[Suggestion] AA range/view distance absurd.

2nd time I actually had to take off since my repair all the sudden was staying even with gain/loss (but would of been loss once my rep tool was on cd). And when I took off I ended up having to bail or die with my craft at long distance from an unseen enemy flak. I only went back because of how absurd it was I couldn't see them and I wanted to attempt spotting them at that spot out of curiosity.

I think we must be talking about skill in 2 totally different ways.

To me, skill implies that someone can't do it. So asking for a weapon that requires skill, I would see as asking for a weapon that wasn't effective for x% of people.

Is that what you mean by "skill weapon"? Or do you mean something else? If that *is* what you mean, what is the % of players you want to be unable to use AA effectively?

ESFs have 2 user hurdles:
1) non-intuitive and hard to learn to move
2) performance after you learn is almost entirely skill based

You are talking about the 1st. But I am saying it's the 1st and 2nd that form the problem.

If ESFs just had the 1st problem, they wouldn't be nearly as bad. They'd just have a nasty learning curve, but then players could perform well with them. But since it has the 2nd problem too, even if/when they get past the basics curve, they still get mauled by the skill based outcomes.

You run into problems of:
1) who can reliably use the counter
2) are any of those people at the battle
3) if they are not at the battle, then Air will crush
4) if they are at the battle, Air can go check the next battle to see if maybe it is missing skilled enough AA players

An experienced ESF pilot almost never dies from most AA, even a lot of it. Experienced ESFs stay away from crowds, limit line-of-sight, and do test passes to assess threat levels.

I was fine with the old AA vs. ESFs, I just would have lowered the firepower of ESFs a lot. I don't know A2G for Libs and Gals enough to suggest balancing for them.

I have no interest in a high skill player being able to dodge damage and circumvent massed properly used AA.

I want pilots to use smarts, caution, loadouts, assessment, etc. to avoid AA damage.

I don't want skill difference to massive determine results difference. I only want it to slightly boost it up/down.

I prefer having tactics, strategy, preparation, caution, surprise, numbers, loadout, etc. provide the major performance factors.

AA in game now sounds terrible. Before, it wasn't bad in most cases, I used HA G2A Lockon and AA Base Turret a lot.

ESF actually has a lot of ways to play in areas with AA, unless it's an area that has no terrain to hide approaches/exits in.

I don't see it. I'll have to go re-read your post details.

I was not talking about G2A here. I was talking about how ESF as AA is broken because the ESF cannot reliably be used as AA vs. other ESF (or Valks or Gals for that matter).

Well, I understand what you are saying now at least. You are saying you want AA so that 20% of players can't use it.

Do you really think that 20% of players can't use a Carbine?

Actually, the ESFs are a terrible experience because yes the (1) skill reward problem, but also the (2) non-intuitive flight mechanics.

HA + Certs + Shield + MedKit + ADAD + Headshots is a fairly similar example to the problems with ESF. Especially so if the attacker is using a gun that has a small Damage/Mag that literally means the attacking player is dead once they fire on the HA from behind.

What I mean by skill weapon is a weapon that has some form of skill floor and skill ceiling. The skill floor can be almost zero, aside from the basics of FPS gameplay. The skill ceiling can be anything, but the power for reaching that skill ceiling does not have to make you virtually impervious. For example, there is an almost infinite skill ceiling to be reached with rocketlaunchers, but firing a rocketlauncher from the back of a moving Harasser at someone more than 300m away means the opponent requires virtually no skill to avoid getting hit in the first place, and even if he does get hit in a vehicle for example the damage is going to be unrewarding compared to the skill it required to actually pull it off. But in this case that's not a problem, as the weapon wasn't intended for such extreme range. Within it's effective range, anyone can use it to varying effects, no one is going to be powerless. Unfortunately the amount of power that any G2G launcher has is pretty unrewarding vs any vehicle and the lack of skill they need to murder you right back.

