Pay2Anni-lock

Think we need to bracke off render distance issues as something seperate.

current bugs with said engine, are not a good idea to nerf weapons.

either way, fine so randoms can self organise to use the tactic. What still makes it an illegit tactic? Or something the game needs to get rid of?

Its just unfair that there are points of the map you have to go around? Welcome to space war.

So what gameplay mechanic would you suggest, presumably involving some kind of skill, that would allow infantry to counter aircraft? Since this is a game, we're ignoring the fact that in real life, a single Stinger can lock onto and take out a low flying aircraft, and you're complaining about a weapon that needs four or five missile hits to take out a plane. Oh I get it, you're supposed to be able to just fly around in an armored aircraft, out of range of small arms fire, or invulnerable to it, and farm the infantry. Because for you, that's a cool game mechanic. Have fun playing by yourself then, or in nothing but air-to-air combat. Ever play infantry and try to hit a moving aircraft with a dumbfire missile? Pretty much impossible, unless the aircraft is parked. Fire and forget are pretty much the ONLY alternative. Unless you want rifles so overpowered that planes can be shot down by small arms fire.

Fine then, how about this ? Add artillery to the game to counter annihilator squads !

You know there's an annihilator party up on that hill next to crossroads ? No problem ! We'll spawn some artillery and barrage that hill till the cockroaches leave.

Good, everyone being an ace from the start would REALLY remove skill in this game. As for the Annihilator, it is useless if there is only one person. Let me emphasize this point: Size. Always. Matters.

Yes hope they nerf it soon

They are: orbital strikes.

lone wolf spamming rocketpods = 1337skillz
Organized squad defending infantry from aircraft = babby noob losers

Face it, the pilots in this game just want to be able to destroy anything on the ground without any risk to them.
Piloting is less skilled them infantry, we have 1 weapon to defend ourselves from you with (no we can't attack you unless you let us by getting close) and you want it removed.

Learn to fly or use teamwork effectively, is that easy.

Oh God haha people are defending a weapon that can FAF a target from HEX A HEX GOD DAMN YOU away and call it 'team work and organization?"

Lock-on as it is. Is the ultimate form of NOT organization. It is a fault in the cross counter wheel that renders actual team work and coordinated absolutely moot.

See a tank? FAF
See an ESF? FAF
See ANY vehicle in this game because even tiny specks on the horizon are lockable

Fire and forget.

Air is harassing us! We must get up a AA blanket to protect ourselves and our vehicle assests on the ground! Ok lets see can someone man the AA turrets? Can someone pull a AA MAX? Can we get a counter ESF in the air? Was someone stupid enough to buy the skyguard? (At the very least we can annoying him away)

Oh wait! We have lock-on FAF weapons on over HALF the infantry milling around in the area. Everyone just point up and look at the problem until it detonates.

That applies to EVERY vehicle. Nothing can get close to a cluster of HA in ratio numbers. It rewards people who cannot be bothered to get out counters. Pffffsh that is hard. I'm much rather CoD with my LMG and if any vehicles do show up we can all just put unavoidable fire on it until it has to leave the HEX. Or more then likely just explodes because nothing can leave the range of the lock before getting pinged to death. There is no threat to infantry anymore which is a vital component to combined arms. Hell it is the founding principle.

You have the basic infantry. Large in number and required to the actual process of taking hexes and bases. They are masters of close range and extremely versitle. In larger bases they can also utilize the dozens of very powerful anti-vehicle and anti-air turrets so they don't even have to pull that many counters. Out in the open they must bring their counters in the form of their own vehicles.

What do you do when the enemy outnumbers you? Logic says if you are going to attack or defend from a force of infantry that outnumber you then you will lose. So how do you tip the scales? You pull vehicles. You provide a platform which is either designed for killing large numbers of infantry. As those get pulled counter vehicles begin to emerge to hunt down and kill those specialized in killing infantry. This entire counter lattice between infantry/armor/air is what makes PS2 so different from other online shooters. It is what makes it fun on a grand scale.

