AA, dogfights and farming

texico · 2012-02-14, 05:39 PM

One of the problems I found with PS1 was the triangle of AA, Airchav and ground infantry. The nature of AA largely destroyed a lot of over-battle dogfights and made it difficult for airchav focused on destroying other air vehicles to perform. Basically as soon as AA locked on to a mossie, it had to afterburn away immediately or it'd likely be destroyed.

But on the other hand, farming was too easy, and so AA was necessary otherwise infantry wouldn't be able to step outside without getting mowed.

Does anybody else think PS2 should find a way of dealing with this better, so that air chav fights can be preserved above battlefields, but won't be rampantly able to mow ground targets? The easiest way I can think of dealing with this is to make sure the flight ceiling is out of range of AA, but at the same time make AA very very deadly if the aircraft is near.

Imo PlanetSide 1 didn't do a good enough job of preserving dogfights between airchav, and I hope PS2 can improve on that without jeopardizing ground battles due to farming.

Azren · 2012-02-14, 05:44 PM

Flight physics are going to be very different, no way to tell how it will turn out.

Metalsheep · 2012-02-14, 06:38 PM

The only way to lessen softie farming in an aircraft is so make it so that Aircav cant hover. Or shoot while hovering/going slow&low.

Softies will always be vulnerable to aircraft when AA is not around, unless they make Jammers proximity burst like Flak

It was always epic to Jam a hovering mossie/reaver. They were really vulnerable to small arms fire once they couldnt instagib you.

BigBossMonkey · 2012-02-14, 06:54 PM

Well one thing going in its favor is if they're wanting to dogfight they will have a weapon loadout for that that may not work very well at killing infantry.

Also, you can't put flight ceiling too high up where they cant reach it with AA otherwise Libs will reign if the other empire(s) have the air at lower altitude locked down.

PoisonTaco · 2012-02-14, 07:24 PM

Make it a CERT spec you can go where you can hover. You can target infantry and ground vehicles but you are a sitting duck for AA fighters.

Grognard · 2012-02-14, 07:35 PM

Originally Posted by texico

Does anybody else think PS2 should find a way of dealing with this better, so that air chav fights can be preserved above battlefields, but won't be rampantly able to mow ground targets? The easiest way I can think of dealing with this is to make sure the flight ceiling is out of range of AA, but at the same time make AA very very deadly if the aircraft is near.

Imo PlanetSide 1 didn't do a good enough job of preserving dogfights between airchav, and I hope PS2 can improve on that without jeopardizing ground battles due to farming.

I'd think countermeasures would be a good start; flares, chaff, AMS systems. Should allow for more/better dogfighting situations, but it will only last so long... Flight dynamics that allow for shaking missles if you really turn n burn.

Thats all I got.

Warborn · 2012-02-14, 07:46 PM

Originally Posted by texico

Does anybody else think PS2 should find a way of dealing with this better, so that air chav fights can be preserved above battlefields, but won't be rampantly able to mow ground targets?

I think they've done what they need to do to solve it. First, they've given fighters either effective air-to-air weapons OR air-to-ground weapons. Second, flying looks like it's fun. Vehicles move much faster and it looks like an actual arcadey flight game so hopefully it will actually be fun to dogfight. And... that's kind of it. If air-to-ground fighters get chewed up and spat out by air-to-air fighters, then you no longer need very strong ground-to-air weapons for infantry or even vehicles.

As for hovering, aircraft camping doorways is dumb as hell. It's about as far from what should be a viable tactic for aircraft in a game as possible. I would not mind at all if hovering was something you had to toggle and doing so disabled your weapons, so that it's only useful for landing/taking off purposes. Fighter planes floating around in mass numbers outside of buildings waiting for someone to open the door is not gameplay I think they should encourage.

Originally Posted by Grognard

I'd think countermeasures would be a good start; flares, chaff, AMS systems. Should allow for more/better dogfighting situations, but it will only last so long... Flight dynamics that allow for shaking missles if you really turn n burn.

