Aircraft and AA, more realistic > planetside aircraft.

[navygrl]

Let's face it, AA is overpowered in Planetside, as is aircraft. Why is air overpowered? Heavy ordinance, Reavers good against everything, and it can hover. The reason it can hover, is because of its VTOL(Vertical Take-Off and Landing) design. Hovering aircraft combines choppers and aircraft into one.

Why is AA overpowered? Lock-On and projectile speed. As it stands, Starfire(Locked on orbs only), travel 300m/s at its peak. Faster then any aircraft in the game, however, such lockon is necessary for such 'overpowered' aircraft. Lets find some common ground here.

Flak:
http://www.nofrag.com/screenshots/actualite/2003-05-01_008.jpg

FlakPanzer. This is very different in terms of the Skyguard. Why? Armor. As you can obviously see, it sports a lot of armor, 4 20-40mm Bofors cannons. In return, it has very mediocre ground defence, and speed. How did Flak work back in the WW2 days? Simple... You fire hundreds of shots, and hope for a few direct hits, or near-misses. Usually it would only take 1-2 direct hits to down most bombers/fighters/fighter-bombers, so obviously Flak did lots of damage, at the cost of no lock-on, and accuracy. MAXs should not be in this new game, and if a hybrid is, AA platforms should not be one of them. Like the picture above, AA Tanks should travel slow, and require an escort to get them where they need to go.

If a form of the Flakpanzer is put into the game, it should feature:
High DPS, 1-3 shots to kill, depending on where hit
High ammo capacity and rate of fire
Very Very small proximity detonation, perhaps 10 feet of the shell, which is about -80% Bursters proximity.

AA-Platforms-Lock on
http://www.aeronautics.ru/img002/pantzir01.jpg

Obviously by design, it's larger then a Flak tank, has wheels which means it can travel faster, and it has very little armor.

Specs:
1-4 hits to down most aircraft
Can be evaded trough 'Flares'
Lock on

Shouler Mounted SAM
http://www.aeronautics.ru/stinger.jpg
'Stinger'..
Obviously, can only be used by foot infantry, lacks the range of other AA, and has a one shot per clip, but offers not having to grab a vehicle to use it.


Thats all I could come up with for AA. As for Aircraft, someone else should do it :)

[GreatMazinkaiser]

I think the general feeling is that AA will be provided in two ways, Flak and other aircraft.
With that being said, I was had thought about including ES Flak weapons in several ways:

1) AA Tower mounted, as Coggy's already hinted at the inclusion of AA defense towers, at least for capitals
2) Mobile versions, a.k.a. our version of the Skyguard (one of which I already designed)
3) An optional weapon for MBT hardpoints
4) A gunner pack mount for SGA's (i.e. HBTs)

HAX suits, which are to be included in the game (it's a given), will not be equipped with any sort of AA system, and will probably be rigged for AV/AI depending on user preferences.

I question why an AA vehicle should have to travel slow considering it's target tends to be rather fast... doesn't make much sense to me...

It would seem to me that you want to treat an AA platform more like an artillery piece, and to be honest, I don't know why anyone would want drive/gun an AA platform like that.

Balancing aircraft is already being dealt with in one of the other threads.

[navygrl]

I think the general feeling is that AA will be provided in two ways, Flak and other aircraft.
With that being said, I was had thought about including ES Flak weapons in several ways:

1) AA Tower mounted, as Coggy's already hinted at the inclusion of AA defense towers, at least for capitals
2) Mobile versions, a.k.a. our version of the Skyguard (one of which I already designed)
3) An optional weapon for MBT hardpoints
4) A gunner pack mount for SGA's (i.e. HBTs)

HAX suits, which are to be included in the game (it's a given), will not be equipped with any sort of AA system, and will probably be rigged for AV/AI depending on user preferences.

I question why an AA vehicle should have to travle slow considering it's target tends to be rather fast... doesn't make much sense to me...

It would seem to me that you want to treat an AA platform more like an artillery piece, and to be honest, I don't know why anyone would want drive/gun an AA platform like that.

Balancing aircraft is already being dealt with in one of the other threads.




Skyguard sucks. We need actual AA TANKS that sport heavy firepower, and firepower in its designated role. Nimble and weakly armored buggies ala Skyguard will be crap in this game, assumign you can hit drivers out of their vehicles and such. You need lots of armor to hide behind. As far as wanting to DRIVE such units, im sure we will have some sort of incentive, i would not mind driving one at all.

Secondly, having AA be in the form of a heavy tank, will localize armor columns and cooridnation even more, as opposed to grabbing a skyguard, driving very fast to where you want to go, and pwn any aircraft along the way. Being a tank will mean you travel much slower, and will almost always want another tank escorting you.

[RebelCommander]

Ahem...

Just to point out:

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/harrier6-s.jpg

or...

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/apache2.jpg

Both = Reavers.

Hovering vehicles in the future aren't all that unrealistic. In fact, the Navy just picked up the designs and plans for the Joint Strike Fighter, a VTOL/Single-einged version of the YF-22 Raptor.

