New Lock On Is Great From An ESF Stand Point.

TL;DR: ESFs get shot at by many sources, it is hard to find the sources when they hide in tree canopies, under/in buildings. Not only do they take damage from everything, they take large/high amounts of damage from sources that are accessible at every base. A lock on rocket that does reduced damage and can allow a pilot to avoid it whilst still being exposed to many of the damage sources is a benefit for pilots, or in my opinion.

This is really interesting, i feel like a few of the people on here primarily play ground and don't know how hard survive-ability in a battle zone, for an ESF it is.
- Small Arms Fire, to which we have composite armour, which is great at reducing damage from one or two soldiers, but three or more soldiers and the effects of composite armour can be seen as negligible.
-Anti Air, to which again we have composite armour. But the reduced effectiveness of AA when using armour isn't allways noticable. I will admit that it has helped me and many other pilots just save our ESF from getting destroyed, but those times are few and far between. The armour would be better and more widely used, if it also had the versatility to reduce damage from all explosives, except for the dalton and C4, because if you can hit an air craft with those two weapons, you are f*cking ACE!
-G2A lock ons, sure we have flares, and they work well, pop them and get the h3ll out of dodge, typically flying further into enemy territory, to get away from the initial lock and then decide where to go next.
-A2A lock ons, again flares and there was a comment above that depicted A2A engagement with flares and how effective they are.
-Other aircraft, depending on what the other air craft is doing, they could be flying high, to get the jump on you, or they could spot you hovering, repairing etc.
-Stealth is great to run on ESFs, however in an engagement, where you have poor aim and the enemy uses lock ons, you aren't going to have much success. It does help in out running lock ons and the time to acquire lock as well as flanking enemies that aren't listening the the games environment.

3/5 of the above are practically at every base, there is always at least usually one heavy with a lock on In tank columns, there will be either a couple of AA lightnings, or heavy tanks with an anti air source on them.

I would have more sympathy for this rocket launcher being crap on the attackers side against an ESF, if it wasn't for the shear amount of high damage weaponry that ESF pilots have to put up with. AA is relatively easy to use and any one has access to it at any base (lightning/skyguard, MAX, AA harrasser, AA sunderer), as long as they have resources. Once you figure out how to lead the target, from what ever weapon you are using, you can be guaranteed taking a substantial amount of their health away, depending on their closeness to you. Not only that, TR and VS MAX variants have damage profile boosts, personally i don't think VS deserve the boost, otherwise give all three factions a damage boost modifier, and the TR something else. Because NC max is a joke at medium to long ranges, or what i consider to be medium to long range. TR max used to be so OP but now it seems to have the same effective range of an NC max. Lets not get into a MAX debate, this is about the lock on rocket launchers place.

Sure this rocket launcher doesn't have a place, we already have a general purpose lock on launcher and a specifics lock on launcher. However it gives people a chance to fire something similar to a T2 Striker. Which is very powerful cqc against an ESF.

ESF have two primary purposes, ground support, and air support, Pilots can either tailor their VTOL too either one of the roles, or take the hybrid approach, personally i like the hybrid approach, the fast firing/short reload/small magazine weapon for anti air and rocket pods for infantry and air/ground vehicles.

Lets focus on ground support ESFs, typically they will run with rocket/photon pods. The ESF will be hovering and strafing slowly, or at least most pilots do, and in this phase/state, the ESF is very vulnerable, it can get a mouthful of AA, a rocket/tank shell up the @rse, One or more lock acquisitions, small arms fire, and i have seen a cheeky LA place a C4 brick on the ESF, was rather funny. Usually the ESF will take about half damage before the ESF has transitioned out of hover mode and is into flight mode, whilst still getting shot at or locked onto.

**Other Info That I Moved About**
When you consider this, not only do they all do high amounts of damage, they can be located any where at any time, as long as they don't get stuck, making it hard for an ESF to pinpoint the source of damage they are taking, especially skyguards in tree canopy's. An easy way to avoid an ESF, is to hide in a building, depending on the scale of the battle, the ESF will either hang about or be getting shot at soon after by other sources and then fly away to repair. If it hangs about, spot it and trace where it is facing, then dart from building to building, before it can hit you, staying away from doors.

I feel like i am forgetting something but there are both positives and negatives to ESF's in combat.

