Air vs. Ground Balance. You can't make it fair by making nobody happy.

[Rothnang]

Originally Posted by belch

I don't know Roth...you have the occasional "Libbers" saying that they find it boring...and yet there are a lot of them running around. Someone finds running them compelling gameplay. That, or they must enjoy boring gameplay...? But really, that is not the question I am going to ponder, as to me they are a tool within the toolkit, and if they do their job (delivering supportive fires from an aerial platform), I have no issues with anyone running them regardless of what I find compelling.

I don't think that it's that simple of a matter. I fly Liberators a lot because I enjoy it, but I still have a problem with the way that Liberators can be completely shut down and turned into disposable units in large battles, and I also seriously dislike just hovering around while the gunner clicks doritos. I enjoy flying low and using the tankbuster on things, or generally getting more down into the action, but most of the time that's not really an option.

Enjoying a unit and wanting its gameplay further improved are not mutually exclusive. Neither are enjoying a unit and realizing when it's hurting other peoples enjoyment of the game. Not every moment you spend in a Liberator is boring. I personally enjoy just flying the thing around, there doesn't even need to be a big battle for it to be fun to just hug the terrain.

[Rolfski]

Originally Posted by belch

But a default weapon that allows a lone wolf to plausibly "fight back" against a Lib...no thank you.

You know as well as I do that a single Annihilator doesn't stand a chance against a Liberator or an ESF for that matter. Inexperienced pilots however might not know this and might completely chicken away from the battlefield when they get a lock-on.

That's exactly what I call single player empowerment. Its not really that you can fight back in this situation, it's about giving players the feeling that they can do at least something.
And this is important because according to the devs, only 20% of the infantry gets killed by vehicles, 80% gets killed by other infantry. Yet the calls for nerving vehicles have been by far the loudest so far, especially when it comes to Liberators. Why is that? Because getting killed by a vehicle makes you feel helpless while getting killed by other infantry feels you could have done better.
It's all about perception. Just change this perception and the problem is fixed.

[Sunrock]

Originally Posted by Rolfski

You know as well as I do that a single Annihilator doesn't stand a chance against a Liberator or an ESF for that matter. Inexperienced pilots however might not know this and might completely chicken away from the battlefield when they get a lock-on.

That's exactly what I call single player empowerment. Its not really that you can fight back in this situation, it's about giving players the feeling that they can do at least something.
And this is important because according to the devs, only 20% of the infantry gets killed by vehicles, 80% gets killed by other infantry. Yet the calls for nerving vehicles have been by far the loudest so far, especially when it comes to Liberators. Why is that? Because getting killed by a vehicle makes you feel helpless while getting killed by other infantry feels you could have done better.
It's all about perception. Just change this perception and the problem is fixed.

Way change the game because players are stupid? Educate the players about there stupidity instead. Stop dumb down games! Even if you feel like you can't do anything by getting killed as a infantry by vehicles you are dead wrong. I think this is really called for to say "L2P n00b" to those that cry about getting killed.

But as ESF pilot you don't know if it's an other ESF that locks on to you or if its a rocket launcher from the ground. As the ESF lock on is allot bigger threat it's best to assume that all lock on is ESF lock on if you want to stay alive. That is way pilots tend to stop hovering when they get locked on by a a rocket launcher. Not because they don't know that the Annihilator damage is relatively low.

Also having 6-7 HA with annihilators coordinating fire is devastating. Will "one shot" any aircraft or MBT/sundy. And you never know how many that locks on to you at the same time....

[Ghoest9]

Originally Posted by Rothnang

I don't think that it's that simple of a matter. I fly Liberators a lot because I enjoy it, but I still have a problem with the way that Liberators can be completely shut down and turned into disposable units in large battles, and I also seriously dislike just hovering around while the gunner clicks doritos. I enjoy flying low and using the tankbuster on things, or generally getting more down into the action, but most of the time that's not really an option.

Enjoying a unit and wanting its gameplay further improved are not mutually exclusive. Neither are enjoying a unit and realizing when it's hurting other peoples enjoyment of the game. Not every moment you spend in a Liberator is boring. I personally enjoy just flying the thing around, there doesn't even need to be a big battle for it to be fun to just hug the terrain.

You mean the way infantry doesnt enjoy being completely locked down by a Lib?

If you want to be good in a lib fly in a squadron and play smart - deal with it.

[Rothnang]

Originally Posted by maradine

So, you want aircraft weapons and anti-aircraft weapons to both only operate at 100 meters or less?

Not necessarily, there can be longer range weapons on both sides, I just don't like weapons that spray bullets that explode if they come anywhere near you at 500 meters because that creates that dome of death effect where a large number of people using that weapon can just lock down a huge area.

What if we had different kinds of AA guns, like we have the machine gun type AA that we have right now which would work at close range, and does tons of damage pretty much guaranteed, and then we'd have some AA that's more like an 88 Flak that fires single big shells with airburst capabilities, but works at long range.

