Tomcats (a2a locks) op and fun-breaking

Oh the good old tomcats thread! I love these! I always think they are focused on completely the wrong focus. To either remove or keep them.

Tomcats have been introduced to give new players a better chance to attack more experienced players. This isn't a weird thing to my imagination. The truly experienced air players are so good they can handle 20 inexperienced air players easily. This isn't possible in any other ground based vehicle or infantry unit. To even the playing field is a good idea in that regard.

Now you think it is too powerful and too easy to use. Like all vehicles, you can counter it. Although most counters reduce the damage. Let us look at tanks for a second.
Mines can be greatly reduced by mineguard.
You can grant yourself a temporary immunity from lock-ons with IR-smoke.
General AV can be reduced by fire suppression.

These differ in effectiveness. Generally fire suppression is chosen, as you don't encounter mines too often, and lock-ons against tanks are often less of a problem than other sources of damage.

Now air has fire suppression that heals a quarter of your ESF to reduce damage.
Flares to prevent the much more effective lock-ons.
An ejection system to safely bale out of your ESF when you lose a battle.
An engagement radar to prevent other air from sneaking up on you.

At this point, you have a hard counter against a strong weapon. It grants several seconds of immunity against it, which is something that should be valued highly. If I look at these forums, it seems to me that flares are hardly used.
The game revolves about two things. Skill and being prepared. Not bringing mineguard will increase my chances of mines blowing me up drastically. This is not a problem, as I simply wasn't prepared. Same thing with infantry. If there is long distances, I prepare long ranged weapons. If I get a shortranged weapon and get shot, my skill didn't really matter. Just how prepared I was.
Same with tomcats. Being unprepared against one of your counters and dying is not anyone's fault but your own.

Now the discussion begins for me. The punishment for not having flares might be too hard, and tomcats need to be toned down in that situation. Simultaneously we can check the situation for when you have flares. From the forums I seem to deduce that many think the tomcats punishment is too high even with flares. If this is the case, tomcats should be toned down in that regard.

As soon as you have a certain balance in tomcats (counter vs air) against air no flare (being countered with no reduction), and between tomcats (counter vs air) against air with flare (being countered but with reduction), we will be done here. At the same time, we will leave with a weapon that takes less skill to use for beginners, but does not ruin the airgame. Maybe it ruins some peoples day as they aren't mentally able to switch from one way of fighting to another, but doesn't ruin the airgame on a whole.

So you should be talking about balancing the tomcats in those two situations. Not about removing it because you think they are no fun. I don't whine about being blown up by mines if I didn't take mineguard either, or blown up by C4 if I didn't keep moving and presented a juicy target.

Well. The answer is simple. You should use lock ons if you are planning on killing ESF's. this thread is the result of greedy and whiny Pilots who want to be able to kill ground targets with lolpods while still being the best at killing aircrafts with their nose gun. Guess what? I got news for you. You can't get the best of both worlds. You wanna kill ESFs better? Get lockons. You wanna decimate infantry? Get lolpods. You wanna kill tanks? Get hellfire. This is all about trade off and it simply makes sense. Get over it.

i run fuel pods m8, not every esf pilot has this thirst for farming the poo right out of the groundlings

How'd I lie? My server allowed much larger render ranges than others. What you can call me out on is overstating how easy it is, but I think that if we look at the world of overstating the air-game is pretty much top-notch already.

Positioning is a wonderful way to make shotguns better. AI MAX's at least see a difference in how well you can play with it. While not every noob will do it, many will kill themselves quickly simply by not sticking to your support etc. But you do have a point, they could use some improvement. Although there is one big problem with my statement: too much skillful and the game stops being fun for the average/low skill player. There should be a clear difference between a noob and a pro, but the difference shouldn't be so big that the noob simply has no chance at all. Whether you like it or not, and I think many people like it, low-skill players are part of the game too and it needs to cater to them for a part as well, and I don't doubt that many pro players have had their fun by simply gunning down half a dozen low-skill players.

