[Suggestion] Lockon Launcher and AA

Ok, we all know that AA is broken, and not in a good way. My question is, why are lockon launcher such low damage and range? I understand the reasoning behind it. They are supposed to be the direct counter to air, yet the range is so low that it and flak can't lock on to targets that can still attack them. A dude got a sundy on a hill, and at least 4 of us had lockons, scaring off the ESFs, Valks, and Liberators that got too close. Then the ESFs simply backed up outside of our range and blew up our sundy, and there wasn't a single thing anyone could do about it. Literally, just increase the range of lockons to "as long as you can see the aircraft, to a reasonable degree" and just make it take longer to lock the further they go out. It's simple. Then for Flak, either make it more damage, more accurate, or higher flak radius.

MOO

From my limited understanding there are not enough pilots. Reasons abound, etc etc etc.... One thing is again from my understanding, air is the direct counter to air.

Opposing ESF's ignoring each other 50 feet apart to farm planetmans is by the by

You are very right. Air is the direct counter to air. The problem with it is that there is such a high learning curve to how to fight with it, so all the pilots you see are good ones. Plus, its like pulling a tank to counter a tank. You need the better positioning, you need to get the jump on the enemy, you need to be better than they are. The good thing is that A2A loadouts because you want to counter air will make it easier to fight the A2G farmers, but the learning curve is the hardest entry into flying.

Even if you accept that air is a counter to air, why should it be the only counter? Why cant ground get some actual killer weapons instead of purposefully nerfed deterrents?

When talking about lock ons, they would be too powerful if they were an actual threat to aircraft due to how easy they are to use. You would need to make a less easy version, like a laser-guided flak missile instead of a "point at craft and click trigger if you see a green square".

Also when talking about aircraft, why is the ESF the only one build for real A2A? It might make some small sense in a real-world scenario, but ESF use hover combat rather than real-world/WWII air combat. So why not enhance the gameplay and make all aircraft more capable of A2A in a designed and fun way (so avoiding Liberators one-shotting ESF with bellyguns)? Because only letting ESF do A2A with most loadouts and making them the most powerful lone-wolf vehicle in the game is not good for the game, especially if you then turn around and demand that teamwork is needed to down the most powerful lonewolf vehicle.

Exactly! And yeah, I understand why they made lockons more of a deterrent, but you cant have everything in the game as a deterrent because they'll come back. And if your deterrent can't do anything against real threats to you, well, you are screwed. And yeah, ESFs should be like, Harasser levels of A2A combat, with everything else on the higher spectrum. If you are wondering what is Flash level of A2A, its the Javelin.

1000 meter lock-ons, hmmmm yummmy.

The reason they are bad is because it takes 0 skill to use a lock on. Put in trash get trash out.

I can't remember the exact amount of being killed by an ESF while on the ground...
Let's be frank here: If ESF are solely used for A2A, then some people didn't get the memo. ESF are securing air surpremacy, liberators are the Hunterkillers on Auraxis and the Valkyrie is just a small, agile troop transport while the Galaxy is the bigger pendant to that.

So what can be done in order to not mess things up for either ESFs and make them a victim to the ground or the ground forces victim to ESFs?

Nerfing ESF weapon systems is not a valid option, yet buffing launcher weapon systems also isn't one. I for one would enlarge the radius of canopies by 33%, double the amount of damage they can withstand and cut the recharge cooldown it needs to build a new canopy by 20%. Makes it less appealing to ESFs to go after a target shooting back behind a shield. There is no further threat for the ESFs, yet the incentive to farm (prepared) infantry is weakened.

The limited flight control settings are an obsticle, too. Like not being able to change the mouse control from roll to yaw or having seperate sliders for vertical- and horizontal sensitivity for aircrafts

Yeah but why would anyone design a trash weapon in the first place? What purpose does it serve besides being trash? Well its designed to protect the aircraft ofcourse, cant have them dying to G2A fire right?

How about we delete all trash weapons and replace them with something effective? You cant leave it at "its trash" and then stop talking about it as if you've said enough.

This is a horrible way to balance things.

