Why do stationary anti-aircraft guns need a buff?
A year or so ago engineer built anti-aircraft guns were very dominant in Enlisted, however, now they are in a pretty sad state barely able to do their designed job of killing aircraft. This is because of a series of nerfs that has effected their performance, while these nerfs were necessary for the guns at the time this was when every campaign and country used the 2 cm Flakvierling 38, but, now that all nations have their own much less effective stationary anti aircraft guns these nerfs are a little redundant.
How should stationary anti-aircraft guns get buffed?
First off the nerf that prevents the anti-aircraft guns from aiming at zero degrees needs to be reverted, it is not necessary anymore. This nerf was implemented to stop the domination of anti-aircraft guns against infantry but that was before the 2 cm Flakvierling 38 was removed and the heavy machine guns were added. The new anti-aircraft guns would be much less effective against infantry than heavy machine guns, they have a slower fire rate, smaller magazines and they both instantly kill infantry from any range. All this nerf serves to do anymore is make it so that anti-aircraft guns are ineffective against low flying aircraft and that’s it.
Secondly anti-aircraft guns should have infinite reserve reloads. The current anti-aircraft guns only have enough ammo in reserve to take out one to two aircraft with really well placed shots, this is far too low. It would be both fair and balanced for the anti-aircraft guns to have infinite ammo in-order to effectively suppress, deter, and kill enemy aircraft without having to worry about running out of reserve ammo, if heavy machine guns can have both infinite magazines and infinite ammo then why shouldn’t the anti-aircraft guns.
SPAAs. that also need buffs.
The Flakpanzer I, GAZ-MM (72-k), Ta-Se, and the light tank Panzer II all need buffs to their gun barrel over heat time, it takes far too little time for the gun barrels to over heat when firing and far too much time for them to cool down when not firing. This severely limits these vehicles capabilities to effectively kill not only infantry but especially aircraft, this makes these vehicles useless and a waste of a vehicle slot. This change would also be a very welcome change for the stationary engineer built anti-air guns, but it not as necessary for them as it would be for the aforementioned SPAAs.
Closing thoughts.
In the current version of the game aircraft are really strong against infantry and the main way infantry can defend themselves against air attacks is with stationary anti-aircraft guns, these weapons should be effective at their purpose of destroying aircraft and at this moment they are not. The above listed buffs will help these weapons tremendously in their purpose. Having good air defense will also help curb the strong fire power that aircraft currently have in Enlisted.
This has been going on for God knows how long at this point but I do not think they’ll even bother fixing it at this point because they can’t afford to hurt the plane meta going on right now
I definitely agree with your first point, however not entirely on your second point.
Infinite ammo should NOT be a thing. Increased amounts compared to what it currently has? Absolutely.
As far as other details regarding the AA’s I recommend looking at the suggestions I’ve posted in the past:
Regarding the SPAAs that you were asking for buffs on:
The Flakpanzer is very effective as it is currently. Its armored against infantry attacks, has decent mag capacity, and decent stopping power.
The GAZ-MM while having more mobility that the Flakpanzer is far less effective due to its vulnerability to infantry, small mag size, and absolute necessity for extreme precision. If it were buffed, I’d suggest a faster reload speed.
The Ta-Se is really just a joke at this point. While the gun is decently powerful, and has a 20 round magazine, its gunners are completely exposed to infantry. I really don’t know how this thing could be buffed to actually be worthwhile.
I think the issue is the relative power between being anti-infantry and anti air and that most debuffs to fight against the anti-infantry roll that AA emplacements had were implemented before debuffing anti air as a whole, making compounding interest of ineffectiveness. On AA needing to be buffed, I sort of agree. I disagree on the proposal to how though. The ability to aim at 0 degrees makes AA a better machine gun as it also has armor/wall penetration, combined with infinite ammo(though the reloads allow a very vulnerable interval) you’ve got a better HMG.
I think AA ought to have a few variants. First would be a series of HMGs or LMGs, like the quadruple maxim or the rear of those american half tracks. These could shift up though not up that much and have practically infinite ammo but of course would not be greatly effective against (advanced) aircraft or armor. Then medium AA like the polstens and such we have now. These could aim anywhere but rely on player skill as they do now since they can fill pretty much any roll just not very well. Then I’d also have those big quad 2cm AA but those would only be able to aim upwards, though big AA I could take or leave since air players should still have a game and a good AA player can eliminate that. However having exclusively the Polstens kinda sucks as, especially in the pacific, I tend to use the anti tank rifles more and better as AA than Polstens.
On SPAA I’ve only really used the ones in the pacific and I agree the Ta-Se should be buffed or upgraded somehow, barrel cooling and maybe a slight reload time decrease could work, and seating the soldiers a bit lower.
No it doesn’t. AA still primarily fires an HE shell, which has very little armor/ wall penetration. In comparison, the HMG will easily pass through walls and even go through thin and medium tank armor.
I disagree with your first point about how if the AA guns could fire at zero degrees they would be better than the HMGs. I had already sort-of addressed this in my post but I think that the slow rate of fire, lack of armor penetration and the requirement of a reload every 7-20 shots means they will be much less effective than HMGs and probably LMGs at killing infantry. The infinite ammo requirement will just bring AA guns in parody with other engineer built automatic weapons and will mostly serve to give the player more freedom and remove the annoyance of running out of ammo when you are about to kill a aircraft.
While I somewhat like your second Idea, I think having more weapons in game is always nice, there are a few issues with it, like what weapons would you give to each country? why would anyone build HMGs or LMGs when they could just build quad versions of the same gun but with greater effectiveness? how would this effect balance? but the biggest downside of your proposed change is that it would be very hard to implement and would need to be a semi-major update, while my suggestions could be done in a “Making Enlisted a Better Place” style update.
could you please elaborate on why we shouldn’t have infinite ammo? what I am saying is that the guns should still have to reload but the reserve ammo would be infinite. I do not see this as “overpowered” in the slightest, I think this would be an overall benefit making it so you don’t have to resupply your gun after every four mags. this would make it so players can more effectively suppress, deter, and kill aircraft because they wont have to worry about how many magazines they have left, not to mention this would just be bringing the AA gun into parody with the other automatic stationary weapons.
I haven’t used dedicated AA in awhile, I thought they were using AP but since they use HE then the angle and piercing isn’t a problem. Then yeah I agree with the infinite reserve ammo, or at least restoring from ammo crates.
For my proposed AA it would be by class. I originally thought any engineer could put up the AAMG but it should probably just belong to Machine gunner battalions, while medium is made by engineers and heavy would either be engineer 2 or require a great deal of building materials requiring 2 or 3 engineers worth of building material. You’re also right in that it would require a semi major update and probably a lot more testing that the devs would rather increment towards than throw in all at once.
So in the end I agree with your suggested changes and included a tangent.
Giving the Americans an additional SPAA is completely unnecessary, as their current SPAA is by far the most effective one in the game. After the merge, it will likely be in many people’s lineups, even at higher tiers, due to how effectively it takes down infantry, let alone aircraft.
I dont care if they dont revert the angle nerf as long as I get to kill airplanes again, now is not even worth to use eng squad which I used to rely on back in the day, now I just swaped them
Eh…
If, say, Flak guns had some form of mobility - like the AT guns have, enter march formation and push them around, then I could see them making to the tank resupply point and getting their ammo replenished there. But with how slow they are, it kind of kills the pace of the game, doesn’t it?
Still, I am not in favor of giving them infinite ammo. But I am for partially addressing this issue - by adding more ammo than they have now. Say, 1.5-2 times, that they have now.