So yeah, they could have some improvement. I would like a more varied weapon choice anyway. Tanks in general have shells either fly fast and have small AOE but good AV, or shells that fly slower and have large AOE bug low AV, and one intermediary option.
Where's the weird stuff? Where's flak shells that you can detonate yourself to deal the big damage? Where's the shells that you can bounce around in a building? Why aren't there more Viper style weapons, but with a tiny AOE against infantry for MBT's? Tank primary canon shotgun? The ability to carry or activate specialized ammo so your shots get additional effects, from small Flash-grenade effects to Concussion or the ability to have bullets/shells pass through multiple enemies or even tanks?

I think there's a whole difference between the two. But I do think every class and every tank could get dedicated weapons and/or tools/abilities to combat anything. Infiltrator with dedicated anti-MAX weapon, such as a deployable anti-material weapon? Harasser with the ability to deactivate nearby tanks their HUD, drain their energy and perhaps slow them down? Smoke screens against aircraft, AOE explosion around your tank to damage and kill infantry near you?
Basically, every class should get a weapon or tool to be able to deal with aircraft, tanks or MAX's in as much as possible seperate loadouts. The same counts for tanks. Even the humble Flash should get an AA loadout, even if it consists out of firing a smoke-screen up in the air that blocks scopes, everything should get something.

Crazy idea, but I wouldn't mind being crazy with you on this one. I wouldn't mind it personally.

Well I had this nice huge paragraph here to explain this, but since it was deleted and I'm a lazy fellow, I won't bother to redo it. Instead I'll give you the end of it, Pilots don't use lock ons because they are more hardcore players that care about the game and about having fun. And since they respect each other, they don't use lock-ons on each other.

Because most players farming a2g are already really bad pilots and would get killed by a nosegun anyways, tomcats is something they will use themselves, and if they don't, well they are usually dead anyways. It's not like they would get "less owned" by enemies with a2a, they would just get owned anyways, and if not, it's because they got tomcats themselves.

Noob pilots already get farmed, that's the way it goes, and we all had to go through there. And you know what? If you simply asked for help from any real pilot on your server, they will more than willingly help you out, and they will even do duels with you. For instance, our WG was getting camped a little while ago, and after trying 2 times or so to get out, I was talking with one of them, and I ended up asking if I could do a duel. He talked to the others (2 other ESF), and they left me alone. Other pilots from other factions were also told to leave us alone, and we went in a deserted corner and dueled a bunch of times. He gave me a few advices too, and I learned a new trick.

Pilots respect each others, and they are more than willing to help others. In this case, a few extremely good pilots agreed to duel me even though they all completely wrecked me. I'm better than average in my ESF, and I'll kill an average pilot, but I'm far from their level, but they still spent time with me, and even showed me new stuff.

And you have to realise that it's no different from infantry. For instance, someone like Yehhh1g from DA. Would you say he's "Farming n00b infantry" because his k/d's over 5, and he's got an insane kph? I mean, it's the same as an ace pilot, he's really good in his field, and he's performing well. Is an experienced sniper "farming n00b snipers" with ease? Well yes... now, if any of them asked for help, the experienced ones will be more than willing to help.

In fact, if you look over at the class sub forums, you'll notice yehhh1g made an offer to help any player, and he's already spent hours on it. There's guides made, and more too. So yes, noobs get farmed everywhere, and that's how shooters go... It's nothing special about the air that makes noobs getting farmed more.

I just lost the previous half of the post during the copy pasting from one page to another, so I won't continue with all your posts, and this one's the last one I will answer to. I will go back to the first ones to answer them once again :/ Oh well.

Well this particular one was answered. Also, grenades can be avoided, not a2a tomcats.

And without being mean, the reason why you did horrible with tomcats is because you would do horrible with just anything else. It's not the tomcats in particular. And the reason why you don't see a2a lock ons is because good pilots don't use them.

So are rocketpods and hornets... get rid of the those and I'd agree to get rid of G2A lock ons.

