A2A missiles and Coyotes, do you love them?

Ok so personally i absolutely hate A2A missiles and Coyotes the way they currently work.

I don't think a secondary weapon should perform better than a primary weapon.

I never see any threads about them here and so i figured i would start using them, hopefully to make some people mad and get them to post or something.

I was surprised by the response to my laming people. For a day i never even used my nosegun and i shot down plane after plane after plane. I Would send the victims a tell after and ask them how they felt about what i had just done, and almost all of them were fine with it.

A couple of people told me i was being lame, which i readily agreed with, but the rest thought A2A missiles were just fine, even after i explained to them why they weren't just fine.

I think that since we can't seem to get rid of the lock-on mechanic altogether, (which i think is what most of us want), coyotes and A2A missiles should do a lot less damage. Maybe half what they do now.

So anyway, i was wondering, do you think A2A missiles and Coyotes are fine, or do you think they need to be changed?

Changed. I agree with the damage, Star Citizen's lock-ons wille do far less damage. It should be like that on PS2.

Actually technically the wing mounts are the primaries.
Nose gun would be secondary.

Coyotes are fine, noobs can actually defend themselves now.

Alot of pilot elitists are buthurt now because they cant easily crush everyone they meet.

No sympathy from me.

Earlier I was flying over by Rashnu and I had to dip out. On the start of my retreat I noticed the "Lock A" start showing. I got hit with one missile, started getting the message again. Couldn't turn around yet since I wasn't out of the flak view. Got hit a second time. By time I could turn around the jerk had locked me 3 times and was locking a 4th so I bailed out.

This happens daily when I go and fly. It's what everyone hates about the air. You turn and fight you are dead. If you run you are dead. If these weapons are going to remain with their current mechanics their damage needs to be toned down considerably. I'd rather them hold 30 rockets doing half the damage then 10 rockets doing the current damage. These are weapons designed for new players that can't figure out leading their targets to hit with their nose gun. They shouldn't be being abused by high skilled pilots to be total dicks in the air.

Coyote missiles ruin the air game.

nosegun has a significantly shorter TTK than either of the a2a wing mounts. Likely even if your nosegun only had 50% accuracy it would still win. the wing mounts will only realy push the advantage when you use them in conjuction with your nosegun.

If you are good then the nosegun will be by far more leathal than just using A2A or just using coyotes. In a duel the more skilled pilot will still win far more often than not without some outside consideration (such as geting the jump on someone, other pilots, g2a AA, etc). Of course this is planetside 2, its not a game about dueling, outside considerations abound, and rightfully so.

Double the reload time on coyotes. The main limiter on damage output for all of the other secondaries (excluding the Hornets and the new Tomcats but including the old ones) is the reload time.

they're fine because at the end of the day they suck when compared to a nosegun+tanks loadout being used perfectly

Lol noobs get wrecked either way. When you get a good pilot and equip them with coyotes or a2a missiles they become unkillable vs pilots who arent using them.

There are lots of ways to play PS2 which imo is awesome, but that doesnt mean every playstyle has to be noob friendly.

Infantry is fun, but its kind of a lemming fest. Even when you start doing well vs other infantry some tank with thermals will snipe you from some hilltop that he just barely peeks over. Or some lib will rain fire down on you. Or you will die to a Max (which is the lamest way to die as infantry). The TTK is so short that there is no real back and forth in a fight.

Flying is the one arena in this game where you can have good long lasting fights that go back and forth and last more than 2 secs, (tank fights can last a while but usually end up being long range snooze fests). A2A missiles and Coyotes ruin that.

The argument that Coyotes help noobs is false. For me, (and most people i talk to), the fun of flying is in the challenge and the idea of getting better. If you can fly decently, you will be as good with A2A missiles the first hour as you will be on the thousandth hour. Coyotes take a bit longer to learn, but yeah after you figure out that all you have to do is rush people and keep spamming the rockets when you get close ftw there is no room for improvement.

Once there is no room for growth or improvement in a playstyle, it becomes stale and boring. So, new players are given this boring un-fun way to fly which to someone who doesnt know how to aim might seem great, but in reality is robbing the new player of the true experience of flying.

If you want to help new players, add a VR type area that doesnt kill you when you hit the boundary and in which you can duel other players. You cant really learn to fly in VR cause there is no way to practice shooting at moving targets.

I was a noob pilot once, and i wont deny that it was frustrating at times, but mainly due to the resource system and vehicle timers. To me, there is nothing that keeps me playing longer than that guy that just killed me. Wanting to get revenge. and if hes just better than me, that fuels me even more to practice more and improve my aim.

Don't you want a challenge? If you wanted a tab target game why did you choose an FPS?

I guess it's fun to get the jump on a coyote/tomcat user, and then when he turns around say 'Holy **** that does a lot of damage'. No? Ok then.

I don't understand how we just had a balance patch and neither were touched, but then it took a year for the range on the AV mana turret to get nerfed when almost every player was telling SOE it had to happen since about the second day after that thing was released. How SOE decides what and how to nerf/buff things is a complete mystery. I'm pretty sure a dart board is involved.

q

Personally i love Coyotes because I can actually use a nose gun OTHER than rotary now.
The combo I use is Coyotes and Banshee.
I use my Banshee to kill the dirty peasants on the ground and use my Coyotes to scare/kill anyone that comes at me.