No, I'm talking about the second. Learning how to move is one thing, but the maneuvers themselves even after learning offer little solution with the exception of Hover Fighting and RM. You could be 50x more skillful than an RM/HF pilot, but that's not going to help you if the RM/HF pilot uses his skillset simply because it grants far more power than any other maneuver. Additionally, having more skill in RM/HF increases your power exponentially, the opposite of a good skillcurve where the closer to the skill ceiling you get the less power you get additionally.

Yes, I've covered that only half a million times already.

Everyone, I keep saying that literally, Everyone, yet you still get hung up on %'s that I couldn't even guarantee if the best developers in the world made it. With the exception of 0% and 100%.

This all doesn't matter because this isn't a problem for the weapons I'm proposing.

And you don't even have to be experienced. And even then, the G2A can be 50x more skillful than any of the pilots he engages, in the end it's almost 95% up to the pilot if he dies or not, rather than the G2A player who could be pinpoint perfect with his lead and have done some perfect maneuvering and still not get rewarded for it.

The old AA wasn't fine, at all. 3+ G2A sources to kill or deter a single vehicle of the most lone-wolf vehicle in the game? Yeah that sounds reasonable /s.

Why would they magically be capable of circumventing massed properly used AA? A ground vehicle attacked by massed properly used AV doesn't stand a real chance either does he? So how could the aircraft suddenly have that power?

And I want that too, that's why I proposed this system. But for some reason you get hung up on things that aren't even a problem.

Yes, that's what I'm saying. So what's the problem?

Yes, so? That's exactly what my idea's for G2A will do. And it won't have those nasty little things like mass-G2A being able to lock aircraft completely out of the fight, and the effective range of these weapons can be far better regulated with my G2A weapons than with any currently existing G2A weapons.

And it was terrible.

Yes, that's what I keep saying. But again: Why should they? Why should they try to learn the skills of playing in area's with AA if they can just go to an area without it in a minute and have a breeze until they pull AA there and they can either curbstomp it or leave for another area without AA again?

That's again a problem I solve with my G2A weapons: I make them useful before aircraft arrive and after aircraft leave. No more ways to look for a fight without G2A. Fighting while G2A is around should be par of the course, just like fighting while there's AI or AV is par of the course for everyone else.

You are better off looking for threads where I've already laid down more detailed weapons. And the thing is that those things can be changed to modify how easy or hard they are to use. You can modify their projectile velocity, the flak detonation range from tiny (0,5m) to normal (8m, which is ridiculously large) to large (current Striker distance of a whopping 20m, seriously that's 2 Sunderer lengths in any direction?!?). You can add guidance like laser-guidance and allow the missile different agility. A very very low agility could be used for smart munitions that can make only small adjustments to their direction to try and have a slightly higher accuracy, or you can have the ultra-high agility of things like Coyote's and Strikers which basically hit whenever they come within range of an aircraft, or anything in between. And that's just the start of it.

Since they are the most reliable AA in the game it only goes to show how bad the G2A system is.

No, I was explaining how a normal bell-curve would look like, approximately. Then I explain that because almost everyone (as in more than 80%) can use a Carbine, the low-skill end of the Skillcurve would be less than 1% (meaning more than 99% of the players can use it). In more detail it's going to be the less than 1% of the players that are completely new to the FPS genre and simply need to learn the basic FPS mechanics. I just thought I didn't have to spell it out and that you would understand from the context.

