lock-ons everywhere

I'm going to say it now, flares need a cool-down reduction or turn in to an ammo based weapon. I used to think flares were good enough and it was fire suppression that needed a nerf, but flares need a buff. But A2G farmers you might say. Yes, and this would let more ESFs die to the massive amounts of flak everywhere. Plus, with air's loss of Hornet splash and thermals, we'll never see farming on the level we once did, even if lock-ons were entirely removed from the game, which would also be a great idea, as long as Infantry was given a direct fire replacement, maybe similar to the Striker. If you're going to give up the massive advantage of 25% health on demand then you really should be able to dogfight without worry of too many missiles.

Why ASF are used to kill infantry instead of doing their objective of achieving air supreriority?

Pls devide ASF from gunship-class aircraft.

No! At top rank the cooldown is what? 20-30sec! and pulling them breaks all lock, and grant you imunity for 5 sec. Pulled off with good timing (as late as possible) you get almost 10 sec of attack and retreat window!
10 out of 30, a good ratio!

I hate to break it to you but the rest of us Vehicles can only heal 12%, the Valkyrie 15%, and have to run with the a comparable caliber of anti-lockon (IR Smoke, whatever the Sunderer has right now, etc.).

Well, I get that you don't want ESF shooting the ground, that should be Libs.... But the developers gave ESF ground specific weapons, so that's PS2 for you. Make your case in a PS3 debate.

25 second cooldown, 3.5 seconds for lock with max stealth? 5 second immunity, plus a second or 2 of flight time. It's fine if you're doing air to ground and moving cover to cover, but you start getting locks from hills at the flight ceiling on half of Indar. Staying in that dog fight is a death to the, and running from the missile is a death from the other ESF. It's not that I want infantry to be helpless, I just want air to air to not suck. Infantry G2A needs that range, so I still think missiles should be like the Striker. The lead time limits the missiles to aircraft that are a threat to ground, but still gives you a chance at helping friendly air. Ground/Air has always sucked in this game, and that's a decent part of the reason the game isn't doing so well, because its combined arms aspect has always sucked.

I've always argued that fire suppression needs to be nerfed, and I still think it should, but if lock-ons aren't going to change then flares still need a buff. The air game just sucks, what with non-stop missile alerts and spawn room bursters. You get those few glorious moments, but air in general is arguably the worst part of this game.

i think lock-ons are fine, an ESF can facetank 2 rockets, they're the fastest unit in the game and they can fly,
you shouldn't be dying to lock-ons,

you have time to LoS and break the lock while they're acquiring it,
you then have time to LoS the missile so it crashes into terrain,
if you still somehow let that missile hit you then don't worry, you need to let that happen all over again... twice!
ESFs shouldn't be dying to lock ons.

renzor had a video awhile ago where he showed how he just sits there and lets the guy with the G2A launcher shoot him,
because he knows how utterly ineffective it is, all it does is give away the guys position for a free kill.

whenever i try flying its almost never G2A that kills me, its almost always skyknights
(the kind who camp enemy warpgates and gank skynewbies like me, to prove how MLG they are because they've spent 20 weeks flying ESF.)

Flares are fine against lock-on, the ability to avoid one rocket plus the 5 sec immunity are good enough.
The problem is that FS is a better choice because it's more versatile.
What's the point to avoid a few rockets when you'll see your HP melt from AA ?

If you want to make flares a sidegrade of FS, add bonus resistance to flak detonation as long as the lock-on immunity last. So flares will be the A2G choice.

Composite armor?

You have to be at an incredible distance from a Lock-On to get it to crash into an object. They follow your exact flight pattern to a point if they're close enough to you already, so trying to get the missile to crash into anything other than a Skyshield is pointless. Ever since they made it so you could delay firing for a moment to change your angle, (shooting around an object, for example) us pilots have had a difficult time avoiding them. Remember, missiles target where you were rather than where you're going.

Let's not forget that it's not always going to be just one lock-on targeting you. It might be 2, 3, or even 10. Some players go crazy with that stuff and have absolutely nothing better to do than aim their launchers at the sky while their teammates fight for them.

