New Lock On Is Great From An ESF Stand Point.

The NS R3 Swarm, is by far the best lock on in the game at the moment, all lock on models should follow this missile launcher.

TLR: Missile Speed = Excellent, Damage profile = Excellent, verdict DO NOT TOUCH OR TINKER WITH THIS WEAPON. Make all lock ons like this weapon.

In my experience, i was running a reaver with stealth, fire suppression, high G and when getting locked by this missile, doing tight turns, using pitch shifting, is excellent in dodging missile most of the time. The missile would tail me until it ran out of fuel or hit something, this is by far what all lock on rockets should do, it makes flying funner, as opposed to the other lock ons where it is very rare/difficult to make the enemy lock on hit terrain or run out of fuel before you get hit.

The only time i would usually get hit by the missile, is if i had to fly in a relatively straight line, to get far enough away from flak, or if another one was fired, from a different location to the initial.

I haven't used this launcher, but i feel it is the most balanced lock on rocket launcher out there. However from what i understand it provides the pilot of an ESF, a chance to avoid the missile and to not be forced to take flares with them, like back when the striker was heavily used, if you wanted to survive a trip into TR territory, you had to take flares. It is also balanced as when spiraling around, trying to out live its fuel supply, you can get shot at and damaged from by other flak.

Also, the damage profile, its soooo gooooood. typically i would be fired upon in bursts of 2 lock on rockets, and their damage combined did somewhere around maybe a 1/4 of my reavers health. This is an excellent amount of damage, because it provides a deterrent to the pilot as well as a fairly substantial amount of damage, not enough that you would be almost guaranteed death in your next dog fight, but it gives you a fighting chance to tie or win a dog fight, straight after being hit.


what about you guys? what do you think, is it a good weapon, balance on both from the attackers side and the victims side? I am really eager to know, because typically SOE/Daybreak adds in weapons, or changes their values, ruining the balance of the game or throwing off a players aim as they aren't used to the altered firing mechanics.

haven't logged in since patch, but current lockons are stupid - I've had one do a full circle around biolab while it followed my reaver. I've had them do 90* turns to hit me behind cover and more.

Aren't ESFs given a free counter against all lock-ons anyway? All it involves is pressing "F".

Really it should boil down to this:

If the ESF has Decoy Flares equipped, they should be virtually immune from lock-ons.
If the ESF does not have Decoy Flares equipped, they should be virtually dead from lock-ons.

Decoy Flares are there for a reason. To provide protection against A2AMs and SAMs. At maximum level, they can provide total protection for 5 seconds out of 25, giving 20% invulnerability to missiles as it is. And 5 seconds, plus increased relock time, is more than enough for any ESF to escape ground-based fire.

If you can simply dodge these missiles, why bother with Decoy Flares at all?

The only A2AMs or SAMs that should be dodgable are ones that might OHK an ESF (essentially anti-Liberator/Galaxy weapons). There the missile trades increased damage for reduced effectiveness against smaller, more agile craft.

But to reduce the ability of all A2AMs or SAMs to hit would be a massive nerf to AA and A2A.

Haven't played jet, but from what you're saying here, it's up from a grounded perspective.
The old lockons were a like big sign: "Get the **** out of here or i may kill you"
The new ones seems more like: "Hello, it would be very gentle if you leave this area, in the next 10 seconds or so, or i may hurt you"
Or in other Words, every groundfarming ESF will laugh about it, while unloading its magazine on the target, turn a little circle, fire some more rounds and fly away for repair instead of: unload a single salve, und run for cover and repair....
Even the old launcher wasn't a big threat to an esf, when it's the only source of AA. if the new one is less powerfull, mäh propaly won't use it.

A ground peasant dosen't care much about what happens in the air, as long as there is no groundfarming plane.
If not, he want as much "get the **** out of here freaking flyboys!" signs as he can get his hands on.
I guess ground peasants don't like the new launcher.

PS: Striker vs ESF, no, just no, just use your lmg it's more effektive.

