Devs please try to fly on Connery when Don Alfrego runs his air squad

Wow, you clearly don't really know what you are talking about

1) Lock on timer can be decreased through certed upgrades
2) Lockons will go around objects (despite DBG's claims of certain angles breaking lockons) and do sharp turns
2.1) lockon tracks the center of the ESF but hitting anywhere on the hitbox counts (obviously) yet - you can hide behind an object and it rocket doesn't hit the ESF on your screen (just explodes near by as it would have to do a sharp 90* turn in order to hit you, yet it registers
3) Tomcats are powerful as they are right now. After one is fired, and as soon as the next one has been loaded (especially if reload speed is certed) it will fire. Even before the first rocket hits. It's very common to see multiple rockets trailing a running ESF. I believe two is enough to set you on fire
4) Flares give only a few seconds which may give one enough time to shoot down a single enemy ESF or run if cover is close, but otherwise as soon as flare no-lock timer expires, you are dead if multiple ESFs are locking on you
5) Lock-on indicators have been bugged for a while - sometimes they don't show that you are being tracked until a second before the missile goes out. I've had situations where i get no lock warning (flashing, meaning someone is trying to lock on me) and only get one once a rocket is in the air.

I'm not against lock-ons as such, but I do think they are broken right now. Flares should either have higher cost but much longer no-lock timer or different mechanics. Where you can shoot 2-3 depending on how many you certed, but they need to be re-stocked at landing pads.

One with AB tanks should also be able to outrun them if there is enough initial distance.

They shouldn't be able to go around objects like bio-labs, mountains at sharp angles.

Flares work vs. Heavy Assault G2A Rockets, because they (1) stop all incoming Rockets and Lock Attempts when activated, and (2) allow the ESF Pilot a short period of "can't be targeted" protection within which the ESF Pilot can fly out of the HA's G2A range. The HA is not mobile compared to the ESF, which is why the ESF can move out of their range.

Flares don't work well vs. ESF A2A Missiles, because the ESF Pilot being targeted cannot fly out of the range of the enemy ESF that is using A2AM. Both pilots have roughly the same mobility, and this allows the enemy A2AM ESF to simply keep pace with the fleeing ESF and chain A2AM until the fleeing ESF is dead. Flare takes 25 seconds to recharge, which is too slow to provide suitable protection against death to chain A2AM.

A "counter" strategy vs. A2AM is for an ESF pilot to identify the location of the A2AM user, and then to charge them (aiming right for them and swerving at the last second). Thereby attempting to (1) force the A2AM player to break line-of-sight (which breaks lock) and (2) put them both in high Accuracy Nosegun Range (Noseguns have faster time to kill than A2AM) in an attempt to force the A2AM player to stop using A2AM, and to have to switch to Noseguns in a 1-vs-1 Nosegun duel.

However, if the enemy A2AM ESF is one of a group of A2AM ESFs, they can spread out and continue to use A2AM Missiles on the ESF target. Only 1 of the A2AM ESFs can be charged and forced out of A2AM usage, but the others can just stand back and keep line-of-site to chain A2AMs on target. These groups are often called Gank Squads (whether they use A2AM or not), and Don Alfrego is a well known leader of Scythe Gank Squads on Connery.

En masse or highly organized, everything is overpowered. This is called emergent gameplay, and while it shouldn't be ignored, squashing it because a few players don't like it is very very poor game design. These things happen, and will continue to happen no matter how many nerfs you apply. As a developer, you literally have to roll with the punches, especially in a game as broad and deep as PS2 is. We're always going to have a scapegoat weapon or tactic. In this case, I think it's less the weapon, than the rolling in numbers and being organized side of things.

We can literally all be shooting spitballs, and some guy will whine about a group of players who choose to use longer straws because it "Gives them an accuracy advantage", or that choose to work together because "I can't kill them alone".

In this game, you're not alone, and frankly, you're missing out and handicapping yourself in some ways if you play that way exclusively, especially if you fly an aircraft. Pilots are meant to work in groups in this game, period. Not that playing solo is wrong... You play how you want, but the fact remains that this is a social game more than anything else, despite the FPS label, and it's even more pronounced when you step into the airgame.

