Things I want, in no particular order, that would be nice to have instead of just ridiculous damage bonuses or something. Basically ITP: Ideas.
- Aircraft damage affects flying. The hallmark of AA is that you get most of your points from shooting mechs - the AA loadouts only do so much damage and generally, unless you come across a sloppy pilot, you're forced to plink away at aircraft until they notice their armor is yellow and they just spaz out with the mouse making them impossible to hit and fly away. I'm not saying kills are impossible, but dying to AA tanks is pretty hard for an experienced pilot. If aircraft section damage dramatically affected the flight performance of an aircraft, it would be much harder for them to do as they are currently capable of doing and simply shake off the AA fire to bomb a mech and then escape at max burner pulling 20G S-turns with their wings held on by just wiring.
- AA tanks equipped with weapon convergence logic so your rounds aren't trying to converge at infinity and sends 99% of your shots around an aircraft. Hitting a Sulla at long range from the side aspect is pretty much impossible. Shivas are nice targets though, as soon as they turn it's almost impossible to miss them.
- AA tanks came equipped with a mix of weapons to really make them effective, such as a single LB-10X, specifically to cause extreme burst damage to aircraft at closer ranges, to serve as an effective ward against aircraft flying DEAD (destruction of enemy air defense) sorties, or to provide means of actually damaging aircraft who are using terrain masking.
- Aircraft-specific weapons instead of mech-mounted weapons. Non-canon, perhaps, but this is sort of why you only see the same handful of aircraft used over and over, because mech-mounted weapons just aren't made for ASF use. Also in this, changes to current aircraft-specific weapons to let aircraft fill different roles besides griefing individual mechs.
- Aircraft physics fixed enough to allow effective dogfighting besides Shiva E aerial instagib (which, face it, isn't dogfighting). If pilots were encouraged to actually fight other pilots beyond Shiva trolling, it would solve a lot of problems.
- Changes to sensor rules. Seriously, an 80T flying battleship shouldn't really be able to just disappear from radar even when it's in plain sight. Mechs can do that because of ground clutter and other things that make them harder to pick up - an aircraft in empty air would be almost impossible to hide from a mech's sensors.
Anyway, yeah. I have to echo the sentiment that AA duty vs. aircraft itself isn't very rewarding. In terms of raw kills, I've gotten far, far more kills with the THORYUKEN maneuver than with AA tanks.
