Anti-Air missiles

[Cuross]

I been wondering, for those who played/playing Alpha or those who watched the videos, do the anti-air missiles have any kind of "weight" or "physics" on them? I'm wondering because watching the E3 streams, it seemed that even though the locked aircraft was trying to dodge a missile, it always seemed to not be enough. Granted, I only recall seeing this situation against those clunky and slow Reavers, but I was wondering if you would be able to juke a missile with some smooth flying.

To the rest of the community:
I'd like constructive arguments here please! Now I know what most of you are thinking, "That kind of stuff would make anti-air missiles useless". Well, I'm here just asking if they have weight because in order to dodge a missile, you have to time it precisely. My scenario is this: You're running close air support for your armor column and you are targeted by enemy aircraft. Your health is already low because of the few bouts of flak that you took and you've used your flares to keep the infantry's missiles off of you before you blew them up. You've got a few options, mainly A) look for a way/place to bail, B) take the missile in the exhaust, C) By luck you are able to double tap the shoulder button at exactly the precise moment to perform a barrel roll which to your amazement you see the missile go streaking by and you escape to fly another day (or you just happened to turn at the very precise moment where the missile couldn't adjust fast enough which I would assume could possible only happen maybe 1-5% of the time)

Will we have to wait for Beta to see? Is this in and we just don't know about it/don't know how to perform it? Will Fox be shot down because the lack of the "Z" or shoulder buttons? Will the Cacti become an Ace's best friend AND archenemy?

I imagine it would make escaping a dogfight a more harrowing experience. Or maybe it might just be the fact that I'm flying a Scythe and think it might be entirely possible for the superior mobility to work in my favor versus a locked missile, but that's just my hope and dream :rolleyes:

[Cuross]

Those slow clunky Reavers may likely be the last thing a VS HA see's. I suspect that Reavers will be (like A-10 Warthogs) a friendly infrantryman's best friend.

Now any Reaver that goes into Scythe territory (top flight ceiling) is asking to get raped.

Lol, don't get me wrong, I have a very healthy respect for the Mosquito and the Reaver, perhaps might border on paranoia one day :P In fact, I'm not looking forward to duking it out with a Reaver. A Mosquito I'll probably be able to handle in many situations, but I'm not looking forward to that tank with wings ^^;; Especially if that pilot was able to get this lucky missile dodge.

[Canaris]

I think if you want to dodge AA missles in your aircraft you'll need to use either anti missle Chaff/Flares or do some very fancy flying down narrow passages, tho if a AA unit catchs you in the open going slow you should just be flak bait.

[Ruffdog]

In E3 PS2 I did see an aircraft dodge a lock-on easily using chaff. But there will be a shit bucket of lock-ons when the game is open to all. So unless in a Reaver or Lib flying low is ill advisable until you buff that armor up.

But like MrMorton said (think about this when buffing in cert tree) it is best to buff the strength of what your vehicle already does best. Then try to make up for shortcomings.

So super-awesome ejector seats for NC and VS?

[SKYeXile]

missles need to be effective, how else am i meant to kill people in aircraft without decent lockon missles?

[Ruffdog]

Haha. Anyone who uses an ejector seat over a ground battle, will be dead before hitting ground. A one-shot-one-kill missile lock-on of anyone in an ejector seat floating in the sky will be likely.

Unless someone finds a game exploit like flying super low then ejecting. To keep the time floating helpless in air to an absolute minimum.

Rememeber, the devs want fast fast fast, nownownowgetbacktotheaction. My guess is you'll see no floating :D

[Otleaz]

Half Life 2 missile launcher.

Problem solved.

[TheInferno]

I was under the impression the ejector seat would work like the Galaxy Drop mechanic, and that you can't lock onto infantry. Did we hear something different that I missed?

[Meriv]

missles need to be effective, how else am i meant to kill people in aircraft without decent lockon missles?

more to scare them.
I think it is the same of tanks, you will damage them (air/tank) but will be hard to take them down since you will need multiple hits and I don't think they will stay in range if already damaged.
the flak max looked a lot more deadly

for the ejecting
during e3 we have seen a low altitude ejection with no death/no damage from a lib. Piloted by a nc max (this will be fixed but)

[HenchAnt]

Btw, has the Burster become an all faction AA weapon?

Here's a video of an NC MAX using the Burster:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=98bGepZsKc4#t=1490s

[TheInferno]

Btw, has the Burster become an all faction AA weapon?

Here's a video of an NC MAX using the Burster:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=98bGepZsKc4#t=1490s

At this point, yes. I think it's manufactured by Nanite Systems now. It'd be cool to have different varieties of flak for each faction though.

[Deadeye]

Lol, don't get me wrong, I have a very healthy respect for the Mosquito and the Reaver, perhaps might border on paranoia one day :P In fact, I'm not looking forward to duking it out with a Reaver. A Mosquito I'll probably be able to handle in many situations, but I'm not looking forward to that tank with wings ^^;; Especially if that pilot was able to get this lucky missile dodge.

I think you're a little confused. The Reaver and Mosquito in PS2 are not the Reaver and Mosquito in PS1. While there don't seem to be specifics right now as to their handling, they are, I think, suppose to be similar aircraft able to perform different missions based on their loadout. The names are just a throwback to PS1.

