ESF Air to Air Feedback for Devs

[Whiteagle]

Originally Posted by maradine

Unless your outfit magically mints 11 more members to drop every time you come back to the gate to stage a drop, I call that line of argument utter hogwash.

Who said anything about Outfit mates?
Just fill up with Pubs and keep taxi'ing.

Originally Posted by maradine

Again - in plain English - every Galaxy drop that wants to get through today is getting through.

Yes, but Galaxy's aren't currently the outright best way to get anywhere right now!

You raise the flight ceiling and all you'll need is Air Superiorty and Gals to constantly rain down Pups from the Skies.

[maradine]

If Galaxies aren't the best way to get someone somewhere at their current 100% efficacy as you suggest, they won't be with a raised flight ceiling either, because their success rate can't get better. This is literally a math question. I'm not sure where and how I'm losing you.

[Neurotoxin]

Non-damage nullification weaponry would be great. A Secondary weapon radial EMP that disables weapon systems & afterburners on enemy aircraft for 5 seconds (and maybe also kills the UI) would give even the worst of pilots a way to fight back against enemy air. Galaxy pilots should get this as a stock feature, maybe Sunderers too.

Another suggestion is A2A (with dumbfire) rockets that deal minimal damage but shut off the engine for 2 to 3 seconds. This is meant to counter players using terrain and low-flying techniques, or to drop a hovering ESF or Liberator because they don't have the thrust or height to recover. If it affects ESF for 3 seconds, it only should affect Libs for 2 seconds, and Galaxy for 1 second.

Ferrous rounds could be added, which basically put easily-detectible metal scraps into the target so all AA lock-on weapons have a shorter lock time. Every hit reduces lock times by 5%, relative to the last hit. 2 hits is 5% of 95% (90.25%). 3 hits is 5% of 90.25% (87.74%). This caps out at 75%, and doesn't wear off until the damage itself is repaired. This also increases the range that the ESF automatically shows up on radar. Due to the inability to shield these rounds from sensors, the user of the Ferrous rounds also suffer an unavoidable 10% (or higher) reduction to lock time, and increase to automatic radar detection.

Raise the fight ceiling to 1200, insert an atmospheric / cloud layer around 850. This allows aircraft to fly high and avoid AA, but have no visibility of the situation below, and be vulnerable to high altitude A2A hunters.

Weaker A2A missiles that are fired 4-at-a-time in a drunken dumbfire pattern before lock is established, but lock can be established before or during flight to cause homing mechanisms to kick in. This prevents it from being potent for A2G uses (particularly why it has the drunken dumbfire rather than linear patterns), while giving pilots a way to trick or trap enemy aircraft and reduce their possible avenues of escape. These shouldn't be more powerful than a single A2A rocket, but flares shouldn't be able go grab more than 3 of the 4 A2A rockets, so minimal damage from these lock-on missiles may be unavoidable. However, their speed and maneuverability (and travel distance) are less than the standard A2A rocket, so the pilot really has to anticipate where the enemy will go to get the best effect.

Lock Designator for ESF air squads. One ESF establishes lock (with a non-weapon secondary) and all the other ESF have signigicatly reduced lock times for their missiles. Or it could be part of a new team weapon, an A2A missile that only works when an ally locks with a Lock Designator, but allows all allies to fire immediately and have the missile hit. Flares only shrug off the first 3 missiles, so a crew of 6 or more would be needed to truly instagib any 1 enemy ESF in the air.

Put Rangers on Liberators for the Tertiary weapon, and as an alternative to the Bulldog on Galaxys. This allows poor gunners to have a more forgiving weapon that somewhat blinds the pursuing aircraft, and lets the Galaxy be used as a flying A2A fortress.

[CliffordtheDuck]

AA is not too powerful in terms of damage. It is too accessible. The availability and amount of flak and lock-on rockets vs the the availability and amount of aircraft is extremely unbalanced.