Ok, so barring bad game design such as allowing ADAD to jinx the system and cause improper hitbox placement and the fact that HA's have an omniversal usage in the game unparalleled by other classes, the skill is more or less equal. You can compensate a bad skill in COF control by better knowing what ranges to shoot at or how to flank for example. If someone superior in all categories attacks you, then you are most likely screwed yes. But that's still a good mechanic as you don't want players to win on basically RNG alone.

indeed i do and i also want diverse weapons .. here is the thing ...you say g2a .. and all the weapons i mentioned have that g2a role (not just lock ons which you probably mean) ..
and saying that lock on´s require no skill is false ... they still require aiming, they even require patience ( cause the lock is either not done or you simply miss with the dumpfire on the lowcost lock ons) and awareness from which direction the aircraft comes from .. being skilled is not all purely bout aiming ...

infantry for the most part avoids fire by taking cover or hide in buildings but gets busted when out in the open by pretty much everything there is... the same is true for esf´s
get behind cover and even a lockon may hit a tree or hill or mountain .. which is most true on hossin
still esf mobility allows them to avoid flak and gunfire were infantry is and groundvehicles are less mobile
otherwise realy how do you want to make infantry vs a2g fair? remove lolpots and just keep noseguns and fire by wire launchers? quite the monotone arsenal that would offer


considering the above quotation ..
when was being taken out by a sniper ever fun?( or being ohk by a tankcannon as infantry)
translate that to a esf being OHK by a tankcannon or dumpfire ... you would be just as pissed no matter what mistake you did or how good your advesary was .. but to me that´s simply the way things are and you simply have to deal with it (aside from realy broken stuff that needs adjustmeant) ...
so with that in mind the most fun weapon for both sides would be likely a burstfiretypeweapon because it doesn´t intakill, still may do fair dmg on hit but also allow for a bit of fire exchange ..

also speaking bout g2a usefullness all of the rocketlaunchers can still be used if aircraft is not around .. you still can use the lowcost airlockons dumbfire against vehicles or maxes .. annihilator and swarm have lock on for both air and ground with the exception of infantry and maxes .. lock ons are technically avoidable by staying out of lock on range (i know ...duh) or keep moving so the missile can´t curve well or hits cover .. and then of course flares being the "hardcounter" ..
and you do have a fire by wire weapon in the form of the masamune ...
you could adjust dmg or projectilevelocity (or both) based on the firemode of each rocketlauncher
for instance if you use the lock on function of the low cost air lock on the projectilespeed is lower than firing it as dumbfire
maybe even ad a damagebonus on the dumbfire but still keep it less effective against infantry over the default launcher just as one example .. that way you may even encourage people to go for dumpfire when aircraft flies by too quick for a lock
i am however against removing lock ons entirely ..
walker can still be used against both infantry and vehicles despite not being able to use it on low turretpitch
so the losers here again are ranger/burster and skyguard .. still i don´t see why these should be removed ..
i don´t see a advantage in homogenising the entire arsenal .. you take away variety/diversaty with that which imo is not good ...

Why would I mean just lock-ons? I've made dozens of threads by now, my latest was this one:
https://forums.daybreakgames.com/ps2/index.php?threads/possible-alternatives-for-g2a.247557/

I'll just explain some things I want from G2A, that would take away the random idea that I'm somehow taking away variety from a system that has practically no variety already.

First, an implementation of AA and AAA. Anything that can hit an ESF with some reliability isn't going to have trouble hittin a Liberator, Valkyrie or Galaxy. Allowing an AA weapon to simply tear a Liberator apart would be unfair to the Liberator as it simply doesn't have the speed or small size to avoid the shots. It would also be unfair to the AA guy if he can't ever do something against a Liberator unless in groups, which is the system we have now. So we need a set of AAA weapons.
The current HEAT canon is a very good candidate for an AAA weapon and would set the tone for other AAA weapons. The HEAT needs something to set it apart from the other two weapons currently, and simply improving it's elevation range would solve it. It would give it better function against high-ground infantry/C4 fairies, it would give it the option to deal with Galaxies, Valkyries and Liberators but the shell drop and velocity of the weapon limit it's range against them and prevent the option to lock down the area by massing HEAT tanks. Although having a mass of HEAT tanks would ofcourse be a problem for a solo aircraft, just like a mass of AV/AI is going to be a problem for a solo tank/infantry simply because there's so much. To make sure the HEAT canon isn't better at AA than the dedicated AA weapons, the HEAT canon would no longer OHK an ESF. If the accuracy is too low on the weapon you could give it smart ammunition from my thread above to increase the chances it'll hit something big in the air.

