In what situation would Lockdown be superior to ZOE?

In what situations would using the Aegis be superior to not using the Aegis?
Never.

ZOE is not better at a turret role. The idea behind point defense with a turret is to kill anything that attempts to get in before it gets close. ZOE's movement bonus doesn't benefit that at all, and the extra damage is paltry in comparison. Can a ZOE MAX hold a passageway? Sure, anything can. But for this role, Lockdown is much better. Also, as a note on squad work, Lockdown proportionally benefits more from teamwork than ZOE does.

However, I did some additional testing on the other points and realized I had forgotten to factor in the Vortex. Ironically, the Fracture has the advantage of being more versatile than either the Comet or the Vortex, but this alone is not enough; I can no longer endorse my other points.

I agree that ZOE is fine, but Lockdown and Aegis need buffs. There's a delay after the unanchoring animation finishes in which you still can't move which ought to go, and the fact that you can partially bypass Aegis by shooting the feet defeats much of the point. Some buffs elsewhere are also likely in order. Perhaps removing reload time during Lockdown entirely, and broadening Aegis.

Anyone who says lockdown is good for holding a point against infantry hasn't tried it. Anyone with a rocketlauncher can just screw you regardless of positioning in the room.

I'd trade ZOE + Vortex for Lockdown + Fractures in a heartbeat...

You will probably also die in a heartbeat, sniped by a tank while standing still

I have to disagree on that. I'll admit that I have much more experience behind a MANA turret than with a Lockdown MAX, but I don't see why they should be so different. In both cases, it takes a short time to set up, and 2 direct hits with a rocket to take you down, several more indirect. The MANA lacks a disengage time, but the goal should be to have a good enough defense that you shouldn't have to. It's all about positioning and coordination with your bunker mates.

For one, you should rarely be standing in-line with the passageway. Rather, stand off to the side with your back to a wall and kill as they try to pass. Your TTK is so short that no one should be able to do anything, except maybe get one rocket off, if they know exactly where you are already. For a more aggressive stance, you can take the riskier approach of facing through the opening at a '/\' angle with your allies (some distance back from the opening). This enables you to shoot approachers and passers-by, and while this technically opens you to outside attacks, it's a lot safer than it seems. What you're doing is using the angle of the walls and the opening to control the line of sight between you and the other side, covering your periphery and forcing engagements to be within your kill zone. Not to mention that people are surprisingly blind-spotted when passing that angle, they're more worried about what's going on in the middle. If you find someone knows exactly where you are and is trying to play peek-a-boo rockets and didn't manage to kill them, then switch positions. They'll usually get themselves killed trying find to find where you moved to.

Lockdown has the advantage of being able to be activated anywhere, even on top of boxes, railings, etc., while the MANA can only be placed on flat ground and a certain distance from other objects. This means Lockdown MAXs have more viable options for good setups.

Can you completely hold down an entire room or bridge by yourself? No, usually not. You will need to work with your allies. But if you can do so effectively, Lockdown should be the best point-defense the game has to offer. (That said, it might still deserve a little buffing.)

Except burster MAX are better AA than Strikers. I've tried using lock ons in a burster nest and I rarely get a chance to get a rocket off and if I manage to get a lock, then the aircraft is destroyed or pop flares before I have the chance to get a hit. I've spent an hour and gotten a grand total of two hits on aircraft with my Annihilator. So explain again how Strikers are so good at AA.

For those of you saying Lockdown isn't good for point defense have not tried using it for camping teleporter room doors. I was in Saurva this morning and there were 3 LD+Fracture MAX's spamming the door. Anyone that tried to walk out of the room was nearly instagibbed (died in under 0.1 seconds). Even a MAX that we had 3 engies holding the repair on, died in under half a second.

So don't tell me it's not good, you just have to figure when and where it's appropriate just like ANYTHING ELSE. It turns your MAX into a freakin' bullethose turret. ZOE just makes you slightly faster at the downside of much weaker. So you only use ZOE to run up to a fight then you turn it off and fight without it. When you wanna leave the fight, you flip it on an run for your life. The ONLY time you use it during a fight is when you're using Comets or Bursters. Otherwise you turn it off because it paints a giant target on you for any vehicle within a 300m radius.

Area denial. While you might not get a million kills with them, pilots will evacuate striker areas. Simple as.

Trench warfare with hundreds of troops
In practice:Never

Here's what I have to say:
Got hit by a rocket while in your MANA turret?
Grow a new one. Immediately. While your old one shields your retreat.
Also, less people target MANA turrets. A nice, big MAX with the promise of a kill worth more than +25EXP is much, much more often shot at by rocket launchers.

And because you're rooted to the spot, everybody and their mum's dumnfires become point and click weapons.

The vulnerability of a fixed unit in a game where respawn exists and where TTKs aren't low enough (and deaths meaningful enough) for suppressive fire to be practical, is immense.