HA lock-on spam completely breaks any balance between the three and allows players to remain safe from threats that should be THREATENING! It is what forces change. Right now we have lockers able to defeat every single vehicle in this game in ratio numbers without even having to aim. Well coordinated infantry. As in 2-3 squads can completely and utterly decimate armor and air forces dozens of times their size and strength. Team work should reward players with a higher then average efficency ratio but not allow them to completely stomp everything that rolls or glides. Vehicles are no shows in truly big battles now as there is an effective anti-every kill zone the size of the HEX the real fights are taking place in. Don't give me "oh pop flares or use teamwork!" That is anecdotal and situational. Doesn't even begin to counter the sheer weight of lock-on when you converge 50+ HA in a single area. That is why so many fliers and armor have chosen to not even come to the fights that matter and are picking on smaller under manned bases. Where they are wasting potential just to have a high powered kill farming tool. Who can blame them?

Attempting to bring vehicles to the meaningful fights means exploding the moment the enemy has LoS.

Just make the annihilator (and all lockon weapons including A2AMs) semi-active instead of Fire and Forget. At least then the infantry would have to PRETEND to aim at something instead of waiting for a box to turn green and push a button).

Would give Snipers some nice targets and promote combined forces (Snipers actually supporting vehicle pushes)

Annihilators are not teamwork. Annihilators only encourage or outright force herding, while discouraging teamwork. Annihilators are zerg empowering, they did nothing for organized outfits except make them all behave and act the same.

Teamwork implies division of labor, different actions to achieve a unified goal. It does not imply everyone kit with the exact same setup and start spamming a single autohit weapon type with no goal in mind other then herp a derp point and click the left mouse button.

10 HA aims you with Anni, you hit the flares and not a single rocket is going to hit you. That's it. As a pilot, I have no problem with Annis but what they could do, is to reduce cooldown of flares. I believe that would make many pilot happy and also reduce this "Anni is OP" spamming.

Ratio numbers? I would sure like to see 5 HA defend against 5 MBT for more then 10 seconds.

well i must be deficient in my vocabulary: infantry screening?

And I'm going to tell you tough $#!%. The annihilator is precisely where it needs to be until I can engage tanks with other, infantry held means at distances I regularly see them shelling a tower/outpost from. They're not sitting right up against the reinforcement point, and the door sure as hell ain't moving, so they sit a go to distance back and spam away. The battle really shouldn't be lost before foot mobiles even step foot within the facility perimeter.

So again, tough $#!%. If I can't engage a tank at range reliably with my dumb-fire rocket because it moves too damn slow, then I need it to home in on the tank. If tank drivers want "balance" they need to pick their poison. Infantry, specifically the class designed to engage vehicles (HA,) absolutely need an effective counter to aircraft and tanks. The dumb-fire rocket is too highly situational simply because of it's low velocities. Flanking around often isn't an option unless the tank is over extending or flanking a location itself, otherwise enemy forces typically surround it, which are often more tanks in fact.

The infantry game is already rare (on Mattherson) without terrain screwing over the tank horde first. Outposts are seldom defended precisely because tank cannon fire just decimates everyone bothering to defend said outposts, making it a pointless effort. At least the annihilator gives HA a chance to do their job in regards to AV before the enemy is right on top of them.

That is a terrible ratio and the infantry would be completely destroyed.

It does show a reoccuring theme among the lock-on supporters though. You keep thinking a tank killing you is some how wrong. Or you keep referencing the insignificant lower damage on the lock-ons. If lock-ons only allowed a single painter and shooter at a time. That would actually matter. What is really happening is every HA in the base or area looking at the vehicle and swarms it with unavoidable death. Slightly less damage per rocket doesn't mean ANYTHING when you are throwing a dozen rockets at the target when at ranges you wouldn't even bother wasting a shot trying to manually hit it.


