Lock ons have 100m/s velocity. Its 360 km/h - more than ESFs max speed even with that nitro or whatever it is. So how the hell can ESF run away flying straight as it does in 50% of situations? 25% is my rocket crashing into anything it might do and the rest is hit that doesnt do anything if my target wasnt damaged
Apparently they were op so they got nerfed into the ground literally, cant fire a look on now days without it flying straight into the ground = P
Because its BARELY faster than an after burning esf. If you start far enough away and run while the lock is still being aquired, you don't really outrun it, so much as you keep away from it longer than the missiles limited lifespan.
The only way you outrun missiles is if you already have like half a kilometer between you and the shooter (in which case you have more than enough time to get a head start). The other option is to have speed chassis + AB pods. You still need some headstart to not get hit though. In case its not clear - missiles have a set amount of fuel in them. They won't chase targets infinitely (but they certainly can follow targets for several hexes). -Stigma
Rockets slam into the ground because of their predictive path, pilots who know this will aim down and accelerate at moment of launch in an attempt to get it to terminate early. As for outrunning them, yeah you can if you have a speed chassis and AB pods, but you need to be ready to run/facing the right way already. Still be faster for the guy on the ground to reload than the ESF to return.
Then I meet a lot of VERY fast EFS's, becasue half of them runs away from my A2A missiles. Mostly br100 "unbeatable" insta turning 100% needler accuracy ones, but still, sometimes even the normal guy. And yes, I knwo the reverse maneouver, and it does not look like that on minimap.
Simple, you are firing them at too great a range. The rocket have a lifespan of about 6 seconds. If an ESF can keep ahead of it for that amount of time, then you won't be able to hit it. By locking on and firing at the edge of your lock on range, you are giving them a massive head start and the chances are in their favor that they will escape it unharmed.
It depends on the situation but I'll often wait until enemy air is within the "kill zone." Instead of locking on to them or firing AA at them as soon as they're in range where they can just fly off and repair, instead try waiting until they're close enough that if they decide to bug out that they'll still be within lockon or firing range.
And usually instantly accelerate straight into the ground! Strangely all that does seem to go together often as not.
More likely than anything else is that ESFs are flaring away the majority of locked missiles you send their way (and don't get a hit on). If I were to guess from experience, that probably accounts for at least 80% of the "no hit" cases where a missile is successfully launched. Granted, many ESFs now run suppression, but I'm guessing that at least half still run flares. A lot of the time the flaring will happen so distantly from you that you won't see the flares - and most likely you aren't looking for it either (because the missiles are fire and forget it dosn't make much sense to stand still and stare towards the ESF for several seconds after firing .... so I'm assuming you don't regularly do that either). Outrunning or dodging missiles by terrain is fairly uncommon because terrain is rarely within reach (and missiles tend to swerve around obstacles a lot anyway) and in order to outrun them you need a lot of distance or tricked out "speed-ESF" with a spesific loadout. -Stigma
I rarely see ESFs with flares these days, mostly because with the new pre-tracking of Lock-on rockets (which don't swerve around anything anymore) all you have to do is point your nose at the ground just after it is released and most of the time the rocket will fly into the ground as it is already at a very low level when launched. Really speaking AA Lock-ons should have either a fair bit of straight fire before tracking or automatically climb to at least 50m from ground level before tracking. Currently it is pretty easy to just scrub missiles off on the ground, perhaps the old systems of Lock-ons was too hard on Air, but the new system is far too soft on Air IMO.
When I discovered my 2 years of using ESF are no good nowdays, I run A2A mostly, to actualy be of some use in air to my team, while practicing dogfights in my "own" time, so I often follow runners and shoot 2-3 missiles on lock maintain. There are some players, that effectively outrun me with my racer frame equipped, they outrun the missile and have greater angular velocity going 45' upwards than the missile. The sign of a missile being flared, is the missile going upwards (same like with the ground smoke lockon). I fired FOUR missiles at the guy, and ALL OF THEM were spiking upwards a second after launch. Not to mention a recording of one guy both causing missiles to skyrocket, and then, suddenly using fire suppresion. After two years of flying "learn to play" or "mad cuz bad" don't really apply to me here. Sure there are better pilots, tons of them and I don't mind that - but I know game mechanic to a point where I see things that might elude BR3 but not alpha-squad pilot. You do have a point that I usually not follow my target if it's going into a hot zone, but it's enough time to get 2-3 missiles off, as there's no need to regain lock (that also indicates flares are not used, becasue nothing is breaking the lock) and the missiles still got diverted (one at a time, not all for example as I leave some space to prevent getting both missiles flared)
Diving on launch only helps if you are already low to the ground. You have to be at an appropriate altitude and have some luck with the timing for that to happen, and that isn't something you can rely on as a defense. All it does is predict an intercept path - and yes the missiles still swerve around obstacles quite a lot due to both having "loose tracking" but also having an infinitely short turning radius such that it literally can't miss short of hitting an obstacle along the way. At least it isn't like before. Missiles would then literally path around obstacles to hit you - and even if you took cover at the root of a tall mountain on the opposite side of someone who fired the missile it was no defence. The missile would just onmisciently head off to the top of the mountain peak and then do an instant 90degree turn to hit you below. Let's not wish for a return to that please. The only thing wrong with the current tracking is that the first 10-15 meters of light should be unguided so you can clear the closest obstacles. That would be reasonable to fix. With a little more than 800hrs of ESF piloting I still run flares far more often than firesuppression. It is only really if you dedicate yourself to stalking flyers exclusively from high altitude that you can afford to ignore missiles like that. Just last night I had 6 missiles incoming at the same time on the same base flyover. Good luck countering that with firesuppression. -Stigma
Which is exactly where most Lock-ons are launched from and smart ground camping ESFs fly (and certainly where the smart ones dive to once they think they have one locked on. I wouldn't suggest flying over a 48+vs48+ fight without flares is always a good idea, but a vast number of people just don't bother with them because they don't really do that. It's actually pretty hard to even get a tone and lock on a smart flying pilot these days unless the launcher is up somewhere high, never mind then getting the missile to hit.
If you set yourself a primary task of dodging missiles by hugging the ground, can you make do without flares? Yes. Certainly, as long as you are very careful about your angles and have the manouvering skills to take advantage of whatever terrain features that might be present. However, doing that essentially makes you what dedicated A2A pilots refer to as "free xp" as you are putting yourself in severe disadvantage to any air threat (and even if you can fight your way out of an ambushing pilot you are then guaranteed to die anyway due to the lockons that you can now no longer dodge while dogfighting. As a strategy it's not exactly advisable most of the time. NOE flying is a luxury you can engage in when you are in the rare occasion of having reasonable air dominance as well as no enemy tanks in the area (as any tanks you get within elevation of is probably more dangerous than anything else in this game is to an ESF). The A2A pilots flying high above the battle surely can take firesuppression and for the most part be safe, sure - but that's not the path that every ESF pilot takes. I unfortunately don't have any hard statistics on this, but just from my own extensive experience I think it is safe to say that flares are still in frequent use - and when you can expect anyone who has them to use them any time they get a lock - that's going to account for a lot of missed lockon missiles. Heck, I probably flare away a hundred of them every day. I'd be extremely surprised if the number of flared missiles wasn't 2x, 3x or even 4x as many as "dodged" missiles in accounting for no-hitters. -Stigma