Oh, i also forgot, A2A weapons on aircraft were aimed at helping lesser skilled pilots in the air game, to which SOE/Daybreak forgot to realise that every BR and skill rank has access to these wepaons. Not only that, when an enemy can continue to lock and fly randomly around you, the defending ESF, is more then likely going to die. I have been in ESF engagements, where in a 1 V 1, no AA, no lock ons, no small arms fire and then enemy fired 4 lock on rockets at me, guaranteeing my death, not once did they bother firing at me with their nose gun. As cold as it is, A2A weapons should get locked off after you reach a certain BR or when you have a certain hit accuracy against other ESF. I think a more realistic damage output of any lock on rocket, would to 2/3 or 3/4 of the current A2A lock on damage.

Oh and the new Lock on counter on aircraft HUDs is so stupid, i always liked and i am sure that many people will agree with me here. With out knowing how many lock ons are trailing your aircraft, there is more excitement, will i die, will my ESF barely survive, it is more anticipation, nerves etc, Now we are going to see pilots bail out of their air craft as soon as they see 3+ lock ons trailing them, which really ruins the sports man ship of the game.

Also, lets not try and talk about real life comparisons, or game logic to much, because in a game set in the future, where infantry can carry two burster weapons in either arm, but an ESF can't have one strapped to the nose gun position or where a futuristic tank still takes more damage by being shot at in the rear. It is sort of stupid and funny at just how ironic this whole facade is. Yes i do understand that it is for tactics and strategic placement and minimising instagibing the opponent, although i do think a dog fight with two ESF back pedaling in circles with each other while firing bursters at each other would be an amaising thing to see, the explosions and black puffs of clouds. trailing from either air craft....

Another deterrent, that can be dodged, and if you do get hit by 2 of the 3 rockets you lose 1/4rth of your health meaning you can just tank it and fly away without afterburner to survive 2 of these?

We don't need more deterrents! We need aircraft killers! None of this "aim in their general direction and get some damage they can always escape from", we need things that require skill, are designed to kill them and pilots can use evasive maneuvers to dodge it.

It's fairly rarely lethal to the ESF, however.

ESF deaths per day: 56,856
ESF deaths per day without suicide or friendly collision: 34,375
ESF hours of use per day: 2,863.3 hours
ESF lifetime: 3 min, 1 sec
ESF lifetime without suicide or friendly collision: 5 min

So even with all that AA, your average ESF lives for 3 minutes. If you only count deaths through enemy action, that stretches to 5 minutes.

Compare that lifespan to a Lightning.

Lightning deaths per day: 35,596
Lightning deaths per day without suicide or friendly collision: 34,618
Lightning hours of use per day: 2,416.7
Lightning lifetime: 4 min, 4 sec
Lightning lifetime without suicide or friendly collision: 4 min, 11 sec

Really if you take out pilot error or cowardice, ESFs on average live longer than Lightnings do.

To top it off, out of the top 10 causes for ESF death, a Skyguard only pops up at #10. Ground-based damage barely makes the top 10 list for ESF deaths. In total, all three Skyguards only account for 3.36% of ESF deaths. Lock-ons only account for 2.76%.

Ground-based AA is really laughable at the moment. Such AA killing an ESF is fairly rare. Other aircraft as well as the fearsome Auraxian tree is more of a threat.

People should stop saying things like "ESF get hit from everything". Aircraft are the unit with the least counters. Any enemy hex you enter you are assured that 95% of the weapons can kill infantry and that the amount of AV capable weapons ranges between 30 to 50%. Sources include tanks, every heavy with an AV rocketlauncher, you could also count AA missile launchers since they score almost 4,9x the vehicle kills than they do aircraft kills.
Anyone here who things that AA launchers are OP against vehicles? No? Well the AA launcher scores 4,9x more vehicle kills than it does aircraft kills, I repeat it again because most people like to gloss over this.

How many ground-based AA do they encounter? The Skyguards, the Burster MAX's, the AA lock-ons... And that's it! I think I just showed everyone how "lethal" AA launchers are, despite being the most used AA out there:
All AA missile launchers out there: about 3200 this month
All Burster MAX's: Even if you assume all arms seperate it's 2071 users. If you assume the highest arm usage (the free right arm burster) it's 1474 AA users, of which about 70% uses both arms and 30% only one. That's (less than) Half of the AA missile users.
Skyguards are used 1235 times this week. Also less than half of the AA missile users.

