Lock-on missiles have negative influence on gaming experience

No, it wouldn't. If infantry could not fire back against ESFs until well after they've been fired upon, then we go right back to the days when ESFs would actively ignore one another to farm ground vehicles and infantry because that's more cert-efficient for them.

I'm just gonna leave it here, and wait untill the next ''yaddayaddayadda'' thread comes along. In these threads, people will go on endlessly on the same points, not changing anything of their personal stance/opinion/arguments.

I will still remain of the opinion that G2A needs to be limited to infantry render distance. Because for infantry to be able to defend itself, it needs to be attacked in the first place. Not gonna sum up all points made in the thread, Sayõnara.

Proactive defense. Kill the other guy before he kills you.
Either way, why can't we apply that statement to everything else in the game?

Sorry but no, lolpods were first. Sure they are not as potent as they used to be but it's hard to dispel the old trauma.
Do you think people on the ground have time to look up to recognize your build, especially when there are dozens of other people shooting at them and it only takes a second to get owned by a diving ESF? No, you pull out the tube and shoot anything that flies your way. Do you even think that you get to be picky as an AA? Most pilots will break the lock with trees, antennas, rocks so no **** the ones flying a bit higher get picked on more frequently.
Either way, on the ground the business is simple: if you ignore ESFs, they WILL take a dump on your head rather sooner than later.

Doesn't matter. Some people still consider that cheap lolpodding their full time job, maybe because it's easier to achieve an epic killstreak to stroke their ego? And some people get so annoyed by constant ESF hit and runs they will go out of their way and pull out the lockon tube even if their only reward for the hassle will be 25xp every fifth rocket that didn't get flared.

will engineers ever get a deployable AA mini turret / flak ?

Errrrm, do you mean, "will engineers ever get a deployable AA flak turret?"

Why?

PS2 is not a private dogfight game; if that's what you want I'm sure that there are games around that will let you have that experience.

Translation:

"Wire guided missiles will let me farm infantry easier".....

Simply because infantry do not render past 300m, and if a unit does not render, you can not hurt it. So basicly we have invisible god mode lock on missile firing units shooting at us all the time.

1. Feelings should not be part of a balance discussion so your 'old trauma' is Bull.
2. I don't expect people on the ground to not fire at me, However I expect in what is supposed to be a skill based game said people would have to do this little thing called aiming and not have built in aimbots.
3. It does not matter what people choose to do in this game as that is the freedom of gaming, it does not matter that people fly with rockets all the time...

So basically your argument is 'My Trauma' and 'People should not get to play the way they want'

Please come back with a real argument.

And again. This is a combined arms game, where are YOUR esf pilots to help cover you? My outfit has several of them, why are you bad? Do people not understand that 'combined arms' does not mean 'infantry counter everything'? Why should the cheapest unit counter everything and make all tanks and air redundant just because you all want to play CoD on a larger map?

You deal with people and people have emotions. Largely impotent snipers get a lot of hate and nobody passes on the chance of humiliating one. For whatever reason lolpodders do their thing even if it's not optimal. And on the other hand too many people wield AA tubes even if it's not optimal and they could be doing more productive things instead. Cheese and prejudice are a part of that.
ESFs are harassers of the sky. Do you think it's easy to repel harassers? They appear out of nowhere, **** people left and right and then drive away only to come back in 15seconds to cause grief even more. People go great lengths to avoid this **** and relying on others takes you only so far. Same deal with ESFs. They can be a huge problem, so disproportionate amount of attention goes to antimeasures because they can hit fast and very hard and letting them anywhere close is bad for business.

And it's not that i am that traumatized, i can cloak to avoid getting **** on but i imagine other players who play frontline grunts can have their jimmies rustled with endless strafing runs. Offpeak hours ESFs are unstoppable, when you have a 4v4 skirmish and you can't afford to put 3 people on AA duty. Does AA have scalability issues with numbers? Sure, but it's not the only thing that does.

