Planetside 2 Thread v2 - Beta floodgates open GOOD LUCK EVERYBODY - Games

[QUOTE=kukiric;38226929]You mean flying low, not getting anywhere near combat (since there's always a few Burster MAXes defending outposts) and in general killing lone troops/distracted tanks in abandoned bases? That doesn't sound very useful. Honestly, AA was fine before they introduced the Skyguard. You could counter air with air and bases could keep aircraft away as long as the turrets were kept up, and AA MAX units were uncommon. Now anywhere there's two/three factions fighting over a base/outpost, the air space is completely locked down by two lightnings and a few MAXes, it's absurd how effective they are against anything that flies.[/QUOTE] Resource and manpower investment in 2 lightnings and a few MAXes is probably equivalent to the amount of air power that would be over a base at any time. I wouldn't nerf it much more than where it is now, or else we end up with rocket spamming fighters ruling the skies again.

I can only speak for playing as the Liberator, but I've found that AA isn't really op. My buddy and I spend well over 30 mins flying in one liberator, getting lots of vehicle kills. We fly up around 550-750 depending on how aware the enemies are, and just people down. Now granted the Liberator has a lot more health than the light attack planes, but its a lot slower too, and we often have to leave an area when and AA or light air spots us. Hell, even the standard 2nd seat machine gun on tanks are a problem when 2+ are shooting at you. Playing air is all about positioning, and knowing when to bug out when your hard counters show up. Fly low, and everyone and their mum is going to try and bring you down. AA is a problem when it finds you, but it should be, or we'd end up just mowing it down along with all the other vehicles and only rtb for more ammo.

[QUOTE=guest91;38228238]I can only speak for playing as the Liberator, but I've found that AA isn't really op. My buddy and I spend well over 30 mins flying in one liberator, getting lots of vehicle kills. We fly up around 550-750 depending on how aware the enemies are, and just people down. Now granted the Liberator has a lot more health than the light attack planes, but its a lot slower too, and we often have to leave an area when and AA or light air spots us. Hell, even the standard 2nd seat machine gun on tanks are a problem when 2+ are shooting at you. Playing air is all about positioning, and knowing when to bug out when your hard counters show up. Fly low, and everyone and their mum is going to try and bring you down. AA is a problem when it finds you, but it should be, or we'd end up just mowing it down along with all the other vehicles and only rtb for more ammo.[/QUOTE] I like to sit on base AA a lot and I find that liberators escape more often than the quicker planes. they're slower but not considerably so and their immense amounts of armor make them much harder to kill. The smaller fighters both leave you nearly unable to see out of the cockpit and with so little armor a single heavy assault can take you out if he can land all the shots

Has anybody tried the C150 Dalton (liberator AV weapon). Could you post a video, or describe the speed the shells move and the damage they do? 480 certs is a lot of investment if it's going to move as slowly as the Zepher shells.

I think the reason they made the base AA is weaker is because there are so many of them at one spot. Its true that they are much less of a problem to air than the Skyguard though. I think the AA vs liberator balance is pretty good, but from what you say, it might indeed be too powerful against the light aircraft. But buffing light aa health could mess with the liberator vs light air balance, which is pretty good right now as well. Light air is one of biggest killers of me when I'm liberating, and unless they stay still in front of the front or bottom gun, or try to make love to your back turret, they have a good chance of taking you down.