That said, I don't feel A2A is in a perfect state, pretty far from it actually. What I wish they would do with ESFs, is to allow both weapon sets to be fired simultaneously without swapping, and severely lessen the killing potential of the secondaries. This way, your primary is your primary, and your secondary is a niche weapon that merely adds to your situational firepower, rather than being the entirety of it. Of course, knowing the way things get done around here, we'll end up with an even more broken airgame.

Tomcats specifically aren't that much of a threat, but I can see a large group of them being a threat. The thing is, any large amount of anything can be a threat to ESFs since they take damage from a stiff breeze. Its more that you ran into a gank squad, and by the sound of things, a ruthless one at that. Not fun, no, but it's going to happen. There are very very few ways that you can limit the strength of a determined, organized group of players without alienating them to the point of leaving, which is the last thing this community needs.

As far as organized/large groups, you'll never do away with that, and if you even want to, I would say that you're playing the wrong game.

Do you think its very fun for infantry to get lolpodded to death by someone simply passing by in the safety of their sky chariot? Hell no it isn't, Its annoying to fight against and its just not very fun for the ones on the ground. The OP is poorly mistaken. He seems to think that even if they had regular noseguns and did not touch the A2A's, He might have a small chance of surviving. To this I say no, You will merely die even quicker. The OP needs to come to Emerald and try to fly when a squad of PREY are running around. As far as I remember, They have strict rules against using A2A launchers, So all it is is you getting ripped to shreds in 2 seconds by nose cannons.

Pilots.. That feeling you feel when you get shot down by another esf running A2A? Thats what every infantry feels when you fly down and lolpod them to death. Relish the feeling, You deserve it seven fold.

It's happening on the ps4 version too now, except in this case we don't have the accuracy of PC players to combat this effectively. The air game is going to be nothing but lockons on the ps4 version soon enough. Very sad

I agree. I think this game would be far better if ESFs had no secondaries and no AI noseguns, and the ground had no flak outside of base turrets. Libs would obviously need a rework or to be removed for that. But then again, my belief for Planetside 2 is that the massive variety is a detriment to the gameplay.

A2A noseguns are annoying and rocketpods are annoying. People complain about both of them. There are tons of other annoying weapons as well, and people complain about those too. We all die when we are outnumbered in this game at some point, but it's the way we die that makes it frustrating. As someone pointed out, carbines have strength in numbers too. People don't complain about that though. Sometimes it's not just about dying, it's about the way we die.

Aside from in games with many hardcore realism enthusiasts, people tend to hate dying to lock-on weapons. This is because aim is one of the most basic and core skills of a shooter, and a weapon that can kill without aim kind of defeats the purpose. When the weapon is perceived to be a counter to skill, it gets under the skin of the people who value skill, and who have put in many hours to build this skill. And this is a big part of why people hate A2A missiles in this game.

LOL to all the people suggesting you pull Skyguards vs Alfrago's air squad. A bunch of us did that the other day. They just bail and C4 you from above, redeploy, and come back.

Hey--that's exactly what I was talking about with the damage attrition stuff!
I'm glad to see my intuition confirmed. Better pilots still win generally, it's just that the missiles force pilots skilled at avoiding nosegun shots to die eventually to enough scrubs who can't aim since they have perfect accuracy.

IMO, this indicates Tomcats don't need a change so much as it indicates that the skill floor needs to be dropped and the skill gaps lessened (which means making the learning curve smooth), all while keeping the skill ceiling, with noseguns and hoverdueling.
The perfect step towards this is still a toggle for hover mode.

I'm confused about how you arrived at that conclusion. I have not problem with using a toggle instead of the analog throttle, but I really don't think the finicky hover/forward transition is to blame for the skill disparity we are seeing.

Let me ask you all something. Lets say Tomcats are deleted tomorrow in a patch. They're gone, don't exist, no longer part of the discussion.

