BF2: Nerf Thread

[Merusk]

I shot-down a 'copter with the .50 on the MEC troop transport last night.  I laughed a good long while about that.

Also, Way hates me because he quit just as I joined his server.

[WayAbvPar]

Did you join? That sucks! I just had a nice run as commander and was off to Trader Joe's with my wife. She is working tonight, so there is a good chance I will be on all damned night long  :-D

[Merusk]

Yeah I joined right as a map ended and you were the #1 on your side.  I was stuck in MEC and we got our asses kicked because nobody worked together.  It's a sad, sad team when I make it into the top 10 with only 6 kills.

[stray]

I'm pretty sure those stats include kills made by the mobile AA battery, which is quite effective at mowing down infantry.

I've used the mobile AA no more than 3 or 4 times. Seriously. I would if I could, but it's usually gone and/or I always forget where one of them is located. The times that I have used it I don't remember killing anything on the ground. I've got my head up in the sky the whole time (And why shouldn't I? I get 4 missles at a time instead of 2. That's sweet.).

From what I can recall, the only kill that shouldn't be counted is a sniper I spotted while I was mounted on the AA gun. The rest are choppers and jets. More choppers than jets, of course, but I've knocked down a couple dozen of those too.

I never say things like this, but you guys need some skills  There's no need for nerfs. My kill ratio with AA is almost as good as my stats for Tank kills (and we all know how easy it is to lay waste with one of them).

[Miasma]

What's your tactic for shooting down jets?  I've heard everything from you should lead them with the missiles, to you should keep the targeting reticle locked right on the jet while the missiles are in flight, to you should just fire off the missiles and let them do the lock-on instead of waiting for the lock tone.  I've tried them all and nothing has worked, I swear the jets move faster than the god-damned missiles.

I've only managed to shoot down a few jets - and they were all with a tank at the enemy's airstrip as they were trying to take off.

While I don't think choppers/jets should be nerfed directly I do think the stationary AA needs to be more powerful.  I can't tell you how many times I have slammed two missiles into a chopper and still have to wait for a reload to finish the job, that's absurd.

[stray]

Keep lock on, wait for them to burst chaff, then fire two missles quick. Reload. Keep lock on. Fire two more. Repeat as necessary. Don't fire missles one at a time, and don't lead (unless you're targeting from the side...but even then, don't lead too much either). Also, start targeting as early as you see them.

I'm never going to take them down on my first two tries, but I'll usually get 2 hits out of 4 shots.

9 times out of 10, you can almost count on them not getting repaired. Instead, they'll turn directly towards you for bombing (pilot mentality, I guess). If that's the case, then you should get a kill.

Another thing, like I mentioned in another thread, it makes it easier if you have at least one pilot on your own team. Either because they help contribute damage, or because it makes the pilot being pursued that much unaware of you (and not particularly evasive to whatever's on the ground).

[Sky]

I do remember getting some decent stinger kills on the demo map. As for pilots who turn into fire to retaliate...classic newbler move. Used to love that in the old flak cannons. I think part of why I think the new stuff sucks is the SAM emplacements blow compared to ancient flak cannons, even though flak cannons were purely manually aimed. There was something really visceral about them imo.

[stray]

The other newbler move is when they pull up instead of sideways (and away). Like that's going to help 

Man, do I hate pilots    They think they own the map. It's the only reason why I play AA more than anything else (even when I don't want to).

[WayAbvPar]

Another thing, like I mentioned in another thread, it makes it easier if you have at least one pilot on your own team. Either because they help contribute damage, or because it makes the pilot being pursued that much unaware of you (and not particularly evasive to whatever's on the ground).

That helps, except when the missiles mysteriously unlock and end up damaging or killing your own aircraft. I have never had more minus points (other than as a commander, when the drooling fucktards punish for arty TKs, because Christ knows they don't get enough fucking warning to avoid them) than when I played AA at the end of the carrier on the Gulf of Oman map. Time and time again, I would get locks, fire, and get a TK message. 