[Landtank]

Hmm yeah I'll go top flight ceiling in a Reaver for a few times atleast, if it goes well I'll make a home there but if not, I'll do what it was designed to do and win the ground war.

As far as missles go, it took 2 missles to take out any of the three aircraft, I assume this will be changed. The chaff/flares effectiveness depends on its cooldown vs the missles cooldown, which I think should be the same. Air Combat would be more fun if it came down to the chain gun/whatever the Vanu weirdos use, which is less effective because its purple.

[MrMorton]

usually, in most of the games I have played, there is a way to dodge the anti air missiles.

I actually cannot think of a recent game where the air missiles were perfect lock. (even post patch bf3 missiles are still dodge-able if you know how to fly)

I am pretty sure there will be a way for every pilot to evade missiles if they know the technique.

and as for the reaver, the scythe is actually the slowest aircraft from what I have seen, and according to e3 footage, the speed without ab went like this.


scythe 180
reaver 210
mosquito 240

[HenchAnt]

At this point, yes. I think it's manufactured by Nanite Systems now. It'd be cool to have different varieties of flak for each faction though.

That's great news, since I really love the burster. :D

But faction specific AA would be cool. NC could keep their long-lock-time Sparrow and VS their laser-guided plasma balls. Perhaps something like the UV-32-57 rocket launcher for TR, firing swarms of fire-and-forget mini-rockets?

http://www.militaryfactory.com/aircraft/imgs/mil-mi8-hip_3.jpg

[TheInferno]

and as for the reaver, the scythe is actually the slowest aircraft from what I have seen, and according to e3 footage, the speed without ab went like this.


scythe 180
reaver 210
mosquito 240

Really? Interesting. Makes sense considering how maneuverable the Scythe is.

[MrMorton]

In E3 PS2 I did see an aircraft dodge a lock-on easily using chaff. But there will be a shit bucket of lock-ons when the game is open to all. So unless in a Reaver or Lib flying low is ill advisable until you buff that armor up.

But like MrMorton said (think about this when buffing in cert tree) it is best to buff the strength of what your vehicle already does best. Then try to make up for shortcomings.

Now that I think of it, each faction will have a unique way of dealing with missiles, countermeasures nonwithstanding.

the mossie will be able to extend away the moment they feel in danger, and should be able to escape only taking 1 missile hit.

the reaver should be able to tank multiple missiles, allowing it to escape even thought it has a lower speed.

The scythe is the only aircraft that will really rely on evading the missiles, but its different flight characteristics should make it easier to dodge missiles.

Really? Interesting. Makes sense considering how maneuverable the Scythe is.

yea I was originally worried the reaver would get destroyed in dogfights, but it seems to be inbetween the two other aircraft as far as performance goes.

[fishirboy]

I been wondering, for those who played/playing Alpha or those who watched the videos, do the anti-air missiles have any kind of "weight" or "physics" on them? I'm wondering because watching the E3 streams, it seemed that even though the locked aircraft was trying to dodge a missile, it always seemed to not be enough. Granted, I only recall seeing this situation against those clunky and slow Reavers, but I was wondering if you would be able to juke a missile with some smooth flying.

To the rest of the community:
I'd like constructive arguments here please! Now I know what most of you are thinking, "That kind of stuff would make anti-air missiles useless". Well, I'm here just asking if they have weight because in order to dodge a missile, you have to time it precisely. My scenario is this: You're running close air support for your armor column and you are targeted by enemy aircraft. Your health is already low because of the few bouts of flak that you took and you've used your flares to keep the infantry's missiles off of you before you blew them up. You've got a few options, mainly A) look for a way/place to bail, B) take the missile in the exhaust, C) By luck you are able to double tap the shoulder button at exactly the precise moment to perform a barrel roll which to your amazement you see the missile go streaking by and you escape to fly another day (or you just happened to turn at the very precise moment where the missile couldn't adjust fast enough which I would assume could possible only happen maybe 1-5% of the time)

Will we have to wait for Beta to see? Is this in and we just don't know about it/don't know how to perform it? Will Fox be shot down because the lack of the "Z" or shoulder buttons? Will the Cacti become an Ace's best friend AND archenemy?

I imagine it would make escaping a dogfight a more harrowing experience. Or maybe it might just be the fact that I'm flying a Scythe and think it might be entirely possible for the superior mobility to work in my favor versus a locked missile, but that's just my hope and dream :rolleyes:

What will happen is when people get into the game (me!) they will judge the distance it makes vs how long until they cant fly any more. So if you can out run it for that long will know what you have to do before you need to worry.

[Xyntech]

I think that the lock on missiles should be more maneuverable than an aircraft can hope to dodge. Speed and placing obstacles between your aircraft and the missile should be the best option available when you don't have countermeasures installed.

[Landtank]

I think that the lock on missiles should be more maneuverable than an aircraft can hope to dodge. Speed and placing obstacles between your aircraft and the missile should be the best option available when you don't have countermeasures installed.

Hmm I disagree, because no aircraft can outrun a missile in a straight line, you should be able to out-turn a missile if you pull on the brakes and do a complete 180. That would leave you vulnerable enough to be balanced.

