Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

[tjmhay]

Re: Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

Before you go off a'callin pots black, ya might wanna make sure you aren't backing a kettle.

That was my point: you're the pot calling the kettle black...

and no that wasn't a personal attack, I was implying that to date your arguments have been riddled with holes.

but whatever, you are entilted to you opinion; I'm not going to bother taking this any further because it's one of the arguments where both sides are so conviced they are right that neither will give an inch to the other.

As for the cute "rational discussion", or what have you, how is that not what I'm doing? Just because you don't like what I have to say doesn't mean I'm not methodical or logical in my posts.

My opinion as it stands:
Ground AA is fine, apart from some whackyness and the occational TKs
Air to Air is not:
- From personal experience hard turns do not save you
- This puts a reduction on piloting ability, but more of a stress on getting weapons locks
- Chaff reload times often mean that the timeframe you have between locks is not enough for them to be effective

I'd much rather just gun everything down than rely on AA to do all the fun work for me.

[WarGimp]

Re: Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

That was my point: you're the pot calling the kettle black...

and no that wasn't a personal attack, I was implying that to date your arguments have been riddled with holes.

What holes? I'd be amazed if you could even tell me what my argument is, let alone poke any holes in it.

but whatever, you are entilted to you opinion; I'm not going to bother taking this any further because it's one of the arguments where both sides are so conviced they are right that neither will give an inch to the other.

Says you.
I was feeling that choppers were fine under the new patch, but have since altered that opinion a bit. They do need a little TLC. Not much, but a bit.

Aside from that, how have you possibly managed to be involved in this thread and yet managed to miss my "No, it's not perfect" comments?

As for the cute "rational discussion", or what have you, how is that not what I'm doing? Just because you don't like what I have to say doesn't mean I'm not methodical or logical in my posts.

I haven't seen ya post anything to truely add to things. Rippin on my posts doesn't count.

Actually, you did an alright point form of outlining your position below. I'm gonna take that and respond to it in a way that might help you understand mine better:

My opinion as it stands:
Ground AA is fine, apart from some whackyness and the occational TKs
Air to Air is not:
- From personal experience hard turns do not save you

Simple hard turns should not save you. That's kinda silly. A missile is capable of pulling more gees than a plane is, both because of construction and because there's no fleshy pilot to black out.

- This puts a reduction on piloting ability, but more of a stress on getting weapons locks

Actually, no. The current system stresses pilot skill to the max. You have to be able to react well, NOW! Not by making simple maneuvers, but by doing good ones that will totally foul your tail in less than 3 seconds.

- Chaff reload times often mean that the timeframe you have between locks is not enough for them to be effective

That's the point of the mechanic. They shouldn't be 100% effective. If you get locked up twice in a row in short order, you've made a mistake.

I'd much rather just gun everything down than rely on AA to do all the fun work for me.

And there ya go. This is the source of your bias. You prefer WWII style dogfighting. That's great. Cool. This isn't that. BF2 is modern combat. On the modern battlefield, much of the killing really is done by some techmonkey that pushes buttons. If that isn't to your taste, you might want to find something else to do (another game or another position).

If you want to talk about what tweaks could be done to enhance things, I do have a couple thoughts:

*IF* air to air and surface to air missile code can be seperated (it's the same thing right now) a longer lock time for air to air missiles would be handy. This would give pilots a better chance to break a lock before launch.

That would sort lots of this out right away.
Unfortunatly, we don't know if that's even possible.

If it's not, the solution is much harder.
SAMs need to have a fairly fast lock to be effective. Their missiles also need to be very manuverable since launch angles are under the control of the attacker (plane), not the defender (SAM).

Hmm... stewing now...

Maybe (and this is a fairly big maybe) locks for AA should be per missile shot. You'd lose your lock each time you fired a missile, thus requiring you to re-aquire. That would effectivly extend the amount of time you'd have to clear your tail without impacting ground AA at all. Since one missile isn't enough to kill you (unless you've already been smacked around), that shouldn't pose a problem.

I kinda sorta like this idea. It would/should be a fairly easy thing to implement compaired to various other ideas I've seen bandied about.

