It's that time again:

Planetside Stratics: Dev Q&A

When you see as much ill-informed and shamelessly biased messageboard soapboxing as I do, you really start to appreciate hearing what the people who actually matter have to say, so these are always quite interesting. This time around, the focus seems to be on balancing the Air Cavalry units, and not before time, if you ask me.

Planetside is largely based around the ideal of combined arms action, at least in theory anyway - infantry, transport, armour, aircraft, and yes, even the big stupid robots, all working in a co-ordinated capacity to get things done. There's a sort of paper, scissors, stone type of dynamic at work here also, with each type of unit able to deal well with some and be dealt with by others. This all sounds fair, but as long as I can remember (over a year), Planetside has always really been dominated by the Air Cavalry units; namely the Mosquito and in particular the Reaver.

Both craft fly more like helicopters than fixed-wing aircraft, meaning that they hover while at rest, have no 'stall speed', can rise/climb on the spot, and both have afterburner boosters allowing forward crusing speeds of 100kph and burst speeds of twice that. The Mosquito is a light scout aircraft with an enemy-revealing radar, and frightening pinpoint nose mounted chain-gun, and is designed for recon and air-superiority. The Reaver is a gunship, a bit bulkier and slower, and armed with forward facing rocket launchers and a pair of less accurate, but bigger, machine guns. It's designed as a sort of tank-buster type of thing, for hit-and-run attacks on enemy vehicles. This rarely matters though, since both craft are mostly used for farming infantry either with shortrange undodgeable rocket-spam or frighteningly accurate high TTK chainguns. They aren't that strong, but strong enough that most infantry will be unable to bring one down alone before he's toast.

The other primary use of these aircraft is as disposable personal paradrop platforms for the Hotdropping Have-a-go Hero, prior to them landing on the roof of a base or tower with a huge gun, and wreaking havoc with all manner of ridiculous Ramboesque Counter-Strike nonsense.

I don't like Air Cavalry, as you may have guessed. Since I started the game, I've been continually hounded by these irritating flyboys; ninja-chainguned from 300m away, rocket-spammed, chased, taunted, humiliated, and on the few occassions when I have managed to severly damage the aircraft, had them just eject and shotgun me to death before they hit the ground, and on the whole I've been thrown around like a rag-doll by these annoying punks, to the point where I almost blank them out and treat being killed by aircraft as an act of god, a random chance that you just ignore and get on with. Almost.

I get annoyed by being killed by anything else of course, but there's just something insanely irritating about the sheer lazy effciency of the average Air-to-Infantry mugging that really winds me up. I don't mind getting one-hitted by tank shells, ripped apart in close quarter combat by shotgun power armours, and even the big robots are just about bearable. Being insta-gibbed by the high-alitude bomber and inter-outpost atillery are just funny, and being killed by a fellow gentleman-sniper is almost an honour. Air Cavalry does rather seem to provide a player with an 'Extra Life' though - any time anything goes a bit wrong, they just hit the afterburner and disappear over the nearest hill, leaving you scanning the skies in paranoia for their enevitable, fully-repaired, return and revenge. Either that, or they just fly over your head and eject, pulling out a very big gun as they fall on you.

Mostly though, I'm jealous. The ability to use Air Cavalry planes merely requires that I free up 5 out of my 24 certification points, and then I can float around OMFGWTFPWNing infantry too, but much as I hate to admit it, flying in Planetside does require a fair degree of skill, which I've never managed to quite 'get'. I sometimes start an alt to try planes again, but something fundamental eludes me and I just end up embarassing myself, and providing the enemy someone they can take their Anti-Air sentiment out on instead.

So I continue be a grunt, and a grumbler, but it's always nice to know that The Powers That Be aren't happy about it either...