AIr to Air missles most worthless cert item

It is usable against libs and galaxies ATM. Its usable against ESFs too if they are not paying attention to you.

As for the second part, A2Am takes out about 1/3 of your health.
That would put the A2Am user at a huge advantage, considering you can hardly put down any damage using the nose-guns.
Its a very easy weapon to use compared to nose-guns. And i believe that it does not improve your skill in the Air gameplay.

If they make the tracking more skill based, then sure. But in its current state: NO

What they can do for the sake of ideas. (I'm against it whatsoever)

They can make the cone smaller depending on how far your target is.

You are dead wrong and isaidhi3 is right, the Tomcats do not require you to maintain a lock after firing them. I have been using them for the last week at least and I have had no issues by firing them and then switching to my nose gun, or firing them and then pulling off/losing line of sight of the enemy.

The problem with A2A missiles is not that they are OP or Useless.. But there is huge problem with how they were implemented and how ESFs can defend against them.

1- it makes no sense whatsoever that a HA with a rocket launcher can lock on at 400+ meters, fire and forget, while an ESF has to get within 200 meters, and needs to maintain a lock. This is complete BS. ESF A2A missiles should lock on from at least as far as G2A missiles and should be fire and forget.

2- to compensate for the longer range and the fire and forget, the lock on time could be adjusted, or the lock on cone could be reduced, making it increasingly difficult to lock on in a close range encounter.

3- ESFs should not have more than 8 A2A missiles (4 on each side) at max ammo capacity.

4- Flares should be completely revamped. They shouldn't be unlimited and on a cooldown. Flares should have ammo capacity and a % of success. Each flare could provide a 66% chance to evade a missile. An ESF could have up to 10 flares with max certs. And pilots could decide to use just 1 or multiple flares to ensure they evade the incoming missile(s).

Theres much more useless things in this game like vehicle mounted mortars that seem without exception been given way too small propulsion charge. Range is practicly a joke and sights useless, only way to hit is to spam and observe fire as you go.

Futuristic shooter that is on technical lvl of WW1 where sighting tech goes.

1. Range buff would make it more useful against these targets, would not really change the effectiveness of it vs. ESFs
2. Not really, chaining any weapon would put you at an advantage. Again, noseguns are close range, Missiles should be long range
3. What do you want it to be? This is about as skill based as they can get without being dumbfire (which I would use btw)
4. This is negative towards your argument because all you have said is that it is skill less and for noobs.
5. This is an interesting idea.

Now dont get me wrong, I am against A2Am entirely. (at least how they currently are)

But i do think that they can make it more skill based, and that I suggested how they can make it slightly more skill based.
They should increase range and reduce damage, and apply the above ^ to make it more skill based. (but this would make it useless against libs and galaxies)

This would make it a long range only option, in areas where its extremely hard to use nose-guns even harder with rotaries.
In short range, one should lose if he/she is using A2Am. Simply cuz the nose-guns will out DPS it by a good margin.

You sir, are insane.

The skill level required to kill an esf faster with a stock nose gun than with A2AM is ridiculously high. It really annoys me because I love using Airhammer/Tomcats but I (almost) always feel dirty using them.

ESF's have 1750 health, if the missiles did 500 damage I would be happy, currently it feels like 600-650ish. Ground locks doing 750 is fine by me btw (except for the annihilator).

They do totally ruin liberators as well but I am kind of ok with that, they are sort of my prey.

What I DON'T like is the current metagame/balance situation where all the superleet pilots are running firesupp instead of flares whilst complaining about A2A locks being too strong. However what I don't like about it is that they are correct, but I don't like the logic of "well with FS if you don't bring locks I have an edge and if you do then I will call you a noob".
Like I said though it's annoying because it isn't so much an equipment counter system as much as it is a selection between skill (AB pods) and OP weapons (coyotes because of reload speed, A2AM because of damage). I want to be able to punish the lack of flares without being given a lightning bolt forged by Zeus himself with which to smite my enemies.

they used to be good but pilots complained that being able to be shot down distracted from the ESFs natural role of killing infantry. I mean who wants an air to air weapon that is actually effective. Thats almost as blasphemous as a ground to air weapon that can hold its own.

Less "lol" and more backing up of your own delusional "alternatives" please.

The rest of the good pilots disagree.

Nosegun + pre-nerf tomcast was the most efficient/effective combo.

I am glad u agree that the nerfs against tomcast was unnecessary, since you find the other two alternatives as "more effective".

Insulting every player (including yourself) is not a good way to survive in forumside.

Try 2 2-man lib (700 resource) against 3 esfs (750 resource), or 5 2-man libs (1750 resource) vs 7 esf (1750 resource), shredder libs.

I doubt your reasoning is based on up-to-date knowledge of the game.

Which doesn't make u much better than the other pilots out there, and u certainly can't speak for all.

It's good that u (almost) feel dirty, some lolpoders consider themselves true "ace" with no feeling of shame whatsoever. Nosegun+missiles can be dirty in clearing the air, but it gets the job done. A jobs that, sadly, nothing else does.

