[Suggestion] Add a counter to lock ons, buff external fuel tanks

AA lock ons are getting out of hand. The default secondary for esf is crap compared to pods/lock ons. A possible solution to both problems would be to add a secondary effect to the external fuel tanks:

As long as you have afterburn active, lock-on weapons will not be able to finish locking on to you.

Basicaly, there is the default 2.5 sec to lock on. But then, as long as a esf with the external fuel tanks is afterburning, you will not get the green lights to fire. If the esf stops afterburning and you have kept him in sight already for the weapon to lock on you will be able to fire at any time. Fired missiles chasing the esf will be unaffected.

This change would:

1. Give new fliets a fair fighting chance against the massive onslaught of lock ons that awaits them as they take their first flying baby steps.

2. Remove part of the MASSIVE imbalance betwen players who bought new secondary weapons and the ones playing with the default esf.

3. Give pilots a very potent tool to counter lock-ons at the cost of their rocket pods/AA missiles. You will have the choice between more firepower or more survivability.

4. Allow people to actually use something else then flares. Currently, if you get multiple locks with flares down you die. If you could delay missiles by several seconds skilled pilots could manage to reach suitable terrain to block the missile.

Thoughts?

Given the way things have gone since release I'm pretty sure that the devs actually have a personal vendetta against non-flare utilities and any new player who ever gets into an ESF. Shooting down low-BR players with missiles or bursters now sort of feels like killing the confused BR1 light assault who just landed near you used to, before they started spawning in bases and TKing people out of fright and confusion.

I think the sentiment and direction you're taking is the right one, but the idea itself could use abit more polish. Still great, though.

I just think they should get the Afterburner tank a few stuff to cert. More fuel, more speed etc.

I never felt good killing those people. I feel the need to inform them that they just had a really really bad drop and it's better once they get rolling in a Sunderer instead. The first welcome to Planetside 2 should NOT be a tank round to the face.

I'm in no way against a buff for the external fuel tanks. The simplest way is to just make them last longer. Allows you more quickly get terrain between you and the missile user, while at the same time increasing your chance to evade/pursue other aircraft.

Personally I don't think the ground-based lock-on missiles are a huge problem though. I get locked a whole lot, but when they hit they only seem to do something like 1/3 of my HP in damage, allowing for me to retreat and repair. I have yet to be killed by a G2A missile, and only once by A2AMs. My most lethal enemy is terrain, I mostly die to crashing while trying to evade enemies or doing random fancy flying X3. Second most common cause of death is other ESFs, with general AA being the cause of my death something like 10% of the time, mostly burster MAXes. The main guns of enemy tanks kill me more often than G2A and A2A missiles X3.

As long as you have afterburn active, lock-on weapons will not be able to finish locking on to you.

C'mon, are you even trying to be somewhat serious? With this, people could use afterburner everytime the lock-on notice appears.

I have the auraxian medal with A2G pods, and i've been killed by A2A/G2A pods a total of 3 times since launch. Lock-ons are NOT overpowered, get inside your ESF and learn to maneuver properly ffs. This game doesn't need to be dumbed down just because YOU can't fly ESFs properly.

This suggestion makes no sense to my military mind. Seeing as the MANPADs that are fired at aircraft in PS2 are "heat seeking" having the Afterburner on, which is dumping RAW fuel into the engine exhaust thus increasing the power output and heat, how would that make locking on harder?

Its not that hard to avoid MANPADs now, just have to do what real pilots call, "BE OUTSIDE THE COCKPIT" Its where you use that thing above your shoulders called a head, and you turn it to see where possible threats are.

I have a Mossy that does not have flares or stealth, and I can avoid missiles pretty easily, even after the patch. Just drop down behind a tree/wall/cliff/mountain or even a rock. Its not that hard people, and they dont even hit for that much damage, this is why I quit using mine on my HA.

How about this for a suggestion for you people who cant seem to grasp the concept of looking around.

-SOE add a RWR, (Radar Warning Reciever), that tells you which direction and roughly how far away the threat that is locking on to you is.

