Yeah performance isn't really my concern i just love being able to see really far.
Also a single ESF shouldn't be able to have an effect on the battlefield, its moronic if you believe it should. As i said its all about combined arms, if people are stupid enough to forget AA then aircraft are effective.
Easiest way to score points is pick off sunders that are supporting a base attack, AA always seems to forget about them.
I personally am not concerned about balance so much as long as everybody is having fun, but of course those things are linked. A single ESF isn't supposed to be able to do a lot of damage and I think it works nicely ingame right now, the damage output against infantry was greatly reduced with the splash nerf. ESFs are midly good at what they are supposed to do, air superiority. When not used by moronic pilots anyway (I'm thinking about the number of ESF I killed by stopping my liberator during a chase).
My gripe is that it takes a single AA Max to suddenly make flying anything in a 500 meter radius become hell, and trying to kill AA units is basically out of the question. AA acting as hard air denial is fine, as long as it is in a small zone, but the problem with this is that when the whole front has AA everywhere because quickly deploying AA is extremely easy (if yo are using a MAX all it takes is a terminal, and many people use Skyguards even when there's no aircraft around), there's simply no way you are going to do anything as a pilot, except repairing. Air shouldn't be effective when there's AA, but not completely useless either.