I'd also like to see a further reduction in plane armour coupled with reducing the amount of damage missiles and cannons (just a little less) inflict. This would help out the helo situation without returning them to the state of being flying tanks.

[Bungalow_Bill]

Re: Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

Some may call a portion of posts arrogant, and condenscending, and I absolutely agree, they are. They are that way simply because that was how I structured them, and my intention is always to ruffle a few feathers. Don't let my E-persona fool you though, I'm actually not an arrogant jackass in person, even though some of my posts might lead you to believe that. Why? Well for some odd reason I enjoy reading posts with people firing off at me and insulting me, I find them very entertaining, sometimes I can't wrap my head around why these people take idle chatter over a forum so insulting.

Even though in my most arrogant posts there is always a kernel of truth to be found, as I actually do think I am the best fighter pilot in BF2, and I base that off my experience and the knowledge that not a single person out of the thousands I shot down managed to best me in a head on 1 on 1 in v1.12 BF2 dogfight, and that my statistics are not even close to being touched by another pilot (as limited of a reflection statistics are of skill, I still find them to be a good indicator). I also did honestly mean that I felt I was part of the direct reason planes got nerfed so badly, but rather when I say me, I actually meant I was one of the handful of pilots with abnormal statistics who were very good pilots and ****ed off quite a few people generating amazing round after amazing round and often times unbalancing the teams in the process (getting banned off said server for "cheating" shortly thereafter).

However, when I want to be constructive I can be very constructive. This thread is meant to be constructive, and to the point. Don't judge me by the way I've worded a single insignificant post, but rather by my intentions on the grandest scale within the context of these forums and BF2 in general. And that intention is to create a balanced game that is fun and fair for everyone, and rewards players of exceptional talent and ability like all FPS shooters and similar hybrids do. That is all I really want, because as of late for every round I spend in a plane I spent a round in a helicopter, and in an APC, and 3 rounds with my beloved PKM, G36E or SCAR-L. My name my be PlaneWhore, but that's only because my piloting skill is where I get my reputation. I wouldn't bother with all this if I didn't enjoy the gameplay in the Battlefield series, and when I say Battlefield, I don't mean just planes, or just anything, and don't forget that. I also like long walks on the beach.

[Roger Smith]

Re: Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

this thread has no point, you anti 1.2 lobbyists dont want a2a to be fixed, you just dont want a2a, so if you arent part of the solution...

[Scotty]

Re: Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

Tonight I was flying on Gulf of Oman as USMC in an F35B. I was chasing an enemy SU-34 for awhile and had steady lock. I waited for his flares and then fired three shots as his jet completely leveled out. (And no, I was not right up on him at the time) But, (I'm thinking because his airspeed was so slow) the missiles chased him and then reaquired another target that was nowhere in my sights. Thinking this must be some sort of glitch, I kept up the pusuit. I adjusted my airspeed to match his and fired off another 3 missiles at him after he had made a soft bank and was leveling off again. Those three missed him as well and hit a friendly blackhawk.

I'm really starting to wonder that if the throttle is low enough, you're a harder target to hit for AA. It seems like the harder you try to get away from AA, the more accurate they are. The reduced heat from the engine while travelling slowly may actually aide in surviving AA. Unfortunately, for this SU-34 pilot, I finished him off with my cannon seconds later.

Now there is something to think about. Perhaps people need to try this out.

Assuming that the missles operate in this fashion, DICE would only have to tweak the jets to allow them to perform some harder acceleration and deceleration. Maybe even add air brakes to them. This would change the whole dynamic because now you could use high G maneuvers to break lock and avoid a jet behind you. Since Top Gun was already mentioned in this thread, think "I'll hit the brakes and he'll go right by."

Basically require the pilots to get reall good with the throttle. Cut throttle while evading and then get back on it to either close the gap or escape entirely.

Couple this with a set amount of flares rather than the rechargeable kind and you'd be onto something. Unfortunately, I think this is far more than Dice will ever implement into the game, so it's just a pipe dream. It would be cool though.