It takes FAR fewer players and resources (and skill) to combat air than it does to actually field it.

People are only flying in Planetside through sheer perseverance right now.
During an alert we'd be more useful to our team if we were on the ground

[LeilaniRock]

Originally Posted by snafus

Truth be told no amount of changes to A2A gameplay will bring back the air battles as they once were. That is all impossible unless they nerf AA. IT is simply to strong and allowing bursters to invisibly fire across multiple hexs and score hits on aircraft makes me sick. Air will die regardless of new weapons or tricked out fuel tanks. One thing has to be nerfed and air can come back and that is AA. You take away the bursters ability to engage beyond infantry render distance and you will have a aviation community again. Leave the sky guard as is or even buff it slightly but you MUST nerf the burster or air will never come back.

This! Problem solved (and i fly a lot-all three factions)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[PurpleOtter]

It's not an Air to Air weapon, but how about an Engineer deployable: the Barrage Balloon, if an ESF crashes into it, it goes boom! Deploy over a base near you!

[snafus]

Originally Posted by Whiteagle

Who said anything about Outfit mates?
Just fill up with Pubs and keep taxi'ing.

You must play on a server with some bad ass pubs dude. Sorry to say back when Connery had some real population you saw Gal pilots begging people to load up and were rarely rewarded. That is simply a make believe scenario that isn't going to be a factor. Gals are only effective at getting troops on a hot location when some competence and comms are involved. Hell It would be great seeing a gall full of pubs doing nothing as the pilot is yelling at them to drop. Free certs is all I would imagine in that moment dude.

[CraazyCanuck]

Originally Posted by snafus

*snip*

On mattherson and on waterson, I find myself loaded up with pubs in a Gal quite often. While it may take a bit longer at times to get a fullseater, I think it more has to do with time of day and whether an alert is active on another continent. Once loaded its easy enough to get the pubs out over the drop and sending them on their way by locking the gal down. Not many people use the in game comms, but there have been some gal pilots I've come across who give a quick squawk to warn of the incoming drop, or a heads up area chat. But mostly if its not outfit related its a quiet ride.

Barely play on Connery so not sure how bad things are there.

[camycamera]

Double the flight ceiling, it will make ESF fights better without being distracted and killed by ground units.

and imagine a Galaxy drop, people just drop down from the sky from nowhere, that would be awesome

[CliffordtheDuck]

Originally Posted by camycamera

Double the flight ceiling, it will make ESF fights better without being distracted and killed by ground units.

and imagine a Galaxy drop, people just drop down from the sky from nowhere, that would be awesome

I hope the devs don't actually pay attention to horrific design ideas like this.

[maradine]

Reasonably certain there isn't much of a consensus that this is a bad idea. I'm sure you'd like to elaborate, though.

[Shamrock]

Originally Posted by laovniux

if you think it is not overpowered take a look at this

http://youtu.be/iyTYRTMxSlE

Please improve air to ground 1st or at least give air more of a chance to escape.

That vid shows a full platoon of bursters with support engineers, a platoon of 28 players is not OP by blowing up 2 to 3 ESF pilots and suiciding GAL pilots.

[Whiteagle]

Originally Posted by maradine

If Galaxies aren't the best way to get someone somewhere at their current 100% efficacy as you suggest, they won't be with a raised flight ceiling either, because their success rate can't get better. This is literally a math question. I'm not sure where and how I'm losing you.

It isn't about them getting TO the Drop, it's Galaxies getting BACK to the Warpgate unscathed because they can literally avoid anything but Air-to-air ESFs.

Originally Posted by maradine

Reasonably certain there isn't much of a consensus that this is a bad idea. I'm sure you'd like to elaborate, though.