What are you going to do if I were to get an ESF squad with AB pods and Rotaries with max stealth? You know how fast a ESF goes down to one rotary, now imagine it with 6 or more?

Are we going to complain about Rotaries? Now what if I do it with the default nose gun? 6 nose guns will still gib your ESF in under a second. And can be done from further out than rotaries.

Tomcats aren't the issue. Your issues are with PVP, that's Player Versus Player. You see Planetside 2 is a PVP game. PVP means that another player can and will dictate what you are capable or incapable of doing at a given moment. If I decide to capture a continent outside of an alert. And you wish to play on that continent. You have to stop me. If you don't, you don't get to play on that continent (and yes you can still capture continents outside of alerts). And if you're on my faction, you better consider rolling another character on another faction.

If I decide to form an air platoon and deny you access to a good time in your ESF. You have to deal with it. You can't go to a GM and ask them to tell me to play nice. You can't go to the devs asking for a nerf (even if you could, its ineffectual). You have to man up and deal with it, or log off till I'm done.

That is what PVP is all about. You either deal with it, or don't. You don't get any other options. Well you can, you can bribe me or whomever is denying you access. Personally I'll take kronos or plat in either Everquest or Everquest 2. Others might want something else.

It's not entirely to blame. It's just that adding a toggle would help alleviate various problems.

The difficulty of getting into the air game is that players new to it rarely have the opportunity to practice nosegun aim because they cannot perform the maneuvers required to reset to what I like to call the 'neutral' position, that is, hoverdueling. Instead, they'll get shot up out of the blue and then then scramble to get away.

Fortunately, it's true that one can practice the reverse maneuver, but some people just can't get it down. This is because they don't understand the general physics behind hovermode and afterburning in it, and no amount of tutorials will help--often, guided training can't help, because they can't translate what the instructor critiques them on into the proper motions. These are the sort of more hands-on people who have to feel it, to experience it, before anything else. Then there are the people who can get it down, but it takes too much time for them to care, or they're discouraged by the first few failed attempts.

A hover mode toggle would allow for a more rapid and direct grasping of AB's affect in hover mode in general. Additionally, one can't 'fail' by transitioning into flight mode unwillingly, which will lead to more encouragement and more importantly a greater frequency for individuals to re-try the maneuvers they've heard about or to discover them in a shorter amount of time.
This, in turn will allow them to dodge initial strikes easier and increase their ability to reset to the neutral hoverdueling position, which allows them to practice their aim against live targets.

The best thing about a hover mode toggle is that it wouldn't hamper the skill ceiling at all, since all the same maneuvers would be possible, and even new maneuvers too since one doesn't have to worry about transitioning to flight mode!

There's two other problems, though. Revisiting the 'out of the blue' thing from earlier, engagement radar has helped newer players set up a neutral engagement by increasing their awareness, that is, reducing their errors in observation. It's not really stealth of pilots that so much succeeded as it did prey upon the weakness of being distracted or generally unobservant. This isn't a bad thing, of course. Even pro pilots get distracted to the point where they might not notice another fighter sneaking up on their flank, and this can be attributed to healthy opportunism, and accidental / natural teamwork, one of the best kinds of teamwork!

However, what IS a problem is that it discourages some potential pilots from flying, since they might thing along the lines that it interferes with other, far more important passive slots for their aircraft like the NAR that everyone uses. They might think "it's not worth it if I can't perform at my potential as soon as possible, and this feels like an artificial barrier which punishes me for trying to learn how to perform better sooner."

As for that problem, I'm not sure if it should be default. It may reduce the amount of accidental teamwork, even if only slightly. On the other hand, perhaps if it's default then stealth would be a viable passive cert line. I have a feeling there's some other downside related to the creation of a new skill gap due to the choice between NAR and stealth, then, and the crutching of some pros that will reduce their observation skills in general and--well, that sort of just makes stealth more viable. The meta would evolve. I'm not so sure if that's an entirely desirable meta, is what I'm saying.