Lockdown would be fearsome if deaths actually meant something in PS2.
Then, suppression would be serious. If it took you a good full minute to re-enter into combat after a death, you won't just run into a hail of bullets.

Lockdown becomes superior to ZoE when you have 2 engineers repairing it or no one returning fire.... down a coridor.

Aegis is superior to ZoE when it has an engineer and a heavy behind it.

All other times the ZoE is superior alone, without any support. Giving a MAX the ability to move like infantry, do the damage of a hacksaw at long range, and take 5% more damage has the balance of a two yearold designer. There are absolutely Zero situations where TR or NC MAX's beat a ZoE player one on one or in a group with equal numbers and skill.

I've tried it with TR where we brought 15 lockdown max's. 8 ZoE's tore us apart. I tried it on my NC toon with about 20 aegis shield max's pushing up a tower. They where shredded in under a minute by 7 ZoE's. I tried poping a ZoE against Aegis MAX's and TR MAX's. Both times it was near laughable how easy it was to run to a engineer to heal after i killed several guy's. Each time i pulled the ZoE MAX we not only won with lower numbers, hell half of the guys where saying in command chat just pop ZoE's with a little air support and you'll wipe out anything.

I don't understand why we are all pretending here. You have a moveable turret with huge damage, or a standing turret with huge damage. Obviously mobility matters. You have a shield that gets out DPS'ed by the walking turret/death machine, and thus dies every time. It may FEEL like your taking alot of damage, however they simply do not die because they can run sprint away and get healed up like any infantry. For gods sake, a HA with shield up is slower then a ZoE MAX.

the damage is underwhelming at range. Crouching is better!

Let's put it this way. How many kills have you ever gotten with the Engineers AI Mana turret? Probably not too many. That's why Lockdown is garbage outside of AA. I actually think it's worse than the Engineers turret too. Since at least, and Engineer can let go of the thing, and run like hell when he sees grenades being thrown at him. Lockdown MAX takes so long to unlock an move again your just dead every time all the time. The situations where most people pretend it's good are situations where your basically already safely farming the enemy. It doesn't have too many serious practical combat application cause it's so easy to counter. Just spam dumbfire rockets, or AV grenades at it. Problem solved. Once again good for AA since you can hide behind an army an just shoot at air that can't see you. Bad for any serious combat situation. Like shooting Fractures at a tank with LD is just going to get you fed a few rounds from it's main gun, on top of being a target for every Engineer AV turret, and Lancer/Phoenix in the area.

I absolutely agree. Problem is other ppl don't try it themselves and just assume it's a l2p issue.

Turret role.

TURRET ROLE.

It excels in the TURRET ROLE, GUYS. OBVIOUSLY better than the ZOE at TURRET ROLE-ING.

So ZOE destroys us in every other situation, but WE GOT TURRETS NOW. Gods be praised!

not sure which part of 'defensive play for lockdown' OP do not understand.

Getting yourself killed?

Lockdown makes for crappy point defense and AA.

Not being able to side step a rocket is inferior to being able to ADAD all the live long day. Not being able to get out of the way of C4 means Lockdown is utterly worthless in most interior situations. Standing still at a chokepoint against targets that can bank grenades around corners and play peek-a-boo rocket spam is idiotic.

Being restricted to facing one way is exactly what you don't want when trying to hit things moving quickly across the sky. Being locked stationary outside and up high is exactly what you don't want when the enemies are given Lancers and Phoenix rockets. Taking 1 second to Lockdown when you may only have a 3-4 second window to fire on passing aircraft is also counter productive.

Inside or out, its drawbacks still outweigh its benefits. Lockdown is just far too situational compared to even Aegis. Compared to ZOE its a joke.

Put me down as someone irate we had to be stuck with this POS after all the noise before it even went live. For about four months now, as soon as it showed up on the roadmap we've been saying that we did NOT want to be stuck with Lockdown. It didn't work in PS1. It doesn't work on the Prowler in PS2. It doesn't work now on the MAX. Immobility in a fast paced combat game IS A STUPID ****ING IDEA. Stop screwing over TR by giving them stuff that either helps the VS and NC or stuff that hasn't had a lick of thought or effort put into it.

Sticking a few extra rounds in a gun with worse TTK than the enemy faction equivalent is not a valid factional theme.

A chaingun that does not fire when you pull the trigger while having a comparable TTK to a LMG that does fire right away is not a valid factional theme.

STANDING STILL IS NOT A VALID FACTIONAL THEME.

• Firing out of a spawn room.
• High traffic fights where there are lots of friendlies around and no real room to strafe without going in front of said friendlies.
• Hallways, walkways, and other constricted areas where the user is close enough to be accurate, but far enough away to not be susceptible to grenades, c4, and such
• Windows
• Behind a MANA AI turret, firing over it.