The problem is that a single Skyguard can almost shut down the surrounding 700 meters of sky. Two of them will completely deny the area with little chance of survival. You can't simply say "combined arms effort" when that single Skyguard is protected by 10 tanks, and each tank is being repaired by an engineer or two. You wont be able to just simply clear it up in a minute or two and aircraft will be free again. The next problem is that people are just assuming that the millisecond a Skyguard sees an aircraft, it shoots, which is only true of people that are bad. The bset thing to do is wait until they are within about 300m. As soon as they get within that range, they're basically screwed. It is almost impossible to escape in the small amount of time you have unless the terrain allows it. If there's no decent cliffs to protect you, you're probably dead. Yes, the Skyguard is a counter to aircraft, but that doesn't mean it should be immediate death with no escape. Third: A Skyguard isn't the only AA you need to worry about. Pretty much everything is a threat. Other Aircraft, Static AA, Max AA, Infantry AA rockets, Tank MG's, Sunderer MG's, Tank Cannons. All of those can kill you. It's not like you can just hide from all of that either. Flying low to avoid AA? You get torn apart by MG's, or if you're too close, you'll easily get taken out by a tank shell. I don't know why people don't think about MG's when talking about aircraft taking damage. the MG's on top of tanks and Sunderers actually do decent damage to aircraft. The reason not as many complain about MG damage is because it requires much better judgement to actually hit a target. With a Skyguard, Max AA, or Static AA, you just need to get the shot in their general vicinity, and it will still hit them. MG shots need to actually hit the target to do damage. How I would balance AA is to change how Static, Max, and Skyguard AA works. Make it so they have a slower fire rate, but more damage per shot. With the increased time between shots, you have more time to react to it. Since the RoF is slower, missing a shot or two will actually matter, and you will need better judgement when leading shots since you won't have a stream of tracers telling you exactly what you're doing wrong. Everything else can stay exactly as it is. With these changes, AA would turn into air denial weapons rather than certain death weapons.

Yeah that could work. Another thing that could be tweaked/added might be damage falloff on the skyguard.

[QUOTE=kenji;38221567]Total biscuit monotises another YT video saying what everyone else has been saying for the past 2 weeks, news at 11.[/QUOTE] Yeah, by risking his contract with SOE which would pay a lot more than this video.

[QUOTE=blazingfly;38227233]The skyguard just wipes out aircraft though, and aircraft have no real viable way of taking it down. A one-two second burst of skyguard wipes out my scythe before I really have time to react. Better: Nerf skyguard range to say, 600m, letting you evade by gaining altitude, at the moment it's range is 1000m High altitude AA could be done by base turrets and by enemy ESFs.[/QUOTE] why are you complaining that anti-air can't be dealt with by aircraft [editline]29th October 2012[/editline] [QUOTE=The golden;38227834]Keeping the skies clear should be a team effort. Right now a single AA unit can do it reasonably well. Two can bring down pretty much anything in range.[/QUOTE] Keeping the skies clear shouldn't be a team effort, because that is what lead to the shitstorm that occurred when everyone had the rocket pods. remember those 2 weeks when bursters were rare and anti-air wasn't very good? remember how fun it was getting annihilated by shit you couldn't see and couldn't shoot down? face it, getting killed by air is no fucking fun. the one man fighters should be good in small skirmishes, or against other air. They should be torn apart in large facility battles in the same way that a lightning gets torn apart in heavy ground combat. It's not where they should be, and it's not what they should be doing. You can't be a one man fighter bomber killing machine, you have to pick your fights.

[QUOTE=Cloak Raider;38228747]face it, getting killed by air is no fucking fun.[/QUOTE] Neither is getting killed by a single AA Max the moment you go near a base. They need to find a happy medium.

[QUOTE=Sharp_Shooter;38228857]Neither is getting killed by a single AA Max the moment you go near a base. They need to find a happy medium.[/QUOTE] the difference is, when AA is imbalanced, aircraft players have no fun. when air is overpowered, nobody other than aircraft players has any fun disagree all you want, but I'd question your opinions if you didn't play in the period where rocket pods were overpowered the game was ruined until they fixed it

I'd rather AA to more effective than air but not to the area where it is now. Like Littledog said above, and coming from a Skyguard player myself, it's far too easy to lock down an area with a single 175 resource investment.

