I've been saying Surface to Air missiles are broken and need a serious Damage buff and Monouver, speed/range buff to make them actually a threat to Aircraft for... Well the last 2 months. Aircraft move quickly, it takes about 7 rockets to kill a LIB, there is no ******* way in hell your going to get off 3 before it flys out of range, let alone 7. It takes 2-3 missiles to kill a fighter (And they can simply swerve tot he side and dodge the damn things). Add the ships Flares in, and you get Waste of Ammo as the result of trying to shoot down aircraft with Anti Air missiles. And Galaxies? Yea.. don't waste your ammo shooting at them you'd need about 15 to kill one (If not more) and oh gee.. you can only carry a maximum of 8 Anti Air Launcher missiles at full upgraded certs on the HA. Which (If you read the above) means 2 are probably going to hit and the other 6 are simply wasted. SAMs in other words are basically useless in this game. You mine as well remove them because there pointless to use as the only kills you will ever get are if you manage to last hit steal the kill or shoot a plane sitting on the ground without an engi healing it. I mean 1 engi can out heal the damage of an HA with anti Air missiles.
While I see your logic, don't forget AA weapons are great for area denial. The minute the pilot gets a lock after using flares, he/she is outta there (generally, unless they have nice upgrades and are very cocky). In this game, air superiority helps a TON. Denying them airspace goes a long way for the ground offense/defense. But yes personally I'd much rather have anti-vehicular rockets equipped.
While trialing the Hawk (Guided Surface to Air) launcher for the HA, I did notice that the missiles often don't do ANY damage. Not to be confused with "very little". They'd hit the aircraft and be completely ignored. This behaviour was mostly with liberators - (VS and TR obviously). I did manage do damage to most of the ESF I shot at though (some were so far away at the time of impact I couldn't tell if they had deployed flares or not) So in my conclusion it seems more like impact detection bugs, than specific issues with the weapons themselves.
I dont ever have the not hit issue myself, I just notice the hit, and how little damage it does. It's really depressing when your trying to hold an area and all a faction needs to do to take it is spam aircraft. The AA max upgrade in the last patch helps, but Anti Air missiles definitely need some love. Whether that means buffing their damage, or lowering the Aircrafts resistances to that damage, or whatever. In beta Anti Air was awesome and worth it, Now its just useless. (For whatever reason)
Well I mean thats kind of the point of an Anti Air Defense, to deny the enemy the ability to take your territory by Air. It means they would need to use ground forces instead of simply zerging Aircraft which are virtually invincible and unkillable in the hands of a skilled pilot due to the current mechanics.