This is not quite true. It all sounds good in theory, but not in practice. When you get locked form ground and you have flares - sure, you pop them and fly away (even if you don't have AB equipped ). With A2A it's a different story. First of all, lock indicators are not always reliable. I've had them show up only AFTER lock was acquired and missile was released (no being locked-on indication at all). Second - if you get locked on by A2A and you don't have the enemy ESF in sight - you can pop the flares, but after a VERY short period of time you will be locked again and now flares are not available until after 2 rockets have a chance to hit you (certed lock-on timer or certed reload speed). So unless you have flares, you are close to ground, there is cover you can duck behind - you can't counter (unless you can outdamage them in a dog fight before second rocket (first one will be wasted by flares) hits you and then finish you with nosegun.

Right now flares are only useful against ground lockons, air lockons are a different story.

So your ideal vision of lock on rockets is that they should be outrun, lead to explode into terrain geometry, flared out of or just fire suppression most of its damage, it doesn't look to me like an effective weapon to me by how you recount your experience considering these heavy drawbacks, but then again I haven't logged in yet after the patch, so I will be checking it out soon.

In an A2A situation though you have still managed to disable your enemy's secondary weapon for 5 seconds. That is a significant advantage. You have forced your enemy to fall back on their nose gun, and in that situation you should be evenly matched (unless you were in an A2G loadout, but in that case against an A2A ESF you probably deserve to die). Furthermore your own secondary weapon is not disabled, meaning that with Afterburner Tanks or Coyotes you still have an advantage against your opponent who is down to a single weapon.

Really A2A missiles should be the primary method of A2A engagement... nose guns stopped being the favoured tool long, long ago.

Then again we have yet to see a single vehicle-mounted SAM and we're still using ancient flak weaponry...

Translation: This is totally ineffective at killing aircraft. Therefore, it is great.

If it doesn't statistically demonstrate an ability to affect Air, it will get buffed in that respect. That's how the developers think.

To be fair, it doesn't have to try too hard. A.KPH of the Annihilator is only slightly above 3 and the faction-specific Air lock-ons only get a 3.5 A.KPH. Also, since it's a dual-purpose launcher, it'll also be competing with the Annihilator and faction Vehicle lock-ons in V.KPH.

I would say that's exactly backwards. It's like saying small arms weapons(carbines, ARs, LMGs, etc.) should take a back to grenade and other explosives spam in infantry battles. Who really wants that? The people with bad aim? The people who aren't in it for the long haul?

And noseguns are still the dominant A2A weapon. They have not fallen out of favor, as far as I can tell.

If you get locked before finding your enemy, you have two choices - run or look more.

1) You run - flares give you 5 seconds headstart. even if you have AB tanks - you will not outrun the second and third rocket. Your only hope is finding cover.

2) You fight - it may take you those 5 seconds to find your enemy at which point you are at a disadvantage. You have already used up your utility slot, they probably still have either Nanite repair or Flares. At the same time as soon as 5 seconds are up and you just spotted them - a second rocket will hit you. At that point you are at around 50% health and are now against an ESF with full health. he can use A2A or nosegun to finish you off.

I know it's possible to win against A2A, and I've done it myself. BUT - i do see a lot more experienced pilots taking A2A lately, which means that anyone but true ace pilots with meticulous nonegun aim are going to die. This is due to a few reasons - most experienced pilots have received their directives, they have fully certed aircraft, they are tired of nosegun and want to mess around with other weapons.
A2A is not a thread only in inexperienced hands. Even I will equip them once in a while (Especially when there is an enemy ESF gank-squad in the air)

Reason why nosegun is the most used A2A weapon is not because people are elitists or try-hards, but because nosegun is effective against all targets, all other weapons are very situational. It gives you the most flexibility and a chance against most engagements.

It's not how they think. They don't care about balance as much as about revenue and cash-flow. These weapons were introduced not to make game more fun, but to impelement additional cert sink and to provide another object of desire with those would consider paying real money.

if you really think they are working for your pleasure and not for making money then you are going to be very surprised.

Out of the latest F-35 A,B, and Cs, only the F-35A is equipped with a standard nose cannon. The B and C variants do not come with one, and if they want cannon they have to bring along gun pods.

Just as how gun AA has been replaced by missile AA, aircraft A2A weapons are heavily reliant on missiles. Nose cannon are much less useful because they are heavily outranged by missiles.

