[Vehicle] Why Tomcats are amazing!!!

So you are at the warpgate. You have seen, read rather, for countless months how "Truly skilled pilots use nosegun and AB tanks"

Finally. you decide. "Then I will prove I am just as good, with practice and work, and I will nosegun some people out of the sky!"

Into the skys you soar, your ESF of choice certed for speed, agility, a test of martial skill... may the best pilot win.

You find your target, and swoop to engage. It is clear that your target is no slouch, as they are soon coming about. Soon its a hover duel, and you both swoop around backwards and crazy like, firing bursts, aiming, moving.

You get a good magazine on your target and unload. Certianly this will turn the tide in your favor.

In a flash, your opponents craft flashes with a bright white light and your opponent returns fire.

You explode in a fiery wreck. Your enemy is at half health despite having been clearly beaten in this contest of skill because your opponent simply had more health.

Fast forward two minutes. You see the same knight trying to pick off random infantry and unaware players. You swoop in again, from a distance and your lock indicator flashes green.

In quite a bit of time (cause tomcats have a slow refire rate) your opponents craft explodes right after he bails out as a drifter jet light assault.

"Tomcats are cheese noob" is the message you recieve from this honorable, skilled and amazing pilot.

Cheese indeed my white knight, cheese indeed.

I am trying to figure out how to pronounce your name. aeth-est-is? ae-the-stis? I can't figure it out, so please help me out here.

Yeah, ignore the tells. Not your fault for their incompetence in recognizing meta shifts.

So theyre amazing because they allow the lesser player to kill the better one? I guess if your only goal is to get that kill rather than actually get better, each their own.

The comments in this thread will be entirely rational and very calm.

I'm pretty sure all weapons allow players with lower skill to beat players with higher skill. Case in point. I'm less than BR 70, and I've definitely killed BR 100s. If the game was decided purely by skill with shooting and skill alone I would lose every encounter with someone of higher skill than me, no matter what margin the difference is. If I'm able to snipe someone who is unaware of me, who, if they were at 50 meters and we were playing with the exact same loadouts would definitely win, does that make my kill a cheap cheese kill?
Traits are there to provide advantages and tradeoffs. If I take a CQC weapon like a shotgun, I will be able to win most encounters at close range, but I will undoubtedly lose against anyone who can shoot at me past 30 meters.
If I take an HE cannon I am giving up my ability to hunt tanks in order to have an advantage against infantry. If I see another tank, chances are I will die from the encounter.
And if I take A2A pods then my ability to chase, flee or maneuver is reduced in favor of having a greater hit rate against an opponent that is also in the air. My secondary weapon slot has no effect on ground, and is completely nullified if my opponent uses flares (oddly enough most "skyknights" are adamantly against using anything but fire suppression, and blame skill-less A2A when they die to tomcats...).

I'm glad tanks don't have lock-ons.

That's fine and all, but the reality is, you'll kill a lot more noobs with lock-ons than sky knights, and it's the noob's experience which is really getting ruined here. Nothing says "give up and go back to playing HA" like getting gibbed by an undodgeable attack from an opponent you haven't seen yet.

Using A2A to kill air. Hold the phone..

Reminds me of the pilot threads on the Battlefield 3 forums. Everyone but pilots: Jets are overpowered, they cannot be shot down, destroy tanks from five miles away by abusing 3D spotting, and end the game with 60 kills and 2 deaths. Pilots: WE'RE JUST BETTER THAN YOU, JETS ARE FINE.

I wish the MBT had a Tunguska turret - dual shredder miniguns and a rack of SAMs.

Battle Rank is purely a how long they have played number, it has nothing to do with who is better. This is not an RPG.

And now imagine these evil sky knights would use them as well. That is something players like Aethestis will never get.

As opposed to when the sky knight can't be bothered to switch over to Tomcats and just 1-clips you with a Rotary?

If everyone were bad enough to be 1-clipped so easily.

I really don't understand all this hatred for pilots just because they're good. If SOE introduced an AV secondary for tanks that did AP level damage and locked on then I would act in the same way. If SOE introduced rifles that automatically aim for the head I'm sure the skilled infantry players would respond the same way as well.

The air game is particularly difficult to get into so I understand the decision to introduce weapons with easier mechanics to learn. What I don't agree with is giving those weapons comparable power to the weapons that actually require skill to use.

Hey, if we're going to pretend it matters whether the aces are using A2A...
And anyway,

I bet you aren't even running AB pods on your Vanguard. Poser.

The keys are not fine. They are boring compared to the jets in bf2, so, boring.

If use a tomcat you will receive a hate tell. Every time. It is like a mini game lol.

There was no fight because he chose fire suppression over flares and stealth. Better yet, if he had those and stuck close to you then it would have be much harder for you to lock.

At the end of the day the game isn't about duelling. It is about mmofps where you do everything to get the upper hand. You don't see infantry taking 10 steps with 1 shot pistols. No, the get the high ground with appropriate weapons for the task at hand.

I think if you choose AA load outs then that should give you the advantage over someone that chooses AG or a mix of AG+AA, just like some one in a small room has the advantage with a shotgun over a sniper rifle.

I wish. I think I've gotten a grand total of one hate tell since I picked those things up.

:'(

So boring to watch someone sit far away hovering and shooting you from 1000 meters away . At least tomcats make you have to move . Not really a dogfight when you hovering in one spot shooting someone .