Originally Posted by CraazyCanuck

On mattherson and on waterson, I find myself loaded up with pubs in a Gal quite often. While it may take a bit longer at times to get a fullseater, I think it more has to do with time of day and whether an alert is active on another continent. Once loaded its easy enough to get the pubs out over the drop and sending them on their way by locking the gal down. Not many people use the in game comms, but there have been some gal pilots I've come across who give a quick squawk to warn of the incoming drop, or a heads up area chat. But mostly if its not outfit related its a quiet ride.

So now we've got Pub Air Taxi's constantly going back and forth from the Warpgate, dumping huge numbers down on every fight with no warning.

The ground game becomes completely irrelevant, because who ever gains Air Superiority will win through uncounterable mobility.

[Falcon_br]

Ok, after 12 pages the things that everyone agree are:
Increase flight ceiling, so galaxies can stealth drop soldiers all day long without any worries with anti air ground units, just keep one eye for those esf flying very high, maybe they got luck and on the whole map to choose, he was on the same place as you were so he can kill you if you are full of idiot gunners and you still have time to eject everyone so he doesn't get any kill!
Ok, this idea is really dumb, lets go to the next one:
3d radar on ESF, that would be great, but does anyone know how to implement it on the planetside 2 engines? It has been discussed here before... The game uses 2 axis, not three, it was not built to be a flight simulator, even the bullet drop doesn't works right because of the lack of z axis, so I really don't think it is possible to be implemented on the game.
The emp ability will really be more used to grief then to really help your team! I am pretty sure about that!
I am looking about the eve online ship to ship weapons, maybe I can find something that can be used on the game, I will also look other games, but it is really hard to find, my only bet until now is the QAAM from the ace combat series.

[Juryrig]

Originally Posted by Falcon_br

Ok, after 12 pages the things that everyone agree are:
Increase flight ceiling, so galaxies can stealth drop soldiers all day long without any worries with anti air ground units, just keep one eye for those esf flying very high, maybe they got luck and on the whole map to choose, he was on the same place as you were so he can kill you if you are full of idiot gunners and you still have time to eject everyone so he doesn't get any kill!
Ok, this idea is really dumb, lets go to the next one:

Just limit the height above terrain from which Gals can hot-drop. So they can transit in relative safety at high altitude, but have to drop to within range of ground based AA before they can offload. Play around with actual height/speed/drop rate/etc to get some kind of balance or utility/risk.

Originally Posted by Falcon_br

3d radar on ESF, that would be great, but does anyone know how to implement it on the planetside 2 engines? It has been discussed here before... The game uses 2 axis, not three, it was not built to be a flight simulator, even the bullet drop doesn't works right because of the lack of z axis, so I really don't think it is possible to be implemented on the game.

If the game only had two axes we wouldn't have flight at all.... David Braben coded a very, very clear and functional 3d pilot display in 'Elite' in 1984, when the entire game fit within 12 kilobytes. I'll never believe anyone who says it can't be done in PS2 because of 'technical reasons'. The data exists within the clients, it's just a question of how to display it.

There's no reason why it can't be completely separate to the existing minimap - some really elegant way to present the data in an integrated manner would be great, but I'd take a simple, non-integrated, toggleable solution over 'nothing' any day of the week.

Personal thoughts:

1) raise the flight ceiling, so there is a separate area of operation for air out of range of ground based AA, which also prevents air attacking ground from the 'safe zone' (give all the AG weapons a 'max range' beyond which their damage drops to zero
2) change flares to an ammo based system, and make them give a percentage chance of breaking lock, rather than 100% certainty. Start at 50%, increase through certs to 90 or 95%
3) split lolpods into AV/AI variants
4) give the aircraft a flight model reasonably based on physics and vectored thrust, rather than the magical float-model they currently have
5) change the altitude display to be height above ground, rather than height above SL - or make it selectable.

There have been loads of good suggestions made in the thread, it'd be nice to see a whole bunch of them tried on the test server to see how they actually play out. With the obvious caveat that there probably aren't enough bodies on the test server to test them thoroughly...maybe we could start a test-pilot recruiting drive?