I think that it should be very difficult to out-maneuver a missile, but it should be possible fo sho.

[super pretendo]

Lockons should be clunky and dodgeable and require skill and leading to aim. Leading a missle should help, unless they they around

[Nasher]

If it's anything like PS1 then flak > missiles by a long way. With flak you don't have a lock on and you can often shoot stuff down before they realise what's going on. The TR burster MAX was probably the most powerful anti-air.

[Biohazard]

I think that the angle the missile is at should make a huge difference. If someone gets a lock perpendicular to me, then I should just be able to turn into them to lose the lock. However if they are directly behind or in front of me than it should be much more difficult or impossible.

Can we upgrade the guidance for our missiles? Something along the lines of:

Heat seeking (No lock on warning, easily countered with flares)
Radar seeking(No lock on warning, can be countered by turning off radar or chaff)
Radar guided (Lock on warning, more difficult to counter, shorter lock time)
Laser guided (Lock on warning, can be countered by breaking visual contact with the shooter.)
Self correcting heat seeking (No lock on warning, difficult to counter while in sight of the shooter)
Semi-intelligent Dual guidance heat/radar seeking (The ultimate guided missle, is a fast kinetic kill vehicle as the guidence system took up the payload space; No lock on, cannot be countered with flares or chaff, can only be avoided if the pilot breaks visual contact with the missle for longer than 4 seconds):lol:

It's the future, we can come up with some really cool weapon systems :D

[mintyc]

the one thing that has me a bit annoyed is that in the E3 footage the pilots had to switch to ther missles as the active wepon to get a lock on, meaning that they coulldent fire ther guns as ther locked on.

i know ther is probably a good reason why they have done it this way but the flight-sim nerd in me still finds it a little annoying.

[LegioX]

Missiles are for pansies. Give me 8 guns on my wings anyway.

[Blackwolf]

PS1 had similar tricky maneuvers. Flying around trees and over hills sometimes got the missile caught on a tree or the hill and you were free. Flying out of lock range or breaking LOS with some AA platforms (Quasar and Striker) was all you needed in some cases.

You couldn't just shake the missile in mid flight though, and I think those kinds of physics in the game would take a lot of programming.

the one thing that has me a bit annoyed is that in the E3 footage the pilots had to switch to ther missles as the active wepon to get a lock on, meaning that they coulldent fire ther guns as ther locked on.

i know ther is probably a good reason why they have done it this way but the flight-sim nerd in me still finds it a little annoying.

I was really hoping they would remove the "secondary" weapons completely. Just use right mouse button to fire your secondary weapon, no need to switch between modes at all. That's what I wanted to see though, guess they are just doing that for MAX suits though.

[Xyntech]

Hmm I disagree, because no aircraft can outrun a missile in a straight line, you should be able to out-turn a missile if you pull on the brakes and do a complete 180. That would leave you vulnerable enough to be balanced.

I think that it should be very difficult to out-maneuver a missile, but it should be possible fo sho.

No. Anti-Air missiles need to be valuable. Flares also need to be valuable, or else the tradeoff isn't worth it.

If you don't have flares, afterburn behind some cover.

[LegioX]

Be nice if missiles have to be re-equiped. No use having unlimited missiles out there.

[Xyntech]

Be nice if missiles have to be re-equiped. No use having unlimited missiles out there.

Hopefully none of the vehicles have unlimited ammo in the final release. That shit is failtastic.

I suppose having a module that generated ammo for your vehicle out of nanites would be acceptable, so long as it came with heavy tradeoffs, such as generating the new ammo pretty slowly, taking up a valuable module slot, and having a smaller maximum ammo capacity so that you actually had to rely on the regeneration a lot quicker than normal. The explanation could be that the ammo generation module took up a lot of space, so it replaced most of the ammo magazine storage area in the vehicle.

To balance how long it took to regenerate the ammo, I would first figure out how long it took for a vehicle to expand all of it's ammo on average in normal battle conditions, and then make it take twice as long as that for the regenerating ammo to generate that many rounds. A regenerating ammo vehicle would still be viable at that point, but at reduced capacity. Seems fair to me. Everything is about tradeoffs.

[LegioX]

I'm going to be air-to-air, but i will never have missiles on my plane. Hopefully i can put about 8 machine/plasma guns on it. That would be deadly.

[MrMorton]

PS1 had similar tricky maneuvers. Flying around trees and over hills sometimes got the missile caught on a tree or the hill and you were free. Flying out of lock range or breaking LOS with some AA platforms (Quasar and Striker) was all you needed in some cases.

You couldn't just shake the missile in mid flight though, and I think those kinds of physics in the game would take a lot of programming.



I was really hoping they would remove the "secondary" weapons completely. Just use right mouse button to fire your secondary weapon, no need to switch between modes at all. That's what I wanted to see though, guess they are just doing that for MAX suits though.

I don't know about that,

bf3 missiles can be evaded and the flight model in that game is VERY simplistic

[LegioX]

I don't know about that,

bf3 missiles can be evaded and the flight model in that game is VERY simplistic

PS 2 better have a better quality flight model than BF's POS. Seriously show the airboys some love.

[Fab]

To me the missile should be avoidable without flares, not with speed of course, but only with good piloting more than Scythe-like manouvers : get in canyons, crossing forest, things like that.

