ESF A2AM are worthless.

They SHOULD be vastly superior to the rotary. The rotary is a jack of all trades weapon, the A2AM are a specialized anti-air weapon. Again it's like having a HEAT turret perform as good if not better than an AP turret. If someone takes A2AM it means they're limiting themselves to air combat for the most part. The argument you are giving me is the same as me saying "a tank with a HEAT turret and basilisk on top should be able to perform just as well as a tank with an AP turret and ESAV on top" That simply is not, and should not be how it works. If you bring a rotary and they bring A2AM then yeah, you should be at a massive disadvantage. I don't see tankers cry when their HEAT tank gets blown up by an AP tank.

So no, A2AM are not balanced as they do not perform their role. Their role is a specialized A2A weapon. The ONLY weapon an ESF has that should match A2AM are coyotes as those are also specialized A2A weapons. Your nose-gun shouldn't be able to compete with a dedicated anti-air ESF. It's just that simple.

I agree Coyotes are a bad idea there Lock on were a great idea to deal with multiple aircraft but poorly designed.
But you nerf a legit A2AM into the ground and pisspoor range was a horrible idea.

How your suppose to used A2AM is to lock on flying into combat then finish them off with the main gun. in a 2 v 1 you should lock on the 1 fire make him retreat or have him at half HP and dog fight the other fighter. the purpose of the a2am was to allow you to dog fight at range then use the main gun to finish..

The problem was people were too stupid to know how to deal with a2am they weren't OP they were just difficult to deal with since the decoy flares where on cool down when it should of bin an ammo count of 10.


Example: You're flying around you see 6 fighters and 2 lib's instead of flying in and dieing maybe killing 1 fighter you use your lock on to harass the air group and still be able to get away..

Example: You see an enemy lib with 5-10 buster maxes and your max's/skyguards can't get a shot at the lib you lock on and fire forcing him retreat or land for repairs..

again people were didn't know how to deal with them.. they were fine before the nerf i agree the look around lock on was a bit much but the range nerf was too much at a 100m even 150m with full upgrades is ****... at that range you might as well use rocketpods.

A2A in their current implementation are terrible. You can't maneuver when locking on or firing them because you have to keep lock. At 100m you can just as accurately use your rotary, without sitting there for half an hour waiting for it to lock on.

So, you do know that you can use your nosegun after you've locked on and fired, right?

Depending on target and what they are doing, not really.
You still need to aim sort of on the target for the missile to keep the lock and if the target is moving a lot actually hitting with the nosegun means you have to lead your target.. aka not aim at the target.

I think you see where this makes your statement not true.

Personally I think the range should be buffed a bit but make the reload longer, it does feel pretty stupid to have to get so close to use them that you might as well use the nosegun.

When I have the A2A equipped I pretty much just use them because I like the fancy ball(VS), breaks up the hover fighting and the hate tells can also be fun. Often I find myself trying to use them in situations even though I know the nosegun would be both easier and quicker... but its somehow satisfying to see the ball fly off and the ESF explode when they connect.

Its also kinda nice when someone is just running around to be able to lock them.. the Scythe is so terribly slow so chasing isnt the most fun thing to do with them and before anyone even tries to say anything against it, yes they are slow, like a Liberator.. now imagine yourself chasing after an ESF with a Liberator that has a better version of its original AB on it and you have the Scythe in pursuit

Lock-ons are only good against fleeing wounded targets and in backing someone else up in their "honorable duel," Sure, the second guy could use his nosegun, but he should only do so if his aim is sharp. Hitting his own buddy could mean the difference between victory and defeat for said buddy, and friendly fire is always more accurate and enemy fire.

Someone that is actively shooting at you will put you down before those lock-ons ever get to the point of becoming scary. In direct confrontations, coyotes are the weapon of choice, but they're actually quite lousy at engaging already distant fleeing targets. Might as well be firing dumb fires.

