How are more casual players supposed to compete with experienced ESF pilots?

If I were fighting 2 average pilots, both with nose guns, I'd probably wipe the floor with them. If I was fighting 2 semi-ace level pilots, both with nose guns, I might need to make a decision as to whether I need to disengage and come back at them later. Both chances things might go wrong for me, but I have the option of breaking off, and juking and dodging my way out of the situation.

Add A2A missiles to one or both of those hostile ESFs, I either die or lose my ESF 80-90% of the time. That isn't balanced. Heck add in a 3rd ESF running A2A missiles, and they can instantly kill me. lol

Lock ons only get you some glimmer of hope of being competitive. You can still easily be demolished by better pilots who know their stuff. You will be demolished if you run into gank squads ie. multiple ESFs running together. The elite pilots hate lock-ons when they're run by other high BRs in multi-ESF formations for this reason. A single ESF with lock ons shouldn't be that much trouble for a true elite pilot.

You really want to get under the skin of pilots and don't have the time to invest in the air game? Dual Bursters and Skyguard. Extended mags and ammo storage for your dual Bursters, cause without them, they won't be nearly as good. If you want to do it in the air, form a gank squad of your own and look for single ESFs that are easy targets.

The case is the same in any combined arms shooter, armor and air gameplay is a different beast and requires different experience.

But the only reasons you would have multiple ESFs on you in the first place is because you've either overextended, or the enemy just has a significantly higher A2A presence in the area. You might say that you'll probably win against 2 average pilots, which is fine and how it should be, but semi-skilled pilots should kill you every time. This is how it currently happens in-game. It doesn't matter if they are locking on to you or being deadly accurate with their nosegun. Hell, at least you get a warning with Tomcats.

For the record, what you've described is the reason I always run max stealth over max NAR. It gives me significantly more time for me to react to lock-ons, and I can get the jump on pretty much anyone 7/10 times.

While it's true that a certed tank helps the newbies more than a certed ESF, 1-on-1 they still don't stand much of a chance against a good tanker/crew. So to have a chance (much like the ESF) you do actually need some skill (or dumb luck) to take on the best tankers.

Would it surprise you then that it was the sky knights themselves who introduced the term to me?
Besides, I'm not one of those who use the A2A or Coyotes. Not any more.
While I'm far from an ace, I'm not that bad in the air.

If w're going to try and belittle lock on users, can we publicly shame BR 100's using pods? Only seems fair, imo.

Easy games, while they may satisfy one's ego, quickly become sterile experiences. Replayability is nil.

Even if a pilot is skilled / semi-skilled, I can make them miss 70-80% of their shots if they are pursuing me. My point is that A2A Missiles aren't effected by the vexation of aiming and tracking a dodging target.

Even if the enemy has more people in the Air, if they cannot reliably hit me with their nose guns, I can prance around all day and pick people off left and right. Whereas, if I'm engaged by multiple ESFs sporting A2A missiles, suddenly the above statement becomes moot. A2A missiles are too reliable. I'd give up Fire Suppression immediately if flares were ammo based and not timer based.

So you're like that HA bunny hoping around. Everyone thinks you look silly, but in your mind you're "MLG".

Rocketpods or Fuelpods?

Rocketpods.

I don't understand the point of your post.

Your asking how can a novice chess player beat a grandmaster? Everyone else if giving you tips on moves you can make, but the real answer is practice. Practice Practice Practice.

Honestly, the Air game is really end game content and it takes hours and hours of play time in these vehicles to master them. I really do not think anything other then flight time is going to help a casual player, if you do not have the hours in the cockpit there is nothing they can do for you. Making it easier to fly or survive or kill other ESF will not make Casuals or less experienced players any better in relation to veteran pilots, because any of those advantages will carry through to them as well.

Moin

Why? They are the only real option an ESF has to engage armoured ground targets since the nosegun nerf and have been nerfed over and over again. Hornets aren't bad, but rocket pods are still the way to go if you want to have a chance at taking that skyguard out that hits you from 1000m away.
That being said I don't really use rocketpods that often anymore. Got the auraxium one year ago and only made a couple of kills since then, mostly against vehicles. I mainly do A2A and some AI with AH/M20 and fuel pods. I don't even have rocket pods for my TR and VS chars. Still I don't think they are in any way overpowered or cheesy. When you start playing this game you die a few times against them until you figure out how to avoid them most of the times. If you're a veteran player who still dies to them a lot it's entirely your own fault for being bad at this game. You most likely die a lot to enemy infantry weapons as well.