[Sky]

Heh, Stray...I was a pilot for my clan in '42  My tactic was pretty much to hit the deck and maneuver behind some cover when under fire. The new jets just move too fast, and neither them nor the choppers seem to play nice with my new joypad. I just can't seem to get the hang of them. But a good pilot (in '42, anyway) DID own the map...drop in, wipe out your armor, let the grunts move in, take out your respawned armor, down your pathetic planes, repeat :) The Stuka was a challenge because it was a friggin' boat, but give me a 109 or Spit and death from above ensued.

I'll ditto that bit about the goddamned tk code. It's way too sensitive.

[stray]

Yeah, I've had a few problems with TK's. More "Team Vehicle Damage" than TKing though. I can't bring up that stat site up atm, but I need to check what the numbers are.

It's forced me to be a little more patient than I'd like, but I got tired of being blamed for shit that wasn't my fault. I mean, it's AA, with lock-on. I can't intentionally target a teammate with it....Yet, they still punish me.

Like I said, I hate pilots. Even the ones on my own side are assholes.  .

[EDIT] Yeah, you're right about '42 Sky. Pilots did own the map. I think that if pilots were overpowered in anything, it was there. Not in BF2. I have more of a chance now than I ever did back then.

No offense on the hate btw  :-D

[EDIT] OK, here it is:

Team: Kills, Damage, & Vehicle Damage  40 / 16 / 37 

[Big Gulp]

It's forced me to be a little more patient than I'd like, but I got tired of being blamed for shit that wasn't my fault. I mean, it's AA, with lock-on. I can't intentionally target a teammate with it....Yet, they still punish me.

Maybe I'm just warped, but I love the team damage.  Just the other night we were involved in a really close in fight where one of our bases was being overrun.  Someone calls out an enemy sighting and our commander starts sending an ungodly amount of artillery our way.  Oh sure, he killed a lot of enemy, but he also took out most of us defending the base.  You could tell that they guy was kind of horrified that he did that, but hey, that's how these things go sometimes.  I dig that kind of authenticity to this game.

[WayAbvPar]

Yeah, but IRL he doesn't get kicked from the server for too many TKs 

[Sky]

Hey, that stat page is nifty. I also suck, haha.

http://bf2s.com/player/gruntzilla/

Team: Kills, Damage, & Vehicle Damage     19 / 8 / 2 ....not so bad! And a few of those were intentional ;) And I agree with Gulp, even with some of the wonky tk code, freindly fire is a must for a good game.

[Toast]

Stray-
I'm not sure what point you are making but I think you are exaggerating your claims about the effectiveness of anti-air.

There's no way that you have shot down dozens of jets. It's just not possible. Secondly, you have really spent 4h 12min sitting in those little AA turrets? Really? Are you positive you weren't driving around in a Tunguska blasting buggies and infantry (you do have 13 road kills).

I'm not trying to flame. I just think your anecdotes are a little suspect with a tilt toward making yourself appear more skilled than the rest of us.

FYI, my air defense is 77 kills, 30 deaths in about 1h 45min

[Sky]

Oh man...I was just kicked from AGE's server for excessive teamkilling...with no friendly fire! I guess I was killing a few too many AGE folks, heh. They were claiming I was cheating, but they kept bunching up, making it easy for my 'nade launching ass to clean up...I think the final straw was my aforementioned 'hit the chopper from underneath with the grenade launcher and laugh as ragdolls fly out' trick...probably doing the engineer 'trick'.

[stray]

I'm just telling you what I know from my own experience. It has nothing to do with exaggerating.