No, Air game is supposed to be about consensual Hover/Reverse stuff jousting 1 on 1, with preparation and Squires. Potion use allowed(Fire Supp), at the end of the duel you need to let the other person to Jet-Pack safely to bring their next ESF which is faster than landing fixing their damaged ESF and minimizes exposure to the other 90% of the players or "Bads"(People who do not solely use Hover+FS+NAR and default weapon with ABs).

Exceptions are LOLPod farmers, as Air you need to leave them alone because they are tactically suppressing the enemy so you can duel.

/Thread

So you want to bring back the old A2Am, which were MUCH MUCH stronger than the Rotary?

They need to break the lock-mechanic if they are to buff the A2Am. People don't rant about HEAT vs AP, because a good HEAT driver can still kill a bad AP driver. This is not the case with A2Am, cuz they used to guarantee 99% hit chance while being well out of any gun range.

A2Am are just a skill-less gun, that allows the worst pilots to kill the best pilots, granted that they only saw the good pilot first.
The worst AP tank CAN NOT kill the worst HEAT tank on the other hand.
Air-game was at its worst when the OLD A2Am used to exist.

Again, if you want, I can show you how good these A2Am are if you care to come on any server (I'll just trial them).

A2Am are very balanced at the moment, they offer a significant edge when one is re-positioning itself where landing rotary hits is improbable. With this weapon, I killed some of the best pilots of Emerald, pilots that I wouldn't be able to kill otherwise.

this is hilarious, just imagining how bad you guys must be to say they are worthless.... you can add more range to them or you can reduce the lock on timer.... these are far from useless they are actually VERY effective and a mediocore pilot can take down some top pilots with this if you get the jump or if you are able to use your limited turbo to maneuver and stay at a distance while locking on to them... smh

I can show you how good they are, if you care to duel me on any US server.

A2A lock ons were designed to help new players enter the esf game without investing ludicrous hours to learn the nose gun.

It's terrible in this role. The range is so low that you are better off spamming the default nose gun in the general direction of your target. The lock on mechanics are so sensitive that by the time you can reliably use the lock on, you are decent enough with the nose gun.
On top of that, you need to spend 3k certs to upgrade lock time and range to make it useful.

Good pilots can use the lock ons to increase their dps, because they can aim in between reloads. However, they are not the ones who need the help.

The real solution is to have coyote and a2a lock ons replace the nose gun. You can then balance lock ons to be low skill, low damage and nose guns be high skill, high damage.

An ESF with Banshee/PPA + A2AM is a mixed load out, should it automatically win against Vortek + Rocket Pods? Both have one decent option to engage aircraft but Vortek is more challenging. Or how about Vortek + AB? Sure, you can kill the odd infantry and armor, but primarily it's anti-air. Likewise, an AP turret can kill infantry and the odd aircraft yet people accept that as the dedicated anti-armor option.

Also, comparing lock-ons with an AP turret is misleading because you're overlooking the difficulty factor. If two weapons perform the same at their role but one is easier to use what is the point of choosing the more difficult one?

How can A2A missiles be balanced if their goal is to both perform better and be easier than the primary means of A2A combat, the nose gun? Everyone would ignore the rotary and just take either the dedicated A2G gun or default if they wanted to plink away at armor too.

No the OP's right.... at the range you have to get to use them, you might as well just be firing Yotes or Pods instead.
And yes I maxed out the "Range" upgrade on mine. It has no noticeable impact.

Meanwhile minimizing Lock-On time on them is TOO GOOD imho against anyone but MaxStealth Aircraft and needs a nerf.
You'd really think these 2 upgrades would have gotten smoothed out a lot better after all this time

People here who complain about the range obviously have no clue, nor inclination to actually test something before whining about it. The range is 400meters upgraded. That's close to the furthest ranges that any lockon launchers have in the game (G2A lanchers have 450meters lockon range, 300m for G2G). That is also well outside of what anyone, including veteran pilots, would consider effective nosegun range. GG OP, you were only off on your range estimation by a factor of 80x.

