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1: NC

2: NC and TR

3: NC, TR and Vanu

[DJ]

I C4ed a low hovering Lib once as LA. Best aircraft kill ever.

[Jelle]

Anyone have any tips on fighting aircraft? I can tell from personal experience that trying to shoot them down the seemingly reasonable way with lock-on G2A missiles is an excercise in futility, as everyone and their mother has decoy flares and automated repair systems. Not to mention that it still takes your entire supply of rockets to take down one Mosquito/Scythe, and that's if you find one that's stupid enough to both lack decoy flares and the sense to get the hell out of dodge when the lock-on alarms start blaring.

Lockon missles. If you're the only one shooting at the target it'll only serve as a deterence, but if there's enough lockons around it creates a no fly zone. Just like other long range anti vehicle weaponry, on its own its nothing special, but once you reach a treshold where you have enough firepower to blow something up before it can be repaired its an amazing weapon.

Especially now that maxes have increased in cost and the bursters have been toned down, and lockons have recieved no real changes, the heavy with a lockon launcher is the best anti air measure now.

*awaits hurdurr everything is stronk when used in large numbers comment*

[miauw62]

I use AA missiles all the time. They're nice for forcing small aircraft to fuck off for a while until they feel safe again.

[Toaster]

If you're TR, you and your 500 friends with the Striker can get air cover to piss off rather quickly.

[TolyK]

Anyone have any tips on fighting aircraft? I can tell from personal experience that trying to shoot them down the seemingly reasonable way with lock-on G2A missiles is an excercise in futility, as everyone and their mother has decoy flares and automated repair systems. Not to mention that it still takes your entire supply of rockets to take down one Mosquito/Scythe, and that's if you find one that's stupid enough to both lack decoy flares and the sense to get the hell out of dodge when the lock-on alarms start blaring.

That's strange.
I bought the G2A launcher today and had a LOT of fun. I got most aircraft down to half-health, about half of those I ended up killing.

How I got around the flares: most pilots use flares right after they've been locked onto, so I wait a second or two before firing (unless they're getting out of range). Hits nearly all the time.

If you're TR, you and your 500 friends with the Striker can get air cover to piss off rather quickly.

Damn TR and their high-ROF-Lockon-Launcher >.>

And I really hate the situation on Miller - the TR has the population advantage over both us and the NC, and they can typically afford to send 1.5 times more people than VS and NC combined...
Obviously, they win nearly all alerts (95% of them which are not on Indar). Even those that start with VS or NC leading are usually lost.

I really hope they fix that some time. 

[Myroc]

How I got around the flares: most pilots use flares right after they've been locked onto, so I wait a second or two before firing (unless they're getting out of range). Hits nearly all the time.

You're not actually getting around flares, the ECM effect lasts longer than the time it takes to reload a rocket launcher anyway. They are serving exactly their purpose, throwing off a rocket for long enough for them to bombard you with their rocket pods, leaving plenty of time to retreat before any substantial retaliation hits. Then it's merely a matter of waiting half a minute (during which a buddy with an identical loadout can do exactly what you just did) for the flares to come back and your aircraft to repair itself, before repeating the cycle. The only reliable way I've found of taking down enemy ESFs is to man one myself, which sort of defeats the purpose of surface-to-air weaponry in the first place.

[Siquo]

Well, you can't really expect to be able to 1-on-1 an aircraft as infantry. You don't 1-on-1 a tank with your RPG either.

[Silfurdreki]

Aircraft are always very difficult to balance. Currently, they're very good in small fights, where there's ~<15 players in a base from any faction. Any more than that, however, and you'll always have one or two people as burster MAXes or heavies with lock on launchers. As Jelle said, you hit a critical mass of AA lock-ons and you completely wipe any aircraft in the air off the map. Currently, that critical mass is 3 HA's (or 2 if you're TR with the striker). This means that in any bigger fight aircraft are almost completely useless because they have to retreat as soon as they get locked on since there's no way of knowing how many people are locking onto you on the ground. In big fights getting locked onto happens more or less as soon as someone with an AA launcher sees you, and there are usually a lot of people with them around, especially when they're TR.

Aircraft are very frustrating to play right now, since your tactics have to be swoop in, hope the enemy renders early enough for you to actually line one of them up, fire and get out of there, hoping that you can get behind something before the enemy gets lock-on missiles off. If they do, you're generally dead since there will almost always be more than enough to kill you and they now intelligently go around mountains. If you're not dead, repeat when flares have recharged. That time is usually long enough that the guy you just killed have respawned three or four times already, though, so you actually have very little impact on any given battle.

