Connery's newest fail favorite "A2AM"

Now forgive my ignorance, but what % of your health do you lose to a lock-on A2A missile, and what is the lock-on range of said missile?

Skyguard is definitely better after the update, but it's only a marginal improvement... the effective range and accuracy are still really limited, and the bullet velocity increase made very little difference. The "air farm" I had last night was purely due to a spike in the amount of noob pilots to shoot at, combined with the clip size allowing you to finish off ESFs which don't respond to being shot at.

Snafus, I believe you are a solid ESF dog-fighter, based on your rep. That said, "game balance" does not revolve around 1v1 fights ever. If someone else kills me with sniper rifle while I'm trying to shank an enemy player, so be it.

Unless A2A missiles can 1-shot your full-health ESF, I can't see how they're game-breaking, OP or noobish. To me, they sound like a weapon which might be useful for leading into a fight as a wing of friendly ESFs engage a group of enemy aircraft in a group effort to push an enemy force, which will typically include ground support. Planetside is an MMO, and it's important we don't forget this.

You lose about 40% of your HP and your basic unupgraded lock on range is 400 meters. And what do you mean its effective range is limited? They were nailing myself and my lib crew outside of ground vehicle render range this morning. Don't think it needs to be any further then that for crying out loud. We had multiple Sky guards this morning that made air ops a much more difficult tasks until they were eliminated.

But for vehicles 1v1 does come into play when your talking balance. SOE has adjusted vehicles stats time and again because of those results. So they are not everything but 1v1 encounters for vehicles is dam important when it comes to over all balance.

No one said they were game breaking either, I said they were imbalanced. Obviously they are not one shotting anyone. But their current setup is simply to powerful for the ease of use required to operate the weapon system. I feel they should be in game but need a re purpose for LIB hunting. Their current fire and forget setup is simply to good when in comparison to the skill required to nose gun an enemy. I love the difficulty that comes with flying in this game and I hope it never changes. Allowing fire and forget weapons directly assaults that skill demand to be effective in a negative manor. It simply dumbs down combat making it a COD friendly environment.

Hell I was hoping they would increase the TTK for rotary cannons. Would make dogfights more cut throat and stop a lot of our little hover dances we get into.

Flares breh!

Then I want prowlers prior to nerf and and air craft splash damage back since we should just all deal.

Oh, you mean like lolpods?

Rocket pods have a 100% chance to hit? Or hell have anything to do with A2A engagements among ESF?

I have A2A but I only used them for about a week in December. I usually roll with AB pods, but yesterday I pulled them out for the first time since December because it seemed every ESF I came across was using them for some reason.... so I used them myself and shot them all down. Then I lawn darted my Reaver and spawned another one with rocket pods to pound their buddies.

If all these guys are going to start using A2A, I will pull them out every now and then to give them a taste of their own medicine. I could shoot most of them down with my gun..... but I want them to feel the lameness of the A2A.

Fun fact: BF3 heatseekers (except the Stinger) are statistically very-deadly against air. You can fire two of them at once, they are pretty hard to dodge by maneuvering and if both hits, Ka-boom. They are also considered not very useful because one ECM or flare release will make short work of them and leave you plenty of time to get the hell out before the missiles reload / you are able to be locked again. The most useful way I've used them is to fire one to force the pilot use his ECM or flare, then fire another one to damage him as soon as possible. The kill still needs to be done with the gun no matter if I'm sitting in a jet or a mobile AA. Everything I mentioned above presumes a 1v1 situation with both players starting out at 100% vehicle health.

Moral of the day: Use flares.

Or...

If you dislike lockons so much, here's a door to another MMOFPS that I'm fairly certain to contain no lockon weapon at all and with fairly realistic WW2-style dogfight. No hover dances because you can't freaking hover.

Oh I didn't know we were playing BF3, sure was certain it was PS2.

You mentioned that PS2 is trying to cater to CoD kiddies with all these fire-and-forgets. Catering to CoD kiddies is something that BF3 is so blatantly doing that the BF fanbase literally split in half because of it. Yet it has heatseekers that are only slightly more useful than the PS2 A2AMs when countered in the same way. Big deal.

Damn, BF3 heatseekers are so OP that I rarely even see anyone on Battlelog MENTIONING them save for before Air Superiority went live (where there was genuine concern that heatseeker-spamming in a dogfight furball would be a problem). I agree that catering to CoD kiddies is a bad thing, but using it as an excuse against lockons is just making me laugh.

Really..................

Again using BF3 balance debates is quite irrelevant to the current PS2 issue. And it is far more then SOE catering to lower skill level pilots by adding A2AM. They are actually to powerful in their current state. Their ability to have a missile perform amazing maneuvers as it chases an enemy ESF is quite ridiculous. Then to top it off it simply takes a aim and click mechanic to operate. They need to add some level of skill demand to level the balance bar back out. Or if they must mantain this click and forget system bring back the old missile trajectory paths instead of this new follow where ever you go one they have now.

It's always been fire and forget?

