Originally Posted by belch
In all honesty, the ESF is more akin to an AH-64 than the Liberator. The Apache is an attack helicopter, and wasn't designed to carry enough armament to loiter. Honestly, they are hardly ideal for ground support beyond tank busting. An AC-130 is a gunship, and when you think of it like that, the Lib actually fills that role. We shouldn't get too much into real life comparisons though...I have never seen hordes of AC-130's, nor AH-64's like demonstrated in game with the Libs and ESFs.. The sheer numbers throws a lot of conventional roles for those platforms (attack aviation, gunships, etc.) right out the window.
|
All the aircraft in PS2 carry way more ammo than any aircraft does in real life, with maybe the exception of an AC130. The thing about the AC130 is though, from a gameplay perspective it would be an awful aircraft. It flies around at night and has a huge complement of flares and chaff on it if enemies shoot missiles at it, and is not supposed to ever operate in an area where there are enemy aircraft or AA guns. It's just not really the kind of vehicle that pulls any impressive maneuvers.
As far as I'm concerned good gameplay should always be the primary concern of the devs, and right now airplanes in PS2 just don't really provide that. In order to have gameplay that you can really sink your teeth into you just need to have serious options for countering what the enemy throws at you. There is simply no amount of skill you can leverage in PS2 at this point that would allow you to go up against lockon spam or AA guns and get away unscathed. You can only fly in such a way that you're well on your way back to a safe spot by the time the damage you inevitably take adds up so much that you're one opportunistic ESF away from going down in flames.
Let's be real here, the counterplay for air against AA weapons is nonexistent at this point. You know what I enjoy? Taking a Liberator with the Tankbuster and fighting heavies that use dumbfire rockets with it, no bellygun. Yea, I know, it's just two people using the wrong weapons for the job to go at each other, but the reason why I enjoy the hell out of it is because you can actually dodge a dumbfire rocket that's coming straight at you, but it's not impossible for the guy to shoot you down, because in order to kill infantry with a tankbuster you need to hover. The reason why a missfit battle like that is way more enjoyable than Bellygun vs. Burster Max is because it's a real contest of skill. Then some craphead with one of the no-skill fun ruining AA weapons shows up and blows you out of the sky in seconds because you dared using your aircraft in a fun way instead of hovering 400 meters overhead with your finger on the "cheese it" button. Pheh.