Then there's the option to include weapons that can switch between AA and AAA so that you aren't useless when another aircraft comes along.
More options: Free weapons, resource-per-shot utility weapons (like C4 cost. Cost, not power per hit ya dummies), and buy-once-use-till-death (like how you buy a designator for your Orbital Strike but this one costs nanites. Again, you don't buy a designator, you buy an AA/AAA weapon). Ofcourse the Buy-once-use-till-death weapons would include ground vehicles, before someone now makes the conclusion that this is only about infantry and it's seriously sad that I have to spell everything out.
Each of those options would again have the option to deal with aircraft with various power. The buy-once-use-till-death weapons would be about on-par with an aircraft since similar to the aircraft you lose it upon death. The resource-per-shot would have a power depending on it's cost and ease-of-use. a cheap and easy to use weapon would naturally have a low damage output while an expensive and hard to use weapon would have a far more powerful damage output.


On to some actual weapon idea's:
Auto-canon:
Let's start with a vehicular based AA weapon because otherwise people will still go "it's all about infantry!" and somehow make that a problem.
Auto-canons would function similar to the Enforcer, Saron and Viper. It is a small magazine weapon that fires shots rapidly. It could have a small COF increase per shot, but doesn't have to. A small COF increase per shot means that in long-range you have to fire in short bursts rather than hold the trigger.
It could switch between AA and AAA by making the velocity higher or slower (lore explanation: AA uses rocket-propulsed shells and AAA conserves that fuel for detonation or something).
Besides standard direct-hit shells this weapon could make use of (and read my thread above if you want to understand) smart-ammunition, FFP, RFFP, small flak detonation range (between 0,5 and 2m, rather than the massive 8m range from normal flak). Potentially the weapon can switch ammo type on the fly by pressing X, B or even just fire different types using left mouse, space, ctrl and C. I'm not saying it should have access to all these types of ammo at the same time, I'm saying that you could have various auto-canons that have access to different ammo types, and that you could set up the ammo types to be either AA or AAA and allow the same auto-canon to switch between them to set it for either AA or AAA.
There, a single auto-canon that has more than 10 variations with 2 firing modes already (more variations if you add more than 2 firing modes as additional weapons), and that's just for that single auto-canon. If you add another one with a larger magazine for example, or one with slower but larger shells, or one with high velocity small clips and short reloads or whatever else you can think off, you have another 7 variations for each. So no, I'm not trying to make the G2A game have a lower variety. Considering there's just flak, Walkers and lock-ons it's kinda hard to reduce the variety any further.
An additional advantage of these auto-canons is that they can perform secondary roles. You can give them an anti-infantry and anti-light-armor role, allowing it to accurately hit Harassers several times and finish them off, but also to deal with long-range AV nests with several accurate shots where the AOE effect of other AI tank weapons isn't effective. You can also give them a long-range AV role themselves, but with lowered damage so they don't dominate in short to mid-range fights. This means these type of weapons will be around before the aircraft arrive, and will still be around and useful after they leave.

Lock-ons/missile-based weapons:
These do not necessarily have to be on infantry and could be options added to vehicles as well. In fact, I would heavily encourage DBG to give all ground vehicles access to a top-mounted weapon with limited AA capabilities so that no vehicle is ever defenseless against aircraft. Now on to actual idea's for these weapons.