The second problem that arises is ultra new players being confused about why they're not allowed to go fast or go slow, depending on which mode would be the default if toggle would be implemented.
But that can be easily fixed by advertising the advantages and disadvantages of each mode according to the meta, small FTEs and voiceovers which explain why one'd want to transition between the two etc.
And, another just as good if not better option is allowing the toggle to be toggleable.
What I mean by that is a toggle in the options menu which turns the current auto-transitioning from hover to flight modes off or on. The default would be auto-transitioning on, of course.
Both would likely be necessary to get an ultra-new player to understand the air game.
That is, unless we want to butcher hoverdueling etc. and made the flight models more traditional and thus intuitive coming from most other games. A lot of people wouldn't like that, though

The ESF gameplay vs. Air is different than other units. It's not really and Apples to Apples thing.

ESF speed, mobility, durability/evasion vs. ground threats, lack of radar presence, and firepower (combined with Air's relative inability to stay out of line-of-sight visibility from far ranges) makes ESF Gank Squads a crazy potent threat vs. other Air. And the speed/mobility/visibility makes for the equivalent of a very small Inafntry Map... with no terrain obstructing line-of-sight... and the ability of packs of Infantry to overwhelm anyone else not stacked with lots of numbers.

I am fine with buffing flares vs. A2AM (likely with longer Lock Protection vs. A2AM), while keeping flares the same vs. G2A Lockons.

However, I will say that Scythes are very slow, and they can have problems with keeping up with fleeing prey from a distance (a situation where A2AM helps them). While Reaver and Mosquito can run down Scythes. It's no coincidence that lots of Scythe Gank Squads use Saron+A2AM whereas Reaver Gank Squads often use Vortek+Fuel Tank.

I think speed should be changed so that Scythe top speed and AB both fall ~halfway between Reaver and Mosquito.

(I have 6 characters, 2 of each faction, all with ESFs. I fly all ESFs. I also play HA w/ Annihilator a lot and do lots of G2A with it)

I Play LOTS of Infantry, including HA, Infiltrator, and Engineer. ESF Rocket attacks generally don't bother me that much, except in small fights where there is bad line-of-sight.

I use HA w/ Annihilator to get rid of them. Either pick a high-point at your location, or spawn at a nearby one. Putting 1 Rocket on an ESF (or forcing it to use Flares and then putting Lock on it again) will make it run. Also, make sure to Q-Spot it so that allies can know where it is and hopefully hit it too. If it gets aggressive/close, switch to Main Gun and put holes in it, but get to cover. If you are at a Sunderer, get in the Sunderer and shoot the ESF: ESF takes a long time to kill a Sunderer and Sunderer fire can scare it off. Rocket Pods also have low Ammo Supply, so they will be having to leave to ReSupply after ~6-7 attack runs.

LPPA can be a problem for Infantry. But LPPA is only viable when it's a very small fight or a one-sided Infantry farm. In which case you can either spawn an ESF and shoot it down (LPPA Scythes have bad A2A), or just respawn to another base if the LPPA Scythe is part of a big zerg that's gonna be too hard to deal with. If you can't fly an ESF, then just use the Continent Air Channel to report the LPPA's position so that ally ESF Pilots on the Channel can respond and take out the threat... oh wait, this is PS2, where the Devs want 12-person groups to dominate and "mass communication" to cap out at 12 people.

Harassars, Libs, and Mags are all much more of a terror to me as Infantry. The equivalent to me when in an ESF is Ace ESFs, ESF Gank Squads, and Ace Lib Dalton pilots/gunners.

Most G2A does not bother Gank Squads simply because the Gank Squads are not going to be staying in the region. They are just going to farm the Air (or other easy targets) and then move on. G2A is great to clear a region of Air, but they aren't great at stopping a Gank Squad from killing Air in the region and then leaving. Gank Squads don't care about staying in a particular region, they just roam around and look for easy Air targets to Gank.

The giant swarms of ESFs that show up at battles sometimes and then all proceed do stick around and die are not Gank Squads. Those are randoms spawning ESFs to rushdown a battle and do as much A2G damage as they can before they die.