[Goyo]

I specificly remember seeing at least 3 instances in the E3 vids/live streams where aircraft did maneuver to put scenery inbetween themselves and an incoming missile to success. So, use that terrain for cover!

However, outmaneuvering missiles without cover I do not remember.

The missile airspeed did leave a little to be desired. I expected them to travel faster. Shrug.

[Blackwolf]

I don't know about that,

bf3 missiles can be evaded and the flight model in that game is VERY simplistic

This is simplification. Bf3 had a max of how many players on a battlefield at any given time? How many would be firing off AA missiles at a time? Against how many aircraft? PS2 will have a very large quantity of players fighting at any given time. Means more projectiles to track and code to read.

Please stop comparing PS2 to BF3 or any other low player count game.

Never played BF3, so I don't care about it. I see the PS2 videos and I see air craft sinking while hovering, with obvious manual boosts upwards done by the players in order to maintain a hovering position. I also see complicated maneuvers like barrel rolls and inverted spins in PS2 so I know the flight mechanics are complex. But PS1 featured the same missiles and they were not hard to avoid despite zero flares/chafe.

Programming the physics behind projectiles complicates the server's task of keeping track of everything that happens in the battlefield. Which is why you likely won't see projectiles affected by wind, and it's just a math equation that tells the computer how far the bullet will drop over how long a distance in the air (based on gravity). A math equation that would be applied to almost all of the projectiles at the same degree as opposed to wind which might affect rounds at different angles and different direction based on the shooter and the direction he is aiming relative to the wind.

[TheInferno]

Can we specify which anti-air missiles we're talking about? The first part of the thread seemed to be specifically about ground-to-air Heavy Assault style Anti-Air, and now it seems we're talking about Air-to-Air missiles. There should be differences between the two.

[Blackwolf]

Can we specify which anti-air missiles we're talking about? The first part of the thread seemed to be specifically about ground-to-air Heavy Assault style Anti-Air, and now it seems we're talking about Air-to-Air missiles. There should be differences between the two.

Why?

Obvious differences are that air-to-air holds serious advantages due to lack of obstruction and much higher chance of maintaining lock from fire to hit. Ground-to-air is limited by obstructions from trees and terrain, lack of mobility (compared to their target), and vulnerability with barrels aimed up all the time. Advantages are typically harder to spot and better armored in the case of vehicles.

Other then those differences, differences in missile behavior isn't really needed.

[Toppopia]

I hope flares/chaff is super effective, and you can use it as much as you want, but you only have a limited number, so if i was in a Liberator doing a 'airstrike' then i would use my flares on the way in and the way out, maybe i will constantly apply them until i run out to ensure i survive. And if you wanted to stay in the battle, use less flares. But for most people, they will do hit 'n' run missions so 1 payload of flares/chaff should be enough to protect them from most missiles. Not all, there should be a small chance a missile explodes near your aircraft doing damage. But i did see a thread about this somewhere, can't remember where though.

[Landtank]

They should just make the missiles like Ace Combat, powerful if they are fired at the right angle, but still able to be out maneuvered if you know what your doing. Flares and Chaff would still be useful, but with the amount of missiles that could potentially be coming at you it just makes sense that you should be able to dodge them.

Otherwise the game is just fire a missile, fire another missle, etc. The cannon/chain gun should be the prominent weapon of choice, it requires more skill and is more fun.

I don't want to be pressing a button to release flares/chaff all day because I can't dodge a missile, it's no fun.

[Toppopia]

They should just make the missiles like Ace Combat, powerful if they are fired at the right angle, but still able to be out maneuvered if you know what your doing. Flares and Chaff would still be useful, but with the amount of missiles that could potentially be coming at you it just makes sense that you should be able to dodge them.

Otherwise the game is just fire a missile, fire another missle, etc. The cannon/chain gun should be the prominent weapon of choice, it requires more skill and is more fun.

I don't want to be pressing a button to release flares/chaff all day because I can't dodge a missile, it's no fun.

But thats how you stop missiles flying at you, is to break the lock, which is what flares/chaff attempts to do. You can still dodge missiles if you want, i just want flares to be useful for those doing strafing runs then flying back to base to rearm. If you are skilled then i applaud your skill at dodging missiles. But we have to accommodate for the people that don't want to do fancy manoeuvres and are just there to provide fire support / strafing runs. Since it will be too dangerous to stay in a battle zone for more than a minute, else you want to become a fireworks display.

And plus. Who wouldn't want to see this at night time??

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4f/C-130_Hercules_10.jpg/596px-C-130_Hercules_10.jpg

[Landtank]

But thats how you stop missiles flying at you, is to break the lock, which is what flares/chaff attempts to do. You can still dodge missiles if you want, i just want flares to be useful for those doing strafing runs then flying back to base to rearm. If you are skilled then i applaud your skill at dodging missiles. But we have to accommodate for the people that don't want to do fancy manoeuvres and are just there to provide fire support / strafing runs. Since it will be too dangerous to stay in a battle zone for more than a minute, else you want to become a fireworks display.

And plus. Who wouldn't want to see this at night time??