Maintain-lock weapons:
Rather than current fire-and-forget weapons, you have to maintain lock. The lock-on time would be reduced for faster acquisition, the lock-on angle would be reduced so that you have to aim closer to the center to lock on to a target and give aircraft a way to shake the lock. Locks can be acquired after the missile is fired, and a broken lock can be re-acquired (on a different target if necessary) if the player has the skill for it.
You can again give this missile access to FFP, RFFP, flak and direct-hit ammo. Additionally the missile could have 3 variants of missile agility: Slow agility, meaning you have to lead the target and hope it gets within lock-on range otherwise the missile will miss despite a lock. High-agility, like current missiles that can sometimes do insane turns in split-seconds, and anything in between the two so that aircraft have a higher or lower chance to dodge the missile depending on how agile you make it.

Laser-guided missile:
I already talked about this one in the for of laser-guided flak warheads. But it could also use FFP, RFFP, direct-hit and smart-ammo. To keep flares useful the weapon has an invisible lock-on angle that doesn't help with guiding the missile, but does alert the aircraft it's being locked-on. If it uses flares the missile will stop tracking the laser-guidance as long as the flare works and the player has the aircraft that used the flare within it's invisible lock-on angle.
Similar to the previous missile, you could have low agility, high agility and middle-agility on the missile to determine how much skill in leading you need to properly hit the target.

Also keep in mind that this doesn't have to be a single missile, you could fire a bunch of smaller missiles per attack for example.

I could come up with a few more idea's, but since each of these can already have several dozen variants with ammo type, magazine capacity, ROF, projectile agility, projectile velocity and damage I don't think it's necessary.

Compared to other weapons in the game, they require virtually no skill. Hence "no skill weapons". In the end everything takes skill, a Grandma capable of typing 2 letters a minute also has a skill (namely reading, the knowledge that the keyboard is linked to the screen and capability to find the right letter eventually), but it's not exactly a skill to write home about.

Oh you summer child, you have no idea how much the sniper has evolved for this exact reason.
Getting OHK'd by a sniper isn't fun, but the point is that the chance to get OHK'd can be reduced.
In the early games, snipers were hitscan weapons. The sound of the snipers didn't carry far, there was no tracer to see, if the bullet didn't strike anything nearby you so you could hear or see the impact you would rarely ever know it was shot.
So the developers started designing new ways for the sniper to work. It still did a OHK, but now they had a physical bullet travel from your weapon to the target, bullet drop was introduced, the bullet got tracers to make it visible and tell someone "You are under fire!!!", the bullet itself got a sound as it passes nearby targets, the sniper got louder firing sounds and radar minimaps often show people's position when firing. While the OHK on a headshot persists, it became harder to pull off a headshot and if the target remains moving then he'll get a notification he's under fire and can react to it before he's killed.

i don´t realy care .. it still pisses me off when i´m on the recieving end .. and i don´t think i would be any less pissed
being basicaly railgunned ... and instahit sniping is still a thing in games like UT4 even with quiker movement and all .. and yea i get just *** pissed .. YES i would mind it being that way in ps2 too ..
still doesn´t change my stance on having lock ons taken away, instead it emphases what i said about adjust the modes of each rocketlauncher .. one solution would imo be to decrease the projectile and/or turningcapabilities and maybe decrease projectiledistance like with the phoenix

what does AAA stand for in this context? (you people and your abreviations :/ )

realy all there is to say about this is that i myself have asked for more AA options be that high ROF guns
or high alpha autocannons or missiles and missilebatteries be that for vehicles or in some cases for infantry (primarily engineer cause HA´s have enough options that may just need further tweaking for the moment i think .. of course more doesn´t nessesarily hurt

i even had that idea of a bfg/fusioncannon style weapon with ammo costing nanites so i am not against the idea of nanite costing weapons either ..

https://forums.daybreakgames.com/ps2/index.php?threads/bfg-esk-ns-heavyweapon.244973/

be that a infantry or vehicleweapon or both ..

Relying on cover would be fine if AA only fought against A2G aircraft. But my problem with that arrangement is that cover isn't an option for the other half of aircraft, the A2A pilots. They're unique in the game in that they need to rely on maneuvering to avoid fire, and area-effect flak and lock-ons don't allow them to do that.