Thats all I got.

The answer to stuff like strikers is to not have stuff like strikers. Perfectly accurate homing weapons fired against air targets by infantry is a bad idea. It was necessary in PS1, but a better designed game wouldn't have required it to be necessary. Infantry should not be so easily targeted by aircraft in this new Planetside, and as a result they should not have strong anti-air weapons at their disposal. The lightning, configured for AA, is apparently taking the place of the skyguard, and that seems enough for me. Make it a deterrent to aircraft, but leave the job of clearing the skies to people flying fighters.

CutterJohn · 2012-02-14, 08:19 PM

Only thing wrong with the PS1 relationship is Infantry had no effective counter to air. Solution is an effective counter, not to make air worthless vs infantry.

Metalsheep · 2012-02-14, 08:22 PM

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

Only thing wrong with the PS1 relationship is Infantry had no effective counter to air. Solution is an effective counter, not to make air worthless vs infantry.

I heard in the test servers they had something called the "Jamlet" which sounds like a rocklet rifle that could fire Proximity Jammer grenades on Aircav.

Why this was never added still confuses me. I'd rather have the Jamlet than a bunch of the other AA stuff added.

Figment · 2012-02-14, 08:48 PM

Originally Posted by Metalsheep

I heard in the test servers they had something called the "Jamlet" which sounds like a rocklet rifle that could fire Proximity Jammer grenades on Aircav.

Why this was never added still confuses me. I'd rather have the Jamlet than a bunch of the other AA stuff added.

Problem was they made it work on normal stuff as well. Especially Wall Turrets became useless, but other vehicles couldn't even approach infantry anymore... The impact of dozens of people bringing them to a fight was huge.

Why they didn't just make a short range (50m) AA proximity only version with extremely low accuracy akin to the Flaklet out of it, we'll never know. At 50m, it'd been quite a bit better than a grenade against air, but a grenade would have a more reliable angle and it wouldn't have been much better than a Thumper EMP then either.

Instead, it had Rocklet range and accuracy.

Erendil · 2012-02-14, 11:06 PM

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

Only thing wrong with the PS1 relationship is Infantry had no effective counter to air. Solution is an effective counter, not to make air worthless vs infantry.

Yep. The Lancer was semi-decent against Mossies if you were good w/ it. And multiple Strikers were good at scaring away timid Mossies but they didn't stop a dedicated AB'ing farmer.

Originally Posted by Figment

Problem was they made it work on normal stuff as well. Especially Wall Turrets became useless, but other vehicles couldn't even approach infantry anymore... The impact of dozens of people bringing them to a fight was huge.

Why they didn't just make a short range (50m) AA proximity only version with extremely low accuracy akin to the Flaklet out of it, we'll never know. At 50m, it'd been quite a bit better than a grenade against air, but a grenade would have a more reliable angle and it wouldn't have been much better than a Thumper EMP then either.

Instead, it had Rocklet range and accuracy.

IIRC the Jamlet had a 400m range too. It was devistating to BFr's since they were big, slow moving targets. One Jamlet user on a base wall could effectively perma-jam a BFR (not that that's necessarily a bad thing mind you.

BFR pilots didn't like it so much tho...)

To the OP, here's my thoughts:

Give infantry air-burst jammers
Give infantry AA the ability to kill stock-level Air Cav in a reasonable amount of time, w/o reloading if possible
make all AA MAXes flak/airburst-based (no lockon or FAF)
don't let lock-on weapons reach high altitude, only flak from wall turrets, Lightnings, and AA MAXes
limit the quick-escape potential of afterburners when engaged from low flying speeds
give Air Cav ECM/chaff as an upgrade

In doing the above, high altitudes would be relatively but not completely safe since they wouldn't have to deal w/ lockon, infantry could jam and scare away farmers, and air cav couldn't AB to safety right away after every farm attempt but could break lock via chaff if they get caught at low-mid altitude.

