ESF Air to Air Feedback for Devs

[maradine]

At risk of repeating myself - double the flight ceiling. Things that wish to transit while avoiding ground fire will use the extra space. Things that wish to kill those things will hunt them. All of a sudden, you have a bunch of air combat happening out of the range of the AAA, just like everyone wants, and you didn't have to change much to get there.

[RSphil]

well atm i dont dogfight as they always end up as hover wars and coming from a WW2 combat flight sim that is pure dogfighting it annoys me that eveyone slams on the breaks and just hover around to fight.
if that can be sorted id enjoy it much more.

as for weapons the guns seem good atm but the A2A rockets are a bit of a wast as we all have decoys. id love to see the decoys fire like the F/A18 for the ESF as in firing 4 or 5 in rapid succession but counting as one. just for looks more then anything else, the Gal and lib could fire them like the C130's 4-5 from either side. that would look cool.

if you fire a missile and the enemy deploys a decoy it could maybe seek for a few seconds or try to find a another target maybe?
long range and short range variants could be cool.
maybe in the future have a sort of AWAC Gal and the ESF could lock onto targets that the AWAC marks for you? there are lots of ideas and tweaks that can be done. some good ideas about and i cant wait to see what the PS2 gods come up with.

[Dougnifico]

Well Higby, its hard to do because we have an aircraft that is half jet and half helicopter. Ground farming is a very easy way to get XP. You could increase the potency of A2A weapons. You could also have the dogfighting airframe more severely cripple the ESF's ability to hover while providing more defense against G2A (so that only dogfighters get the added protection). You need to make it so that a suicide ejection is credited as a kill. You could also give an extra XP bump for A2A or ESF to ESF kills.

[AnamNantom]

Originally Posted by Hamma

https://twitter.com/mhigby/status/332308256179511298

How about a weapon for the Scythe that will lock on and temporarily disrupt an enemy's flight controls, speed, UI, or etc. This could be akin to some of what happens with Eve Online' ships.

[Ohaunlaim]

One problem I see is that the most useful air unit is the ESF, next the Liberator, and way down the line the Galaxy.

If you can increase the Galaxy's usefulness (so they aren't solely for transport) without encroaching on the lib/esf roles (ie, killing things) then you will see more of these new support oriented air vehicles. They should only need one person to bring their support to the field. Just like a sunderer doesn't need to be full of passengers to be useful, so too should a Galaxy. Heck even further boost their resistance to ground fire just for shits and giggles.

Do this and suddenly you have beefy exp boxes flying around specifically for ESF's to either hunt or protect. Liberators could take advantage of or even support Galaxy operations (such as Ground vehicle radar or troop spawning). And now you have a full air environment:

Galaxies being the special support and transport air unit. Liberators being the main ground attack and suppression unit. ESF being the primary air attack and secondary ground attack unit.

Special weapons, new guns, tweaked boom-booms are all well and good, but give the ESFs more to shoot at than their counter parts or the poor ground huggers.

[Hyglak]

Must: Fix the bail-out /crash problem. A dogfight rarely rewards a kill.

Ideas:

- give ranks to pilots based on how much planes they shot down +
increase exp for shooting down the high ranking ones.

Stuff to buy/cert

- primary Weapon:
a Rotary with a Dmg-buff to air and higher bulletvelocity
( and fix the aiming on the Vortek <3)

a gun that fires small explosive projectiles, doing alot of dmg when staying close to a lib or gal.

secondary weapon:
- a canister of nanite-drones. needs to be released close to a Lib or gal and does dmg over time.
- a big "phoenix-like" a2a-missle suitable for hunting liberators and Galaxys

secondary slot ideas:

-Flare spender "Sunburst" - Flares without timer, but ammo-usage; certable, if need to cost ressources

-"Bird of Prey" - a cloak to replace stealth

-Radar, showing only flying vehicles but in a bigger radius. maybe just change the Scout.Radar

-Radarbomb, like a scoutflash for your friends on the ground.

-Ammo-Canister

-loudspeakerbomb, to unnerve the enemy with your empires Propaganda. -_-

Balance:

- modify Lock-On-missiles (because you can not remove them), shorten lock-on time but make esfs able to dodge or outrun them through flying wild maneuvers thus increasing the usefulness of AB and Racer.

- remove some a2a-ability from the lib, increase damage resistance vs. Ground-AA for the lib. (modify Dalton)

- Add a another Armortype that is good vs. a2a-guns

- modify stealth so that you have to activate it. buff the lock-on-time increase.

- make ground AA less effective above 500m, excluding direct hits.

[PredatorFour]

Ok here is a potentially wild addition but what about a new type of esf hull? I was thinking some kind of anti ram armour hull so people intentionally ramming you would not kill you, nor you them. Instead, any collision will just make the craft bounce then carry on. Just a random thought

[ARCStormtrooper]

As a decent A2A Reaver pilot, I'd like to see:

1. Easier counters to each weapon. i.e. remove full lockon capability of the A2A missiles. Make the missiles much less agile so that we don't absolutely need flares or even terrain to avoid them.
2. Give each ESF (1) a starting advantage to a particular performance stat. Right now, the Scythe has hover, the Mossie has speed and (seemingly) dogfighting, and the Reaver has nothing (really). I recommend the Reaver get speed (it has all those engines for goodness sakes). Give the Mossie dogfighting.
3. EMP air mines/missiles with a good radius that can cause any air vehicle to stall for 2-3 seconds.
4. Give an good air radar option. Maybe one that swaps out the mini map. You can even make it so that it does not pick up ground forces.
5. Nerf bullet speed, damage, and range of Burster MAXes. The turrets are fine I think.
6. Make S2A lockons less agile.
7. Make specific nose guns (rotary) even less effective against ground vehicles.
8. Make performance frames have active vulnerabilities: Racer has less turning speed, hover less acceleration speed, dogfighting less overall speed. Please make this a different percentage based on ESF and maybe build.