To give you an idea how "skilled" I am:

Assault Rifles

98 Kills
278 Deaths (it was even worse before I got a new video card  ).

Carbines

50 Kills
117 Deaths

The reason why I say that my stats for AA are as good as my stats for Tanks is because they are. The reason why I'm here arguing against nerfing is because it has me completely baffled. It's lock-on targeting for crissakes. How much more simple should it get? That's the "point" as to why I'm here. In my experience, I've had more success with AA than almost everything else.

Armor

117 Kills
62 Deaths

Air Defense
 
112 Kills
69 Deaths
 
For another vehicle reference:

Helicopter

54 Kills
52 Deaths


Not mobile AA. Just AA. I have a memory, y'know? I can distinctly remember knocking jets and choppers down with the sit-in AA guns. Plenty of times. Enough times that I piss them off so much that they come back for more. And I know that I rarely have the opportunity to use Mobile AA in the first place. I'd tell you if I was spending all that time mowing down infantry with a machine gun, believe me.

[edit] As for the 13 road kills, then it's from the times I've targeted players coming near the AA gun (I mentioned the sniper), but I forgot to mention tanks. There's also been a few weird situtations where one of my stray missles actually hit something (while I was targetting a plane or chopper).

[Big Gulp]

In my experience, I've had more success with AA than almost everything else.

Same here.  I was just in a game with Sky (opposite teams, bastard gunned me down like a dog), and I racked up at least 7 kills in a row with AA.  True, only one jet out of the 7, but man, that's a potent tool considering the amount of havoc helicopters can inflict on your team.  My trick is to do the slow double tap.  I release my first missile, wait one second and then tap it again.  If my first one misses (cause of chaff) the second one will probably do the trick.  The closest I've come to that number of consecutive kills is when I camped out on a smoke stack with a sniper rifle until a chopper pilot finally smoked me.

Oh, and Sky bitches like an old lady about people not picking him up (which is a valid pet peeve).

[WayAbvPar]

The trick is to find out who the chopper whores are on your team and then join their squads...nothing is nicer than spawning into a seat with a nice chain gun with which to wreak havoc.

[Sky]

Heh. I find the server Gulp is on via xfire. Log in, someone grabs the apc in front of me and zooms off for the planes. I turn to head for the tank, and someone jumps in and starts circling the base. So I run for the hmmv. Someone jumps in and takes off toward the map (I'm at the main base), solo. Just then the attack chopper spawns, and mr. tank zooms over to it. I wait until he gets out, tk him, then use the chopper as a taxi to the nearest flag and bail :P (I hate that, but at least it's fast and the chopper respawns quick enough...and all the land vehicles were being used by soloers or as transport to the planes...) Bitching the entire time about the fucking morons on my team "I see dumb people".

Best game ever that is also made pretty shitty by the morons playing it.

Finally got on Gulp's side only to get run over twice by my own team. Then he logs off.

Anyway, after Gulp left I sat in the static AA by our airfield and racked up a few kills. Jets are goddamned hard to kill, even when I time the chaff right, they just dodge out of the way. But yeah, choppers aren't too bad, and they tend to come straight for you after the first salvo, heh. Not much changed from '42, people camping the goddamned airstrips. I'm starting to get the hang of flying choppers finally, though I suck at hovering, so I'm no flagcap whore like most.

[WayAbvPar]

So you tked someone to get a chopper, then bailed out of it? That is exactly the kind of behavior that makes me fucking crazy. It also makes me switch servers to one with active admins.

[Sky]

Nonono. I tked someone who took the tank and circled the uncappable home base until the chopper spawned, then hopped out of the tank to get the chopper. I tked him because he was acting like a smacktard. I was going to take the tank into the fight, but took the chopper instead just to spite him.

Besides, as I said, the chopper respawns quickly, I went straight for a flag and bailed.

If it hadn't been a smacktard, I wouldn't have done it. As I said in that post, I hate that kind of stuff, too. But I'm sure he was still at the base camping the air spawns, if he didn't leave the server. Heck, I don't mind good players camping the air vehicles, but don't take ground vehicles people can use to do so.

