Mobile AA Issues & Rework Potential

Mobile AA needs a buff & rework!

It's well known that the Mobile AA is the worst of the major vehicles in Battlefield 6. Various statements have been made by devs, and with the addition of the 2 new missiles for it, the Mobile AA is slightly more effective, but still needs a significant rework & upgrade.

The problem?

It's not very good at doing it's job of killing air vehicles. It's not very good at anything.

The nerfs DICE have done to cater to air mains, and additionally to avoid the Mobile AA from being useful in ground combat have left it in a position where most of the time it's not worth using because a good player will be more effective doing anything that isn't being in the Mobile AA.

This has created a big imbalance in the game, leaving helicopters and jets to have free roam of the map unless they decide to kill each other. This imbalance would still exist even if the Mobile AA was very good, because there are always multiple air vehicles on a map with them, and only one Mobile AA (except maybe the final stages of Escalation, I don't play that mode very often so I could be wrong).

This has created a situation where the best anti-air vehicle in the game is the Little Bird with it's extremely powerful miniguns, which function how the anti-air should! The Little Bird is also the best anti-infantry vehicle in the game. It makes the attack helicopter, which is meant to be a powerhouse with a two man team, access to anti-infantry cannon, anti-tank missiles, anti-air missiles and rockets, a poor second place! The best anti-air vehicle was an IFV or Tank using anti-tank guided missiles, which were nerfed significantly due to helo main complaints.

The poor old Mobile AA is often completely ignored. Because why bother? You can't kill anything. You are forced into an extremely passive, boring play style of camping near or in spawn flinging missiles at air vehicles if they come on your half of the map, that they would flare then dive below radar and hide for 10 seconds to go back to their side of the map.

Mobile AA has no utility. It cannot assist in defending flags from a significant push, and it can't attack to cap any objectives unless they are undefended or the enemy is entirely lacking engineers or recons, which is rare in the vehicle heavy, engineer heavy BF6 meta of unlocked class weaponry. This is because the Mobile AA is extremely weak against anything in the game.

This is a list of the significant issues:

• It lacks gun depression. Making it especially hard to shoot downward if you happen to be on an upward slope. Or if you are on one of the many raised hill like surfaces vs an enemy running below you.
• The radar dishes on top of the vehicles get in the way of vision. This is extremely bad on the NATO variant.
• The two shells don't converge on your aim cross-hair. This means at closer ranges, below ~100m, you can't hit someone by aiming at them correctly because your shells will be either side of them. You have to adjust the aim to hit them with a single cannon by not aiming at them directly. Or to hope the dispersion gets you hits. This is stupid.
• The combination of the atrocious shotgun like dispersion and being a twin gun weapon makes aiming extremely hard. There is a complete lack of precision. Even at 150 meters away your shells spray all over the place. This is the opposite of how these weapons should work. You should be rewarded for your precision, not punished into a spray & pray shotgun blast style.
• All ammo types take ~10 hits to kill an infantry soldier. You are all but defenceless against them. They can stand there taking incoming AA rounds to get RPG shots off (and from longer distance, AT4's or Javelins) and once you get hit a couple times you cannot stick around, you have to leave. You in an armoured vehicle with 35mm high speed anti-vehicle ammo gets out DPS'd by a guy firing a WW2 level piece of technology at you from cover.
• High Velocity ammo causes a huge seizure inducing set of flashes to wash out the screen making it hard to aim.
• High Velocity ammo overheats far too quickly, as a result of the Engineer overheat cooldown passive being nerfed. It makes having the anti-air shell on the main weapon of the anti-air vehicle NOT the most useful choice. The best shell is now the multi-purpose burst ammo because you can use enhanced loading and due to the anti-armor shell nerf.
• Anti-Armour shells are now utterly useless. They fire slowly, they do peashooter damage against infantry (which was their best feature before the nerf) and don't do enough damage against ground vehicles to make them useful.
• Multi-Purpose ammo had a weird "buffer" upon reloading that delayed shooting. I don't know if it's still in the game, but it only gets fixed when you take Enhanced Loading.
• In general the range of the ammo is too low. You get out-ranged by air vehicles. This could be a consequence of the silly dispersion, so it might be okay if you give it accuracy back.
• Upgrades: Optimised Handling either doesn't work still or is pointless. Targeting Jammer is bad. Systems Upgrade only helps if you take High Velocity Ammo AND you don't want Enhanced Loading for the new secondary missiles. In the current "meta" the only good pick is Enhanced Loading so you can get faster Laser Missile reloading.
• Driver Equipment: There's no choice after the Emergency Repair nerf. You need thermal blocking for lock-on air missiles, and the smoke wall it gives for helping to retreat from ground enemies.
• The new High-Velocity missile needs more velocity and a proximity fuse. I appreciate the new weapon but right now it's in a bad place. It isn't fast enough for it's lack of ability to guide. It's damage is low. It still needs direct hits.
• Laser-Guided needs a proximity fuse. I think it should do more damage against ground vehicles as well. But I like this weapon. Good work DICE.
• Both of those new missiles have issues with the hit-boxes on the smaller vehicles.
• It has no gunner seat.
• It only has 1 Equipment slot.
• Certain maps like Contaminated don't have a Mobile AA even though there's multiple air vehicles per side. If there are 2 air vehicles, there should be a Mobile AA no matter what.