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4f/C-130_Hercules_10.jpg/596px-C-130_Hercules_10.jpg

No absolutely, I just don't want my only option to be pushing a single button to live, it requires 0 skill and gets old really fast. I still agree that flares/chaff should be the best option, but I don't want it to be the only option.

[AvacadoEight]

Remember guys, missiles can't be too smart, becuse with large fights, at any given point you can have 5+ people locking onto you. Because of this, they can't be like missiles from, say Battlefield, or MW3, that instant kill. Either that, or we need (We since I'm a Reaver pilot :P ) a set of chaffs/flares that can be set off without cooldown, or something like that. Or else HA's would terrorize the air to the point of non-existence, or to the flight ceeling where you're out of lock range.

[TheInferno]

I agree that the Heavy Assault missiles shouldn't one or two hit kills. Air-to-Air, yeah, because that makes for better dogfighting, but as was said in the livestream, you can't make the weapons really effective for heavy assault for the sheer fact that there are so many of them on the field at once.

Still, they could behave the same way and the ground to air could just have less damage, for instance.

[Xyntech]

I don't want to be pressing a button to release flares/chaff all day because I can't dodge a missile, it's no fun.

You've completely ignored the part about using terrain for cover to break lockons and blow up locked on missiles. This is a big skill and planning factor, and is a lot more of a tradeoff than just being able to outmaneuver a locked on missile out in the open.

I don't want guns to be useless in a dogfight, but I'm already pretty certain that they won't be. Lock-ons take time, and skilled pilots will be able to escape lock-ons without much problem. Missiles will need to be impossible to outmaneuver in the open, or else they will be useless. Useless just like you fear guns will be.

Guns will dominate the sky in skilled dogfights. Between flares and diving behind obstacles, there will be few times that a skilled pilot will fall victim to a simple missile. Missiles will be more of an area denial, forcing pilots to take evasive action, at the cost of finding/diving for cover, not just pulling some fancy trick in the middle of the air.

Of course they could make missiles be overpowered, by it wasn't in the E3 footage. No reason to worry at the moment.

[Blackwolf]

No absolutely, I just don't want my only option to be pushing a single button to live, it requires 0 skill and gets old really fast. I still agree that flares/chaff should be the best option, but I don't want it to be the only option.

Well if you do rely on a single option based on convenience, then that's your downfall. There were several ways to counter AA platforms in PS1 without flares, learning just one wasn't enough. Relying on flares alone will probably get you killed a lot.

[Landtank]

You've completely ignored the part about using terrain for cover to break lockons and blow up locked on missiles. This is a big skill and planning factor, and is a lot more of a tradeoff than just being able to outmaneuver a locked on missile out in the open.

I don't want guns to be useless in a dogfight, but I'm already pretty certain that they won't be. Lock-ons take time, and skilled pilots will be able to escape lock-ons without much problem. Missiles will need to be impossible to outmaneuver in the open, or else they will be useless. Useless just like you fear guns will be.

Guns will dominate the sky in skilled dogfights. Between flares and diving behind obstacles, there will be few times that a skilled pilot will fall victim to a simple missile. Missiles will be more of an area denial, forcing pilots to take evasive action, at the cost of finding/diving for cover, not just pulling some fancy trick in the middle of the air.

Of course they could make missiles be overpowered, by it wasn't in the E3 footage. No reason to worry at the moment.

Indeed you are correct, I apologize for ignoring that.

Well what I was thinking about instead of typing was that when your in the northern area of Indar, where its relatively flat or desolate, what do you do then, or what if you are 300 meters in the air.

It would definitely be a balancing act to make missiles work right, I agree with most of your points, and it really comes down to seeing how it works in beta.. which needs to come soon..

[Trafalgar]

C) By luck you are able to double tap the shoulder button at exactly the precise moment to perform a barrel roll

Personally, I was (and am) assuming that if you wanted to do a barrel roll, you would actually have to do a barrel roll (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_roll).

[Blackwolf]

Indeed you are correct, I apologize for ignoring that.

Well what I was thinking about instead of typing was that when your in the northern area of Indar, where its relatively flat or desolate, what do you do then, or what if you are 300 meters in the air.

It would definitely be a balancing act to make missiles work right, I agree with most of your points, and it really comes down to seeing how it works in beta.. which needs to come soon..

I can only base my guess on PS1, but being caught in the open meant your attacker had pretty much earned a free kill.

You can get lucky at altitude with AB but without AB the missile would quickly run you down. Typical strategy was to identify the direction the missile was coming from (shows up on the mini map), and AB in the opposite direction in order to break lock with range. Racing upwards towards flight ceiling while racing away improved your odds considerably since it got you out of the firing dome faster.

You just have to learn what maneuvers work. It's not like they won't exist at all. You aren't dead the moment you see "missile lock" flash on your screen. Just when you see "Wasp Missile Lock" because then there is almost no escape...

[Cuross]

Great discussion going on :)

@Xyntech:
I do agree that missiles are going to feel more like area denial and that their effectiveness will be severely limited by LOS and outmaneuvering through terrain. I do remember bugging out through forest and swamp plenty of times in PS1 just to avoid taking that last missile in the end. Your points are valid and I agree, the game could be left at that and I would still be satisfied, but just the ability to stay in the thick of it a moment longer because of that lucky roll would really give me a good amount of fun.