Most the people who want A2AM nerfed are Ace/Good ESF Pilots. They are cool with the idea of dueling multiple lower skilled ESFs, or them and a couple buddies taking on a group.

Buffing Flares is often not something this group asks for, because they don't want to give up Fire Suppression to actually use Flares.

Many Reaver Gank Squads already use Fuel Tanks instead of A2AM.

I would do the following to start with:
1) make all Air that is over enemy or contested territory show up on Radar (*maybe* just non-contested enemy territory)
2) give all players access to a free HA G2A Lockon
3) nerf Ammo Supply on Hornet and LPPA
4) maybe nerf AH damage vs. MAXs (can anyone MAX player comment if this is a problem?)

Depending on how that went, I might make other changes like:
1) give more Infantry classes access to AA (think how much worse AA would be if HA weren't so popular)
2) give players access to dedicated Chat Channels: Air Channel for Continent, Armor Channel for region, etc. Using this, players can coordinate AA and coordinated AA (like 3 Lockons) can kill/shut down any ESF

Air locks do exactly what they are supposed to do. They make a versatile air unit not versatile by specializing in one category; killing air units. This is working as intended and if you are getting ganked by an air squad running locks I suggest you either deal with it and play on the ground or get some friends in the air with you and engage them. You might even have a good time up there, or you could whine about people using weapons for it's intended purpose...like a moron. It's like complaining that bullets hurt infantry.

Tomcats do scale well because it's impossible to hover duel if there is another ESF plinking you from range. I actually like this, it makes the ESF fights interesting instead of two douches spaming RTM until one dies. The air game is bad because the autists have known for a long time that tomcats are the hard counter to their skill at spamming RTM and have tried to have the community ban tomcats from use. Keep using them to maintain air superiority the way the devs designed the game and play with wingmen in the air. It's much more fun anyway IMO.

All the ******* ground peasants in this thread who are saying A2A lock-ons are fine need to fly in their server's Server Smash air squad/platoon when there's no agreement banning lock-ons. Any experienced pilot should be able to tell you that lock-ons make organized air combat less fun for EVERYONE. Whenever we have a Server Smash where the air teams agree to ban lock-ons, EVERONE has more fun! This is a ******* game, and if removing a weapon increases the amount of fun for 99% of people, it's pretty obvious what should be done.

PS: I have no problem with infantry using G2A lock-ons.

I purpose we buff every attribute of the the Tomcats by 200% and enjoy the rain of tears from pilots.

....that would be a good start.

AA already doesn't do **** unless you outpop the enemy anyway.

Simple solution to air cheesing ground:

All AA does 3x damage within 100m.

Now, the pilots have to sit way off in the distance and aim carefully, or get turned to paste when they come in close.

The one exception to the comment just above this one would be Valkyries.
1.5x @ 75m would be more than enough for valks.

So you can't pull an equal number of Tomcats to counter what your enemy is doing? Or can't you set up an AA Nest with multiple Bursters and use a few ESF's with Flares as bait?

Team work is ALWAYS OP. Everything has a counter and in the case of teamwork, that means you are going to need to use teamwork as well... You just are refusing to do the things necessary to counter this players tactics, because teamwork is tough. It involves organizing multiple players, utilizing communications and focusing on targets and or objectives.

tomcats for the most part are ok.

the main problems that exist with flares could be fixed by making it an ammunition based system with a very short cooldown timer. that is to say you can evade 3 missiles with it in 5 seconds, but then you're out of flares until you get to a tower. or something similar to that.

the main problems that still exist after that, are problems involving the exploit of the "ghost reload" of ESF weapons (reloading while switched to the other weapon - even Heavy Assault can't duck his reloads) and the exploit of a particular bug involving the lock on timer while a missile is already in flight. likely intended to allow lost locks to be picked up again, what it really allows is up to 3 missiles in flight from a single ESF against a fleeing target with no additional lock on time per extra missile. this is an exploit and should be amended to allow only 1 missile in flight at a time, with a full lock on time required for additional missiles.