Tomcats (a2a locks) op and fun-breaking

Where did you even get that number from? And yes, I'm a pilot who flies A2G and takes AR instead of flares because I wouldn't waste my money on something I may not even need to use.

And yes, I'm bad at dogfighting, I'll admit. But what were you talking about? Newbies who own experienced pilots with Tomcats? Why would that be a problem if you consider that most newbies wouldn't know how to keep their nose pointed at the enemy plane in the first place? And even if they did, they experienced pilots can simply break the LoS. Why would you keep your nose pointing at someone and hoping to deal damage (most often you don't) when you can be happily firing your noseguns?

Ah yes, it will be my pleasure to answer you
I will do so in two parts, first, I'll answer straight to your questions, then I will explain a bit both sides.


The flares are very very inefficient, they sit on a 45s cooldown, which is fine if you consider using it against g2a lock ons as they were intended. They gave you the time to escape providing sufficient cover, and you had a delay before you could come back.

The problem is that a2a locks are extremely quick to lock on to you, do a lot of damage, and you can't run away from them. So using flares to run away is not an option. Also, if you try to engage against someone with tomcats, they can easily maneuver for the few seconds that the flares work, or use their nosegun in the meantime. Then, after a very short period of time, they can lock you again, and kill you.

Noseguns require aiming, and they are quite hard to land perfectly, you probbly already noticed if you ever tried shooting at anything while in an aircraft. Tomcats on the other hand, are lock on missiles. They never miss, and they do a lot of damage.

The reason why you can't just tweak the flares is that yes, in the dogfighting scene, that might work. Put a 10s cooldown on it, which allows maybe a 5s opening for the lock ons (which probably would still be way too strong, but what can you do). But then what happens for ground2a locks, those become worst than useless.

As of the reason why this is a 6 page debate, it stems from the two different sides. On one side you got "pilots", and on the other side you got "not pilots". Pilots are players who spent a good amount of time in an aircraft and who try to get better at the air game. "Not pilots" are just everybody else.

Pilots have this code whereas one does not use the tomcats because the weapon are very overpowered (for instance, the server smash had an agreement not to use them because of this) and they require little to no skill to use.

"Not pilots" have a hard time to kill someone more experienced than them in a straight up 1v1 dogfight, so they want something that allows them to do so. Kind of like if I couldn't beat you on infantry because I had bad aim, and I used a weapon that had a strong aim-assist on it.

That alone is kind of frustrating for players that play in the air, but the bigger problematic is when someone who's got experience in the air decides to get tomcats. They basically become un-beatable because the weapon is geared towards newer players. Coyotes were supposed to be the equalizer, and Higby noticed how overpowered tomcats where before he left, and he made a tweet about it. Since he left though, and since DBG is now the new owner, it's not quite clear if they well get changed as higby mentionned.

This is again so (insert a word here), that I won't bother to answer

If you can't think of something wise and logical to counter, then don't.

If I replied "banana" I'd be about as logical as you were. At some point it's just depressing you know? Imagine having to answer the same illogical things over and over and over and over. It's annoying at first, but in the end it's depressing. And you want to answer, but you know it will just be one more time, and once more the person will probably not read it, or if they do, they'll usually just say something dumb again. And even if you answer, and the other has an epiphany, you know that in a day or not even. Maybe in the same thread, someone will say the same thing again... and again... and again... and again...

It's a really depressing thing overall. I mean, sometime, it's something that makes sense, and that's great, sometime it's a lack of information, but not that's not obvious, then that's fine also. But then there's the stuff that's so dumb and so obvious, that it's just depressing.

And then you wonder, should I answer this comment, and keep him going, thinking he's actually cornering me or saying something that's getting somewhere. Or just I just drop it, and not bother answering something that anybody who reads, will find so obvious they wouldn't need to read an answer for it.

But I tell you what, I'll reply to your comment, something that's been said over and over; but in exchange, once I did and you read it, instead of jumping to something else, you will tell me, in what I said, EXACTLY where I am wrong or illogical. And if you can't do so, you will instead write "Jawarisin is right, I was wrong". And I will add that to my signature.

Illogical? So you are saying that I didn't come up with points to counter your argument earlier? You are the one who is deviating.

Ahh yes depressing is good, for the tears of a skyknight is sweet and nutritious.

What's depressing is your cognitive abilities, not whatever else you said. I guess I also need to clarify that... which makes it all the more depressing. My faith in humanity sometime dips really low.

But if you ever want a reply to the ilogical and plain dumb thing you said earlier, feel free to take me up on my offer.

=edit=
I just saw this message on elusive's video where someone says (no name will be said):
"so you sneak around as a infiltrator with a cheap ohk weapon and when you play heavy you're a VS orion user.
I don't get the admiration here...."

yours is the same kind of depressing as this guy. Where I won't even bother answering.

Well you could not be a ***** to start off with.