I haven't played BF3 either, so I have no idea what evasion in that game is like, either, but I'm expecting that from what we've seen, I agree with the others that it seems like flak and chainguns/purple pew pew lasers will be more effective at taking down aircraft. Flares and chaff will still be incredibly useful if you're completely out of options which will probably feel like most of the time against missiles.

In no way do I want missiles to become useless because some hotshot Aces know how to dodge them, but I'm just saying, if they can dodge one every now and again (like once every twenty or thirty attempts), it might make dogfighting a little more hectic.

[Baneblade]

Maybe try avoiding getting locked in the first place? ;)

[Trafalgar]

I haven't played BF3 either. In Freelancer, there was one section of the game where there was a giant battle with capital ships from two sides shooting each other, and if I tried to fight like it instructed me to, I would get wtfpwned.

So I came up with the very simple tactic of going into an inside loop with my cruise drive enabled - and anything that tried to shoot at me missed completely, and missiles all lost lock and failed to hit me, not that they'd have any luck unless they were smart enough to figure out I was flying in a circle, fly to any point on the circle, and then blow up in front of my fighter when I came back around. (They lost lock immediately after being fired, which is rather peculiar considering I wasn't really flying out of range or behind them or anything)

In other games, that kind of thing doesn't always seem to work (one would hope not, since without a cruise drive or afterburners you can't go fast enough to lose lock on anything coming near you, and if they have a proximity fuse and large blast radius they could still be dangerous) but it is frequently possible to trick missiles using a well-timed immelman (optionally omitting the half roll at the end), ideally while using afterburners so it doesn't just hit you while you're doing it. That requires spotting the missile, flying away from it, and looking behind the airplane or spaceship to see the missile approaching, though. So that would require a "look behind/back" button, and some indicator what direction missiles are coming from.

Probably can't spin around and shoot the missile while continuing to fly away from it in PS2, since these are airplanes and not space fighters with newtonian physics.

[Xyntech]

I wouldn't mind seeing something like afterburning straight towards a missile allowing you to get away from it, but consider the balancing act. A Reaver is slower and clunkier, while a Scythe can change directions very quickly. If it were possible for a Reaver to sometimes outmaneuver a missile lock, than it would likely be very easy for a Scythe to outmaneuver a missile like.

I certainly don't think the Scythe is in need of that kind of buff for the moment.

Obviously open terrain is going to make buggering out a little more difficult, but that's always the tradeoff. You need to be careful and stay mindful of your terrain. If you can outmaneuver a missile in open air, I think it will quickly render anti-air missiles useless.

It is certainly something that would be cool to see and do, but it doesn't seem like it would be very balanced to me. I don't want flares to be the only option in every situation, but if it's the only option in certain situations, I think it will be okay.

[MrMorton]

This is simplification. Bf3 had a max of how many players on a battlefield at any given time? How many would be firing off AA missiles at a time? Against how many aircraft? PS2 will have a very large quantity of players fighting at any given time. Means more projectiles to track and code to read.

Please stop comparing PS2 to BF3 or any other low player count game.

Never played BF3, so I don't care about it. I see the PS2 videos and I see air craft sinking while hovering, with obvious manual boosts upwards done by the players in order to maintain a hovering position. I also see complicated maneuvers like barrel rolls and inverted spins in PS2 so I know the flight mechanics are complex. But PS1 featured the same missiles and they were not hard to avoid despite zero flares/chafe.

Programming the physics behind projectiles complicates the server's task of keeping track of everything that happens in the battlefield. Which is why you likely won't see projectiles affected by wind, and it's just a math equation that tells the computer how far the bullet will drop over how long a distance in the air (based on gravity). A math equation that would be applied to almost all of the projectiles at the same degree as opposed to wind which might affect rounds at different angles and different direction based on the shooter and the direction he is aiming relative to the wind.

in this case the comparison can be made between the two games because the flight model is not impacted by the number of players on a server. The reason for this is because your concept of how the flight model would work is someone wrong.

Yes calculating wind would be more taxing that calculating bullet drop, but ONLY by 1 extra calculation where the angle between the wind and projectile would be calculated. That is not much more taxing on the system than bullet drop, and nothing in comparison to having realtime projectiles/hitboxes in the first place.

The missile flight model could be very simple, but still possible to evade.

for instance: the missile is following the aircraft, and will always stay on it no matter what. Then, you simply add a statement saying the total velocity of the projectile must equal a set number (Xvelocity+Yvelocity+Zvelocity=!=?, simple addition which is not taxing at all). Then a second statement that limits the acceleration in any of these directions (deltaX<?). Boom, dodgable missiles with 4 additional calculations per missile.

I realize it is more complicated to implement than that, but the impact on performance is still very low per missile.

[Eyeklops]

I think that the angle the missile is at should make a huge difference. If someone gets a lock perpendicular to me, then I should just be able to turn into them to lose the lock. However if they are directly behind or in front of me than it should be much more difficult or impossible.