In your setting a Valkyrie, Liberator and Galaxy are automatically screwed when they spot an enemy ESF since the ESF are designed for air superiority and should have the biggest chance of winning the engagement.

Then when those ESF win their own Libs can freely murder anything on the ground that isnt under a canopy or building. Its not as if G2A weapons have the ability to fight back in your setting right?

What needs to be done is that new launcher systems are added that are actually effective but not as easy to use. Laser-guided flak/coyote style missiles for example that you first have to manually lead towards the target before you score a hit. Or instead of fire-and-forget missiles with a large lock-on angle we change them into maintain-lock missiles with a smaller lock-on angle so you need to aim closer to the target and aircraft might dodge the lock, add the ability to lock a missiles that is in flight so you can pre-fire/re-acquire/retarget for more functionality and a shorter lock-on time and its gold.

For aircraft their roles need to be less strict. A Valkyrie for example should be just as capable an air-superiority fighter as an ESF, just with a different playstyle to achieve it. This makes sense since the ESF fulfills too many roles: attack helicopter, dive-bomber, air-superiority fighter, CAS fighter, multi-role fighter and many loadouts can do these at once.
The Valkyrie plays the roles of transport and limited ground attack helicopter, that last role the ESF does better.
The Liberator plays the role of gunship and somewhat like a bomber.
Galaxy plays the role of mass transport and in some cases a gunship role.

The ESF does so much more than the rest with only one player required and with its loadouts more easily playing multiple roles.

Duh? You either use the galaxy for drops or escort it accordingly with ESF aces yourself. If you want air supremacy, climb in an ESF and fight for it. As infantry, I die more to shotgun reavers than liberator bombardement and THAT is the problem. As you said yourself: The ESF takes too many roles, so I am taking the role of dive-bomber away against infantry with making it less an incentive. We have the SkyGuard weapon platform on the Lightning, we have a myriad of launchers and several dozen infantry men on the ground who all could take arms and fight back in great numbers.

What do you want? A one-button-guaranteed-kill launcher or missile system making one man the hero of the day? Not gonna happen without an army of people screaming to nerf the thing to oblivion since it makes ESF play pointless. Remember the TR Striker launcher...

An AA missile launching system for the Lightning might look nice, but if it makes the Skyguard or man-held launcher systems obsolete or adds variation is up for discussion. My approach was to NOT add more weapons or buffing/nerfing weapons, my approach was to buff defensive equipment in order give defenders a way to fight back against ESFs. Remember that ESFs can even be harmed by normal infantry gunfire, so a dozen men shooting at them while they can't fire at the ground forces will make that type of target less appealing.

It doesn't take any skill to use a Beetlejuice but look at that monstrosity.

Real talk though, the reason you can't insta-gib an ESF with one by yourself is obvious. That wouldn't be fair if you couldn't enter the area at all, or else you'd get insta'd. However, it would require you to focus more on air domination first before you could do any A2G. You'd have to wait for your team to take out players with lock-ons. Anyways, increasing the range and time it takes to lock-on at long range wouldn't be a bad thing. It means that if any aircraft decides to linger and farm, they die for it. Thats fair.

And yet the banshee you're shooting your trash lock on launcher at can simply left click to mow down 10 dudes,
Zero skill, put trash in, get diamonds out.

Eyep. Same with rocket pods. Farm a group, end a sundy, and no one can do anything because your oh so skillful launcher can't get to that range before they move and your doo doo skilless lock-ons that are apparently the plague of Planetside don't have enough range to make their way over to an ESF either.

So long as lock-ons remain as they are, then yes I can say it's trash and leave it as is. They already pay out way more damage than it takes effort to put in, but some people won't be happy until they get 1000m 1hko lock-ons because they don't actually want any vehicles in the game at all.

If you want to go ahead and actually design a better G2A weapon then go ahead, but I've been down this road before and none of you ever seem to bother, like the op, and just suggest blanket buffs to a 0 skill playstyle instead.

lol image thinking using a juice takes as much skill as waiting for red square to turn green. Some real comedy going on in this thread lmao.

