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

[Ghilleman]

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

yea, its agood idea (except for the AA station part), the sdewinders shouldn't be "fire and forget". They are in real life, but like planewhore (kinda) pointed out, pilots do need to achieve a lock in real life before they fire, they dont just open up with missles as soon as they see something moving in the sky.

[SK]

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

I am a physicist and working on my PhD so I know what I am talking about when it comes to physics. If you need to make true heat seeking missile then you need to keep a temperature map for the whole space. when you fire a missile it will keep moving along the path of highest temperature. this is a pain in the @#$%^@ for the best programmer and computer.

The days of this "go for the next best heat source" are long gone, modern IR AAMs have imaging infrared seekers, who are far more advanced than this and provide the capability to skip flares/countermeasures and other hot stuff that is not the target (early heatseekers would go for the sun for example). So yes, simulating all this indepth is prohibitive in computational cost (but that goes for everything, you always have to choose an abstraction level when simulating stuff).

As for the ingame AA: I found it pretty nice to actually be able to hit enemy air. AA isn´t totally skillless btw, most of the time you have to watch the map for spotted planes and potential attack vectors, be aware of potential enemies in the surroundings etc.
Don´t listen to Cry- err I mean Attentionwhore, He talked such BS about the pre 1.2 ("it´s fine, you just have to be skilled to use it") that he basically disqualified himself regarding this topic.

[F-1]

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

The idea of having a very small circle is not that attractive to me. The jets usually move at full speed during the game. almost everyone keeps the throttle all the way up. when a pilot moves in circles and random trajectories, it will be almost impossible to hit a target. Basically that will through the air dominance back the the pre-patch days.

[maranello]

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

I guess this is one of those endless debates

[vbl]

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

The idea of having a very small circle is not that attractive to me. The jets usually move at full speed during the game. almost everyone keeps the throttle all the way up. when a pilot moves in circles and random trajectories, it will be almost impossible to hit a target. Basically that will through the air dominance back the the pre-patch days.

Maybe they should just increase lock-on time, and have it decay at the same rate.

Reticle over target:
4..
3..
2..
1..

Reticle off target:
2..
3..

Reticle on target:
3..
2..
1..
Lock acquired and fire, and no need to keep the reticle on the target once the missiles have locked.

[Bungalow_Bill]

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

Oh darn, sorry I forgot I shouldn't have given any additional purpose to the least popular kit in the game. Although I'd say for as rare as they are, engineers are very underated, they've got a pretty nice shotgun, mines, and the ability to repair units. Though, the number of things to repair is rather limited, which is the reason they're usually attached to armor whores. Making AA require repairs from an engineer would give them a whole new vital purpose and role to serve during the round.

I'd consider that a positive side-effect of this change, engineers certainly need more of a (critical) purpose, and defending against AA is certainly very important to any team. So that would make engineers the total anti-vehicle package, with mines for the tanks and repaired AA for the planes and helicopters.

[Bungalow_Bill]

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

The idea of having a very small circle is not that attractive to me. The jets usually move at full speed during the game. almost everyone keeps the throttle all the way up. when a pilot moves in circles and random trajectories, it will be almost impossible to hit a target. Basically that will through the air dominance back the the pre-patch days.

I'm not talking a tiny little dot, I'm talking something bigger than the crosshairs and a little smaller than the AT circle. Planes may move fast, but on the ground they don't move any faster than a regular old infantry running across my screen, and often times slower (depending on the distance). Not to mention that planes often move in a predictable fashion, and as a very basic example, a low flying plane can really go up or side to side, and a plane in an attack run will be diving, so again, very predictable.

Infantry move just as fast if not faster than a plane when they're moving along, and present a much more difficult target as you'd need to be more precise shooting a gun at infantry. So really, as long as you can aim and shoot with some accuracy AA based off my suggestions would not be difficult to use at all. Of course, DICE may also want to tweak the lock distance, or rather give a "locking distance" and a "tracking distance". The tracking distance would obviously be further than the locking distance, not too much, but just enough where you can give a plane a missile right in the behind if they are attempting to escape.

I'm my biggest critic, and I'm being honest when I say I can't find a flaw in my proposal.

[F-1]

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

Maybe they should just increase lock-on time, and have it decay at the same rate.

Reticle over target:
4..
3..
2..
1..

Reticle off target:
2..
3..

Reticle on target:
3..
2..
1..
Lock acquired and fire, and no need to keep the reticle on the target once the missiles have locked.

If I am reading you correctly then it sounds to me that you are somehow inventing a new type of AA. (I could be wrong though). although that is not a bad idea, but I think we'd better have something similar to the already existing real world AA. sounds more satisfying to me. I am sure many people share me the same feeling.