Effective sniping is difficult, and when I die to a single headshot I usually feel that it was my fault for standing too still while out of cover or that we need our own counter snipers to get to work. Half of infantry combat is figuring out how to move cover to cover with minimal risk. One big problem with snipers in this game is the Commissioner. It's basically a side-grade of a primary and allows snipers to be effective at any range. But when you look at games like Squad and Arma, they pay for that long range superiority by being easy targets if you maneuver in close. As far as OHK from tanks, I want AP to get its OHK back. HESH needs to OHK within a smaller range and it needs its anti-armor ability tuned down a touch. But I think that's pretty balanced otherwise. What's messed up is base design, such as putting the only point in a clearing overlooked by a hill. Or a spawnroom surrounded by hills without the slightest bit of cover for infantry to move in to the base. But I don't blame vehicles for that, they should stay powerful for the resources they cost.

There are situations now where there is substantive damage that pilots can't see. Part of this is bullets paths not rendering, nor impacts rendering in third person view. On top of that, blinding flak has returned.

I've shifted to the opinion now that G2A has been buffed too much, and now needs reductions of slight amounts (-5 off Skyguard Indirect, 10% Ranger damage reduction to pull it inline and make it on par with Skyguard damage so that skyguard is more efficient than ranger harasser. Which I'm not entirely against removing entirely from the game.)

Archer needs a full revert to Pre-CAI, and then buffed against MAXes.

Its too effective vs. aircraft, and at a minimum needs more bullet drop.

Tweaking damage won't fix this problem. Flak needs to change from an area-effect weapon to an accurate and highly damaging gun, with some sort of damage falloff, or at least a low damage burst with direct hits re-introduced.

What aircraft is the Archer too strong against? Even against farming ESF, if they sit around to die to that many hits then they deserve it. I like that it's no longer a hard counter to Maxes and is actually useful as an anti-infantry weapon. I'm fine with more drop to limit its ranged potential, but its damage is fine.

You realize the only AA weapon currently more powerful than before is the Ranger, right?
And you realize that the Skyguard now has pre-CAI damage levels, but with a larger COF (and thus less accuracy) than before, right?

But for some reason, now the Skyguard needs less damage against aircraft despite it just having been nerfed anyway?

The Valkyrie takes way too much damage from the Archer. Coming from me, the Archer main.

The Valk is a little more resistant to it than an ESF, except it's at least three times easier to hit along with a longer exposure time. (ESF is confirmed 6-12 shots to kill, Valk is put just below half or closer to a 1/3 from a full mag from my experience in common ranges) I've had good pilots angle the belly towards me to reduce the damage, but they're usually retreating by that point due to the heavy damage I already inflicted.

ESFs on the other hand need to take much more damage for their relative difficulty to hit several times within the aircraft's very low exposure time. I'm talking getting one-clipped somewhere within 50-80m. The game as a whole needs more defensive AA that doesn't also have easy hits at crazy ranges. Tweaking Archer resistances is a good placeholder until (if) AA is reworked to be skill-based and effective.

Yes, now the Skyguard needs less indirect damage against aircraft, as the flak detonation bugs that affected it immediately post CAI, and in my view colored opinions that it had been "Nerfed" have been corrected. Your perception of the effectiveness in the immediate post CAI could be re-evaluated in this light.

I've previously asked for skyguard to be buffed. Skyguard is now more effective relatively than it was before pre-CAI. This is part of the eternal cycle of balance and re-balance. We cannot logically expect each side of an euqation to be on eternally increasing effectiveness scale simply because they have always been previously ineffective, thus shaping our expectation of any change as "Not enough, needs more buff."

The buff has been sufficient. Barring a system revamp of how AA works, the skyguard needs a minor damage reduction, and the Ranger needs to be swung back down. G2A launchers are sufficiently within range to be left alone, given that they have no associated resource cost.