That alone would make the AA battles more interesting, because a slow firing large shell AA would give the pilots something to dodge, rather than just putting a giant cone of death in the sky that you can't get out of for longer than a split second by changing course because the shooters can probe for optimal lead and instantly fire another shot.

Missiles would be more interesting if Flares weren't based on cooldown, but instead had ammo like in real life. They would basically be an alternative armor. As people lock on to you you start depleting your flares, and when you get low you have to pick up more from a tower. With a system like that missiles wouldn't be about the volume of missiles you can fire at the same time, but about how far you have spread out your missile troops, so that they can continuously fire at the aircraft and deplete its flares before it can leave the area.

Originally Posted by Ghoest9

You mean the way infantry doesnt enjoy being completely locked down by a Lib?

If you want to be good in a lib fly in a squadron and play smart - deal with it.

I have killed enough Lib squadrons with bursters to know that they stand no chance against an efficient air defense. Maybe they can rush the position and land some hits before exploding, but "use more aircraft" vs. the current AA guns is just a Banzai charge. It's not fun if you actually want a chance to hold on to your unit.

[maradine]

Originally Posted by Rothnang

What if we had different kinds of AA guns, like we have the machine gun type AA that we have right now which would work at close range, and does tons of damage pretty much guaranteed, and then we'd have some AA that's more like an 88 Flak that fires single big shells with airburst capabilities, but works at long range.

Then we'd have exactly what we have now. Organized groups of players intent on air denial over the maximum range of their weapons. That's not going to change. Weapon variety is great. No one's arguing against weapon variety.

[moosepoop]

why is the explosion radius of the flak guns in ps2 so small? in ps1 the radius was so big you could damage multiple aircraft, and you did not have to be exactly on target since the proximity trigger was so large.


why is anti air so difficult in this game? i thoght ps2 is supposed to be streamlined for mainstream casual gamers. but aa is extremely difficult to use.

it would be better if the skyguard shot much less rounds and had a large expllosion radius like the skyguard in ps1.

[Rothnang]

Originally Posted by maradine

Then we'd have exactly what we have now. Organized groups of players intent on air denial over the maximum range of their weapons. That's not going to change. Weapon variety is great. No one's arguing against weapon variety.

I disagree entirely, if the long range weapons had a high effect variance the outcome would be entirely different. Of course large numbers of organized players are always going to make your life difficult, if they couldn't there wouldn't be any point in organizing, but it makes a huge difference how those weapons work.

If they fire weapons that are hard to hit with but do a good chunk of damage when they do hit instead of weapons that are easy to hit with and put out a constant reliable stream of damage you can't just count up to perfect air coverage, the quality of the shots matters more than the quantity. Also if makes a much bigger difference how the pilot handles the aircraft if the damage doesn't average out so much.

It's like Snipers vs. Infantry. Yes, they are very deadly, but it's difficult to land a hit and the counters you can use to avoid getting sniped are effective even if there are multiple snipers.
If you put 100 snipers on a hill you wouldn't expect them to hit absolutely everyone who charges to get them. If they all had a weapon that did 1% of a snipers damage to the attackers guaranteed they would kill everyone however, even though they wouldn't be worth anything on their own anymore. That's how AA works right now. Mediocre damage that is so easy to inflict that the units aren't really worth anything on their own but can't fail in large groups. All the buffs to AA damage have accomplished nothing than lower the bar to reach for an AA squad to become unstoppable.

[Rolfski]

Originally Posted by Sunrock

Way change the game because players are stupid? Educate the players about there stupidity instead. Stop dumb down games! Even if you feel like you can't do anything by getting killed as a infantry by vehicles you are dead wrong. I think this is really called for to say "L2P n00b" to those that cry about getting killed.

Good games are easy to learn hard to master and as the devs said, the first hour of gameplay for a new player is imperative. So your starting position and load-out needs to be relatively "dump" /easy to get into and giving you empowerment, while learning along the way you figure out there are better way to get things done.

Originally Posted by Sunrock

But as ESF pilot you don't know if it's an other ESF that locks on to you or if its a rocket launcher from the ground.

There you have a good point. There should be some indication for pilots to what sort of lock-on they're facing, could be sound or anything. This would balance these lock-on launchers a bit more out.

[Rothnang]

In general it would help if the directional indicators for air were adjusted a bit to be more informative.

Missiles don't tell you where they are coming from when they are locked on or fired at you, and Flak will indicate where it's coming from by what side of your aircraft it exploded on, not by where it was shot from. Both of those things combined with the render issues and general lack of a good view down make it really hard to react to a threat the right way oftentimes. Even just losing 3, 4 seconds to get your bearings and figure out which way you have to go to get away from the damage can end up killing you.

Also I'd really like it if they changed the animation on the airburst to be less of an opaque fireball, because I really hate it when I have a Max unit square in the sights of my Tankbuster or Fighter Gun after having snook up on them and suddenly they notice me, open fire and my entire viewscreen is just filled with explosions so I can't do anything to shoot back anymore. Same goes for the bellygun in a Liberator, it wouldn't be anywhere near as difficult to kill Burster MAXes if they didn't blind your gunner with a crapload of explosions.