There are already countless types of AA in this world. When I think about it, the best AA for a game I knew so far is the SA3 we had in DesertCombat. It was completely guided by the AA user just like a jet but with a much higher speed. it was very deadly. the best thing about it is that it did not make any lock warning for the pilot so you were always caught off guard. I hated it a lot at that time because it was very effective against pilots (I was one of them :p )
Any guided AA with a lock warning will not work. If PlaneWhore think it is ok to have a guided AA then how about having it without the lock warning?

if you want to keep the lock warning then forget about the user guided idea. it just wont work even against the clueless pilot because all you need to do is a stupid jerky movement or circles or zigzag or whatever.

Also we have another problem.... we have the feeling that we are stuck in the modern era so DICE may not go back to the 1970's SA3 AA missles. BTW, the SA3 is a radar guided in reality. However, in DesertCombat it was user guided... again ... without the lock warning.

[F-1]

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

Planes may move fast, but on the ground they don't move any faster than a regular old infantry running across my screen, and often times slower (depending on the distance). Not to mention that planes often move in a predictable fashion, and as a very basic example, a low flying plane can really go up or side to side, and a plane in an attack run will be diving, so again, very predictable.

I do not think the planes movements are predictable.That is not as easy as you may think. the AA's speed is much higher than a jet's speed. if a pilot can make a quick move then the AA guy needs to be faster. that is too difficult with the lock warning.

Edit: OK, maybe the jet's motion is not as bad as a zigzag :P but still it can be very unpredictable and difficult to track when the pilot has the lock warning.

[WarGimp]

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

I propsed awhile back (but it was drowned out in the noise) that since even PW concedes that the problem is with Air To Air and not SAMs, a good solution may be to require that planes need to reaquire their locks per missile.

Ie, you get a lock, you fire, you lose your lock, then have to reaquire. This would mean that you would have to keep on someone's tail in order to put more than one missile into him. Not very realistic... but maybe a good fudge for mechanics.

[DrJambo]

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

I'm my biggest critic, and I'm being honest when I say I can't find a flaw in my proposal.

Nope, I think this self-serving comment only illustrates that you're actually your biggest fan.

[Bungalow_Bill]

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

Airplane movement is very predictable because you know in a very general sense the direction they are going, the direction they will continue to go in, and the limited potential alterations they can make to their current heading. Unless you've seen any planes in BF2 going 1000 MPH straightahead, dropping to a dead stop in an instant like some kind of UFO, and immediately speeding off at 1000MPH instantly in the direction they just came from.

Planes are not omni-direction beasts like the standard soldier (or, even the new AA missiles for that matter). They differ because for example a soldier can move left right forward backwards and in a diagonal fashion without having to interconnect the motions meaning just because a soldier is running forward doesn't mean they can't instantly stop, jump or duck, or run backwards. You can be assured that a plane is currently going forward in X direction that they will continue going forward in X direction and at best they'll only be able to turn in a big circle in any given direction, and as the turning speed for a plane is a fixed variable within a game they'll be able to turn no faster than you could ever anticipate. This simple concept makes them infinitely easier to aim at than any soldier. Of course they have speed, but that's all they have, and if your reflexes can top their speed they are dead (I am of course speaking in regards to if the original idea for AA balancing was implemented).

A simple concept but a bit difficult for me to put in to words, and the sole reason it is almost effortless for me to follow planes along the sky in the video in this thread.

[DrJambo]

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

Oh darn, sorry I forgot I shouldn't have given any additional purpose to the least popular kit in the game. Although I'd say for as rare as they are, engineers are very underated, they've got a pretty nice shotgun, mines, and the ability to repair units. Though, the number of things to repair is rather limited, which is the reason they're usually attached to armor whores. Making AA require repairs from an engineer would give them a whole new vital purpose and role to serve during the round.

I'd consider that a positive side-effect of this change, engineers certainly need more of a (critical) purpose, and defending against AA is certainly very important to any team. So that would make engineers the total anti-vehicle package, with mines for the tanks and repaired AA for the planes and helicopters.

I'm sorry, but I simply don't see this as a workable and effective solution. AA sites take 1 second to destroy - via tank, C4, jet, helo - and yet would require the special services of an engineer to fix? Most likely there are only ever 2-3 engineers on a map and these will be in armour as that's clearly the best place for an engineer to be.

DICE would have to make repairing them ludicrously appealing, i.e. 3 repair points or something of that ilk, to entice engineers to leave the safety of their armour to spend time repairing one (which will inevitably be blown up seconds later, probably engineer included).

[maranello]

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

wow planewhore when did you come back? I was getting worried that you forgot our forums:)

[WarGimp]

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

PW, do you not realise that your pompus grandstanding is infact disrupting some useful debate that could lead to some real practical solutions to issues that you seem rather concerned with?

People have given you some good logical objections to your suggestions and proposed some alternates. Instead of discussing anything else, however, you just stroke your E-peepee some more.

Worthless dude, truely worthless.
Ditch the ego 'n lets yap about something real.