Archer, as Sazukata pointed out, has issues in that Valk and ESF share resistance vulnerabilities to small arms, yet Valk is eminently easier to hit.

The Archer's resistance category isn't Small Arms. The Archer is NS-AM7 Archer.
You are correct, however, that the Archer has the same resistance multiplier for both ESF and Valkyrie.

You can be pissed off, but the sniper mechanics have been made much more favorable than before.
I also made a suggestion about having lock-ons changed. There's no reason to keep current lock-ons. They require far lower skill than just about anything else in the game, are often annoying for the user who feels that the lock-ons expose him too long giving the aircraft enough time to stomp his face in and annoying for the aircraft as aside from stomping the lock-on into the ground or fleeing they have little options to deal with it. Current lock-ons are still deterrents, and deterrents are bad design through and through.

Just think it like this: They are a different type of hitscan sniper in how much annoyance they create, only this time it's also annoying for the user.

Anti-Air Artillery.
In real-life it's more emplacements and big trucks carrying large long-range missiles, in PS2 the "artillery" could just stand for "anything with heavy damage to large aircraft and a tough chance to hit on ESF".

How has the Skyguard exactly been buffed according to you?
And if the Skyguard has been bugged, shouldn't you be fixing the bug instead of nerfing the rest of the vehicle? I know that the devs did that to aircraft but that doesn't mean it's good design.

The devs could make lolpods work like Typhoon locklets (i.e. relatively high damage to vehicles/aircraft for direct hits - but no splash damage).

That would stop them being used as an inescapable infantry farming tool - would still give them an AV/AA role.

The flip side of that is - ground units only tend to pull AA weapons when they start getting farmed - because of the massive disadvantage many AA weapons bring (not to mention - many A2A dogfights occur at an altitude where lockons aren't effective anyway).

In my experience, in fights where there are loads of A2A pilots slugging it out - but no ground farmers - the ground units tend to ignore air completely and concentrate on their ground fight.

This isn't a suggestion btw, you need to propose a solution or an improvement to be making a suggestion.

i don´t see how your lock on suggestion solves the exposureissue .. the same lock on user now has to actualy keep visual on the aircraft and is not able to defend himself when under fire ... otherwise the general outcome means missing ..
switch to gun = miss
get killed = miss
brake line of sight by just a branch or pole = miss
at best this is just another option of lock ons with more damge fore higher/risk reward .. but i don´t see this solve anything realy ...

yea i disagree ...

flak still needs to be lead, you can´t just hold down and think you gonna trash that aicraft and the further away said aircraft is the more flak spreads ..
lock ons have limited lock range .. outside of that range a lock on user can´t do a thing ...

it´s not a matter of how risky/rewarding a action is ..
it´s a matter of the person on the recieving end .. any action can be as hard as it wants to be this is not what i am discussing ..
just take the lightning or sunderer user f.e. with his default vehicle being in the middle of a fight be it against vehicles or supportfire to a captureable base .. suddenly "BOOM" you hit mines, "BOOM" you got C4`ed .. immidiate death on hit .. get that many times over and it´s likely that your lose your cool .. some even ragequit ..
and that is the case for your average non HA/non max infantryplayer aswell .. there are only so many times a player can deal with instantkills of any kind ...

regarding AP ohk .. how then is infantry supposed to support vehicles and maxxes in openspacebattles without people getting frustrated the frigg out their minds? especialy if vehiclecaptureable bases may become more and more a thing?
why should openspace/openarea battle be exclusive to just vehicles?
decrease the ttk and people stop going out unless in a vehicle themselves .. so no heavies that fight against vehicles outside of a base, medics already can only watch (who even usesa medic as a driver?) as well as infils because there would be nothing to snipe realy .. and engineers are the pilots .. maxxes are also not used outside of a base, spawnroom or sunderer ... how was that with combined arms and teamplay? because that is pretty absent at the moment when it comes to open area play from my experience ..