posted by KaskaMatej

And AA defence is free? Except for AA turrets (which are nearly useless) everything costs 1000 certs/700 smedbux. But unlike rocket pods, AA is bad.

Yes, there are free AA turrets all over the place. The engineers even have the free turrets they can drop and I've taken out a few ESFs that weren't paying attention with those too.

Originally Posted by KaskaMatej

NO! This isn't real life, this is a game, and a game must be balanced! ROCK-PAPER-SCISSORS, not ROCK-PAPER-ESF! Played enough games where air dominates everything, it gets old fast.

But say no more, you're a mostly pilot, you will say everything you can to make excuses for bad air-AA balance.

Thanks for questioning my motives, because that really strengthens your argument.

If nothing else, the timers and resource counters prevent me from being in the air most of the time. Unless I'm really in a mood where all I want to do is fly, after I die I'm going to have to spend some time seeing how the other half lives.

You know what bad air to ground balance looks like? Battlefield 2, where one lone jet can utterly dominate the entire map and nobody can do anything about it. This game has swung from air power being a little too much to AA being way too much, back to where it is now, which is pretty good.

The fact is this is a team based game about a giant war between three factions. In a war, air superiority is important, and if you want it, you need other aircraft.

But frankly, the thing that matters most often in this game is not R-P-S, but just flat out numbers. There will always be way more people on the ground than in the air, just because most people either can't or don't want to fly. If those people all choose to start shooting at the planes, the planes are going to lose.

[KaskaMatej]

Originally Posted by CrankyTRex

snip

I'd like to know, what game are you playing? Because I am playing Planetside 2. I'd just like to know.

[Kail]

In hindsight, I wish the Engineer would have been given a Flak turret by default (with extended shield coverage). If HA is the go-to default class for vehicles, then it would make sense to have a go-to default class for AA.

[Figment]

Originally Posted by boogy

I really don't get how people hate on esfs while the real op air is the lib. Those things are near impossible to kill from the ground while a couple dual burster maxes can easily pick off esfs.

Three ESFs or one Lib? I'll take the Lib.

At least it's more likely to be hit by your vehicle gun even at range due to being a bigger, slower and less agile target.

Plus they have less firepower than three ESFs and aren't as likely to get in your butt.

[Figment]

At long range, both AA and aircav should be piss poor at hitting anything. Note that air is still likely to use splash to hit nonetheless. Especially as it is easier to gauge distance and compensate when you have reference points (firing at the ground), opposed to when you have no distance reference points (firing at the sky). To hit anything, air would have to be relatively stable, giving AA a chance to gauge and compensate for range and distance.

At medium range, air should hit with approximately 40%-50% of the shots. That includes splash. Air should avoid hovering. AA should be strong here and any, and I mean any, lingering should be punished with getting shot down. Only high speed maneuvring should be viable here. Air should be more about: hit and run, hit and run, hit and kill, rather than: hit, kill and hit and kill again, then run.

At short range, air can hit whatever they want. But at this point they should be toast if they come under fire. AA should obliterate at this range.



I would say air should have more frequent reloads than they have now and lower damage per clip for A2G weaponry. This should incentice hit-and-run strafing runs over hoverspam and provide a window of opportunity for the attacked to respond and retaliate. If they want to hoverspam to get a kill, they would have to stay still in the air for a longer period of time, again opening a window of opportunity. At distances where they're not a threat to ground units, AA shouldn't need to be a threat to them. Currently though, any pilot can be a threat from any distance with the accuracy of rocket pods.

When I currently die to them I didn't hear or see them coming and they wern't on radar yet, that's a very "oh ffs..." type of death and that's not fun since you can't respond to it and frankly, I presume I'm better at seeing that type of death coming than a newbee to the PS series so I can only imagine how annoying it must be to them, especially if they're infantry game jocks (and yes, those need to be attracted to make the game a success too).



Air to ground skill should be about landing shots on the move, especially on moving targets, while avoiding AA and in fact, avoiding detection and then of course evasion. Currently (and same for PS1 Reaverspam) "skill" is defined by aiming in the general direction of a dot and holding the button to unload a clip of AoE rockets on a stable reticule, which is simply piss easy. Meanwhile, the current TTK on aircraft provides a large window of opportunity in which to do this and then flee (with flares for any locks).


