Why did they ruin the Air Raider?

[Doctor Gitgud]

Locking half of his inventory (the good half) is a huge penalty. Air raider is my main, but I checked inventory for the other classes and it looks like they aren't getting screwed in this way. The new airstrikes are a joke. They're almost impossible to aim distance-wise unless you have high ground, but most of the missions have you on flat terrain. They have very low damage too. I'm basically forced to use the sniper drones since they're the only good thing in his new kits, which is not my preferred playstyle. Even worse, all of his vehicles other than a spider walker are locked.

Then after you gain access to his full kit, you play a few missions and then everything is locked again. I'm in the 40s (playing on hard) and still can't use most of my weapons. I really don't get why Air Raider was singled out to be penalized for a huge portion of the game.

[Baklavah]

Originally posted by JCD3nton:

Locking half of his inventory (the good half) is a huge penalty. Air raider is my main, but I checked inventory for the other classes and it looks like they aren't getting screwed in this way. The new airstrikes are a joke. They're almost impossible to aim distance-wise unless you have high ground, but most of the missions have you on flat terrain. They have very low damage too. I'm basically forced to use the sniper drones since they're the only good thing in his new kits, which is not my preferred playstyle. Even worse, all of his vehicles other than a spider walker are locked.

Then after you gain access to his full kit, you play a few missions and then everything is locked again. I'm in the 40s (playing on hard) and still can't use most of my weapons. I really don't get why Air Raider was singled out to be penalized for a huge portion of the game.

Yeah I was wondering about this nonsense... I'm still early on but the thing says "Up to Lv5 weapons", and half of everything is locked. wtf is this garbage?

[Titan]

The Drones are just actually straight up better versions of the usual air strikes anyway

[Dooker]

It's for story reasons. When you are in the present time, there are no ships or cruisers to call down your huge air drops and bombs, so you can only use them when you are in the past/future parts of the game.

[darkblade]

For me it was WD, no good weapons at the start, i guess the rapier and plasma cannon are ok but the first thing they throw ar us are frogs with shotguns, at least they dont have the god aim from the red frogs in edf 5 thats at least sonething

[Soul]

Man the hell you mean? The drones are awesome,portable air strikes and actual mean of defense alone that don't need to be big boom boom that can self damage and fling you like crazy.AND they don't have a cooldown beside coming back after use,which is way faster than any reload of credit reload based.
And self defense drones are just a god send.

[darkblade]

Originally posted by JCD3nton:

Locking half of his inventory (the good half) is a huge penalty. Air raider is my main, but I checked inventory for the other classes and it looks like they aren't getting screwed in this way. The new airstrikes are a joke. They're almost impossible to aim distance-wise unless you have high ground, but most of the missions have you on flat terrain. They have very low damage too. I'm basically forced to use the sniper drones since they're the only good thing in his new kits, which is not my preferred playstyle. Even worse, all of his vehicles other than a spider walker are locked.

Then after you gain access to his full kit, you play a few missions and then everything is locked again. I'm in the 40s (playing on hard) and still can't use most of my weapons. I really don't get why Air Raider was singled out to be penalized for a huge portion of the game.

I guess you did not do mission 14 then, jusr wait and play the story you get your bombers back

[Big Guy]

Air raider main here, and it's really not so bad, it's all part of story telling, previous EDF titles had the same apply to certain missions where you couldn't use certain assets since the military had no way to get to you, but atleast now it locks them up

[>-FISH-D]

Originally posted by Titan:

The Drones are just actually straight up better versions of the usual air strikes anyway

This ^. Also, I feel like the devs were trying to cut down on air raiders constantly nuking the rest of the classes which are up front fighting.

[Evil Tim]

Originally posted by >-FISH-D:

Originally posted by Titan:

The Drones are just actually straight up better versions of the usual air strikes anyway

This ^. Also, I feel like the devs were trying to cut down on air raiders constantly nuking the rest of the classes which are up front fighting.

Yeah, I believe reducing the constant displays of how strong Phobos is was one of the goals in this one.

[Doctor Gitgud]

Originally posted by Soul:

Man the hell you mean? The drones are awesome,portable air strikes and actual mean of defense alone that don't need to be big boom boom that can self damage and fling you like crazy.AND they don't have a cooldown beside coming back after use,which is way faster than any reload of credit reload based.
And self defense drones are just a god send.

Yeah they reload fast. But that doesn't matter if they don't do enough damage to even be worth the time to aim. You throw one right into a mass of enemies and it does like 500 damage total. They're pretty worthless from an AOE standpoint and you're just holding your team back playing "pretend" air raider if you use them.