Before Coyotes you NEEDED to use rotary because if you had anything else, you would lose.

Coyotes were necessary, a wing mount that could actually stand up in a dog fight.

Anyone skilled with a rotary will skill make paste of a guy using Coyotes, they dont have as fast TTK as the noseguns but it allows for far more flexibility in loadouts now.
And unless you are point blank, they take more skill than rotaries as you need to predict where the target will be, they are useless at range.

You just expounded on why they are broken. Thank you.

Do you know how many pilots have 50% accuracy with the nosegun?

Other people who are saying coyotes shouldn't be changed because they help noobs, fly on most servers now and the aces are all using coyotes, annihilating everything. Coyotes water down the whole air game to cater to new pilots which is just a stupid crutch IMO, flying is hard in all games - but every death you can learn from and improve, if you main coyotes then you can kill a nosegun use without aiming. It just feels really cheap.

But again, useless thread. Most people don't fly that much and like these crutches - they will not get nerfed as long as the people who fly often remain <5% of the active players.


To everyone saying that a skilled nosegunner will take down a person with coyotes - well, if the skill gap is wide enough then yes, but there are 2 parts in a dogfight which you have to combine in order to win - constant maneuvering (basically making yourself harder to hit) whilst aiming. Obviously, if you're using the nosegun then there's only a certain amount of maneuvering you can do whilst holding aim. With coyotes you can 100% focus on making yourself hard to hit, whilst pointing in your enemies general direction - 4 salvos and their dead, with the quick reload that really isn't very long.

I'll paste what I wrote in reddit once.

The fact that, without aiming, you can take off around 1/4 of an ESF's health in one salvo is just ridiculous IMO. At launch they were a bit UP (something like 200 per rocket I think), but then their acceleration got buffed AND damage got doubled - typical SOE over buff of two features of the coyotes.

Let's get some context. Let's say rguitar/bequ is a "10" on skill level, and a new pilot is a "1" - who can barely leave the WG without crashing. Let's say "7"+ is going into ace level. Let's say "3-5" can at least hold a consistent gaze on an enemy ESF, maybe do some basic maneuvers.
As a pilot of around 200hrs, an enemy of "3-4" with coyotes, is a far bigger threat than an enemy of "5-7" with the nosegun - 9/10 times. The only time coyotes aren't a bigger threat is such that they are at such a distance that by the time they've come close to hit me, they're already dead - and that's pretty rare even if I hit a good chunk of my clip. I also think that a "5" (coyotes) would wipe the floor with a "6" (AB tanks), a "6" (coyotes) would wipe the floor with a "7" (AB tanks) etc...



So fine, crutches can be introduced into the game to help new pilots, but what if the good pilots go around with coyotes, obliterating everything including other good pilots? That's what is happening on a lot of servers now.

Obviously my point is quite hard to get across with the use of basically arbitrary numbers and not many examples of skill level, but I think you can get the idea.
breaths in deeply
I think the damage should be put back 300 per rocket, at least.
/rant

you did not account for the impact gimped mobility has on live play

I agree that Coyotes could get a reload nerf and A2Am a damage nerf.

It's especially fustrating in 2V1 situations.

But on the other side, people that use those secondaries give up Rocketpods & ABfuel tanks versatility for being better at dogfight.

Paper-Rock-cissors should aslo applies to ESFs.

Literally nobody cares what bad pilots use, that's been said again and again

It's when people that know how to fly abuse lockons/coyotes it gets very irritating, not fun, and has caused 90% of the pilots to leave this game

missiles were meant to help new pilots instead they're getting wrecked by them

no that is by far the stupides idea for game balance, it isn't fun for anybody

I look at it this way; as long as a 'nub friendly' weapon does not compromise the performance or the effectiveness of none-nub pilots, while on the contrary it enhances it, its A DESIGN FLAW. Period.

What even makes it worse is the lack of their counters. i.e., mag based flares. Forums, Reddit and Youtube are filled with great balance ideas. Huge amount of them are neglected. It's always painful to watch something utterly promising never leaves the state of 'almost' perfect.

Why? because we now have choice?

Wow. God no.


You know something's wrong when you can have AI build which can still absolutely decimate air. SOE nerfed afterburners due to trying to give builds defined roles - don't give us this 'choice' bull, it's completely ridiculous to be running an AI setup and still be able to cheese your way through killing other air, and you know it.

I would like to see slightly longer reload on Coyotes to prevent them from being used as "nosegun 2.0".

However, the damage potential of noseguns is still far higher than that of Coyotes. They are easier to use but they will not save a newbie or an average pilot from a PRO-MLG ace, however, they will give players an advantage against enemies of similar skill. This is perfectly normal as they are A2A secondaries, if you want to beat dedicated A2A pilots that use rotary+A2A secondary, get such a loadout yourself. There needs to be a clear advantage of taking Coyotes or A2AMs instead of just defaulting to lolpods, the current state of those weapons accomplishes this.

If a full HEAT tank faces a full AP tank it has no right to complain if it gets killed as the other guy was using a loadout specifically intended to kill tanks, so why should a multirole or AB pod pilot complain if he gets killed by a dedicated A2A pilot that was using a loadout specifically intended to kill air?