That can be helpful, but... expect to be immediately acquired as a target by every other ESF in the area, thanks to Engagement Radar being passive. Makes it almost stupid to use anything other than Vehicle Stealth. To be honest, stealth might even be too good...but not using it means missiles lock on faster, and other ESFs target you first. So yeah, it's really a very situational thing to use A2G weapons along with Composite Armor. If you're protected by other friendly air, then you might be fine. If not, well... good luck. I've done well with that combo before, but again, situational. Definitely the one thing that lets you facetank a burster MAX while you shred them with a Banshee or Airhammer.

That thing is as useful as the old decoy grenade. I've max rank and the bonus resistance you get are negligible. Currently, stealth is far more effective.
I'll maybe change my mind when the patchnote on PTS will come to live, since most lock on will deal flak detonation damage type instead of rocket damage type. But nowaday, composite armor is just a crap.

Fantastic. Brilliant. Amazing. I love it. A2G farming is the worst thing in the game so anything that stops people doing it gets my vote.

PS2 rewards are built around Infantry. So all units in the hands of regular players focus largely on killing Infantry. If you want players to not target/farm Infantry, then give them frequent and reliable and realistic OTHER non-Infantry objectives and targets they can focus on.

It's like a car with bad alignment (where you point the wheel straight, but if you let go of the wheel, the car turns automatically more and more to the right anyway until you are just driving to the right). You can try to steer toward non-Infantry gameplay, but eventually the game's rewards will push you toward killing Infantry.

PS2 rewards are built around Infantry Objectives and Killing Infantry: Certs, XP, Stats, Formal Objectives, Directives, Auraxium, Weapons functionality, what's consistently and reliably available to target, what doesn't require higher skill to target and not die, safer targets, etc.

Most units can't rely on finding any particular enemy unit on the battlefield except Infantry. Which they know they can find at any battle. So they eat what find, and come prepared to eat it. Many other units you do find won't come back if you kill them, Infantry will.

Air and Harassers have the speed to hunt around more, but only the best pilots or gank squad Air groups can hunt for other Air without running the high chance of dying... and the non-best or gank squad pilots then eventually get Resource locked out of Air.

If you want players to not target/farm Infantry, then give them frequent and reliable and realistic OTHER objectives they can focus on:
* Make regional enemy outposts (that auto-regene every 15 minutes, or can be manually repaired) that provide simple benefits while not destroyed, and Vehicles can swarm them and take them out. Add things like Air radar stations to these outposts, that Air will swarm and kill before beginning operations.
* Make directives that specifically focus on specific vehicle vs. specific vehicle, or vehicle class.
* Make stats that track vehicle vs. vehicle kill ratios, including things like specific and class ratios.
* Give resources gain rate higher if player is killing or damaging (or otherwise engaging) their units preferred target type. Give XP bonsuses and Ribbons, etc. You can tie it by Weapons, and give a unit bonuses when it uses that weapon as intended.
* Add a heat map filter option that shows where enemy units are by Class on ally and frontline areas of the map.
* Make killing the preferred unit for your unit "doable" for the average player. ESF is not reliably usable as A2A for the average player.
* Make sure each unit has realistic Loadout options to target and reliably kill it's intended target(s).

Make it so that the alignment of each units "steering wheel" naturally pushes that player to WANT to target their units/weapons/loadouts intended target.

For the record, I DO think it is a good idea to base all gameplay around Infantry as something to interact with and kill. It makes all units able to perform even without high skill, it provides plenty of targets, it's easy to find these targets, and (like a watering hole and the animals that come to it) it makes (almost) all the units converge on the same areas and targets. However, I also think they should stack OTHER non-infantry objectives ABOVE Infantry targets in terms of rewards. This would motivate players to farm Infantry less, but still have the game keep the Infantry farm low baseline so there was always something to do.

If lock-ons are annoying you, then destroy them with weapon systems that are not at risk of having lock-ons used against them.

Combined Arms.

