What's with all the annihilators? Tons of them out there

its because lock ons are broken now... no lock on tone so everyone and their cousin are using one, fantastic ploy by SOE to boost sales, take out the lock on tones for a few days boost lock on sales put lock tones back in listen to whines on the forums how so and so was stealth nerfed....

More like once every 40 seconds but even after you max out flares, its once every 25 seconds with 5 seconds of immunity.

VS if you are going to Mag zerg a base remember to bring infantry support with you. That tactic doesn't work anymore.

The projectile for this rocket launcher should start pretty slow and speed up as it goes along. Also the projectile should gradually turn to the target so it's not simply lock and shoot. A combination of these two elements would require the user to at least aim his rocket carefully.

YES.

The damage is 1150 now... vs. 1550 for the specialized missiles. Annihilator can lock on to every target - damage should be about 50% (and I'd say a bit lower because of 100% targeting) - 750 is a perfect amount.

Swarms would still be dangerous/deadly to ESF/MBT -- and the missile would assume a reasonable role as a low DPS omni-functional option... vs. the 67% DPS obvious-functional option it is, now.

This would probably cause a lot of players to actually make a tough choice in their loadout - currently there really isn't one.... and it would probably be supported by ESF pilots as they would get a bit more breathing room...

Nobody cares about its ability to kill turrets.

Annihilator - 1150 damage
Nemesis - 1500 damage
S1 - 1700 damage
Decimator - 2000

Honestly I think this would be considered a bigger issue if ESF's didn't get so much hate from people because of rocket pods.

The simple fact of the matter is that the range of G2A lock ons is absurd to the point of threatening tanks simply because the infantry can fire at distance that puts him self at no threat what so ever. At least rocket podding ESF's went into a predictable line of movement that could be hit by flak.

Nowa a days though I don't even see flak anymore, I haven't seen a single flak max a long time, and with good reason, why use a infantry cool down to fight a vehicle cool down when you can use a free counter with HA?

I double checked the one for the Lightning/Prowler and max rank says 15 second cooldown. When activated, makes you immune to lock-on for 6 seconds. So...I don't play vehicles, but my understanding is:

-Activate Ability
-15 second cooldown begins
-6 second immunity begins
-6 second immunity ends
-9 seconds remaining on cooldown
-rinse/repeat.

That's kind of OP, actually. Here's a screenshot:

I'm sorry but do u have 4 GPUs?

Yes.

That's tank smoke screen, which is understandably much better than ESF flares, but I doubt enough to actually save you from the current levels of launchers.

I assumed it was appropriate to be talking about tanks considering the original post:

Ya but he's talking about flares.

Quoting myself from a different long buried thread on the topic of lock on missiles. Still applicable I just don't feel like rewriting basically the same post over and over lol.

Ah, I see. Someone quoted my post in the tank lock on thread and changed it to be about aircraft. I have no aircraft experience. They seem fine to me at the moment. Incredibly lethal to tanks. But they have counters. Which is how it should be. When I had my prowler out one time, every time a flyer came by I had to run. Because unless I had an AA gun, I was toast. Fortunately, the annihilator has lower damage output than the standard anti-air rockets. So it should be more manageable. But maybe I'm not one to speak as my server is quite dead and I have no idea what large battle are like. People here hardly have any AA. The most AA I've ever seen out at a time, ever, is 4 AA max units, and 2 AA HA guys. And my mind was absolutely blown away at that fact. As it never happens on my server.

I was referring to flares for ESF.

Milk cash out of all the vehicle ******, then (re)introduce lockon variants in attempt to placate Infantry except with target discrimination, forcing people to re-equip, ok in bases, rubbish in field, introduce jack-of-all-trades-faceroll-launcher, bam cash cow.

SoE aren't really that bothered about 'balance' and you'll note the appearance of 'un-balanced but fair' threads, which is good for SoE as it leaves options for them to 'unveil' a new cash shop item to 'fix' that imbalance.

PS2 makes a lot more sense if you look at everything as a means for SoE to generate revenue, everything else is a secondary consideration.

They've pretty much run out of 'lockon' iterations to milk at the moment and if the rumour-mill is to be believed, then at least the Lancer is making a re-appearance, rapid firing, accurate and long range DPS monster is what the original in PS1 was, it will be interesting to see if/how they implement it, especially with render distance and directional hitboxes on vehicles. A direct copy would result in a 300m radius hemisphere of plasmary melty death for vehicles, MAXs and air alike.

It's the opposite of what happened pre-launcher buff. All the tanks would sit exactly 151m away from a spawn room and spam HE with an ammo sunderer sitting nearby and there was absolutely nothing infantry could do about it but leave the base, even if the enemy had no adjacent territory to take it yet.

Now actual coordinated groups can use the annihilator to lock on to anything at something like 400m, call out targets, and send out instant kill volleys at stuff that can't even render it. It's nice to have an actual fighting chance, though sometimes I sit up on that ledge on the crown(you know the one) shooting instant death volleys out at people who can't even see me and I wonder for a second if it's maybe a little too powerful. Then I see a competent tank driver with high IR smoke and stealth that waits until he's locked, gives the rockets a little travel time, pops IR smoke and then gets to cover before it ends and he can be re-locked and instakilled. He's basically immune to the annihilator, between stealth and IR smoke and intelligent driving. I don't feel bad about it after that.

If by slight range you mean, if they can't render you for ages while you can lock on them in an ever increasing render range, Fine. Air and ground has NO idea where the rockets are coming from, can't tell that they are even fired at them half the time, and can't shoot back at them even if they know the position due to rendering errors. This ISN'T a counter, this is flat out ********. Infantry would be crying out their ******** if tanks could sit outside of render range, still see them, damage them, have entirely safe spots to shoot at them, require no resources, and heatseek, still while having the disadvantage of taking up more space,requiring resources, and having a cooldown.

Air vehicles have always had to at least aim.

Infantry doesn't help versus dual lock on as much as you think it should due to the rendering issues. A wall of HA will pop up at the same time you can see them, while being invisible to snipers due to the dynamic rendering. If Smoke from underbarrels, or the radar from ESFs jammed lockon by a second or two, there MIGHT be a counter, but as is the BEST counter you can have is a suicidal ESF with a light assault hoping to be able to drop C4 and detonate before they are killed.

That would stop one spawn from being useful, compared to a 500m area of no air, no ground, and limited infantry. Organized air or ground could still roll in from another area and at least put up a fight.

How is, "I can't see you, I can't hit you, and I might not even know you're shooting at me." a fighting chance?

People like you are so stupid it actually hurts. Let's look at the differences here shall we:
When air was "OP", pilots told infantry who refused to go AA MAX and just continuously spawned as engineers, medics, etc. on a Sundy to L2P and use the Burster MAX, which was a legitimate counter. Even before the flak buff the Skydock was one of the most defensible bases in this game - why? Well, a few dual Bursters and engineers could hold it indefinitely.
Now that invisible Annihilation squads are the ones doing the farming they're telling pilots/drivers to L2P - learn to do what? You're invisible you fool. How do I adapt against a force that is not only invisible, but is impervious to damage even if I shoot at a location where I know there's 50 HAs clumped together?