Actually, I've played WWI/II Sims LONG before you got into playing games. This also includes an old favorite, Chuck Yeager's Combat Sim, and also playing Star Wars X-wing, Tie Fighter, X-Wing Vs Tie-Fighter, Wing Commander Series and Star Lancer. While the last few mentioned have a heavy use of missiles as well, they also focused on also working on evasion of said weapons and those are also coming from Fighter to Fighter. Even the later X-wing based games focused on interception by shooting missiles.

Strictly speaking, yes, it's irrelevant.

What I am bringing up is that the standard CoD kiddie-catering playfield has heatseekers that are more powerful than the PS2 versions, yet everyone still at most use them as assist, if not simply dropping it for the BF3 version of lolpods altogether. The heatseekers are literal jokes in a dueling situation due to the presence of countermeasures, and I don't see how they are not the same joke I see them as in PS2 given that you use the same damn countermeasure (which almost work the same way) against an evern weaker version of the heatseeker.

Strictly from a PS2 balance standpoint, your hybrid rotary+lolpod setup is SUPPOSED to lose to dedicated A2A setup, and your only saving grace should be your superior skill, not playing Forumside to call for a nerf.

Otherwise, if you just want to satisfy your gunkill & yay I can dodge missiles ego, I wholeheartedly recommends Ace Combat. Missile tracking are absolute trash in that game that you can dodge missiles by simply turning. No excuse to get hit by any missile that's not a QAAM.

When I say Skyguard is limited range, I mean exactly that. Under 200m, Skyguard will tear into an ESF. At much over 300m, the cone of fire causes much of the shots to pass by a smaller target like an ESF, even if its hovering. Libs are easier to hit at longer ranges due to their hitbox, much lower speed and comparative lack of maneuverability.

In summary, Skyguard is good, decent even and I think the shift to vehicle AA from max AA was a good one overall, especially when you consider their increased render range, vulnerability to lock ons, the finality of killing a lightning (compared to a rezzable MAX) and their dependence on base or ammo sunderers in prolonged fights, not to mention the increased cost and relatively limited availability compared to bursters.

As far as A2A, it still sounds like a tactics issue to an extent. At 400m range for lock ons, an ESFs speed and maneuverability does give it some options, but it seems like not flying solo is the biggest consideration just my theory as I am a terrible pilot.

Hoho, the Use flares argument........

We do use them, and they will not save you if your in a dog fight already. Also, The BF3 heatseakrs are not that hard to doge, they are no where near as powerful as the PS2 A2Am...

People use RL comparisons because the game tries to focus on several RL aspects of warfare. Such as the fact that some arguments made by some pilots about their justification why Anti-Air shouldn't be as it is now or one of my favorite justifications, the resource cost of an ESF justifies the abilities it has to tear up tanks and infantry, and now, that is one less justification when a tank is MORE than an ESF and it doesn't dominate the both air and ground still, so the Resource cost != justification for the power in question.

Another thing to note, in RL, yes, we do create weapons to make war. We are playing a game that is playing for war as well. However, we all don't get what we want either. Our vehicles don't have auto stabilization, we have weapon systems that while they are 'modern' to a degree, they are also apply a lot of really non-sensical and lackluster level of actual systems.

Believe it or not... Military equipment may seem 'super complex', but originally, military equipment is just super complex to maintain. Given enough time and playing around, a complete idiot of a civilian can technically drive a tank or fire a gun. The training is how to use it properly.

A good example - Back in the 40s, they needed people to know how to drive a tank. Not all volunteers were literate. They were taught using comic books on how to operate things. IE: Back then, you didn't need to be a high school graduate to operate a tank.

Another good example - Beverly Hills Cop 2... As much as we know it is Hollywood, the LAW rocket system was again, designed to be used simply, same with RPGs and other weapons. That is 1960-70s hardware.

The only real 'complex' part of any system is just how to operate it under combat situations, but many weapon systems are designed to be used by people given just enough training not to blow themselves up, blow someone else up (on their side) or crash/f-it up so badly that it isn't usable anymore.

This game is semi-close with that respect that we do have 'simple' to use weapons because we have 'simple' people.

One more thing you should also consider... The A2AMs are actually weaker than what anything we would compare to RL. Lockon Range, even with the cert buff into them, is still shorter than any traditional A2A engagement is.

This is exactly what a lot of us said would happen. The Skyguard was never going to be the magic bullet that many said it would be, simply because it brings its own set of problems for fliers. You may be able to see Skyguards easier than you could Bursters, but they are a lot more mobile and can travel with other vehicles and be quickly rearmed and repaired. And they bite, hard, as many fliers are now finding out.

Getting more people into the air sounds like a good idea, but they're going to want something to shoot at and A2A combat with nose guns is simply too hard to master in the short attention span of many gamers. They stay away from ground because of AA, so A2A missiles are the logical choice for people that just want to shoot stuff.

There is never going to be a time when fliers can buzz around the skies uninterrupted in search of "dogfights". Just the same as tankers will never be able to disappear off to some mysterious continent and live out their tank battle fantasies.

This game is about shooting stuff. Everything gets shot at by everything else all of the time. It's the nature of the game.