Spritefall, Liconic, Tempest: these are the weapons real men use.

[Doctor Gitgud]

Originally posted by darkblade:

Originally posted by JCD3nton:

Locking half of his inventory (the good half) is a huge penalty. Air raider is my main, but I checked inventory for the other classes and it looks like they aren't getting screwed in this way. The new airstrikes are a joke. They're almost impossible to aim distance-wise unless you have high ground, but most of the missions have you on flat terrain. They have very low damage too. I'm basically forced to use the sniper drones since they're the only good thing in his new kits, which is not my preferred playstyle. Even worse, all of his vehicles other than a spider walker are locked.

Then after you gain access to his full kit, you play a few missions and then everything is locked again. I'm in the 40s (playing on hard) and still can't use most of my weapons. I really don't get why Air Raider was singled out to be penalized for a huge portion of the game.

I guess you did not do mission 14 then, jusr wait and play the story you get your bombers back

I guess you didn't keep playing (or reading). They take the bombers away again soon after giving them back. When I made that post, I was in the mid 40s and still didn't have them. It's not until mission 47 or 48 that I finally got them back again.

[KirasiN]

While I hated not having tanks or actual air strikes, I disagree, drones are broken as hell.

I have insane single target now, and even an amazing sniper drone. AoE stuff isn't bad either.
The issue is, as usual, whoever makes these weapons doesn't test them, 90% of the weapons are unusable or just much worse than the good picks. I really doubt they do any testing, cause with a bit of data analysis during a beta test they could have seen all this,

What's worse is that most of these weapons are exactly the same as they were in EDF5, there were mods that rebalanced them, but official release is still outer ♥♥♥♥ balance wise.

[cris3f]

Originally posted by JCD3nton:

Then after you gain access to his full kit, you play a few missions and then everything is locked again. I'm in the 40s (playing on hard) and still can't use most of my weapons. I really don't get why Air Raider was singled out to be penalized for a huge portion of the game.

Yes, sadly most drones suck. You can thank the stupid story and Sandlot deciding that Ranger had to be the MAN so they stole everything they could from him, althoiugh it must be said that Ranger had almost no chance of doing 1/4 of the the missions without turrets. But they could have given the "exceptional" drones to Ranger instead. The bigger issue is when you reach hardest and even worse Inferno and most drones are not useable because you can't be shooting Ranger style with AR as you'll die all the time. They're very awkward and time consuming to use and you can't have either issue.
Stupid decisions from Sandlot, crapping the AR.

Originally posted by Titan:

The Drones are just actually straight up better versions of the usual air strikes anyway

This is hilarious. Better versions of the Air Strikes?

Originally posted by Soul:

Man the hell you mean? The drones are awesome,portable air strikes and actual mean of defense alone that don't need to be big boom boom that can self damage and fling you like crazy.AND they don't have a cooldown beside coming back after use,which is way faster than any reload of credit reload based.
And self defense drones are just a god send.

AR required brains and knowledge to use and was not a dumb shooting class like Ranger. That's one of the reasons it was awesome.
And all the people talking about self defense only show that they don't have much idea on how to play the class. If you play it well, self defense will be not necessary, and on the limit the vehicles are for that.

Originally posted by Big Guy:

Air raider main here, and it's really not so bad, it's all part of story telling, previous EDF titles had the same apply to certain missions where you couldn't use certain assets since the military had no way to get to you, but atleast now it locks them up

Wait until you get to hardest and Inferno...

[Muu]

Sounds like fans of drones never get to inferno in edf games.

[Commander Hitman2b]

Originally posted by Baklavah:

Originally posted by JCD3nton:

Locking half of his inventory (the good half) is a huge penalty. Air raider is my main, but I checked inventory for the other classes and it looks like they aren't getting screwed in this way. The new airstrikes are a joke. They're almost impossible to aim distance-wise unless you have high ground, but most of the missions have you on flat terrain. They have very low damage too. I'm basically forced to use the sniper drones since they're the only good thing in his new kits, which is not my preferred playstyle. Even worse, all of his vehicles other than a spider walker are locked.

Then after you gain access to his full kit, you play a few missions and then everything is locked again. I'm in the 40s (playing on hard) and still can't use most of my weapons. I really don't get why Air Raider was singled out to be penalized for a huge portion of the game.

Yeah I was wondering about this nonsense... I'm still early on but the thing says "Up to Lv5 weapons", and half of everything is locked. wtf is this garbage?

cuz in the future there is no air support