Since WWI, infantry small arms are probably the least effective way to kill infantry, by body count. So yes, the primary method of engaging infantry should rely on bombs, shells, and mortars. An infantryman killing another infantryman with bullets should be much less effective than bombarding them with artillery or airstrikes.

I'm not talking about real life scenarios at all. As far as I'm concerned, fun > realism. If I wanted realism, I'd be playing Arma or BF(with that realism mod).

Oh, well I was talking about logic. So I guess that's why we have this disagreement.

I would be fine with a lockon that ESFs can easily avoid if it does a lot more damage than the standard ones. Basically and anti-Lib and anti-Gal lockon. The one-size-fits-all style of AA is rather hard to balance.

Used to be like that... guess what it meant?

It meant EVERYONE used flares and popping flares meant you were relegated out of combat for full duration of CD.

And you continue to think that real life equates to balance, which is where your "logic" falls flat on it's face. (in war, the entire purpose and goal is to create as unfair a situation for your enemy as possible, and thus we have a few world super powers with the Armies to squish anyone else... like man portable rocket launchers capable of OHKing any tank in the entire world, A2G missiles fired from miles away, from a jet traveling at super sonic speeds, undetectable at the range it's at, and hitting targets with pinpoint accuracy and devasdtating effects, etc etc etc... ALL of which would be the single most unfun game ever conceived if translated directly)

Consistently.

But hey, at least you're consistent

At least in real life there are roles for infantry, aircraft, armour, anti-aircraft and artillery (not to mention ships and various support vehicles). Everything has a role. Everything is important.

Can you say the same about PS2?

Of course not. In PS2 there is only infantry and possibly a role for ESFs, as the Server Smashes prove. The only vehicle in PS2 that makes a difference is the Sunderer, and again that is because it is of use to infantry.

For example, in the last Server Smash between Emerald and Cobalt, Lightnings killed a grand total of 28 things (and I'm assuming that it's Lightnings for both sides). Vanguards managed to sneak in 23, and Magriders got 10. So a grand total of 61 things (infantry and tanks) died to tanks.

That's out of 27,898 deaths total, making tank-related deaths a whopping 0.22%. Not 2.2%, but less than a quarter of a single percent.

So go on. Tell me that PS2 is balanced. That tanks, aircraft, and infantry all have an important role. Really.

I mean even real war statistics weren't that bad. WWII infantry at least got 10% of kills. Compare that to the 0.22% that tanks in PS2 get.

There are two ways to change PS2 to actually make PS2 a balanced game.

The first is logistics. So long as that "middle area" between bases is inconsequential and bases themselves off-limits to tanks, then tanks will continue to be irrelevant.
1) Get rid of 50% of all bases. Make the distance from base to base much longer and more treacherous.
2) Prevent defenders from spawning in "contested" bases. The garrison you start out with is what you get. If you are killed in a contested base, you spawn at the closest uncontested base and have to grab transport over.
3) Limit attacker Sunderer spawns per Sunderer. Each Sunderer now only can spawn 20 infantry before it has to drive back to a friendly, uncontested base to "refill" on spawns.
4) Reduce Sunderer armour and HP. Sunderers are now weak and easily destroyed trucks. Parking Sunderers next to walls should be a bad idea. Sunderers should be rear-line vehicles, meaning that infantry still must fight over some empty land to get to the base (or risk their Sunderer).
5) Reduce Galaxy armour and HP and remove the ability to squad spawn into a Galaxy. Galaxies should be able to be downed and destroyed by enemy air defenses before it reaches the base; dropping infantry in the open outside the base should have great benefits compared to dropping them on top of the point.

The second is to buff tank durability and resistance to damage. If tanks are more dangerous and lethal, then they might have an impact on the outcome of a fight regardless of logistics. That's a pretty simple one.

In the end, real life does equate to balance. Or at least it has more balance than what PS2 currently shows!

Real life has better graphics too.

Unfortunately, real wars are traumatizing, and you don't get any respawns. Maybe PS2 is better than real life after all?

The point is that drawing parallels between the two doesn't work because the context is so different.