Lolpods refers specifically to the dedicated A2G missiles, which don't have any sort of lock. If someone is truly good at taking down airtargets with lolpods, then they really do have the right to consider themselves aces.

I just wish flares were baseline for all aircraft.. even if the CD was a bit longer, or it worked on a *charge* system.. where you had 2 flares, no CD, but 1min recharge per flare.

.. That and Thermal for the Galaxy pilot.. so I can see the damn hud while looking at the sun >.>

Surely nobody could've predicted ahead of time that it would be bad for a low skill requirement (lock-on) weapon to also be very effective in its role.

Or wait, no, I guess most players would probably understand why that's a bad thing.

I seriously think the word skill needs to be word filtered to XxMLGnoscopeMtDewYOLO420BlazeSwagXx or maybe just shorten that to XxMLGproXx

The obvious alternatives... Noseguns... Rocketpods... AB tanks... All still kill Libs faster than A2AM, and far more reliably to boot, providing any competent pilot a boat load more survivability, and more utility in actual combat too.

I'm confident this isn't the case. That's why (or at least, one of the many reasons) when tackling Liberators, you don't see any good pilots rolling A2AM unless in a pure chase loadout like when Warpgate camping. You're welcome to cite some complaints from good pilots about how vital A2AM are for countering Liberators if you'd like, but we both know that's not going to happen.

Not by a long shot. Perhaps try running the numbers on the Vortek+Rocketpod combo from the time... And if you don't want to look at raw damage potential, then have a look at the survivability that AB gives over A2AM for why it's far more reliable to take on a Lib (even at a slight DPS disadvantage) with just a nosegun... It'll take longer to kill it, but you WILL kill it, and you won't get killed in doing so.

Much more effective. The nerfs were necessary because tomcats were too effective for how little skill they required. They weren't better than an AB loadout in the hands of a good pilot, but they made it so easy to take on lesser pilots as a good pilot that it wasn't worth flying with skill or picking engagements well; just skillpod->nosegun->guaranteed kill. Every time. Whilst this was in some ways intentional (to allow bad players to compete on a higher level than their own skill would allow when using the higher skill floor+ceiling loadouts), the issue was that they scaled too effectively into the hands of better players, having no outright effect on the skillcurve, whilst replacing the go-to choice for most of the playerbase with a fire and forget snoozefest.

It's all good though, talking about the past really has no place here. Clearly the developers agreed with us and hence the situation was changed. Time to skill up.

A beautiful three-year-old logical approach to attempt to say that A and B are always untrue? Ho ho ho! How very entertaining for all of you with an IQ in double figures... I'm really not sure why you think I need lessons in how to survive forumside though... Beyond your 28 post history making this a particularly peculiar approach, I'm doing great thanks. It's always a pleasure to talk down to fools and praise brilliant thinking.

Lol, so you want 4 against 3 and 10 against 7? Because the resources are even? I'm pretty confident that in almost all other comparisons it's a hell of a lot more relevant how many humans you're fielding than whether they've each got 750 resources or only 250... I'm confident the 3 ESFs would indeed take the 2 Libs though; they simply can't put enough fire on enough angles to avoid being *****, and the ESFs can bolt for auto-repairs every time it's necessary... The 10v7 on the other hand, yep, I think you're right, the side with nigh 50% more players will win. What a freaking travesty, eh?

I doubt your reasoning.

Oh, should I have gone on? I would love to know what you think my knowledge has fallen behind on that would change any of the reasoning here?

Nope, it's just my piloting ability that does that *ego*

There's quite a big difference tbh...

Skill-less and cheese are two different concepts, and only the latter is really unique to its affiliation with MLG

Well... there is a high skill ceiling for esf's yes?

Lets assume answer is yes.

Then the new unskilled player really has a tough time fighting the pro's in the air with all their backwards thrusting and abilities to maintain a good position over the new player yes?

Lets assume answer is yes.

Therefore the A2A missiles was perfect for the new player to have a chance for some kills in a place where the pro flyers dominate. They where indeed fire and forget, but with limited used even then, but they did kill enough whiners to get them nerfed multiple times to the point, they are useless now.

So like them or not, they where a good place for a new flyer to start.

Nerfers ultimate objective is for circle jerks and squirt guns until someone dies of drowning.

If the weapon is effective, expect a nerf.

Nerfing is a cancer.
The cause is from prolonged exposure to whiners.
Its why deathcam survives to this day invading FPS....

No one wants to think or adapt.

Look at my skill pressing this button.

ive always used tomcats on my reaver for dedicated AA, and even with the nerf i still do well and it hasnt immensely impacted my performance. i can easily live with current AA missiles

on the other hand, throwing in coyotes that dont need any kind of lock whatsoever to do their job and autofollow after the huge nerf campaign that took form for the A2A and not hearing anything about em from those campaigners is telling. moreover, the silence is

'Real' pilots only use the melee button.