Now how to rework the Mobile AA?

The first thing is that DICE should accept that it should be the best anti-air weapon in the game, and that it should be able to do it's job. I also believe that it should be able to contribute to attacking and not simply staying in spawn. It should also block out the constant calls for nerfs from the air mains. Tell them that because they can pick and choose where to attack because of their speed, huge map borders for air vehicles, below radar and the mountains all the maps have that give them terrain masking, long range weapons, magic repairs, magic flares and below radar that they need to play more carefully.

Base Vehicle:

• Remove the radar dish from the vehicles, or keep it in the locked and stowed position at all times.
• Change the vehicles from the twin barrels to having a single barrel that sticks out the front. This will solve the aim-point convergence issue.
• With this new single barrel weapon, place it at the top of the front of the turret. Give it the ability to point all the way upward and let it point as far down as possible until it bumps the bottom of the hull.
• Add a seat for a gunner.
• Since we're doing all of this to the base model, adjust the secondary missiles so they are visibly different.
• If a map has 2 air vehicles, there needs to be a Mobile AA.
• If a map has 4 or more air vehicles, there should be 2 Mobile AAs.

Main Gun:

• Consolidate all the ammo types in a single type. The Mobile AA doesn't need three types of shells. It needs one useful shell.
• 20 rounds, non-overheating. Like the multi-purpose ammo is currently.
• ROF like the high velocity shells.
• Remove the crazy shotgun spray and make it an accurate stream of shells.
• 4 or 5 hit infantry kill.
• Against other armour, it should be able to kill a tank or IFV with one reload if you hit ~70% of the shots into the back of a tank or the rear/side of an IFV/MAA. The Mobile AA doesn't need to one on one tanks from front on, but it shouldn't be defenceless either.
• Fix the odd buffering that (if it inherits it's shooting from multi-purpose) exists if you don't have enhanced loading.

Missiles:

• Lock-On: Increase the range & speed. This weapon is bad due to magic flares and below radar. So if you pick this, it should lean into the ability to protect larger airspace area than the new missiles.
• High-Velocity: Increase the speed. Add proximity fuse. Remove guidance. This missile is inferior to the other new missile and should get a buff to make it more useful. The goal of this missile should be that you want to pick it for better ability to damage Jets and Little Birds that have very high speed & manoeuvrability but lower hit points. 2 hits should put a Jet or Little Bird into disabled state, and blown it up if you hit 3.
• Laser-Guided: Add proximity fuse.

Equipment:

• Leave the Thermal-Blocking as the only option in Equipment Slot 1. This vehicle needs it.
• Add Equipment Slot 2, and give that 2nd slot a choice between Emergency Repair, Threat Detector or Counter-Fire Radar.

Upgrades:

• Remove Optimised Handling. It's worthless and might not even work.
• Targeting Jammer needs a huge buff, otherwise remove it.
• Enhanced Loading and Systems Upgrade can remain as normal to provide a choice between faster reloads on the ammo or faster reload on the thermal smoke.