Lock-ons are fine, you get killed by lock-ons boo hoo, they do 500 damage and require 3 locks to kill, If you have flares it takes four, nine times out of ten the pilots with them suck. "But I was dogfighting this other dude then this other dude shot me!" Yeah thats called getting double teamed.

BUT LOCKONS! I CANT RUN FIRE SUP WITH FLARES! Well suffer. I only die to lock ons when I try running from a fight.

Toodles
-Flies away on a stealth mossie-

Well said.

Got your back, ;D

C4 also shouldn't kill my tank because Im more skilled than the guy who dropped it.

Because the dogfighting community believes there is some kind of honor in nose gun dueling. It would be like if the infantry game grew up around using pistols only and shunned anyone who tried to use a primary. Its really really dumb.

Being able to hover 5,000 meters away and shoot down something is not ACE !! So use tomcats keep those guys moving. This guy just wants to fly his scythe around and not get shot down !! Nose gunning is nice if reaver wasnt a giant hit box with wings !!

What?!!? Why can't infantry Have this honor code and use knives only?!? And make this Planetmedieval2?? Oh yeah.. Right.. Cuz that's a stupid idea...Using only machine guns on aircrafts and refusing to use lockons is just as stupid.. This game isn't called planetworldwar1.

with a quick look at your stats, I think your statement of "I only die to lock ons when I try running from a fight" is far VERY far fetched. And I'm not going to bother answering the rest because depressing.

Fyi, my NC is higher br than my VS

I am not an Ace but I have tons of hours in the Air as an ESF. In my experience:
1) Aces very rarely use A2AM
2) those Aces that have used A2AM against me really didn't need them to win

Removing Air LockOns would boost the advantage that skill gives in ESF duels.

Removing Ground LockOns would make A2G much more effective, unless some other AA was boosted, or unless A2A farmed A2G more.

I agree that A2AM helps Gank Squads.

That said, usually we seen Reaver Gank Squads use Vortek/Mustang + After Burner, while Scythes are the ones using A2AM more heavily. Reaver is the fastest ESF with the Loadout for it, whereas Scythe is the slowest and the Gank Squads often need the A2AM to deal with opponents that run.

If you removed Lockons, it would give Reaver Gank Squads a huge edge over other Gank Squads.

I am in favor of A2AM for exactly this reason.

I almost never use A2AM. And I would have won a lot more ESF duels with lower skill pilots if they were not in the game. But I support them precisely because they are a tool to allow lower skilled players to do better vs. higher skilled players, which I feel is essential to providing a method to keep high skill Air in check and provide a more enjoyable game for the Average player masses the game needs the support of to be successful.

This is a combined arms PvP MMO that relies on sheer numbers and counter units/weapons to be able to counter player skill.

Ace Infantry players in a medium-large, competitive engagement will eventually die to cumulative firepower from the enemy sheer numbers or counter units. This is both Frequent and Usual in frequency of happening.

Ace ESF Pilots do not die with same Frequent and Usual frequency, especially when A2AMs and Coyotes are not included as kill methods.

The Average player does not want to play (and will not support) a game that allows elite players to extensively dominate gameplay success and objective outcomes. Many games segregate players of different skill levels to avoid this, but PS2 does not have that option (shared battlefield). PS2 needs Average Player support to succeed on a commercial level for DBG, so they should have tools and counters in the game to keep Elite players within relative parameters of success.

PS2 is a large budget commercial product. It does not care about paying homage to high skill players more than it cares about keeping a large playerbase happy and supporting the game.

Aces do get an advantage in the game. But that advantage needs to be capped.

Maybe because you don't know how to answer?
Don't worry, I get depressed too when I'm stuck with a question.

Yeah, and when you could still deconstruct your vehicle, about half of the air-players and especially the pro-air players would exit the vehicle, deconstruct and log out through Macro's to deny someone the vehicle kill, the infantry kill and save their stats. "honor" is something mostly used to get other players fighting your game.

I can see you're scared to take me up on my offer. Cmon, do it. I'll even create a thread for it.

There isn't really much for me talk about your argument here. Whatever that was related to the topic was already mentioned from other posts made not only by me, but many others too.

The player base, maybe except for the bushido code Skyknights that you view only as "pilots" has been proven again and again to use whatever OP or seemingly OP weapons to their advantage. This is a fact. So why isn't anyone abusing the hell out of those "OP" weapons in normal gameplay? Because they aren't OP the first place.

You keep saying "real pilots" don't use locks at all because they are OP, that's why no one gets shot down by A2A lock ons nowadays, or even get a "LOCK: AIR" sign. No, they are terrible in this game, that's why no one uses it. I can't even get locked even if I wanted to.

If people want to handicap themselves with rockets or hornets in air to air combat, so be it. Pilots with dedicated anti air missiles be it coyotes or tomcats will own the @$$ out of them, and rightfully so.