Originally Posted by Erendil
I say this because not only does it feel like an arbitrary limitation to put on the longer range AA, but more importantly the larger-scale battles will always have a mixture of both low and high altitude aircraft, and if every form of AA out there can only hit one or the other you've effectively cut the amount of AA out there in half for any given pilot flying in the area. So you'd have to setup twice as much AA as would otherwise be needed if an "either/or" tiered system weren't in place.
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That isn't really true. In a altitude tier system, you're going to see more low-mid range AA, if only because low-mid range aircraft have more of an effect on the ground. It then becomes really unlikely that you'll see any less low-mid range AA than you did in PlanetSide 1.
So if the concern then becomes that you don't see much mid-high range AA, you can evaluate it one of a few ways:
1) Is that even a problem? Are the mid-high range aircraft having such a meaningful impact on the ground that they
need to be hard-countered?
2) Is the mid-high range AA not accessible enough? Are players not using it because it requires too much of an investment to train for or is too time-consuming to acquire and set up at a base?
3) Is mid-high range AA just not effective enough? Is it easily accessible, but just too ineffective to be worth it?
Originally Posted by Erendil
So, rather than forcing AA to choose between one or the other, I envision more of a 3-tiered system, where all AA is effective at low AA, only some of it at mid-altitute and a very select few can hit high altitude. But the high-alt AA would also be effective at low and mid alts as well. So, assuming, say, a 700m flight ceiling, here's what I see:
0-300m - Infantry general AV , vehicle mounted machine guns (which IMO need to be much more effective at AA than they are in PS1), cerb turrets (w/ similar range to the cerbs in PS1).
300-500m - non-upgraded wall turrets, Tank/other vehicle mounted AA, Infantry dedicated AA weapon (think of a 3-shot disposable SAM, like a guided Deci only effective vs air), AA MAX lock-on weapons (all 3 empires would have this available)
500-700m - AA wall turrets, Skyguards, AA MAX flak-based weapons (all 3 empires would have this available)
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If high-altitude AA is just as effective at all flight levels, no one would ever seriously consider using anything but skyguards and flak addons.