I understand that they are a part of the game. I understand they're part of defending bases from vehicles, especially aircraft. I also understand that people have different playstyles and like to use them specifically. But, they're pretty darn effective. Too effective at times. In the air, whether an ESF is bothering ground or not, or even at near world height, lockons are usually present. When you're fighting that guy and you're kicking his butt, you get locked and then you lose the majority of the time because you can't run, you could maybe pop flares to be locked again a few seconds later, or you can suck it up and try to get that kill before you get annihilated. It's not fun. Most guys I know don't mind them most of the time - but when those invisible infantry on the ground see your shiny vehicle further than you can see them, point, and shoot, it's a little ridiculous to be damaged for around half your health at render distance in the case of the ESF. Now, I see a lot of people defending it saying "Oh, they're necessary for defending against lolpodders and spawn tank spamming." This is true. They are pretty effective at this. But they should be more of a deterrent that can and will kill you if you stay around long enough. Not something that you have to run halfway across the map from in order to escape the second or even third lock. Now, A2A lockons are ridiculous. Can't run from them most of the time, flares only help for a little, and they do a whole lot of damage. They do need to be cut down quite a bit.
At least you have been playing TR, well your avatar leads me to believe so in any case. NC and VS have had it the worst dealing with lockons for a good while.
I'm sorry to hear that lockons are making it difficult for you to spawncamp. Just a tidbit from your recent killboard: You were recently killed by 3 Hawks. You have ONE A2AM death on your killboard page right now. Your problems aren't lockons though. Overwhelmingly most of your deaths in the air are coming from Reaver Vorteks and to a lesser extent Scythe turbolasers. And you have a pretty negative KDR so it's not like you can claim you're some extremely skilled player but lockons make it impossible for you to play. I'm not trying to bust on ya. I'm not trying to claim I'm Tom Cruise before everyone figured out he was crazy. I'm just calling em like I sees em. I'm a whale biologist.
Trees and terrain objects break lock. Flares render you invulnerable to lock for long enough for you to dump a rocket clump. You can outmaneuver/out run missiles. You have every tool at your disposal to escape them. ESFs and Liberators are the undisputed lords and masters over everything on the ground in anything less than a 48v48. Probably why they never attack one another - because they are too busy farming to do any such thing. I apologize that in a large battle, ground units are able to defend themselves.
I'm glad you took the time to check out my entire profile, killboard, etc. you creepy son of a gun. I would provide counters, but it seems that your ability to take everything out of context is just too impressive for me to handle. Not only that, but your idea that I was talking about my own personal experience in the last few days as a representation of this entire problem is just the best.
Contrary to popular belief, flying behind a tree will not break a lock. Nor will a mountain. It will fly right around those objects. Also, flares may allow that, but getting away with a lock that can be made at about 1-2 territories away is a little bit difficult. Outmaneuvering missiles is difficult, and works very rarely. Outrunning them happens only if they are a reasonable distance away and you have AB fuel pods equipped. Not all ESFs and Liberators farm ground. Many just do A2A fights. What I'm saying is not that I want the ground pounders to just be invincible - quite contrary to that. They should get destroyed for being that close. What I have a problem with, and many others, is that locks hit when we're far away dealing with our own things, with little we can do about it while tangling with someone else.
Yes it will. Happens all the time: When acquiring a lock, a tree branch will break it and I have to start over. My Hawk does not have the capability to lock on that far. You are exaggerating. Never seen it on my home server of Waterson, so I frankly can't be bothered to care. Ground units needed a defense against air spam, and lock-ons were it. They can be outmaneuvered, mitigated, and overwhelmed. They are not a perfect defense, but they are all that is available to the general infantryman.
Your experience as a ground peasant instead of someone who flies means that you lock onto a ton of ESFs, and many escape. But for each ESF, they get locked several times and only escape rarely.
And as long as this is the universal outlook of ESF pilots and Liberator crews, not very many people will sympathize with your regular crying about the occasional inconvenience to your farm.
I would be okay with a range reduction for at least fighters if they also increase the missile speed. The problem being that when I fly I get locked without any clue who is a threat to me. While on the ground the air is able to get away from my (second) missiles most of the time (usually due to them derendering before the missile hits but still well within missile range).
"farm" See that's funny. Because I don't use lolpods. I run AB pods, rotary, and hover, with FS for dogfights. So my "farming" is only other aircraft that don't concern you.
Which is why your kill board shows you attacking ground targets, as pointed out earlier. In any case, ground units have to be able to protect themselves. It's bad enough that your A2A rotaries are effective against all ground vehicles and infantry, effectively making you omnipurpose units. Sorry ESFs get the occasional interruption from the ground, but we have to deal with you guys farming with relative impunity often enough that I highly doubt any dedicated footslogger feels bad about lockons.
I've played this game for like 9999 hours, and 9998 of those are as a TR. One of our faction traits is that we aren't allowed to complain about lock-ons in Forumside 2. Picture if you will, that when you get locked on 3/4ths of your ESF health is now gone. So we have it good now
YOU ARE MISSING THE GIANT POINT I'M ATTEMPTING TO MAKE. Groundpounding, farming, etc = bad ESFs flying far away from ground trying to kill each other = good Lockons that interfere with ESFs doing their own thing far away from ground = bad Lockons that destroy ESFs who get too close to ground = good My killboard from earlier shows one separate event out of many that was actually him jumping me in a reaver, dying. Me killing him to get him out of the way of teammates to get sunderer, and then me doing it myself when they couldn't because he was in the way. If you actually looked at it, you'd find that there are only kills with either the rotary, unknown (represents that they crashed into something), or my own ESF, with a rare tank mine or infantry weapon mixed in. Those kills could be any vehicle or class. Does not mean that I am hovering 100m up sniping infantry with the rotary. It's boring as hell to do that. In addition to that, his comment above is completely taken out of context, not factoring in the learning curve if it was my main account, and cannot represent what actually happens ingame to the full extent necessary. He's basically coming up with random crap in order to make me look bad. I play all three factions, and I am saying this for all three factions. I am not exclusively TR.
You should be a little more specific. You can't just blanketly claim all lockons are OP. They're not. If you seriously want to complain about lockons, complaining about Strikers is really the only way to go but I see you're rocking a TR avatar so I'm guessing not. A2AMs are laughable. When's the last time you saw a squadron of AA Reavers/Scythes? Like...NEVER? Rocketpods are the weapon of choice for ESFs overwhelmingly. To use A2AMs effectively, you have to time your hits and you have to be chasing someone who is running away and doesn't know how to dogfight because flying around trying to lockon to another ESF is just asking to be chewed up by rotary.
TR complaining about Lockon's * Plays Twilight Zone music * This must be some weird ironic parallel universe ... " OMG we are not in Kansas anymore Toto "
Good pilots don't have to worry about any ground lock-ons. 500 meter lock-on range. That is all you need to know. If you go below that and you don't have flares you only have yourself to blame. You're actually more likely to get killed by flak than anything else. Not to mention that you can evade them with cover, or by using your boost.... No. If you get hit by a G2A lock-on, you're very bad. End of story.
I think your strategy is a little off. Take the most supreme farmers and spawncampers in the game, FCRW. There's a reason their Libs and ESFs never stray far from friendly forces and defended territory. How is it "good" to not utilize and coordinate with your ground defenses? And it's not just smart for players who never see anything but the tops of spawnrooms in PS2. It's smart strategy for everyone. It sounds like what you want to play is World of Planes. Yes, that's an actual game. These magical dogfights you imagine where it's just you and another pilot, mano y mano are a fairy tale in a game where thousands of players infantry, ground and air are all trying to kill each other at the same time.