Because infantry are a backbone of every army, because when all else fails they need to be able to repel the threat with some degree of efficiency and because no skill AA tubes exist in real life.
I don't know but when people happen to see 6 mossies minimum and 0 reavers on the sky they don't have time to discover the reasons, they just want to have fun too. Why should it be that if you happen to overpower enemy air their ground forces instantly become sitting ducks? On my server when TR have north they often terrorize 2/3 of the map with mossie wings. If you are in a lowly outpost harassed by ESFs, AA tube is the only thing you can pull that won't lock you in your role because there might be a dozen prowlers parked, eager to farm that need attention too. And it's not like shooting AA tubes is fun, "I like to play infantry because I can use AA lockons" said no one, ever.

yes people have emotions, but balance and balance discussion should be separate from emotions. Here is the thing about snipers, for a sniper to kill an infantry unit, the sniper will be within the 300m render range. Because he is within that 300m range, he can be shot by another infantry player or the same player he is shooting at. Infantry can lock aircraft at 500m, thats 200m that they do not render, and if you don't render in this game then you can not be hurt (thats why you don't get libs spamming from the flight ceiling, even if the bomb hits your feet, because you don't render you don't get hurt or even see the explosion.)

your point of a 4v4 battle is irrelevant in this game that's motto is 'bigger is better.'
Air can only scale to a point, and then they start crashing into each other. get 10 aircraft in the sky over a fight and the sky gets crowded. get 10 infantry in a fight and that is less than a full sundie.

That is the thing though, HA have to easy of an ability to counter everything without any drawback. You should have to get a few people that either like to fly so they can shoot down and support your ground troops (my roll) or have people locked into the AA roll, not let every ant on the ground fire self guided hate at you even though your roll is to protect the ground from the air... You want to know the other reason there are not as many A2A pilots as there are A2G? Lockons make A2A pilots redundant and it is better to put a meh pilot on the ground with a lockon and a machine gun than it is to keep him in the air.

and your question about why air should be able to pound the ground once air supp is setup? that is the spoils of the hard work that is setting up air superiority. That is how air effects the ground game, if air could not do anything to ground, then you may as well delete it as this is a team based objective game where kills don't matter so much as taking the points.

that's more of a technical issue, but practically speaking 300m range would be laughable. Tell we when was the last time you got hit with a phoenix rocket? 300m for ESF is what, 2s?

It's not irrelevant if it happens for a significant part of the 24h cycle. People playing at night for whatever reason have no right to fun? ESFs are a pain in the *** then, they don't even bother with flares because the risk of being alphastriked is nil and sport scout radar instead. It's so good to be infantry caught on foot between bases, with pants around the ankles... and not even cloak will help.

AA can scale only to a point, and then other people's backs break the lock

I agree, HAs are way too universal. I play on the opposite end of the spectrum and have no AV/AA whatsoever.

wait, why don't you think combined arms applies here too? Who said that if you set up advantageous position, you get to profit and not your buddies from other formations?
By your logic snipers should be removed from the game way before ESFs, they can't do anything to mech and air, they are useless at taking points and meaningless kills are pretty much the only thing they are able to do.

Problems with lock ons? Get flares.

/thread.

The ground players have not once, never stopped ESFs from having dogfights, ESF pilots make the decision to be in areas where ground can attack them...

The thread helps make the point that the Reverse Thrust Maneuver (and especially the loadout choices) they intended, should have gone live. ESF would NOT be jack of all trades, would have to choose loadouts between A2A or A2G and based on their choice would be pushed into playing one style or the other. Want A2A, then have an A2A loadout, fuelpods to light your after burners and fly out the A2G lockon zones to have you air battles. Trust us, players on the ground including ground vehicles don't want air around to begin with. We're not asking you to rocketpod us, or hover over a capture point. You hover jockies brought this on yourselfs, you got our Bursters Nerfed to the point they aren't worth certing into now you want our lock-ons nerfed too to top that you want a higher flight ceiling to fly with total and absolute impunity - No way. Weapons should NOT be changed to make it even easier for your jack of all trades ESFs. You have it ALL and want even more screw that!

Apologies to the honorable few pilots out there reading this, I know you empathize.

How bout we cap all lock-ons range at 300 meters (infantry render distance) and decrease the time it takes to lock by one second, so that the launchers are actually useful for self defense?

AND bump the flight ceiling up by 500 meters?

Happy?

(Please?)

Are you being willfully dense?

There is a pretty massive distinction between firing on a liberator or esf which is close enough to attack you, and firing on a liberator or esf that is 300m+ away in the sky fighting other liberators and esfs. If you legitimately can not tell the two apart you should not be participating in this discussion.

If air can attack ground, ground should be able to defend itself against air. Tank battles hardly ever happen any more, either. Deal with it.

Oh wait.

Half way decent pilots already deal with it, because any quick trip to youtube will show thousands upon thousands of dogfighting kill montages. G2A lock-ons didn't ruin those.

Just want to add that those resources you bought your ESF with were earned by the groundpounders you are hating on actually capturing bases for you.

rofl

So you're telling me you base your opinion on frag videos you found on youtube?

alright well that explains a lot I guess