You already have to have air domintation before you do A2G, what are you talking about. Letting ground units completely shutdown air just removes the need for your own aircraft, making defenders even more powerful than they already are. Especially when lock-ons are on the most populous class anyway.

The reason lock-ons don't lock on further away is because infanty don't really render beyond 300 meters, so you'd just be taking mystery damage from who knows other than Gx20. MAXes have a much greater sphere of influence, so they render further away. This is the same reason the AV mana turret doesn't have 1000 meters of range anymore.

loooooool yes dude flying an aircraft takes as much skill as using a lock-on.
Hahahaha. That's why everyone is doing it right? lol

Demigan already suggested a good weapon design, and I like it, and no, I don't want it to 1 hit aircraft, but it should have more range. And I understand the whole infantry registry issue, that makes sense, but 300 meters can be cleared in like 3 seconds by an ESF. And the whole point of raising the AA lockon range is so that you can attack them at the same range they can smoke you and your stuff. The aircraft doesn't need to see the guy and kill him. He just needs to get away from the lockon. We can balance this more so that you can only lockon to an aircraft past 300 meters if their health is at X percent. Attribute it to the aircraft being hotter so the lockon launcher can detect it easier or something. Maybe when an aircraft is smoking, you can lock-on past 300 meters.

Regardless, I understand your point of view, but that doesn't excuse the fact that aircraft are near indestructible unless you are in another aircraft and are better than them. Thats different from the ground game. You don't need another tank to destroy a tank. Get C4. Spam rockets at it. You have options that don't suck.

I just did in this very thread, besides that those are just the bare-bones and that I have posted more in-depth versions with differentiation between large aircraft and small aircraft so large aircraft dont need to be super-resistant/as agile as ESF to be able to handle them:

One of the big problems is that everyone instantly assumes hyperboles, like Tormentos here who instantly assumes I am asking for a 1000m OHK lock-on even though the only players who have said such things are the people like him defending aircraft. I quite literally put in what I am asking and he goes off the rails. And you should have a more open mind too, you might not accuse someone directly but do say that 'people' arent happy until they have OHK lock-ons. Which people exactly? The last time I saw a claim like that it was perhaps a year or two ago and in the sense of "well if we cant have nice things due to air dominating we might as well not let them have nice things either", not a serious proposal as they wanted a more balanced gameplay but the people defending air just hyperbole everything and play the victims.

And you are the reason we cant have nice things like a balanced air-to-ground game, or a balanced air-game.

I quite literally tell you what I want, and you still go hyperbole with "YOU WANT OHK LOCK ONS". That is the dumb hyperbole you have to put in my mouth to justify your rantings. You can read exactly what I want: a skillful G2A missile launcher with no mentions of OHK anywhere or even an allusion to it. I also want all aircraft to be capable of a solid A2A role because there is no justification for letting the ESF be the only one capable of this role. As mentioned if that is the case it would be unbalanced because the team that would gain air dominance would automatically be able to nuke the ground without opposition. Hey thats pretty much how the game currently functions!

Your approach is to let air remain free of G2A threats. Adding/altering current designs is far more fun and fair than letting air keep raining diarhea down on the ground players virtually uncontested. You might say "oh but deterrents are scary when stacked on you!". Well first of all any dedicated AV/AI/AA weapon in the game is scary when stacked against its intended target and second of all they are so scary that most aircraft are downed by AV weapons instead because they are hovering/flying slowly and make easy targets.

I've already pointed out years ago how bad G2A weapons are. Almost every single G2A weapon capable of killing ground units kills more ground vehicles than aircraft. Yes, AA weapons that are used in a pinch against vehicles score more vehicle kills than their actual intended target, that is how bad these weapons are designed.

Some defensive equipment alone will never solve this problem unless it makes the ground units virtually immune. Although making all A2G weapons deterrent-style weapons through such means would be poetic justice it would not be a good thing for the game as a whole.

One of the other issues is rendering. If the ESF has just flown into the area, you can be locked on to him before you have rendered for him. Because of client side hit detection, he can even shoot the spot you are standing for this duration and he won't hit you.