Restore balance and sanity to air power

1. Remove ESF rocket pods as they exist now
2. Replace rocket pods with 4 larger AT rockets; these work like AP tank rounds; think AGM-65 Maverick
3. All infantry AA weapons are removed except for the AA Max
4. Skyguard is buffed into something worth using

Voila! Now you have a sensible set of roles for air, infantry can relax a bit and ESFs stand a chance of flying around without getting locked by everything that moves. The arms race is over.
/not a pilot

You'd need to refund anyone who bought infantry AA weapons, which represents a lot of potentially angry and certainly inconvenienced customers. Also, AA missile launchers should be legit, but they should be more easily dodged. I agree in general principle though

SC... refunded!

So... ESF rocket pods are replaced with larger anti personnel rounds and the tradeoff is infantry AA weapons being removed.

Seems legit.

AP = Armor piercing. See: tank weapons, as mentioned fairly explicitly in the post.

AP=armor piercing

Ah ha. There's an unfortunate fluidity in some of the nomenclature employed here abouts. Thank you both for setting me straight on that.

It's a shame. Because my original consideration was that this seemed like a post aimed at reducing the potency of ESFs for the benefit of Liberators.

I think that ESFs should have the opportunity to ditch their secondaries in favor of equipping an ECM suite which will dramatically increase the amount of time needed for a missile lock to occur.

I never use my rocket pods to kill infantry anyway. Thats what my PPA is for. I wouldn't mind if this took effect. I'd probably see it as a buff.

Not really any need for that. Just make their weapons suck against footsloggers and then remove any capacity for footsloggers to lock on to them. ESFs would be perfectly fine as they are now except that rocket pods and AI noseguns give them too much incentive to keep their noses pointed at the ground instead of in the air. Why spend time and effort chasing down an enemy ESF with all of its maneuverability and speed for a *chance* at some XP (likely an assist) when I can just spam a clip of rockets at a grunt for guaranteed kill XP?

Yet Another Problem PS2 Has That PS1 Already Solved™.

Back in PS1, Anti-Vehicle weapons generally had poor damage against non-vehicle targets. You had to use the right weapon for the task at hand. In PS2, anything that explodes kills infantry instantly or near-instantly, so AV weapons (like the rocket pods) get used as makeshift anti-infantry spam weapons all the time due to ease-of-use.

This seems to be a plausible trade off IMO.
As long as I am refunded in equivalent certs or SC. I'm all for the idea.

But then again, SOE is trying to make this game futuristic and things being guided is part of futuristic.

If it was that simple, rocketpods should have been removed in their state or modified already. Not saying I don't agree with the changes, but I see very large legal problems arising from this. Does not set a good precedent (from SOE's perspective)

Let me take a WILD guess:
1) you dont know that there is a aircrafted called liberator in the game
2) you fly a lib...

The game is not balanced before every single infantry got a one-shot-one-kill multi purpose high velocity A-V weapon. Then we got true balance.

Eh. I still think that giving 'em the opportunity to trade in their pods (A2A or A2G) in exchange for largely removing the threat of locks in order to focus on their gunnery is a more reasonable exchange than isolating them from the ground fight by rendering them more or less impotent against folks on the ground.

As I can see it the chief issues everyone has with each other largely revolve around lolpodding and lockside. Removing one to remove the other, or keeping the one and risking the other, seems a touch more grounded. Also I'm wary, perhaps to the point of paranoia, of returning to the dark days of roaming lone wolf Liberators shutting down infantry movement because they didn't "AIR IS THE COUNTER TO AIR L2P" and so on.

But I doubt that SOE is horny about putting either of our concepts on the drawing board. So there's that.

how about no,ya I like that answer,you are probley just crying because you stand in the open field and get owned by aircraft.

<-- Is a pilot. Very much in favour of this. I have wanted pods to be AT only for a while now and this seems like it would be a good way to achieve it.

I reckon the idea could work if you made the AA missiles really easy to dodge in an ESF. They keep their effectiveness against Libs and Gals but not against the ESFs as they can no longer Roflpod.

Forkyar, I dare you to try and post something constructive on these forums. Just once, please...

So make tanks even more exploitable to air units while majorly limiting ground AA, yea seems like a great idea...

Like the idea. But it will not happen.

Except that infantry can't relax because ESFs aren't flying around sightseeing but they are flighing around searching for infantry to lolpod..

So NO to everything you posted?
I might , maybe, I could consider... giving up on G2A launchers, if we remove the lolpods too.
Then we have a deal (maybe).

Vehicle stealth should not increase lock on timers.
It should decrease the range of missiles, first cert-> 10%, fully upgraded-> 50% decrease in locking range.

That's how stealth works in reality, the better it's designed, the closer the plane must get for the enemy to see it on radar/IR.

As such since the lock on missiles have probably 500-600 meters of range [citation needed], a stealth plane could fly 250-300 meters away and not worry about them at all (and could drop a flare during a bombing run).

Dedicated AT missiles would be fun as well, even if they hit like the Vanguard's AP shell.
Then rocket pods could be changed to an area effect suppression weapon with a non-zero cone of fire.

That, sir, is an excellent suggestion.

Honestly the Annihilators are easy to deceive, but not easy to dodge. Of course, when you're locked on you don't know if it's the dedicated G2A launcher (which you can't dodge, but can run from), the Annihilator (which you can trick by flying toward the ground), or an enemy ESF's A2AM (which will kill you if you try one of the above maneuvers).

I fervently believe that nerfing A2G weapons, and nerfing G2A weapons in kind is the best solution here. "AP Rocket Pods" is a good step, but we could nerf nose gun (particularly air hammer) damage against armor as well.