Even though this makes my head hurt, how a passive thermal guided tracking system would register on a passive detection system boggles my mind. But hey its a game.

The saddest part were the ones who didn't yet realize you were an enemy, and would stand there looking around like 5 feet away, and it's like... well... better you than me. *BAM*

No, if any thing make the lock on rocket variations cost a small amount of resources to help cut on spam, and everyone won't be running around with one out, they will keep the dumb fire until overwhelm by air. <- If you use a lock on against tanks your not very good at this game, and only hurting yourself.

Why is it that every flyboy seems to think they should be invincible some way or another to lock on and ground fire. I say invincible because you are suggesting they can't lock on to you while you are afterburning. I am assuming you are planning to do your normal hover spam until your almost dead, then AB away. Flak wont really be able to keep hitting you, and now people also can not lock onto you.

Its completely unrealistic for one person to not die when faced with 10 or 15 people who are focused on killing them. Why do you think they toned down Air in the place, why do you think 1 Liberator can no longer hold the entire map down its self.

I mean seriously its low skill, medium reward, very helpful to your team. But this is 1000x better then 20 aircraft per hex and anything else moving is insta gibbed. You pilots keep talking like you get killed without time to react and that's ********, you just reacted to slow. I wish you would have been playing infantry upon release to see what an Instagib really feels like. You do not even get the chance to look and see where you got hit from just /die and when you respawn at a sundy across the hex you get hit again and blown up, so you try the spawn room in the area, its camped, same Liberator and or ESF.

If you make them cost a small amount of resources, then you will just have people quit with guided missiles, and just ramming ESFs into other ESFs. I would be cheaper and more effective.

Eh, not sure about that, combine flares with the non-extended after burner and lolpodders would never get locked, they don't even have to fly away to avoid it, just flare up and then pull a reverse manoeuvres and lolpod again.

Just extending the afterburner capacity when using it as secondary by say 25% would help, means if you have it as secondary and something starts locking you can try and burn out of there, atm I usually fall just that little bit short of what I need to get behind some cover and break the lock with my Mozzy and Reaver (neither of which have flares yet) on my Scythe I can usually get out of ground lock-on with flares and then a burn, but vs an enemy ESF with lock on pods I'm toast if I try and run at the moment, only option is to flare up and turn to fight.

The issue with surface to air homing missiles is mostly that there's no indication where you're being locked from (or even that it is on the surface), nor how many are locking you and ultimately how many missiles there are at what proximity to your plane. A single homing missile from a HA is far from being imbalanced, it just rapidly becomes that way the more there are because the information available to the pilot is basically:

-I'm being locked (by someone from somewhere using some weapon).
-I'm being fired at (by at least one person).
-It hasn't hit me in the face so by now it's behind me (at some distance).

The only thing that even comes close to being as annoying as AA is the gigantic battles where bullets come from everywhere and nowhere because most of the participants don't properly exist. Even a liberator firing at my tank from orbit is visible once I know to look for it, and a sniper shooting at me from a distance where I can't tell him apart from the terrain without a scope leaves a tracer (in fact if he kills me instantly I often still get a rough idea where he was and go get him after I respawn).

He said if the missile was already fired it wouldn't be affected by beginning to AB. There's no way you can keep AB active long enough that you could flare and use that to stick around until flares recharge, nor would pulsing help if it doesn't actually break the lock, so I'm not quite sure what you expect to occur there.

Also, using the term 'lolpod' makes you seem a bit... 'special'... by the way.

EDIT: actually looking back, the suggestion didn't even include this effect for default AB.

Well if it's for extended afterburner only I can see the logic, if for default burner, no thanks, they podder won't need to stick around until the flare recharges, just until the pods have reloaded. Still think just buffing the extended afterburner will even it up though.

As for lolpod making me look special, well, it's a fairly common term on these forums... *le shrug*.

You can't quit with guided missiles unless you want us to lose the fight

And Lock ons are not whats killing the majority of the aircraft anyways. Bursters and Skyguards are doing all the damage. Lock ons just hit them when they are running away. People just wont be using them 24/7 I dont mean like 100 resources per.