ESF are far from as visible as people make them out to be. And even if AA can hit them at range... How much damage will they do? At 700m distance I get maybe 5 hits on 70 shots, even though in CQC I need half my magazine to kill it...


AA needs changing, it needs to have less skill reducing mechanics such as flak and lock-ons, ESF need to be able to operate better in heavy AA area's and be able to dodge AA shots, but AA also needs to be able to kill aircraft rather than deter them if you've got the skill to hit.

We used to have one, it was called the striker, now the TR call it, strikeless.

Just wait until the plebs release slow mode = best mode, then it just becomes like every on lock-on.
Fast mode is for escaping ESFs and that's it.

You might want to do your history lesson. The F4 Phantom was thought to never need a nosegun:

The video doesn't show the whole story, but it does show comments about it, but I'm sure you can find the longer version on youtube. But to give an idea of what happened in Viet Nam.. the F4 used by the Air Force was only achieving a 1:1 kill ratio against the inferior Mig-21. Using only missiles, the F4 could not engage properly if the Migs got too close by sneaking up on them.

The Navy and Marine Corps took a vulcan cannon and basically bolted it and duct taped it to the fighter, as well as broke out the old training manuals for dog fighting from WWII and managed a 5:1 kill ratio. Not too long after, the Air Force adopted the same strategies.

The F35 variants not including a nose cannon is just history repeating itself. By no doubt does the US have the greatest military technologies available.. but too frequently does a civilian design the role and manufacture of new designs and just gums everything up in the process. This is evidenced by the use of Humvees in combat over Bradleys and Abrahms, Ospreys over Seaknights, and not using nose cannons on fighters, thinking dogfighting has been made obsolete.

What should always be done by these companies is take a Specialist, Corporal, Senior Airman, and a Petty Officer Third Class aside and ask them if they think it will work. Just to put it through a realism check.

So basically you're telling me they're serverly underpowered. Because the point of lock ons is to hit you. Not for you to get away and have easy mode in the sky.

if you run out of flares...you should be dead. PERIOD.

agreed, but that would require a redesign of the flare system to be any fun at the moment.

They need to increase noises of esf'a. 90% of the time ppl can't hear them at all.

this is real hovering noise and guy is recording like 1 km away.

i am not sure where you get your stats from or if they are coorect but you make it sound as if ESFs only get killed by suicide or small arms fire.

Sure, in a 1 v 1, the ground should have something that can punish an air craft, to make it hesitant or as a deterrent but due to ESF by design, being able to take damage by everything. When fleeing an ESF isn't guaranteed a safe escape, Sometimes they land to repair after catching on fire and a sniper picks them off, their ESF goes boom.

ESF usually flee after one lock on, it would be rather anmature mistake to hang around, after about half your hit points get depleted in one go. Once hit by a lock on, it is easy to get killed by an ESF, or lib coming in to finnish the job, this is a massive multiplayer game. Where team work is "encouraged" or is the aim of the game, a dynamic tactical FPS,Typically you get by multiple of one source at once

I agree that ground should have something that can damage air, it is only logical, however due to defenders being able to camp in spawn rooms and shoot hard hitting weaponry out of them at ESF, luck AA and lock ons, it is a bit unfair, when only one side is exchanging blow for blow.

Also my thoughts are a bit all over the place but what i am trying to say, and it is very true, is that it is nice to have a weapon that gives ESF pilots a chance to dodge. Because ESF can get damaged by every source in this game. some of those sources do lots of damage for being relatively skilless. When dodging this missile, the ESF can sometimes be exposed to flak depending how they do the spiral to avoid the lock on. Besides, it is very rare that an infantry unit has to face an ESF to capture a base, bases are typically in a building, not exposed to the air, and the objective in this game, is to capture points and dominate the continent. yes i agree that dodging a lock on is sort of stupid, when the design of a lock on is to automatically hit the enemy, however i believe there should be a mechanic that allows pilots the chance to avoid missiles, maybe leave flares to newer players. Or as a specialised loadout. if this doesn't make sense, but i think it will be my last post, because many of you sound like hardcore heavies who are unable to use buildings as cover when an enemy aircraft comes your way.So think that lock on rockets need to hit harder, when a standard rocket can kill any ESF in one hit and one small arms shot.