When I say fair ratio I mean how many infantry are likely to be in the area for every vehicle. That is pegged at something around 10-25 depending on how attractive the location is. When more then fully half the players in this game play HA that means at best the Tank is going to be fighting 5:1 odds. In any major battle it is closer to 50:1

So to use your example. 5 tanks going up against 25 HA tanks should win that because that is a large armor squad. Except they are obliterated in 3 volleys. 5 tanks dead inside of 25 seconds from ranges you have no right to be effective at. The only way for armor or air to combat and win in these fights is to outnumber the enemy infantry so completely there is no point in bringing so many vehicles to one base. The numbers will always favor the Infantry. With that in mind that cannot have a weapon that trumps vehicles each and every time with the number that are just passively in the area. Never mind when they are pulling HA into one spot with the purpose of taking out vehicles. Then they can destroy vehicles a dozen times their ratio size without any counter.

If you are going to bring in "real life," let us not forget that irl ground attack aircraft can carry out precision strikes from several kilometers away.

Main problem I have with Annahilator is that it is virtually impossible to avoid and makes it much more difficult for new players to get used to using vehicles.

= Infantry zerg running in first !

I'm pretty sure that stats don't help your story here, as they don't help anyone's who keeps complaining about the "lack of infantry combat".

Most kills (shockingly !) are done by infantry to infantry and most people play infantry far more than they play vehicles.

I see infantry combat all over the place.

And to your example, if you're getting shot at by a line of tanks, are you the only dude with a launcher there ? Perhaps the fight is already lost then.

Otherwise, do you really think a tank could dodge 10 of you (assuming line of tanks = ~10 tanks with no gunners) shooting dumbfires ? Dunno about magriders and prowlers but a Vanguard won't be dodging 10 dumbfires any time soon.

All you have to do is the exact thing the tanks are doing: shoot in their general direction and rely on the amount of shots to do the trick.

What you want is a surgical strike wonder tool that lets you take care of that pesky tank problem. You can't have that.

Normall when moving into difficult terrain that lends itself to AT teams, or coming up against AT teams, armour withdraws and provides overwatch whilst infantry move in and clear AT positions.

In the case of Air, air also withdraws and waits till AA is cleared.

Yes, yes. Its a game.

However, it happens to be a game about massive combined arms warfare in which everything is supposed to has a counter.

first off, please dont make assumptions about my gameplay. I hardly ever fly ESF's, and I play more time as an engi than all of my vehicles combined. my second most played class is LA, which is again more than vehicle time.

as much of a fan as I am in realism, this is a game, and if we REALLY wanted realism, the infantry folks would simply be SOL. IRL, the country with air superiority, rules the ground as well, so stingers are an impossibly irreverent aspect in this discussion.

Inf counters to air. FIrst off, there is a NUMBER of options already available to them. anything from burster maxes, to stationary AA to skygaurds or attaching AA turrets to any other vehicle. there is NO excuse for infantry having a hard time coming up with AA in this game.

My solutions as a replacement are simple. it consists of 2 launchers. one launcher would be like a dart, which fires a projectile VERY fast, in a straight line, and does significant damage to aircraft. this weapon would be VERY dangerous to hovering aircraft, and aircraft making straight on attacks, and would also be able to easily hurt low flying libs. This launcher should not do any damage to tanks.

The second launcher would be a player controlled TV guided missile. Give it similar speed to the lock-ons, and exceptional maneuverability. The kicker to this missile would be that you have a remote detonation for it, avoiding the need for direct contact (which could still be achieved for max damage). when the player feels that he is close enough to the offending aircraft, he could detonate the warhead and give it the explosive power sufficient to hurt aircraft depending on their range from the Detonation. This Launcher would be good for hitting flying targets, or liberators flying high up at the ceiling. It should also do considerable damage to infantry just to make it a fun anti-sniper weapon. this weapon should also do no damage to ground vehicles.

Ground vehicles are already prone to die very quickly from a huge variety of AV weapons. There is NO need to have any weapon viable against air targets and ground. with my suggestions, HA's would have PLENTY of AA options on top of the mountain of options they have already, and each would still require skill to achieve. none for them are universal and it would eliminate the area-denial that the current anni deploys. It would add depth to the game, and im sure MANY people would enjoy using them.

OR we could have a baby-proofed lock-on that is impossible to balance (just ask the ******* that made BF3)

Anni squads.. ultimate zerg... squads.. teamwork.

Zerg.


Teamwork = Zerg?