So you stand still or kneel down "like a real soldier would do in real life" and complain that you get killed by rocket pods? Movement is a big factor in overall "skill", be it as infantry or in the air. Corewin stated that the current lock-on crutches remove this part of the overall "skill", lowering the skill ceiling thereby. It's much easier to just hover/fly straight and hold your crosshair on target till red goes green, taking 1/3 of the enemys health away with MB1 than to do evasive maneuvers while maintaining aim with a weapon you have to aim and lead yourself. Lock-ons are a skillless noob crutch that lower the skill ceiling, there can be no discussion about that. The only discussion we can have is if that's a good or a bad thing for this game. I can understand every casual gamer who actually likes the way tomcats remove a portion of skill from the airgame, but I don't agree with this mentality in the slightest. As I said in a previous post, I am not one of the best and everytime I fly with some of the best on Cobalt this fact is pretty obvious to me. Still I try my best to keep up and get better instead of resigning and joining the lock-on club who claim that it's just "the right tool for the right job" and use this as an excuse to use every crutch SOE throws at them to compensate for their lack of skill and their lack of willingness to get some skill.

Sorry for the rant, but this topic really gets on my nerves.

One thing most people might overlook is .. those ace pilots started flying a long time ago, in the ages where there wasn't much AA around. Some time passed and suddenly there were all those lockons in game and flying wasn't uninterrupted A2G farming heaven anymore. Lock-on hate might have started around there.

...Thankfully I have only needed to deal with that once...

This game can not survive as a hardcore game. The player base for that is too small and without lots of players, this game is rather pointless. So it's somewhat casual or nothing. There are several hardcore FPS and flights sims out there. All games do not need to be hardcore.

That part about games being hard back in the days is also quite a bit of BS. Do you know why games were hard back in the day? Because it was the easiest way to pad the content to make it last longer. You were rather limited when designing for a cartridge so to make the games last longer, they made them harder. It's also partly the arcades fault. There games were designed to be extremely hard and unfair to trick you out of your money. The more you died, the more money the arcade owner made.

No in this day and age, people extect to play a game to have fun, not to have it as a full time job. A lot of people likes games but cannot spend 40 hours a week playing only to have a chance. That huge part of the customers will just plain leave and find another game if you need to spend that much time not to get slaughtered. There are a few hardcore games but they are all niche and they attract a specific type of player.

You seem to be looking for an entirely different game than Planetside. So how about you go play one of the other games that cater to you rather than changing this game and ruin it for the rest of us. Sounds like a good deal?

So what you are saying is that if three people fight two people, the lock ons are unbalanced because three guys will beat two guys with them?

So there is nothing else to do when you are jumped by more people than to give up and die. It's not possible to change your tactics and disengage to take the fight to a place where you are not outnumbered and outgunned?

Your logic works for pretty much all weapons in the game. So we have two AP Prowlers fighting with two AP Vanguards. All of a sudden, a third Prowler appears behind the two Vanguards therefore AP vanguards are OP. Or the other way around, a third Vanguard appears, therefore Vanguard OP.

Perma-death or it is not challenging!

I gotta say, im glad this became an old and good lock on discussion and no one of the more usual lately,

"NO HOVER! for esfs we want even easier gameplay screw the current players its all for the casuals!",

"Please make the controls like war thunder i want to move my mouse and see my esf turn the direction i want it, i dont want to have to press the keyboard to kill people!"

"Skygods deserve to die, spawn skyguards ram them, use lock ons, they farm us all the time!" -That last one is funny seeing as most of the so called skygods never use A|G.

"The Mossie/Reaver/Scythe is OP/UP Please buff ME and nerd THEM."

"I know this is about esfs, but Liberators are OP!!! please nerf them even more! why can a anti tank weapons kill my no moving esf with one hit!?" -I love those, they usually come from people who think they are amazing and cant understand they are not.

I haven't see a lock on thread in a while, it actually feels nostalgic, back in the day i tought maybe one day they will nerf the OP no skill needed weapons, maaan, those were good times.

Anyway carry on.