Originally Posted by Baneblade
All the air really needs is a single squad on the ground and they can take as many territories as they want, as long as they maintain air superiority, and by extension, ground superiority. Composition does matter, certainly... just not nearly as much for air. They have too many universal weapons (all of them actually) while the ground has to specifically intend to counter them. It is imbalanced from the word Go.
People keep saying PS2 is gruntcentric... I just wonder what prescription they are on.
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The same thing was true for mossiefarmers and reaverfarmers in ps1: they were the sole units that were Jack of all trades: they dominated air vs air (to the point they outright demanded to be the SOLE effective counter to air, as they hated "aa-peasants ruining their dogfights"). Then the Wasp got introduced As air vs air only vehicle, meaning it was more effective at fighting air and ineffective at fighting ground vehicles. Airside exploded with rage, because "surely they should dominate both ground and air at the same time without having to deal with a superior, but specialist foes?! Afterall, their "role" was fight air and armour and infantry". Strangely, that logic never got turned around: the idea that aa would actually perform its sole purpose effectively made them cringe: they would have to flee from anti air instead of taking it on one vs one even if the aa required two crew to operate and their reaver only one and the AA max was useless against anything else and required lock on timers that they didn't have... For some reason, something purely built to counter them that was built to attack any type of unit, had to be worse than them or at most equal, because they argued, aa were ground units and they were also designed to take put ground units.
They deliberately ignored that they should make some trade off in fighting capacity in a game where specialists exist. Specialist units should always be better, otherwise they are pointless. But they then argued there would be no fly zones. Well yes. That is the point isn't it? Becoming reliant on combined arms to clear the AA for you?
Air power has always been unbalanced in planetside games because the Jack of all trades has been pronounced "god of all trades". Trade offs didn't exist for things like speed and agility, firepower, base access points reachability, having bailing options, were never compensated with reductions of firepower. Even endurance can hardly be said to have been traded off in PS1 especially.
The wordt excesses however, are introductions of heavy endurance, heavy firepower units. When light solo-player aircraft are already impossible for solo-player AA to deal with, then how is heavy air going to be balanced fairly?
You will notice that pilots will always argue that they must have special privileges. I think it is down to the context in which they work: they are alone, high above everyone else and detached from the reality on the ground. They are not reliant on anyone directly, arn't in touch with others on the ground visibily and hence cannot connect with them, let alone work with them or treat them as equals. Especially not when they can treat their opponent's equivalents as snacks. Often because their aerial point of view gives them more standard situational awareness as they have an overview of the fight. You'll often hear them argue you should use situational awareness against them, even if they can weave into view and fire from outside of radar and hearing range from any direction, making it harder to spot them and then get behind cover faster because of their flight capability, speed enhances even by afterburners, breaking any locks.
Overall, ps pilots never gave me reason to take them as fair players. They are generally unable to take a loss, even prefering to bail than get shot by "skilless flak".
2014-09-10, 10:31 PM
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