As a fellow scissors player, I too think rock needs a nerf. Paper is fine though.

Both of you, and I guess half this post, is looking at this as a ground vs air argument, and completely ignoring air vs air as a thing. I agree that flares as an A2G ****ter are more than adequate, but flares as an air vs air player fall way short. That 8 seconds isn't long enough to finish your air engagement and get away safely. If you get away from the missiles then you die to your air opponent, and he probably dies to lock-ons after getting the kill. And honestly, I don't even run flares on my A2G ESF because they're not needed, not when you're playing with the ground, going cover to cover. Missiles are the last thing I worry about when I'm farming infantry. If anything, this change would help the ground out by letting flak and walkers be more effective thanks to fewer planes running fire suppression.


Liewec123: After grinding my dick in to the wall for more than a year now, I'm finally able to beat most pilots I come across in a 1v1. Know why those Skyknights are camping warpgates? Honestly? There are too many lock-ons above meaningful engagements to do any air to air there. So the options are either A: Stealth/Rotary the poor guy trying to fly and help the war who can't react due to latency then get out of the fight and repair. Or B: Camp the warpgate and have a pure A2A fight before the A2G ****ter can get to the fight. Trust me, an option to be near immune to lock-ons would be good for the ground and air.

Both of you, and I guess half this post, is looking at this as a ground vs air argument, and completely ignoring air vs air as a thing. I agree that flares as an A2G ****ter are more than adequate, but flares as an air vs air player fall way short. That 8 seconds isn't long enough to finish your air engagement and get away safely. If you get away from the missiles then you die to your air opponent, and he probably dies to lock-ons after getting the kill. And honestly, I don't even run flares on my A2G ESF because they're not needed, not when you're playing with the ground, going cover to cover. Missiles are the last thing I worry about when I'm farming infantry. If anything, this change would help the ground out by letting flak and walkers be more effective thanks to fewer planes running fire suppression.


Liewec123: After grinding my dick in to the wall for more than a year now, I'm finally able to beat most pilots I come across in a 1v1. Know why those Skyknights are camping warpgates? Honestly? There are too many lock-ons above meaningful engagements to do any air to air there. So the options are either A: Stealth/Rotary the poor guy trying to fly and help the war who can't react due to latency then get out of the fight and repair. Or B: Camp the warpgate and have a pure A2A fight before the A2G ****ter can get to the fight. Trust me, an option to be near immune to lock-ons would be good for the ground and air.

I run flares instead of FS on my ESF's (I'm a traditionalist who thinks aircraft too badly damaged should go into a death spiral) and while they're great against SAM's, they don't do jack against another ES's guns or ground guns so I can see the desire to make them more effective. However as a ground-pounder the last thing I want to see is the primary threat that keeps ESF's from being even more dominate reduced. The sad fact is that unless a pilot is a moron flak just isn't effective at killing them quickly. And unless you kill them fast enough odds are they will be back soon with another ESF to do whatever they were doing. Lock-ons are the one threat that does keep them at bay due to a risk of being targeted by so many that even FS won't save their hides.


That said I wouldn't exactly be against changing them to a finite number of uses with no cooldown. As long as they can't be resupplied outside of an air pad so using them all up does mean something other than having hanging around an ammo gal for a bit. That way it forces a choice on assured safety now versus needs in the short-term future. That and bring fire suppression in line with other vehicle's version for ***** sake. Its already easy enough to repair an ESF (nano regen or be an engineer) without getting out. Letting them heal twice what a ground vehicle can for the same ability combined with their ability to leave a bad situation at will is just an insult.

no

I've said it before and I'll say it again: If you don't want to be attacked in the air don't attack the ground. You've surely brought this upon yourself.

The only time I pull my Burster Max or my lock-on heavy is when air is farming infantry (especially Mustang AH equipped reavers - I hate that weapon with a passion)

Don't want infantry units shooting at you - don't farm infantry - it's really that simple. I don't even understand why ESFs even have AI weapons. Surely their role is air superiority and perhaps supporting Libs in anti vehicle operations.