We get it. AA is a deterant. How about adding a range finder on AA weapons? Then I know if im wasting my time or not. I can do it on wehicles and infantry with spotting and personal waypoints. I would be nice to know if they are close to entering my range or if im standing out in the open with a certain appendage in my hand waiting to eat a sniper bullet for no reason. Just a thought?
AA deterants were invented by the devs at launch in order to get more people to play aircraft. Their reasoning was that if you can't kill it from the ground, you would join the air to kill your opponent. This reasoning has many glaring flaws that they never adressed: ESF are the most useful A2A vehicle, making other aircraft used very little. Deterants use an easy-to-hit, low damage model to be deterrants. This can easily be overcome by adding enough AA weapons to down an aircraft. Aircraft can and will actively seek out bases with little to no AA. This shifts the problem of aircraft to bases that definitely cannot handle aircraft at that time. "successful" AA puts itself out of order. If it is successful no aircraft are there to engage, and you never know when the next aircraft might arrive. It might be 10 seconds, it might be an hour. That's too much randomness and unpredictability to be keeping an AA weapon on you. This is exacerbated by the fact that AA weapons are very weak against anything other than aircraft. Which is weird since most AV weapons are well capable of engaging infantry keeping them relevant enough until enemy vehicles show up again. The A2A game is a cesspool of unintuitive controls, a lack of variety in what combat maneuvers are effective in the air (Hover Combat and Reverse Maneuver is all), some keybinds aren't even bound by default, abilities like Engagement radar being effectively designed to hunt down and destroy anyone who tries to join the air-game and more. So forcing players to join the air-game is a horrible idea. The simple solutions: Make AA a skillful weapon. High-velocity auto-canons, new types of flak projectiles that still require aim, laser-guided missiles etc. Let all AA fulfill a secondary role. Auto-canons for example would be perfect to deal with things like light armor like Harassers or as an anti-infantry support gun. To make air more intuitive, allow players to set their own controls for aircraft. Let players select "regular" aircraft controls that other games also feature. Change how aircraft fly or act so that the more standard aircraft maneuvers that players try to pull off actually work and give you an advantage if you pull them off successfully.
I've given up hope of a TTK change for AA. I'm just angling for a range finder to see if they are worth shooting at. Would be nice on sniper rifles too but thats pretty easy to get with the current waypoint system since ground targets are 2D
If you've got Sweeper HUD implant it includes a rangefinder display at whatever object you are aiming it.