The Liberator in particular is in a bad spot right now since it cannot flee with nearly the same speed as an ESF. It's in a rather annoying catch 22 situation where it's supposed to be a ground-to-air bomber, but if you're flying high you don't actually render your targets and thus cannot damage them. If you're flying low, you're instead such a large and slow target that tanks and dumbfire launchers reliably hit you, and two or three of those will kill you. In short, flying a lib is an exercise in frustration and I wouldn't recommend it.

Sorry for the lengthy and slightly ranty post, but as a pilot that's been constantly nerfed since release and having seen AA get constant buffs since release (except last patch where bursters were toned down slightly at range, Skyguard got buffed though), it's kind of annoying.

[Jelle]

Well, you can't really expect to be able to 1-on-1 an aircraft as infantry. You don't 1-on-1 a tank with your RPG either.

Tanks are now considerably more expensive then aircraft though so not the best comparison. Not that I'd argue a single infantry should be able to destroy an ESF just like that.


You know what they ought to do to make libs more useful. Have infantry that's been spotted render from further away, allowing libs to bomb spotted targets. Fun for the guy spotting enemy infantry to, mark 'em up and watch your ally rain fire from the sky.

[Myroc]

Well, you can't really expect to be able to 1-on-1 an aircraft as infantry. You don't 1-on-1 a tank with your RPG either.

I'm not expecting to 1-on-1 it, I'm expecting actually being able to be a significant deterrent when using the unlockable weapon that's specifically designed for it. Granted, the reverse should certainly not happen, it would equally suck if your fully certed aircraft could be nullified by any punk with a rocket launcher, but when I bought that weapon I expected it to be more effective than harsh language. As it stands, it's usually a better idea to switch to small arms fire.

[Rakonas]

I don't think infantry based AA should really exist. It's a challenge to keep AA guns on towers up and running or keep a harasser alive in the middle of a large battle, and it should be. Honestly, AA that can lock on is just ridiculously superior to the unguided flak in some ways, why bother with it? Maybe I'm just in the PS1 camp and think that mass vehicle movements should be the best thing ever in open battles.

[Spaghetti7]

Well, you can't really expect to be able to 1-on-1 an aircraft as infantry. You don't 1-on-1 a tank with your RPG either.

I'm not expecting to 1-on-1 it, I'm expecting actually being able to be a significant deterrent when using the unlockable weapon that's specifically designed for it. Granted, the reverse should certainly not happen, it would equally suck if you're fully certed aircraft could be nullified by any punk with a rocket launcher, but when I bought that weapon I expected it to be more effective than harsh language. As it stands, it's usually a better idea to switch to small arms fire.

As a pretty keen ESF pilot, I can't see how it's not a good deterrent. Even if someone is pulling flares, a simple lock-on where they use them and you don't even fire should put them out of the battle for 20-40 seconds, depending on flare level. If they don't pull away, you can shoot them down. Personally, I pull away as quickly as possible whenever somebody locks on to me, because you don't stand a chance otherwise.

[Kanil]

Well, you can't really expect to be able to 1-on-1 an aircraft as infantry. You don't 1-on-1 a tank with your RPG either.

Why not?

I find it weird that people think vehicles should be better than infantry, then complain when the vehicle prices go up making it harder to 24/7 a vehicle. Either they're going to be freely available and not any better than a regular soldier, or they're going to be more useful, but with some drawbacks. Such as limited availability (this doesn't really work in PS2), or with teamwork requirements (Liberator, Harasser are the only ones that really fall into this category).

I get the feeling an experienced pilot probably doesn't have much difficulty in keeping his ESF alive for 5 minutes and accumulating 250 resources in the process... so if a pilot can expect to fly 24/7, then why can't you expect to solo him? (Or, at least, chase him off.)

Anyway, as for air/ground balance... I think in the small scale, it's good (probably favors air), but the problem is that AA reaches critical mass way too easily. Not sure what to do about that, but just straight nerfing damage is going to make other problems. Perhaps adjusting the ranges of the weapons so there's less overlap between players spaced out somewhat? That wouldn't help with lock-ons, but I don't have an idea off the top of my head.

[miauw62]

I get the feeling an experienced pilot probably doesn't have much difficulty in keeping his ESF alive for 5 minutes and accumulating 250 resources in the process... so if a pilot can expect to fly 24/7, then why can't you expect to solo him? (Or, at least, chase him off.)

I bolded the problem. If newbie pilots get shot down constantly, they won't become experienced pilots and aircraft will gradually dissapear from the game.

[Kanil]

So if aircraft has to be better than infantry, and common enough that newbies get lots of time to practice it, why would anyone do anything other than fly?

Seriously, vehicles don't deserve to be better than infantry and be able to be used exclusively at the same time.