Like 25-50...And every tactic you mentioned being more effective IS more effective then lock on missiles. They still really are not ****. And without some other REAL AA like My SG or a Max you are not getting the job done.

A lock-on supporter who does not want the game to be dumbed down? Oh the irony. And I already am afterburning every time a lock-on appears, trying desperatly to find cover before I'm struck down by 2-3 missiles, fired from somewhere, by someone.

Well, gameplay over realism and all that. Never been quite sure why people are applying our worlds logic to a completely fictional game, in a completely fictional world. For all we know, this could be a alternative reality, where the laws of physics work differently. . .

Have you ever tried to hoverspam with afterburners activated? Let me tell you, it is quite tricky, and next to impossible to snipe inf with nose gun during it. You would be able to hover for 2.5 sec (3.5 with max stealth) before hitting the afterburners, and then continuously afterburn for the reminder of your hover time.
As for dying to 10-15 people. . . This game is designed around massive battles with up to a hundred players on each side. Aircraft NEEDS to be able to survive, should 10-15 of those people decide to raise their sight above ground level and aim at the sky instead.

Note - This does nothing for the 'baby infantry' or 'baby tanks' versus air who get no fighting fair chance against air in response to this, so again, this is hardly 'balanced'.

Afterburner == A heat signature to lockon to. Flares are a secondary heat signature that confuses the lockon (Resulting in the missile thinking it is on target, when in fact it is not the original target), but does not make it 'stop working'. Afterburner would not necessarily stop it.

Last I saw, flares are fairly potent. Blowing it affects more than one Lockon user, not just one. If more than one Lockon user is trying to target a person, the flare confuses all of them from what I saw.

Lastly, you forget that there is one more thing that does help Air and Tanks for lockons besides Flare/Smoke. Vehicle stealth gives pilots/tankers an additional .5 seconds lockon delay.

Note also - Infantry has to be using in GROUPS to deal with a vehicle that is 'FAST' and able to use a heavier weapon loadout. It still requires multiple people to kill an ESF or requires the ESF to be in the field of fire for over 3 seconds + flight time for one person.

While you want to protect the 'baby ESF' people, thing is... They have to learn the same as everyone else that there is crap out there that will just pretty much kill them if they do something they shouldn't. Just as infantry is expected to work their way up to get their benefits and the same for the tankers, the ESFers have to do the same as everyone else.

And mind you, the cost to deal with an ESF (IE: Lockon weapons) is a mimimum of 100 Certs, the cost of flares to get Flak Armor. 1000 certs to get one of two G2A lockons. And while baby infantry have access to MAX (Timer based, but requires skill to do reasonably well with the SINGLE burster weapon), and the AA turret (Limited to only certain locations) A baby ESF pilot does not deserve any special treatment over a baby infantry or a baby tank user (Where they do not have any GOOD Anti-Air except spending a minimum of 1000 certs or 700 SC for a Skyguard gun for the Lightning or the AA deterrent on their MBT, which they also suffer against lockons, but also AIR shooting their rear.)

I play all three aspects, and while I deal with lockons as much as an ESF in a tank, I also deal with engineers, light assaults and sometimes even medics and HA way out of range hitting me with dumbfire and not getting much idea where they are except a general direction that I have enough sense to 'GTHO'. Others should be learning, just as the rest of us, how to deal with it, just as air jockeys keep telling infantry to get AA or an ESF to deal with air, telling ground pounders they don't know how 'easy' infantry got it... There is always the flipside the air jockeys don't see either from the ground pounder side.

I agree the dual burster max is the best AA in game, and the SG isnt bad either, but both are FAR better than lock on missiles.

It's pretty rare in my experience that you know who fired the missile anyway. Either he's right in front of you and you see it happen, or the location is really obvious like some guys sitting on a pad or those spawn rooms with an exit to the roof. If you're that sure of it, you could already have dropped flares and attacked as-is, and even if he managed to fire another rocket you'd kill him before he killed you. In fact that's probably a pretty good way to tell how rare it is that they know who fired it from where... theoretically they could come back and get you, even sans flares, if it's just you firing.

Yes... yes it is.