[Roger Smith]

Re: Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

Basically require the pilots to get reall good with the throttle. Cut throttle while evading and then get back on it to either close the gap or escape entirely.

yeap, i mentioned this earlier in the thread aswell

[Scotty]

Re: Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

So I just hopped on an empty server for a second to try a couple things out. There is indeed an air brake on the jets. Hit full reverse (well, on a joystick anyhow) throttle while looking from an external view and you'll see the brake pop up. Throw it into a turn at that point and it seems to come around pretty hard. Definately a timing thing and I didn't really feel like messing around with it much tonight, but it is there.

So for those that are saying that the A2A is point and click, try some stuff out with another decent pilot on a ranked server and see what happens with these missles. Try a variety of dropping throttle, throwing full reverse and evading, evading and then messing with throttle, etc. Perhaps there is a way after all and everyone was so set in their ways of just turning hard that nobody ever bothered to experiment with this.

Maybe it won't work at all, but if it does, I would argue that there is indeed still skill involved. Just a different skillset will be required.

[Bungalow_Bill]

Re: Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

So for those that are saying that the A2A is point and click, try some stuff out with another decent pilot on a ranked server and see what happens with these missles. Try a variety of dropping throttle, throwing full reverse and evading, evading and then messing with throttle, etc. Perhaps there is a way after all and everyone was so set in their ways of just turning hard that nobody ever bothered to experiment with this.

Already done. I probed the AA missiles for any kind of flaw or weakness, but as I soon found out none exisit. As far as I can tell they simply correct course at least 20 times per second and can turn 180 degrees on a dime, and this is the reason you see them orbiting oil flames, and making all sorts of whacky passes and directional corrections. The only way you're escaping from an AA missile is if it picks a new target, or you drop flares, which is essentially the same thing.

The old AA missiles worked fine for me, which is why i can't understand why they felt the need to improve them tenfold. I'd estimate I had a better than 30% chance of connecting with a missile on another plane during a dogfight, which is alright with me as that'd mean out of 6 missile payload I'd get at least 2 to strike and that'd be enough to destroy a plane. Of course, I couldn't just fire them whenever I heard a tone, and it took a lot of technique and timing to get it just right. Fun, and challenging.

Ah, the good old days.

[maranello]

Re: Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

as I actually do think I am the best fighter pilot in BF2,

Just wondering, have you every played Falcon 4.0 AF or LOMAC?

[« R²» HKS]

Re: Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

Already done. I probed the AA missiles for any kind of flaw or weakness, but as I soon found out none exisit. As far as I can tell they simply correct course at least 20 times per second and can turn 180 degrees on a dime, and this is the reason you see them orbiting oil flames, and making all sorts of whacky passes and directional corrections. The only way you're escaping from an AA missile is if it picks a new target, or you drop flares, which is essentially the same thing.

The old AA missiles worked fine for me, which is why i can't understand why they felt the need to improve them tenfold. I'd estimate I had a better than 30% chance of connecting with a missile on another plane during a dogfight, which is alright with me as that'd mean out of 6 missile payload I'd get at least 2 to strike and that'd be enough to destroy a plane. Of course, I couldn't just fire them whenever I heard a tone, and it took a lot of technique and timing to get it just right. Fun, and challenging.

Ah, the good old days.

This is what I have done in regards to helis. I have tested every move, every counter tactic that I can think of which worked before. I have tried to think "outside the square" as well and nothing works. AA's will hit helis no matter what. View the vid about AA's from www.secretsofbattlefield.com and you will see a heli doing 360's deploying AA and then the AA does radical zig zags and still hits the heli.

What makes it hard for me to be 100% pro PW is one thing. I agree with people that say you are very arrogant in saying "I'm the best" The thing is that maybe and probably that is true. However being modest in this respect earns you more respect than not. You don't see me saying I'm the best. I think I know what I'm doing in a heli but I won't even say I'm great, a heli god or the best. That's for others to decide, not me. I have people I fly with for the 1st time. I fly then we die, we respawn, I ask them if they can fly and want a turn and I get the "you fly better than me, even some say a little better than me, you fly" That's enough gratification for me. Even when I say naa if you want a turn you fly. Now I may see they aren't as good as I am but hey, I won't blow my own horn because I am better than them. Usually when I offer again they say "nah, you fly, I will gun". That's all the respect of my skills I need and I appreciate it.