[Kyraal]

I think the thought is that all air vehicles have some sort of hover function, but not every are supposed to be as easily maneuverable as they are in PS, where it's impossible to lose control over your aircraft.

Edit: Thought I replied in another thread, but probably no harm writing this here..

[Cogburn]

The flight dynamics discussion can be found here (http://www.markovforums.com/SMF/index.php?topic=2616.0).

On HAX mounted AA: Our Level 3 Rifle (HA) class of weaponry will be the only ones mountable on HAX. Since there are no lockon or anti-air specific weaponry in that class... Problem solved.

[GreatMazinkaiser]

Ok, I'm going to put it this way:

If you really want a heavily armoured vehicle with flak cannons, then mount 2 on an MBTs hardpoints and go at it...

Thus you sacrifice most, if not all ability of the vehicle to defend itself vs. infantry/vehicles, but you have a big tank with flak, or that which you propose to find acceptable.

With that being said, most people never had any problems with the Skyguard (barring the fact that it never got pulled), and I haven't heard any objections (apart from yours) about keeping a similar vehicle in Versus. The Skygod is a tank, is armoured, cannot protect itself against infantry/vehicles, but it also happens to be a fairly fast vehicle. Where is this a problem?

[navygrl]

http://web.utk.edu/~dhill10/http:/web.utk.edu/~dhill10/images/skygod.png

Same tracktion and armor as lightning = fast travel and speed, by the looks it's probably a one man crew as well. Realistically, such a vehicle, with the flak mounted in the back like such, would fall over, due to 4 very big cannons, and very little front side armor to balance it out a bit. 2 cannons on your lego tank, maybe.

[GreatMazinkaiser]

It's a two man vehicle, roughly 1.5 x the size of a lightning, and yes, it's fast...

4 barrels == completely necessary, as it doesn't use true flak, more like exploding bullets. High RoF + 4 Barrels going at once means that at least some of those bullets will hit.

And Afty probably had a better idea as to what it should look like, but I ended up making a model first.

And honestly, how important is "realism" in a sci-fi game?

[Xae]

Ahem...

Just to point out:

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/harrier6-s.jpg

or...

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/apache2.jpg

Both = Reavers.

Hovering vehicles in the future aren't all that unrealistic. In fact, the Navy just picked up the designs and plans for the Joint Strike Fighter, a VTOL/Single-einged version of the YF-22 Raptor.

Except that a Harrier can't hover all that well as it burns alot of fuel to do so, and Apache's don't have Afterburners/

[UGoBoy]

An Apache has greater Cruise speed than a Reaver does *using* afterburners.

[abathur]

HAX makes me cringe every fucking time I see it, btw.

Can't we go with some combinations of words such as "armor(ed)," "infantry," "platform," "weapons"

IWP. Infantry weapons platform. And I won't have to listen to people yelling HAX twice as fucking much as they do now. ;)

[GreatMazinkaiser]

As long as it looks good, it can be called Big Fat Baby for all I care...

[Aftiel]

An Apache has greater Cruise speed than a Reaver does *using* afterburners.


Which is completley irrelevant.

[Cogburn]

HAX makes me cringe every fucking time I see it, btw.

Can't we go with some combinations of words such as "armor(ed)," "infantry," "platform," "weapons"

IWP. Infantry weapons platform. And I won't have to listen to people yelling HAX twice as fucking much as they do now. ;)


Awwwwww... thats the fun part. :)

[GreatMazinkaiser]

Awwwwww... thats the fun part. :)


QFE indeed...

[Aftiel]

HAX makes me cringe every fucking time I see it, btw.

Can't we go with some combinations of words such as "armor(ed)," "infantry," "platform," "weapons"

IWP. Infantry weapons platform. And I won't have to listen to people yelling HAX twice as fucking much as they do now. ;)


Awwwwww... thats the fun part. :)


Ab you play VS, multiply your HAX yells on TS by 5 then replace HAX with "faggot warping max" and you have playing TR. :)

[RebelCommander]

HAX makes me cringe every fucking time I see it, btw.

Can't we go with some combinations of words such as "armor(ed)," "infantry," "platform," "weapons"

IWP. Infantry weapons platform. And I won't have to listen to people yelling HAX twice as fucking much as they do now. ;)


Awwwwww... thats the fun part. :)


Ab you play VS, multiply your HAX yells on TS by 5 then replace HAX with "faggot warping max" and you have playing TR. :)


ROFLS


And I've seen, albeit it's rare, video of a harrier hovering over a target while firing. Yes, it burns up the fuel. And it's not a smart move since they are open for a LOT of ground fire. But I was making a Real World to Sci-Fi comparison. Are we going to have fuel? No. Do games like BF2 have fuel? No. So that doesn't have to be worried about.

Now if we gave aircraft the need for fueling, that would make hover-spamming more difficult. We could, in effect, make our reavers nothing more than Harriers. That would make Hit-and run attacks more valuable.

On that topic, some form of tracking missiles on vehicles would be NICE, since it IS the fucking future, and we have that in real-world now.