I obviously listed changes that I'd like to see that I believe can bring in a general benefit to the whole A2A system. But if I was to pick two that I feel would really separate the A2A's from the A2G builds, I think it would be the radar and the less agile A2A/S2A missiles.

[Kroova]

My thoughts (or those of previous posters that I like).

1) Increase the flight ceiling.
2) Increase fire-rate; decrease accuracy and projectile speed on Burster MAX.
3) Increase projectile speed on Skyguard.
4) Reduce A2A nosegun (Rotary, Vortex, Hailstorm) damage against Tanks, Sunderers, Harrassers, and turrets
5) Add a 5th turret seat on the Galaxy's nose. Allow Galaxies to equip A30 Walkers on every turret.
6) Give Liberator a new fast firing nosegun (similar to ESF AA noseguns) with less drop and more projectile velocity compared to Tankbuster. However, it is ineffective against ground targets.
7) Make Tankbuster slightly more accurate.
8) Allow Galaxies to equip a jammer that hides nearby friendly air units from radar and increases lock on time for enemy missiles.
9) Give ESFs an air version of Scout Radar that has greater range but only detects air units.
10) Split up A2AM into two variants: a slower, less manueverable one that is more effective against Libs/Gals and an agile, and a fast one more effective against ESFs.
11) Increase the added lock-on time effect of Stealth armor. (maybe increase the defensive bonus of flak armor as well.)

[VGCS]

Move Pods to the Primary Slot. I'm sick of getting farmed on the ground by these guys with Wallhacks and Aimbots who are just as impossible to stop when you pull your A2A Stealth Reaver to blindside them at top speed yet they still somehow know you're aimed right at them (and then they use the speedhacks too). We're talking really low B.R. people here too who obviously lost their last account. I have video of one of them and it's really blatant since the fact of the matter they all have Flares too which means they don't have Scout Radar at the same time... Take away their primary Botting advantage if they want to go pods. No Loadout should ever be the PERFECT loadout. Give them a real downside. PLEASE

[Greenthy]

1) Add Full fledged gunships like in PS1 (as in big beefy and circling kind, same exact set-up as PS1) They'll serve as the big threat only air can truely counter.
2) Add to the flight ceiling on some parts (more like relative to the ground: on some parts of the continents the fleight ceiling is already big enough)
3) Add to the usefulnes of the galaxy (like making it cary a vehicle/ANT (^^))
4) Make A2A fighters more viable. The current A2A is decent at best, but most of the time it's just as useful to bring an A2G fighter except those can shoot ground too.
5) (actually 4 bis) Add vehicle re-equiping (pads/rearm towers). This would solve the whole "will I get a A2G with my precious timer or A2A" : people will get that A2A more to fight air vehicles if needed. This is already possible for infantry, I don't see why vehicles shouldn't be able to.

[VaderShake]

Raise the flight ceiling by 25-50%

Increase the speed of the fighters giving them wider turning radious and a more dynamic feel

Make it more difficult to hover resulting in a stall making your aircraft drop rapidly with a 3 second drop for engine restart if hovers for more than 2-3 seconds (Galaxy aside)

Up the XP points for air to air kills

[phungus]

Originally Posted by VaderShake

Up the XP points for air to air kills

Just need to actually credit a kill when an A2A pilot kills his opponent, right now more then half of the A2A kills made in this game go uncredited.

[SolLeks]

Originally Posted by VaderShake

Raise the flight ceiling by 25-50%

Increase the speed of the fighters giving them wider turning radious and a more dynamic feel

Make it more difficult to hover resulting in a stall making your aircraft drop rapidly with a 3 second drop for engine restart if hovers for more than 2-3 seconds (Galaxy aside)

Up the XP points for air to air kills

Higher Flight ceiling will make no difference, speed is fine and why are so many people agenced the fact that these are VTOL aircraft? Stop thinking that they are 'jets' because they are not. Think Space helicopter / jet things (aka VTOL).

[SolLeks]

Originally Posted by VGCS

Move Pods to the Primary Slot. I'm sick of getting farmed on the ground by these guys with Wallhacks and Aimbots who are just as impossible to stop when you pull your A2A Stealth Reaver to blindside them at top speed yet they still somehow know you're aimed right at them (and then they use the speedhacks too). We're talking really low B.R. people here too who obviously lost their last account. I have video of one of them and it's really blatant since the fact of the matter they all have Flares too which means they don't have Scout Radar at the same time... Take away their primary Botting advantage if they want to go pods. No Loadout should ever be the PERFECT loadout. Give them a real downside. PLEASE

Balancing around hackers sounds like a very bad idea. Currently there is no 'perfect' loadout as a ESF with AB pods will do better facing a ESF with rockets, a ESF with rockets will kill ground /libs better and a ESF with A2AM will be able to snipe enemy ESF and kill libs / gals more effectively.

Now, if the differences are enough is up for debate.