Double post

And that's fine m8, that's simply another tradeoff. And a fair one too, since you get to have more afterburner fuel which allows you to keep that distance and stay out of lockon range. It also allows you to outrun Lockon missles. Many pilots rolling fuel pods have been able to afterburn away from my missles.

ITT, people are surprised that a combination of a secondary and a primary beats using only a secondary. I don't understand how this is such a hard concept to fathom. If it is really an issue, then take flares instead of FS. Unlike FS, you can negate as many lockons as you want. Unfortunately, nobody seems to use them since they all like their +25% heath repair kit. And thus the cycle continues, all because they won't change their utility slot...

I wouldn't use a shotgun to get rid of a sniper, don't use FS if you want to negate lockons. I wouldn't complain when I use a pistfiltrator to take on a HA, you shouldn't complain when a Dogfighter out-DPSs your Interceptor. Quite literally, learn to loadout.

Same thing applies to ESF with tomcats *shoulder shrug*. If I pull tomcats I'd crush my ESF in a rock. At the very least there's that skill.

It's an FPS game. It's a harsh world with gruffed man doing gruffed manly things. Those who can't cut it - die. Low skill? Get better. Progression is all it's about. Being better than you were yesterday. "Equalizers" are bull ****.

And as other people have said it - that equipment is not limited to low skill players.

Even for low skill players there are things to do. They're just not related with killing. Set down mine fields, sit down on a cap point, pull sunderers / provide logistics in other forms, support with heals / revives / ammo. Hell, lay down covering fire with HA.

I agree about equalizers, but they are needed for a game to succeed. The problem is when equalizers are unbeatable.

Tomcats have a fail-proof method to be used that will allow you to kill ANY pilot extremely easy while being nearly impossible to kill yourself. Hence why they are stupid.

I'm not arguing against tomcat nerf, just saying there are multiple manifestations of a similar problem in PS2.

Sigh, looks like I'll have to explain to you all over again.

Lock ons can be avoided using flares, that's for sure, as well flying erratically to break the locking on process. It's easier to avoid a lock with flares than to survive a grenade.

You keep saying that good pilots respect each other, blah blah blah, thus no one uses that "OP" weapon. Oh really? No one will use an "OP" weapon? 0.o When the Phoenix was OP, EVERYONE in the Blue corner was using it. When the original Striker was OP, we saw entire mountains turning red. So what's it about chivalry you were saying again? Pilots apart from skyknights are humans as well, and smart enough to know that spending that money isn't worth it 90% of the time.

And about how A2A locks make ground "farmers" sad: oh sorry I didn't know that you can equip LOLpods /Hornerts with Tomcats as well.

Why do ESF players think they are more important then everyone else?

PPA/Tomcats, banshee/tomcats, air hammer/tomcats. You're so ignorant....

Yep, but you didn't read what I said, pilot respects each other. People like you, don't respect anybody but you don't get any respect either.

And no, flare's a one-time deal that doesn't last very long. It's basically useless. It would be like preaching that nanoweave makes you invulnerable to bullets... No. It's only a little bit, but in the case of ESFs, flares aren't even a little bit good.

Ah, yes. But none as extreme as the tomcats; hence the problem.

Flares give you enough time to get into a dogfight with that missile ESF, and that's when the Banshee or whatever, except for the Air hamner becomes useless. And do you think Tomcats work well in dogfights? Think again.

For the air hammer, that's the problem with the NC, not the missiles.

Edit: compare the nanoweave with flares only when nanoweave provides you a few seconds invulnerability from all bullets.

See, that's where you not being a pilot and being ignorant on the subject makes you think that tomcats are not working well once engaged upon/dogfighting. That's only because you're bad and you don't know better...

Alright, imagine Nanoweave gave a 0.03s invincibility window to bullets, that's how useful flares are.

I have never tried proper dogfighting in PS2, so can someone explain why tomcats are a 6 forum page issue? Why not use the flares, are they somehow inefficient?

E: If so, then flares could be tweaked closer to their ground cousin in terms of cooldown for example