A2AM users clueless - what a shock right? :3

-Stigma

How can't a good rotary pilot kill a bad A2AM pilot? If the A2AM guy is a bad pilot he wont be able to keep up with the good pilots movements. If he can't keep up with the good pilot's movements he can't maintain a lock. If he can't maintain a lock he can't even shoot back. If anything the discrepancy between a good pilot using a rotary against a bad pilot using A2AM is FAR more skewed in the good pilot's favor than your tank scenario.

A2AM are the dedicated anti-air option, they should therefor be the strongest at anti-air, that SHOULD be obvious. As I just said, if anything tankers should be the ones complaining because a bad tanker using AP can still wreck a good tanker using HEAT simply because of the damage difference and the fact that it's much easier to land shots. A bad pilot isn't even going to be able to get a lock on a good pilot, so why the hell do these supposed "good pilots" care? Are they just not using evasive maneuvers or something?

I think that's the thing here, these "good" pilots are so entrenched in their honorable samurai hover duels that they forgot how to fly evasive, since a hover dueling enemy is obviously easy to lock on to. I don't even hardly fly beyond using it as a taxi and even I can manage to prevent a lock just by flying erratically, I'm sure a good pilot could both fly erratically and land hits on the enemy. The only pilots that die to A2AM are either unaware of their surroundings or nowhere near as good as they claim.

This is why ESFs should be restricted to one gun like literally every vehicle in the game. The ground counterpart to the ESF is the Lightning, I don't see Lightnings being able to swap between AP and HE on a whim, do you? If ESFs only had a single primary weapon and had to choose between rocket pods, A2AM, rotary etc that'd make things a LOT more balanced.

Seems like you are thinking that you need to use Tomcats OR your nosegun. What you should be doing is using Tomcats AND your nosgun.

The lock doesn't go away if you switch weapons. Get the lock, fire your rocket, switch to your nosegun and fire away while the rocket does its thing. You shouldn't lose any DPS except for the brief couple seconds of lock-on time.

There is no way of escaping an A2Am, other than turning around and hoping to kill him in a CQC hover duel where he can't maintain his lock.

How does an enemy pilot know you have A2Am? You lock on to him (or pending)

If you're locking on to him he is already in your A2Am range, now he can't escape. So what can he do?
Nothing other than face you in a CQC duel where you can not lock on to him.

There is nearly no way of escaping an A2Am, I've tried outrunning it with my Racer+AB but it doesn't work most of the time.

Flying erratically also doesn't work when it comes to escaping the A2Am Pilot.
You can fly close to him, where he is likely to break his lock, but if you're too close, you're in his nose-gun range.

Like I said, the current A2Am can not kill the best pilots, but the old ones can.
The old ones were fire and forget A2Am, with longer ranges. Air game was worst back then.

If they are going to buff A2Am, they will have to throw away this lock-mechanic and bring in something more skillful.
SOE isn't dumb enough to bring back the old ones anywayz. Or hopefully.

I can come on Test Server, and prove how good they are. And I would like to see how you manage to escape them. (once you're in my range of-course)

If test server is too hard for you, I'll send you a request with my NC main (assuming you are Colt556 in-game too) and I'll hop on my TR alt whenever you want to test.

[I actually think the Lightning could do with a weak machine gun since it's kind of a boring platform, particularly when using a Skyguard. For that matter, the MBT could do with a co-axial MG. Infantry hate being killed by OHK cannons and, with possible ammo adjustments, people would use those more sparingly].

I agree that ESF's effectiveness to manpower ratio has always seemed questionably high relative to other vehicles. But that's such a complicated issue you can't just make A2A missiles stronger and say the game plays better for it.

In fact, the issue of balancing difficulty with reward would become even more obvious by reducing the weapon count once people see the Vortek and default nose guns directly competing with coyotes and lock-on missiles. You can't make a weapon easier and more efficient unless you want to scrap the alternatives - I.E. reducing the skill ceiling across the board.

Now, it'd be one thing to suggest that up front but invariably when people ask for Coyotes/missiles to be more powerful there's little to no consideration to load outs as a whole or the affect on nose guns that people have earned/paid for.

When people simply ask for more powerful missiles it's not surprising the answer is no, because it isn't a balanced proposition given current gameplay.

A2AM are fine. Just use them correctly.