I think PW that is why you rub people the wrong way. A lot already know you are the best and you don't need to tell others you are. This should be all the gratification that you look for rather than a hand on **** statement, "I am the best bar none!" Do you understand where I and others are coming from?

Having said that you should know where I stand on this super AA. Its nuts and there is no escape, especially for helis. I don't care what people say about learn and adapt, there is no such thing.

I don't want to negate what gimpy says as I regard him as a bud, but unfortunately we are at opposite ends of the spectrum regarding 1.2 There is no adapting to 1.2 in regards to helis, its merely 2 left clicks and your dead. There is some adapting when it comes to planes. They can atleast fly high out of range of AA and dive bomb them but helis don't have that option. Flying low nap of the earth, geez I could and did this from day 1 being a heli whore before from BFV so this is natural but with 1.2 low = death from tanks, Apc's, .50 cals, even AT's and GL's. Planes A2A get you no matter what your altitude is. There is no escape whatsoever to those 2 left clicks, period! Sorry gimpy but I'm on the other side of the fence in this debate, no offence intended mate!

So PW go easy on the "I'm the best, bow beneath me noobs" attitude and I'm sure you will earn more respect.

[imported_cmall1113]

Re: Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

awesome video but those other pilots did seem like they were horrible much props though to another good pilot out there. I liked how you followed many of the jets too because alot of people during a dogfight always freak out and gas it too much, but I see that you do know what ur doing keep up the good work.

[DrJambo]

Re: Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

I wish when people mention the poor choppers they'd care to distinguish between attack choppers and transport choppers.

As far as I can see, attack choppers still do remarkably well in the hands of good pilots and that's with the new missile system, reduced hitpoints, etc. It's the transports that are getting royally shafted left, right and centre by the changes. They nerfed the BH down to the level of the MEC/Chinese transports when clearly bringing the MEC/Chinese nearer the level of the BH would have been more desirable. Nerf the BH guns by all means, but somewhere in between 1.12 and 1.2 would have been advised.

In truth the transport choppers should have been made faster and their hitpoints remained the same as 1.12. Maps like Wake Island, Dalian Plant and Gulf of Oman are becoming increasingly one-sided.

[jakswan]

Re: Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

Good lord when is someone going to post a vid of some decent dogfighting not taking on some guy who doesn't even do basic evasive stuff when you get a lock, sheesh.

First off your debating the merits of the new AA on the basis of a vid that shows a pro pilot flying the best jet in the game against a few noobs on Wake Island! Unless you've got a swicthed on team as US it's always going to be a turkey shoot.

Jeez as a pilot I'd don't even try to fly as US on Wake until we've got a foot hold on the Island it's a no go area, J10s and multiple AA sites.

I'm a pilot and I'll tell you why Planewhore doesn't like the new AA, he has to fear AA, before he didn't. The fact that he is the 'best dogfighter', and for the sake of debate I'll grant him that title, meant that he was able to dominate the entire battlefield. Now he can't.

Choppers are too soft a target, on their own yes.... but with manned AA and another pilot supporting them then it's not so easy. I can still rack up huge scores but you need a team behind you.

You can check my stats and you'l see I'm not exactly new to flying myself.

[Bungalow_Bill]

Re: Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

Just wondering, have you every played Falcon 4.0 AF or LOMAC?

I've spent a reasonable chunk of time playing Falcon 4.0 AF, and an equally large chunk of time reading the rather massive manual that's included, but I find it's just a little too slow of a pace for my liking.

[Bungalow_Bill]

Re: Highway to the Boredom Zone, a pilots perspective on the 1.2 patch

I'm not after respect, and I could really care less if people "respected" me or not. All I want is to influence the game rebalancing in the same way I influenced the nerfing, and who knows maybe some code monkey at DICE saw my video and the core message got through to him.

I agree though, helicopters got the worst end of the nerf, and it was really an undeserved nerf to begin with. Planes can adapt, sure, but they'll never be the same. I don't have any problem avoiding ground AA sites and playing in a hit and run type fashion, but I have a huge problem personally with the concept of the first lock or plane choice deciding the winner of a dogfight, and as of current that's all that really matters.