Hornets don't even travel the whole render distance

I'm rolling on the floor laughing. Mate, Hornets hit PIXEL you are aiming at as long as you can guide the rockets to it and understand movement in 3d space. Pods have random spread and drop.
and as much as this game is full of idiots using free russian cheats, there are no cheats for guided weapons like Ravens, Hornets, Phoenix and such, other than instant-hit cheats, that obviously don;t happen if you see that actual freaking rocket...

If you hover perfectly still, yes. If you don't the missiles can lag behind the reticle by a bit.

Now, to be clear here my biggest issue with the hornets, in spite of how damn frustrating they are to me in the mag is their splash damage. Why do these things have to have better splash per missile than AP MBT guns get? Hornets are fired in pairs, and make up 50% of a player's weaponry as opposed to 100%.
Why does it need this indirect damage? Want AI? Tough, go with the nose guns or the rocketpods (I have the opposite issue with those, but that's a separate topic).

Increase velocity, reduce splash. Sounds like a fair trade to me.

Hundreds of hours with TOW's and AT4's in Battlefield helps a lot, and yes you have to lead them and yes they lag behind reticle. That's the best part of them. You can also level-fire them and drop them from above. You can do really nice things with Hornets if you were able to shoot moving helicopter with a tow in BF2. They work the same way, possibly that's why I find them so easy, and that might not be a case for everyone. None of the lag is random on hornets, all are vectors of speed and all can be used as an advantage.

I do agree with your point they should not have splash damage, they should not substitute for AI secondary, and I can use them like that with ease, and that's not good.

More Velocity? Shirley you jest.
They do way too much damage for that.

I am dead serious, and please don't call me Shirley.

IDK, you look like a Shirley to me.

My point still remains: It does way too much damage to get more velocity given the platform it's on.

... actually, regardless of what platform it'd be on.

Surely Shirley doesn't know that hornet missiles are already ridiculously powerful against tanks because tanks can't fight back and can only hide in a tower.

I dunno about your ESF, but in a reaver, there's some incredibly intense non-convergence issues going on.
...atleast in the V.R. room from my experience... Their reticle needs a complete redraw IMHO

No, that's not what I meant - they do lag behind the reticle, but the percived lag is an effect caused by different speed of projectile and your vehicle. If you move towards the ground in 30' angle, and shoot hornets, they will actualy move in UPWARDS arc trying to follow the place you are aiming at while moving. As they are moving slower than your ESF, they never can catch up, and the difference between your aiming spot and their hit increases with time. The longer you fly, the more disproportion you will get.

This is all actual physics, and very basic at that.


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To have hornets hit where you aim at that angle, you would need buff their speed to (X*Y)/2 of ESF speed. But to have that as a constant, and not only in that example, Hornets speed would have to be calculated on the go, based on actual ESF speed, and that would never happen. Yes the example is VERY rough, but that's how it works, and ALL of that can be used as a skill, there's no randomnes in it. Thing that makes you think they are off the mark is small downwards or upwards movement. Hornets follow a straight line from UNDER your ESF, in other words they are going to hit a bit below reticle in exactly same difference that their launchpoint has to your ESF.

I see what you're saying I think, but according to it, my hornets should be passing OVER the target. Instead, they keep hitting the ground in front of it whether I'm hovering forward, or not moving at all...

I can't speak as to balance given that I rarely use ESFs or tanks and don't have Hornets or AP, but from a makes-sense perspective, it's a missile... they explode. That's their job. An AP round specifically doesn't explode, that's its job.

(Then again, if we follow that kind of logic one fighter should easily wipe out a baseload of infantry).

Game balance > realism.
Yes technically rockets explode, but from the perspective of game balance and picking appropriate loadouts, the Hornets flat out don't need the splash. If they end up in a situation where you want to kill infantry, that's the point where either the nose gun should be one because you prepared appropriately or you just have to go get a new craft. Or have someone -else- do the AI.
That's the sort of loadout choice (and consequences) that should be there. More so than what we have at the moment.

I won't dispute that.

We could say it carries a shaped explosive, so it pokes holes in tanks but doesn't have much of a splash.

So basically what IRL HEAT shells do.

Yeah.
I know it's a minor thing, but it bugs the hell out of me when things are unrealistic (still can't stand a .50 caliber sniper rifle having a velocity of 650m/s).

Hornets are not the precision weapon I expected them to be when I got them.
- They don't land on your cross hairs. They land slightly below and to the left or right depending on which wing it was fired from.
- They have a limited range making them not the tank sniper rounds I expected.
- Yes, they are more effective as a close up dive bombing style, but we already have rocketpods for that role.
- I'm still struggling to think of why I would want to start using hornets instead of just sticking with pods for general use.

They are really slow though, and they would be less awkward if they went faster. I would be ok with that being balanced accordingly. Increase velocity, decrease either damage or reload to maintain the same DPS. Don't tweak it by a lot, just tweak it enough to make it feel right. I don't think they could possibly feel perfect unless they were fire and forget, but I think they could feel better.

That may be reasonable.
Most people who ask for velocity buffs for them don't seem to want to give up anything for it. So by now my immediate reaction is to at best be sceptical, at worst... let's not go there.