Great I won't waste money on junk besides nothing is a hard counter to air at the moment.

I wonder when the **** they had the meeting that they all agreed that more lockons is what planetside2 needed. the developers obviously haven't flied a lot... I guess that when they go home they play call of duty and at work when they try to play infantry they get farmed by aircrafts so they thought adding another weapon that locks to aircraft is the best planetside2 can benefit... furthermore how hard is it to develope a new lockon weapon? Take the codes of the lockons that already exist, make some 5 minutes modification and "voilà"... after so many months without releasing anything you release a weapon that can be coded in 5 minutes? POOR EFFORT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Don't be lazy almost everybody pays for daybreakers. If you, developers, don't know how to fly ESF please ask the opinion of the best pilots on any server and they will all agree upon that more anti air is not necessary.
Lock-ons are effortless, I agree to that there is a need to lock onto enemy aircraft but there is already too mcuh anti-air.
Developers please, try to fly an ESF or try to learn how to solo a liberator before you add new anti-air content.

Oh, I'm well aware of that.

It's easily explained by the fact that missiles back then were in more or less an infancy stage. We're talking about A2A missiles from the 1950s... essentially the first generation. Of course such systems are going to be a bit wonky.

The real lesson of the F4 isn't that missiles as a whole are unreliable... but simply that you shouldn't put your faith 100% in new and unproven technologies.

In our 21st century (and PS2's 29th century), there has been plenty of time to develop A2A missiles to the point where nose cannon truly are obsolete.

Consider, for example, the A2A engagements of the first Gulf War (back when Iraq actually had an airforce). Pretty much all engagements were conducted with missiles, despite the fact that participating aircraft had cannon available to them. In fact, the kills involving cannon were limited to:
1) Shooting a parked transport aircraft
2) Shooting helicopters

This is because if you try and use cannon while your opponents are using BVR missiles, you simply will die. That's all there is to it.

I don't believe Iraq and Viet Nam are good comparisons to one another. I just don't see Iraqis on the same level as NVA. In addition that was at a time where yes, missile technology was at its peak and defenses were at an all time low. But as we've proven, radar, IR, laser, and other means of locking targets can be fooled.

One thing we've found in history throughout even the 21st century.. is that the better technology gets to bring us further and further away from the battlefield.. something always crops up that brings us back close.

While there is a certain kernel of truth in what you say, at the same time you are probably quite overstating it.

Many things in warfare have become obsolete over time, replaced by higher-tech weapons. Sharp sticks, stone spears, trebuchets, castles, crossbows, black powder, horse cavalry, AT grenades, AT rifles. We probably aren't going back to those things, even if the opposing force develops defenses against our current missiles and weapons. Instead, we will either look to strengthen our current arsenal or look for new ways to fight the enemy.

Aircraft cannon for A2A combat is simply one of those things. With the short range and relative inaccuracy of cannon, not to mention limited ammunition supply, there is simply not much of a reason to use cannon when you can use missiles.

From my own training (which included unarmed combat and 'sharp sticks'), I just cannot agree. I don't believe in forgetting the basics. Technologies fail, but the basics are always there.

And as for game mechanics. The nose cannon lets you get close without being detected. Lockons announce your presence as soon as you mouse over the target. This has its own benefits as well of course. But each has its purpose.

Sure you may still get training in those things, but we are far from when those methods are the primary or preferred form of engagement.



To say that modern soldiers get training in blades is not the same as saying that modern soldiers primarily use short swords in battle. In fact, the US Army stopped bayonet training back in 2010, simply because it wasn't seen as an effective use of time.

Again your information might be a tad off. Around that time the Army was toying around with the idea of changing the Basic Training to either a 6 week course or to a 12 week one from the 9 week standard. I'm sure some stuff was cut from the 6 week one which turned out to be a failure in policy. I know because I saw the results of 6 week trainees. They made my job rather interesting at times.

In the end they returned to the 9 week training schedule due to the failure of the 6 week course. And the 12 week was just too expensive for the results (the extra 3 weeks was easily covered by Phase 4 in AIT).

Even the Air Force still performs bayonet training. Complete with Pugil stick competition.