Out of the 8 or so rounds I've played today, whichever teams air was killed by the other teams air first stayed alive almost the entire match. Every time. Both when it was my team's air that won, and the enemy teams air that won. Breakthrough usually goes to the attackers as they have aircraft access, though every once in a while you luck out with the enemy having bad pilots pull aircraft and you'll have a decent chance of comboing one down.
Air is the only counter to air. I don't care how much you buff missile damage, the fundamental design of air and maps is flawed.
Infinite ammo (overheat)
Infinite passive repairs (+repair passengers in the "transport" aircraft)
Infinite repair ability
Infinite flares on a short cooldown
For the Condor, infinite boost on a cooldown
Plus, every single map affords them massive amounts of space around the edges, and throughout the center, where they can have mostly/completely safe airspace to wait on cooldowns/passive repair.
It's very rare to see ground killing aircraft, because the level of coordination required required to bait their flares with your hack/stinger shot (because any smart pilot will immediately flare and get outta dodge), then hope they don't have a brain and aren't immediately heading towards easy cover, lock 3+ rockets simultaneously, from areas that are free of even a small twig of visual clutter between you and the aircraft (conveniently, very also big open spaces that make you easy to shoot!), lock and fire all rockets and hope that they travel fast enough to hit the aircraft before it finishes getting behind cover or even behind a very small hill.
Legit, good pilots rarely ever die to ground forces in matches I've been in, no matter which side the pilots are on (mine or the enemies) and just dominate matches.
I don't know how DICE can continue to see the feedback and look at data on aircraft performance, specifically the stealth helicopters and the "transport" gunships, and tell us that they don't think there's something fundamentally wrong with the balance.
They can nerf weapon damage and overheat to oblivion, it won't matter. That's a big part of the problem, yes, but the bigger part of the problem is that aircraft are simply absurdly difficult to kill regardless of coordination through their design and the layout of maps. Even, and often especially, Exposure.