Can we upgrade the guidance for our missiles? Something along the lines of:

Heat seeking (No lock on warning, easily countered with flares)
Radar seeking(No lock on warning, can be countered by turning off radar or chaff)
Radar guided (Lock on warning, more difficult to counter, shorter lock time)
Laser guided (Lock on warning, can be countered by breaking visual contact with the shooter.)
Self correcting heat seeking (No lock on warning, difficult to counter while in sight of the shooter)
Semi-intelligent Dual guidance heat/radar seeking (The ultimate guided missle, is a fast kinetic kill vehicle as the guidence system took up the payload space; No lock on, cannot be countered with flares or chaff, can only be avoided if the pilot breaks visual contact with the missle for longer than 4 seconds):lol:

It's the future, we can come up with some really cool weapon systems :D

I like all of these but the last one.

[Synapse]

Balancing missiles vs pilot skill leaves out one crucial part of the environment. We need to be expecting spam, lots of spam. a dozen people easily in any battlefield just spammng missiles into the air all the time. It's relatively safe, its easy, its fire and forget, you better believe EVERYONE who doesnt feel like shooting will do it.

Shooting missiles is ridiculously easy and low risk. You need to balance pilot skill vs the number of missiles they will be seeing. I would expect 1-2 missiles to be easy to dodge but to make it survivable in an airspace over a real battle you'll need to expect 20-30 active launchers potentially in the area, with the pilot tracking and trying to avoid 10+ missiles, even very simple things to evade become intensely hard.

We shouldnt forget the number of missiles that will be out there. Balancing missiles in a low player count environment could lead to large battles just being a death zone for all air vehicles.

[Trafalgar]

What about using ECM to jam/disable missiles' targeting?

[Novacane]

ECM I can see being very viable to introduce since it would probably fit into the cert system well. Have different levels increase the difficulty of obtaining a lock from AA.

Also, Flares and Chaff are not, by any means, I win buttons. If you deploy them too early, they might disperse enough for the missile to regain a lock before it detonates or runs out of fuel. Deploy them too late and the shrapnel from the explosion may hit you. They are also limited to how much fit in the launchers. That picture of the C-130 is probably a good chunk of its total flares right there. In real aircraft, they have a computer that you can program to disperse countermeasures in patterns to counter the specific threat that is in the area.

[Eclipse]

I wish I could remember exactly where I saw it, but I was watching the stream of e3 day 2 with TotalBiscuit, (which has now disappeared again ARGLEBLARGLE RAGE) and somewhere past the half-way mark they showed a mosquito hunting a reaver, and the mossy fired a homing missile at long range. I watched as the reaver pulled a tight turn, then started a vertical climb, making the missile follow. At the peak, he seemed to cut his engines and flip over backwards, dropping down into a dive. I thought this looked absolutely awesome, and I was sure that would be enough to lose the missile, since the thing missed by a mile after the backflip... but the damn thing whipped right back around and followed the reaver into the dive, hitting it at about the same time as the -second- missile fired by the mossy, blowing it out of the sky.

Personally i think that such skillful and -awesome- looking aerial maneuvers should be enough to make a missile break lock, but the darn things seem to be very good at their job right about now.

If I could find the stream video again I could find exactly where it was (and check to see I'm just not imagining things) but I thought I should mention it since it seemed pertinent to this topic.

[Cuross]

I wish I could remember exactly where I saw it, but I was watching the stream of e3 day 2 with TotalBiscuit, (which has now disappeared again ARGLEBLARGLE RAGE) and somewhere past the half-way mark they showed a mosquito hunting a reaver, and the mossy fired a homing missile at long range. I watched as the reaver pulled a tight turn, then started a vertical climb, making the missile follow. At the peak, he seemed to cut his engines and flip over backwards, dropping down into a dive. I thought this looked absolutely awesome, and I was sure that would be enough to lose the missile, since the thing missed by a mile after the backflip... but the damn thing whipped right back around and followed the reaver into the dive, hitting it at about the same time as the -second- missile fired by the mossy, blowing it out of the sky.

Personally i think that such skillful and -awesome- looking aerial maneuvers should be enough to make a missile break lock, but the darn things seem to be very good at their job right about now.

If I could find the stream video again I could find exactly where it was (and check to see I'm just not imagining things) but I thought I should mention it since it seemed pertinent to this topic.

That is exactly what I was wondering could happen. And that's exactly what I was worried would happen, haha. In any case, that kind of maneuver is tough on timing and I'm surprised anyone might have even been able to get that far ahead of a missile, especially in a Reaver. Will they change it to lose lock in and after Beta? Maybe. If it's not changed in game, will it bother all the pilots? Only a little, but not enough to stop flying :P

[Trafalgar]

I wish I could remember exactly where I saw it, but I was watching the stream of e3 day 2 with TotalBiscuit, (which has now disappeared again ARGLEBLARGLE RAGE)

This is why I saved a copy of it, so I'd still be able to watch it in case it disappeared.

(Oh, and missiles with the tenacity of a Terminator are a bit disturbing.)

[ringring]

I was under the impression the ejector seat would work like the Galaxy Drop mechanic, and that you can't lock onto infantry. Did we hear something different that I missed?

I think we've heard nothing whatsoever other than there will be an ejector seat.

[Otleaz]

I never saw day 2 :(

[Stew]

missles need to be effective, how else am i meant to kill people in aircraft without decent lockon missles?