The problem with air is indeed related to the light air being eviscerated instantly, I totally agree. Part of the problem with it though, is finding things in light air. You can't see anything at the speed you're moving, and your map doesn't show you where units are. Moving slowly will get you killed pretty much every time. In the time it takes you to see something, you're getting shot at and taking damage. I think changing AA to more lock-on, which requires you hold your cursor on the aircraft, would help. This does a few things: 1) Air gets a notice that they will start dying if they hang around too long. 2) Shooting air is not as skill based, so leading a target perfectly doesn't wreck everything in the sky. One could also argue this is a bad thing. 3) Flak could be reserved for stationary AA, leaving heavy bases harder to kill. With this, light air could fly lower to the ground and see things. Getting locked on to, they could run to a mountain and could perhaps avoid the lock-on missile before it hits. At bases, they would still get destroyed pretty quickly from stationary AA, but I feel that should be the way it is. On that note, stationary AA should have a larger ground plane they sit on, and should be higher up in general to avoid getting hit by every ounce of vehicular fire. I think making them nigh-invincible would encourage infantry to take a roll in helping, instead of a game of ambushing AA turrets as airplanes. Giving the AA a generator at the main bases to destroy to disable the AA would help decrease infantry spam onto the mono-objective heavily defended points. Also, giving the light air more health or armor would let them live through more than a few seconds of machine gun fire. Some drastic changes, but this should get more discussion rolling yeah?

I kinda wish the game offered some more direction at time. I just started playing and it seems a bit overwhelming. Maybe I'm just missing something?

Simply lowering the Skyguards damage would be fine, 10%-20%, maybe 25 tops.

[QUOTE=Cloak Raider;38228877]the difference is, when AA is imbalanced, aircraft players have no fun. when air is overpowered, nobody other than aircraft players has any fun disagree all you want, but I'd question your opinions if you didn't play in the period where rocket pods were overpowered the game was ruined until they fixed it[/QUOTE] rocket pods weren't near as overpowered as AA is now

[QUOTE=ButtsexV3;38229429]rocket pods weren't near as overpowered as AA is now[/QUOTE] Arguable.

Air needs some sort of improved anti-tank ability. Right now it's way to easy to just bumrush your way to a warpgate by filling the road with armor and Sunderers without worrying about strategy.

[QUOTE=MrBob1337;38229465]Air needs some sort of improved anti-tank ability. Right now it's way to easy to just bumrush your way to a warpgate by filling the road with armor and Sunderers without worrying about strategy.[/QUOTE] my AT tactics is usually to fly straight at them and unload my MG into them it usually works as long as they're in an open field

I have switched sides. NC is too overpopulated, and TR has better music and guns

the music on all 3 sides sucks

Population on Esamir; 45% NC, 29% TR, 26% VS The fuck?

[QUOTE=paindoc;38229812]Population on Esamir; 45% NC, 29% TR, 26% VS The fuck?[/QUOTE] TR just curbstomped both NC and VS back to the warpgates, it was a sight to see. I think it's still going on (in the East US server)

[QUOTE=Derposaurus;38230325]TR just curbstomped both NC and VS back to the warpgates, it was a sight to see. I think it's still going on (in the East US server)[/QUOTE] We (TR) were pushed back to our warpgate shortly before, but then people got sick of it so we actually started communicating and organizing. The last I had seen was when we were back to halfway down the map. I decided to do something else since I had just bought a Mosquito and basically lost it instantly due to a crash.

Sometimes the respawn cooldowns on vehicles annoys me so much in this... I mean I see why they're needed completely, but when the game bugs out and your tank implodes for no reason and you have to wait a year for a new one, it's annoying.

[QUOTE=paindoc;38229614]I have switched sides. NC is too overpopulated, and TR has better music and guns[/QUOTE] I did the same, I thought for sure NC would be my main faction but I switched because they had too many troops. Recently though, I've been feeling that sense of faction pride well up in me when we kick some cultist or corporate ass and see the enemy whine in chat about how badly they got their shit pushed in. Edit: By the way, is there a Facepunch group for the Terrans? I'm tired of playing alone or in random squads because my friends never want to play TR with, all they want to do is NC and VS.

Here's some footage from today where my friend and I discovered we don't like the cannon unlocks for the liberator. [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55AZTJZ8yio[/media]

That microphone was painful. It did add to the an authentic pilot experience though.

Which draw distance would you guys recommend as the absolute minumum draw distance for infantry/ground vehicle combat? I've currently set mine to 1500 and it makes doing AA properly difficult, and my [B]PC[/B] still crashes after 10-30 minutes of gameplay. Are there any other unconventional things I can do to optimize memory usage? It seems to leak a bit.

I destroyed a mosquito by landing on it with droppod. I died in the process but it was totally worth it.