Some random thoughts on air combat in PS2

[LegioX]

I understand in todays day and age people want FPS's and thats where majority of people play (inf of some sort). Just wish air can get a face lift. Like someone posted before, have some type of energy retention and depletion during combat. If i don't add enough power in a climb, i stall out and become a nice juicy target for someone.

[meiam]

Yeah but whenever an aircraft want to deal damage to ground troops, it's forced to go in a position where the ground troops themselves can attack the aircraft, so you can have 10 guy in aircraft protecting the ground troops (which cost resource for the aircraft) or have them on the ground with AA gun (which cost 0 resource, allow them to re spawn much closer and deal close too as much damage)

Someone did mentioned that people would probably dogfight and what not anyway just because they want to and that's a very good point, but I feel like advance tactics are going to be impossible because of how small the fighting area is going to be, so if you go in full dogfighting mode, you'll quickly leave the contested area and might even cross into enemy territory.

[LegioX]

Originally Posted by TeaReks

Turreting wasn't even a great strategy in PS1 unless who you were fighting was clueless or had no weapon to touch you.

Honestly until we actually get to fly around non of us can really judge what will happen.

Also balance will happen in beta. If one craft dominates the other you can expect it to get balanced. In the end it will come down to pilot skill. I think one vs ones will be very rare given the capacity of the servers and speed of aircraft.

I hope they don't nerf hammer any AC that is consider overpowered. Like in RL, some airplanes excel in areas where others don't. That is the nature of the game.

[LegioX]

Originally Posted by meiam

Yeah but whenever an aircraft want to deal damage to ground troops, it's forced to go in a position where the ground troops themselves can attack the aircraft, so you can have 10 guy in aircraft protecting the ground troops (which cost resource for the aircraft) or have them on the ground with AA gun (which cost 0 resource, allow them to re spawn much closer and deal close too as much damage)

Someone did mentioned that people would probably dogfight and what not anyway just because they want to and that's a very good point, but I feel like advance tactics are going to be impossible because of how small the fighting area is going to be, so if you go in full dogfighting mode, you'll quickly leave the contested area and might even cross into enemy territory.

Then they need to up the ceiling past 1000m. Bring the air war up. Trust me...the higher the ceiling, players will use that to their advantage. Alt/Speed is life.

[meiam]

Originally Posted by LegioX

I hope they don't nerf hammer any AC that is consider overpowered. Like in RL, some airplanes excel in areas where others don't. That is the nature of the game.

Yeah I really hope they don't make all plane super similar in the name of balance, just boring, I like to learn my aircraft and use it's advantage in different way depending on what I'm facing.

One thing, the aircraft aren't plane, there helicopter, I'm pretty sure you can't even stall.

[Landtank]

Originally Posted by meiam

Yeah but whenever an aircraft want to deal damage to ground troops, it's forced to go in a position where the ground troops themselves can attack the aircraft, so you can have 10 guy in aircraft protecting the ground troops (which cost resource for the aircraft) or have them on the ground with AA gun (which cost 0 resource, allow them to re spawn much closer and deal close too as much damage)

There is nothing that says you have to be hovering 100 feet above the battlefield in a liberator or galaxy, with a 75-100mm cannon you can sit at max altitude all day bombing the hell out of an enemy front line or base. I doubt flak or missles will be able to reach the top altitudes and do significant damage.

For the ES Aircraft, then the game changes, they have to do bombing runs and strafing runs etc, but their speed allows this and if they are smart they can avoid anti air fire for a decent amount of time.

[LegioX]

Maybe we can push for them to up the gameplay alt to 2000m? Might be a simple fix? Wouldnt know

[meiam]

I thought I heard in one of the video that they wanted to make sure aircraft where always in range of infantry AA, I might be wrong on that. Also it seems like the 1000 m is based off an arbitrary ocean level, so most of the time it sounds like you'll only be able to be like 700 m above the ground floor.

I really hope they'll open it up, heck you could have different ceiling for different aircraft, that would open up a whole realm of awesome.

[TurelSun]

Originally Posted by meiam

I thought I heard in one of the video that they wanted to make sure aircraft where always in range of infantry AA, I might be wrong on that. Also it seems like the 1000 m is based off an arbitrary ocean level, so most of the time it sounds like you'll only be able to be like 700 m above the ground floor.

I really hope they'll open it up, heck you could have different ceiling for different aircraft, that would open up a whole realm of awesome.

I recall from one of the E3 streams one of the devs mentioning at someone getting hit from apparently no where that a liberator could be sitting far out of range doing that.

[LegioX]

I also heard about them saying AC can use the blinding sun at their backs to kill other enemy AC. I don't know if that means by diving down on them or what.

[Sabot]

Originally Posted by LegioX

I also heard about them saying AC can use the blinding sun at their backs to kill other enemy AC. I don't know if that means by diving down on them or what.

Sun in back for one guy = sun in eyes for other guy. Guy with sun in eyes = dead guy most of the time.

[Pillar of Armor]

In PS1 I piloted a lib quite a lot and typically the only thing that could knock me out of the air was an air-to-air fighter (reaver/hornet). Until AA BFRs came in it was very rare to be killed by ground-to-air AA as a lib pilot.

With my lib crew we would lay down 20+ units in a single run. That's not nothing in terms of resource cost especially when you can do a few good runs in a night and the kills included loaded sundies and tanks. Sometimes that would give us a foothold on a tower or bridge and that changed the battle. That is a huge incentive to take out a lib and the only way I could stay in the sky was with a good wingman. Right there is a big reason to have air-to-air combat and that is how it often happened in PS1.

[Fafnir]

Originally Posted by meiam

I thought I heard in one of the video that they wanted to make sure aircraft where always in range of infantry AA, I might be wrong on that. Also it seems like the 1000 m is based off an arbitrary ocean level, so most of the time it sounds like you'll only be able to be like 700 m above the ground floor.

I really hope they'll open it up, heck you could have different ceiling for different aircraft, that would open up a whole realm of awesome.

You are getting wrong ideas by comparing this 1000m to real life. In PS2 it seems very high to me and I'm sure, that above max altitute it will be nearly impossible to bring down an aircraft with ground-to-air weapons. Rockets won't be able to lock on that far, bullets and flak projectiles will have travel time. We don't know how this 1000m feels until we test it.

Ground troops aren't that hard to deal with for aircrafts in other games, so I don't see how this is going to change in PS2. Higher number of players targeting you doesn't matter, if you are leading rockets from very high altitude, beyond their reach. It also doesn't matter, if you fly low and fast to maximize element of suprise. Terrain in PS2 is actually very hilly, so I think second tactic will be more effective.

[LegioX]

Why do ground troops need to bring down AC at high alt? If you fly high that should be a advantage for you, b/c your out of AA range. You want that plane dead? Call in air support. Ground troops shouldn't have a counter to all air in every way shape or form.

[Pillar of Armor]

Originally Posted by LegioX

Why do ground troops need to bring down AC at high alt? If you fly high that should be a advantage for you, b/c your out of AA range. You want that plane dead? Call in air support. Ground troops shouldn't have a counter to all air in every way shape or form.

I agree, ground AA should be for low fliers. In PS1 altitude was often the only way you could get over a base and it created an incentive for air-to-air combat.