Battlefield 3 - Rocket Rage 2 - YouTube

Maybe like this ?

just hope the rocket will not have a too slow time travel like it was in BF3 before the last patch !

if the rocket are fast enough and have the same scope as they ad in the Alpha at e3 ill be able to take down any air craft with it the Carl gustav in Bfbc2 was the perfect mass destruction weapons agains the helicopters :D

[Toppopia]

Maybe like this ?

just hope the rocket will not have a too slow time travel like it was in BF3 before the last patch !

if the rocket are fast enough and have the same scope as they ad in the Alpha at e3 ill be able to take down any air craft with it the Carl gustav in Bfbc2 was the perfect mass destruction weapons agains the helicopters :D

Has anyone seen a RPG fire in real life? I've only seen it on mythbusters but movies and games soo underplay how awesome an RPG is. It will bust up anything if you see the explosion it sends out when it hits something, and it moves super fast. So i hope they make them like real life, then RPG's would be amazing :bouncy:

And are we allowed to say HAX!! He has HAX!!

[Trafalgar]

Has anyone seen a RPG fire in real life? I've only seen it on mythbusters but movies and games soo underplay how awesome an RPG is. It will bust up anything if you see the explosion it sends out when it hits something, and it moves super fast. So i hope they make them like real life, then RPG's would be amazing :bouncy:

And are we allowed to say HAX!! He has HAX!!

... An RPG isn't going to blow a tank to smithereens in real life. Well, maybe if it was a really poorly armored tank.

[Toppopia]

... An RPG isn't going to blow a tank to smithereens in real life. Well, maybe if it was a really poorly armored tank.

A few will take it out, and 1 will probably do some damage to it. I want an RPG to be viable against aircraft. Because people won't then have to worry about breaking locks, they just have to be super fast and dodge quickly. :lol:

[HenchAnt]

... An RPG isn't going to blow a tank to smithereens in real life. Well, maybe if it was a really poorly armored tank.

RPG29 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPG-29)s and later are capable of penetrating the front armor of modern MBTs like the Challenger II.

But I doubt that's relevant for Planetside2. :cool:
Armor will be as tough as the game needs it to be to be fun, nothing more, nothing less. And if that means those persky Aircraft can endure several rocket hits, so be it.
(Although shooting them down is real fun. I really loved the EMP rocket from "Frontlines - Fuel of War". Not that easy hitting an aircraft with this unguided missile - but knocking out the electronics to make them crash was sooo worth it. :D )

[Landtank]

... An RPG isn't going to blow a tank to smithereens in real life. Well, maybe if it was a really poorly armored tank.

An RPG can do significant damage to a turret of an M1A2 Abrams, that's why they added extra reactive armor around the turret and some chain netting to help dissipate the rocket before it reaches the turret.

I saw that maneuver too, and that's exactly what I was thinking: that kind of maneuver should shake the rocket, but then leave you vulnerable enough to be strafed or attacked by the chain gun.

[Xyntech]

Balance testing can certainly be done to see if maneuvering to break a lock-on would be possible without rendering the missiles useless, but missiles certainly need to be somewhat effective or else you may as well take them out of the game, which I wouldn't be entirely opposed to, but I think is unneeded.

I'm still seeing no way that a skilled pilot will fall victim to missiles as they currently were at E3, and guns are certainly going to dominate dogfights. I'm generally leaning towards making anti-air missiles pretty powerful, so that they at least have the chance to take out the more average pilots, or pilots who do something really stupid to set themselves up for the missile.

[Eclipse]

This is why I saved a copy of it, so I'd still be able to watch it in case it disappeared.

If you have a copy, please PLEASE upload it to youtube or something! So many people haven't seen it, and I didn't think the 'audio problems' were very significant at all!

[Trafalgar]

Eclipse: If TotalBiscuit is not uploading it, and removing it from twitch.tv, and stating that he isn't going to upload it because he wasn't happy with the audio quality, that's a pretty good indicator that he doesn't want it uploaded. Also, copyright. So I can't re-upload it.

I'm kind of curious why TB's recording software wasn't recording the different audio inputs in different, um, you know, pairs of stereo channels, so they could be adjusted after. I am of course assuming he has some kind of expensive recording solution which can do things like that because it's expensive (Surely there is a market for that feature). Or why he didn't just drop the volume of the overly loud playback application (unless his OS doesn't have a per application volume control) when he was switched to the one which was turned way up. But there were other audio issues, like the interview snafu. I haven't watched all of it yet, though.

An RPG can do significant damage to a turret of an M1A2 Abrams, that's why they added extra reactive armor around the turret and some chain netting to help dissipate the rocket before it reaches the turret.


Yes, which I'm aware of, and it can damage the tank if it hits the back or top, but that's not blowing the tank to smithereens either. The post I was replying to was stating that RPGs would basically obliterate anything they hit and I went "Wait a minute... Tanks have reactive armor specifically to stop tank shells, missiles, and shit" and then googled to see what would happen if an RPG did hit an Abrams. (Wikipedia had information, other than that I found a bunch of youtube videos that seemed rather long and pointless)

I was a little surprised the top armor would be weak, but perhaps the US military expects the odds of a US tank being hit by a cruise missile or a bomber in this day and age to be low considering American and NATO air superiority against anyone they have fought any time recently or are likely to fight in the near future.