Warborn · 2012-02-14, 11:32 PM

These are an awful lot of hoops to be jumped through. Wouldn't it be a lot simpler to simply make fighters not very good at targeting infantry at all? If fighters are more about killing vehicles or other aircraft, and not very good at hitting small targets like infantry, then you can skip the entire circus of balancing infantry anti-air with aircraft countermeasures.

Make infantry hard to hit by doing fun stuff like eliminating the ability for fighters to hover around shooting people, and voila, infantry no longer require weapons which are good at shooting down planes.

CutterJohn · 2012-02-14, 11:37 PM

Originally Posted by Metalsheep

I heard in the test servers they had something called the "Jamlet" which sounds like a rocklet rifle that could fire Proximity Jammer grenades on Aircav.

Why this was never added still confuses me. I'd rather have the Jamlet than a bunch of the other AA stuff added.

Simpler solution: Bullets tend to do not nice things to delicate flying machines. Infantry small arms should tear up hovering aircav. The short range would keep it from being crazy.

Originally Posted by Warborn

These are an awful lot of hoops to be jumped through. Wouldn't it be a lot simpler to simply make fighters not very good at targeting infantry at all? If fighters are more about killing vehicles or other aircraft, and not very good at hitting small targets like infantry, then you can skip the entire circus of balancing infantry anti-air with aircraft countermeasures.

Make infantry hard to hit by doing fun stuff like eliminating the ability for fighters to hover around shooting people, and voila, infantry no longer require weapons which are good at shooting down planes.

Vehicles and infantry are tough to balance too, so lets just avoid the problem and have vehicles not really able to hurt infantry, and take AV weapons from grunts.

And come to think of it, Air and Vehicles are tough to balance. Lets just avoid those problems and not give air good weapons to kill vehicles with, and not give vehicles any AA. Yeah, thats great gameplay.

Warborn · 2012-02-14, 11:57 PM

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

Vehicles and infantry are tough to balance too, so lets just avoid the problem and have vehicles not really able to hurt infantry, and take AV weapons from grunts.

And come to think of it, Air and Vehicles are tough to balance. Lets just avoid those problems and not give air good weapons to kill vehicles with, and not give vehicles any AA. Yeah, thats great gameplay.

Pretty constructive post you got there.

The point is that not everything needs to be good against everything else. Should everything on be an equally viable target for everything else? Is it a bad thing if some vehicles aren't good at killing infantry? I don't see it as a bad thing if MBTs aren't good at killing infantry at all, but are good against ground vehicles. Or if infantry aren't good against aircraft, but are good against other infantry or vehicles if they can get close to them.

It's about synergy. Combined arms. Relying on team mates to fill the gaps. That's the point of them axing the supersoldiers of the original game and making classes with distinct roles. That mentality should extend to vehicles, too. If you want to kill infantry, X vehicle(s) are good at that. If you want to kill aircraft, Y vehicle(s) are good at that.

It's hardly a novel concept in other games, I don't see importing the idea into Planetside 2 as something to be avoided. On the contrary, requiring people to use an array of vehicles to be well-rounded, or exploiting a lack of capacity in enemy forces by using a certain type of vehicle or whatever, sounds like pretty good gameplay to me.

Forsaken One · 2012-02-15, 02:10 AM

I have to admit I hope that air does not get chaff, flares, or anything like it.

EVERY Battlefield game I've ever played Air both jets and helis were ridiculously overpowered and stupid.

Fixed gun emplacements to deal with AA which were auto blown up 99% of the time, God mod flare spam BS, and they tended to be so fast that the placement guns missiles/bullets were outrun by them.

Only Battlefield game that ever did Air decently was BF2142 but then in a patch they "raised the flight ceiling" so now the gunships in that game are total bullshit able to rape stuff from outside AA and sight range.

I think Planetside did Air and anti air balance decently. (you know, other then the whole air camping doors and stuff thing.) Air was decently killable as it should be. They should not be battlefield style "wait in line to auto pwn with plane" flying godmode BS that take a whole team on the ground to take down just one of them.