[Merusk]

The bonus is when I find a team that is air camping, and the server doesn't autobalance.  I flip sides and sniper their airfield. Great fun for the family.

[Furiously]

I did that on a server a few days ago. Five minutes later their planes were sitting empty on the runways. They totally gave up. So I stole a plane and crashed 4 minutes later.

[Miasma]

I did that on a server a few days ago. Five minutes later their planes were sitting empty on the runways. They totally gave up. So I stole a plane and crashed 4 minutes later.

You can get a nice easy ribbon doing that, just take the plane up a few hundred feet and parachute out, after about ten seconds you get an airborne ribbon.

In an unrelated matter I think I should be able to kill anyone sneaking up behind me when playing anti-tank

U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Gary R. Nichols fires an AT-4 light anti-armor weapon at an old tank during a training exercise at Camp Bucca near the southern Iraq port of Umm Qasr, in this military handout photo taken July 18 and released on July 30, 2005. REUTERS/HO/USMC/Cpl. Eric R. Martin

[Toast]

It appears that the community has evolved its own way of dealing with overpowered, fully-crewed Blackhawks. It's simple, crude, and effective:

Ram the loaded Blackhawk with a jet. The helicopter whores are already crying foul as their god mode has been taken down a notch.

[Big Gulp]

Ram the loaded Blackhawk with a jet. The helicopter whores are already crying foul as their god mode has been taken down a notch.

I just don't see the nastiness of a fully crewed Blackhawk being a cheat.  2 chain guns and crew of riflemen should be fucking nasty.  Doesn't mean it isn't still vulnerable to small arms fire, vehicular fire and the ever present SAMs...

If you've got a crewed Blackhawk headed for one of your outposts you should be concerned as a commander.

[Toast]

There are three problems with a fully crewed blackhawk:

1. Excessively high armor/ineffective Stingers
2. In flight repair. Two engineers make a Blackhawk nearly impossible to kill. (this one has to be a bug..it just has to)
3. Take the above two points and add in the fact that flags almost instantly turn when this crewed helicopter floats nearby.

[Furiously]

Yea - taking 3 shots from a missile on a linebacker to take down a blackhawk seems a bit much. One stinger should do it. All the air assets seem a bit strong.

[WayAbvPar]

I played some more over the weekend, and I still think that jets are severely overpowered (helicopters aren't as bad; at least they can't outfly and outturn the fucking SAM missiles). The Gulf of Oman map is a giant deathtrap for anyone not in a jet- it is to the point that it is nearly unplayable, IMHO.

[Furiously]

I tend to like the maps without a big airpower presence. I'm looking forward to the special forces version of the game. Other then zip lines.

[Toast]

Dalian plant is also practically unplayable for me due to the air factor. It's so irritating.

Special forces should be good.

[Furiously]

Go for the linebackers on those maps.  Get in one - kill someone quick and get out, because they are coming back for revenge - And for some reason - helicopters have more armor then mobile AA does.

[sinij]

Go for the linebackers on those maps.  Get in one - kill someone quick and get out, because they are coming back for revenge - And for some reason - helicopters have more armor then mobile AA does.

I find APC is by far better at shooting helicopters down than AA. AA missiles are really bad at locking on targets, about only reliable way to hit anything if target moves AWAY from you. Well problem is that you are often dead or turret wrecked when that happens.

[WayAbvPar]

Go for the linebackers on those maps.  Get in one - kill someone quick and get out, because they are coming back for revenge - And for some reason - helicopters have more armor then mobile AA does.

Yeah, if you can get a Linebacker in Dalian, you can wreak some havoc. Hit and move, hit and move, so the joystick jockeys or the commander can't get a lock on your position and do unspeakable things to you with high explosives. Be prepared for some TKs or at least damages though- as mentioned before, the missiles have a tendency to swith targets and hit your buddies. You can accumulate both kills and the ire of the other team if you do it right, however