Again, I have no problem with lock on missiles requiring three hits. But Flak is a costly investment and a huge trade-off made. It should be very powerful, though it doesn't have to be accurate at range.

[psijaka]

Originally Posted by Figment

-snip-

^ this is as it should be.

[Mavvvy]

Originally Posted by Soothsayer

When I agree with Figment, I'm all-in, on-board with what he says. This topic is a time where that is happening.

The teamwork issue is moot because the ESF's aren't required to use teamwork.

Cost is negligible in some arguments as it relates to skyguards because they also cost resources. With regards to G2A infantry weapons, the fact that they don't cost anything doesn't really have any bearing because they are just so bad. The most effective scenario for a grounder is when the ESF is flying away, otherwise there's too great of a chance for the rocket to be dodged (which is fine, skill is not a bad thing, but infantry needs to have a fighting chance).

Basically if you have spent the certs/SC to specialize into something, equipped that specialization (to the detriment of effectiveness in other areas) and get put in a situation where the specialization is geared towards you should BEAST whatever you're geared out to take out.

That is not the case with AA. Then to add insult to injury, ESF's completely ignore that design decision and are very capable, effectively gaining specialization grade effectiveness without the drawback of sucking whatever they have not specialized into.

With due respect teamwork is never moot, I guarantee I could have many a flyer screaming op at my outfits co-ordinated aa defense in easimir yesterday on miller. 2 dedicated anti-air reavers working with 2 Skyguards and 3 shoulder launched hawks.

I rarely if ever see any pl's making such provisions so it really doesn't surprise me when I see threads like this.

[Juryrig]

Originally Posted by Kail

In hindsight, I wish the Engineer would have been given a Flak turret by default (with extended shield coverage). If HA is the go-to default class for vehicles, then it would make sense to have a go-to default class for AA.

If the MANA A/V turret ever makes it into game, it should help. Given that it never even appeared in the beta, though, there's no guessing when (or if) we'll have it.

Other than that, I agree completely with Figment's post above.

[Mavvvy]

Yeah got to agree with figment to, rockets should have a spread, hadn't considered that as a factor previously, I suppose I was looking at the issue from the point of "how it is now" and how to be make a current workable defense.

[CasualCat]

Originally Posted by Figment

Three ESFs or one Lib? I'll take the Lib.

At least it's more likely to be hit by your vehicle gun even at range due to being a bigger, slower and less agile target.

Plus they have less firepower than three ESFs and aren't as likely to get in your butt.

And a single ESF can also take it down easier/faster than it could three ESFs.

In fact we had ESFs on voice coms flying cover for our Libs the other night. Even with fully manned Libs and that air cover, a determined ESF could usually take down a Lib before it'd die itself. A rocket volley can take 80-90% of a lib's health down in a single pass.

Originally Posted by Miffy

Lock on missiles and Flak are fine but the standard AA turrets on prowlers and default MAX units for both AA and AV are really weak.

I feel the problem really comes down to one thing though, rocket pods. Now the easiest way to balance them out is to have AV and AI rocket pods as seperate purchases. This way you have to choose if you want to be really good against vehicles or Infantry.

I don't want to see aircraft nerfed or AA buffed too much because then it wouldn't be fun to fly. However Libs and Galaxies are balanced perfectly, they're massive slow targets that never last too long and need the light aircraft to survive really.

There is only one unbalanced thing and that is rocket pods being both AI and AV, you need to purchase them separately and have to choose. If you lower the damage you make it useless, this way it balances it out so you cannot be master of all.

I don't think rocket pods are the only issue. I think ESFs just have too much health. Not familiar with Gals, but with Libs at least, an ESF can usually just tank the tail gun damage to kill the Lib. So Libs and Gals might be generally balanced, but Libs at least still feel like a free kill for ESFs. That shouldn't be the case if they're within the tail gun arc.

The other issue is XP gain/cost for piloting a Lib/Gal vs an ESF. That certainly isn't balanced.

[Bocheezu]

One thing I've been thinking about is possibly another tier to Burster weaponry. I looked up the wiki and it has a Burster XS on there. This doesn't exist in the game currently.

http://wiki.planetside-universe.com/ps/MAX_Anti-Vehicle

The regular Burster left arm should be cheaper (500) and then 1000 each for whatever aircraft killer the Burster XS is. 2000 for two arms should wreck aircraft.