Lock-on Missiles (AA & Jets)

[rampo]

disagree. I think its pretty easy to evade AA as u know roughly the AA positions to stay outta those areas, then use the terrain, hills and houses for cover and then ofcourse the missile evade prosegure it self, just when u get the lock, pop flares and immediately change direction or follow the flares falling to the ground and use the ground for cover when escaping.

[Nemus]

Maps in PR are too small to have a comparison with jets IRL.
I mean 4 km maps? IRL they are not enough even for a normal landing approach.

A jet IRL doesnt strafe for hours over an area with AAs. And doesnt make "epic doghfights" when its EWS is full of threats. It makes its bombing run fast and disapears faster.

PR is not a simulator in every part of it. Infantry, tanks, jets etc. Many features are (and must be) simplified. Many assets are just "too big" for the maps. If we want them we must accept and their capability (or incapability) to do some things they appear unrealistic, easy, hard etc.
Otherwise we can play a specific simulator. You want rewarding accuracy? Try to shoot down a P-51 at IL-2. First time i did it i felt like Red Baron.

[IAJTHOMAS]

How often do you see BMPs downing jets on Kashan at the moment? How often in previous versions did tunguska's down jets that weren't carelessly flying down the AA's throat? Same with the CWIS when they were still on the Essex.

To be honest its relatively easy to avoid AA missiles at the moment by popping some flares and getting the hell out of dodge. You can even deliberately fly in to an AA envelope to engage the AAVs if you dropping flares on the run and know where they are an have a reasonable chance of survival.

Sure the AA will get you via the law of probabilites, but a good pilot taking precautions is tough to shoot down.

The main problems I see are that the attack choppers are particularly vulnerable as they are often required to operate at highish alttitude and a low speed to engage targets effectively. In an ideal world you'd engage lased targets, dropping flares on the pass and breaking off early, but often this doesn't happen and you have to hunt for yourself and your at a greater risk doing that.

[Oddsodz]

Now. You are forgetting the balance from the jets side of things. When a jet drops a bomb on target (meaning it's lazed and all that jazz). It's a one shot/bomb kill. So the AA also I believe needs to be a 1 shot kill of sorts. That is the way it is right now.

The reason why jets get killed by AA is because players are to greedy or just don't have the patients to wait for marked targets. And if you can't learn to take your time and work with a spotter on the ground. Then the jet deserves to get it's *** handed to it.

Jets are the most deadly thing in game. And so a good counter is needed for them. The AA as it is right now is just about right. Although I think the MEC Gaskin needs to be replaced with something has a .50 or something to counter the AAv Avenger.

Now for choppers. They do need more flare packs. A set of 5 is not enough.

[CAS_117]

As the guy who designed the AA in PR, and has used the AA missiles from 0.5 till now, I can tell you that yes, without them it is quite impossible to shoot down an aircraft that does even the slightest evasion. But not because hitting it is particularly hard, especially at the ranges we are usually at.

Is it really that hard to lead an aircraft with guns? No not at all. The problem is that "If I hit it, will it die?".

Let me elaborate. Have you ever hit a guy in the head and he not die? Shoot a humvee with a tank shell and have it not die? Or use an anti air missile that detonates beside a helicopter and of course it not take any damage.

Think of it this way, an aircraft that is moving very quickly has less and less surface area on it that is vulnerable to damage:



Here's the problem. BF2 has very poor hit detection. Basically, the faster a target goes, the less damage it will sustain. Note that in the Scenario 2 the aircraft has practically ZERO killable surface area. This is why I am quite loathe to increase the armor of aircraft or pretty much anything in general because the hitboxes in effect double the required number of hits on average.

*So in effect, the more you hit an aircraft, the worse a shot you are, and the more you miss the better a shot you are.

How to get around this limitation? You see the yellow box in the diagram? That is the heat object. This is what the missile tracks. Moving these to the nose of an aircraft means that instead of trying to hit the air 12m or so behind the plane, the missile will "overcompensate" for the hitboxes position; the missiles automatically attack the point where most of the aircraft is "killable".

The other solution is to add proximity fuses to the missiles. The problem is simply getting them to do enough damage while getting them to detonate at all. In short: The bigger the proximity fuse, the less damage the explosion does. Give a missile a 100m proximity fuse and a 50m blast radius and the missile will practically never do anything. Give a missile a 50m proximity fuse and a 100m blast radius and it just might, except now its got the blast radius of a bloody 500lb bomb! Great work.

So by removing the heat object from the aircraft, you are no longer tracking a 14.5m long airframe, you are trying to hit a point in space that is about 0.5m high and 2m long. By any stretch this is impossible, especially since you have practically zero idea where this is located (unless you use hitfixer and know the targets ping).

Hitting an aircraft with guns? Easy. Doing any damage? Very hard.

[Naruto-kun]

good explanation CAS_117

After my experiences with VBF2 1.50 its actually easier to shoot planes down with only guns, since the hitreg is a lot better there.

[Rhino]

ye v1.5 is meant to fix the hitboxes a bit but I've yet to see a diffidence in the short time I tried it out.

[Naruto-kun]

ye v1.5 is meant to fix the hitboxes a bit but I've yet to see a diffidence in the short time I tried it out.

Well try it as long you don't do the same mistake as me(installing 1.50 over 1.41)

but believe me you will like the Hitreg

Play some 1.41 first and try 1.50 after

[fuzzhead]

One thing I would add: actually I think BF2 has one of the best hit detections for combined arms games with 64 players.

No other games really attempt to have that many players with infantry, ground vehicles and air vehicles all moving around large maps.

ArmA2 does it but we wont talk on its hit detection as it desyncs to all hell with 60 players on at the same time and its very sketchy with alot of vehicles in the air, vehicles warping around and everything else its kind of a turkey shoot in pub servers.

So maybe there is another game that Im not aware of but I think BF2's hit detection aint half bad, but of course would be nice to be better.

[Outlawz7]

If the heat lock is on the nose, doesn't that mean that AA missiles incoming from the rear have the highest chance of killing the aircraft?

Give a missile a 50m proximity fuse and a 100m blast radius and it just might, except now its got the blast radius of a bloody 500lb bomb! Great work.

Couldn't this be tweaked via material settings by giving it a small amount of damage so it doesn't kill everything, but the modifier for AA damage vs. aircraft/heli material is multiplied several times so it only kills those?

[CAS_117]

Couldn't this be tweaked via material settings by giving it a small amount of damage so it doesn't kill everything, but the modifier for AA damage vs. aircraft/heli material is multiplied several times so it only kills those?

Sure but it means that 1 missile into a base will kill all aircraft pretty much. And I know people don't use this tactic much, but I dumb fire missiles into the ground directly below a transport chopper that is attempting to do terrain masking. The 50m blast will do the rest.

Having a blast radius that big spells trouble even if it only affects aircraft. I'd wait till 1.5 is done.

To answer your first question, yes, a rear or nose shot is ideal. You'll have the minimum possible hitbox deflection if the planes not turning. This is why snapshooting the missiles before an aircraft can turn works so well; In a turn the vertical deflection is very small, but so is the actual aircraft's height. Generally the killable surface is nothing.

[Logaritm]

here is how not to get shot down by AA:

DON'T GO THERE

i'm getting really feed up at people thinking that just by getting in a tank/plane/heli you will be harder to kill, but guess what, there is weapons out there that's made with the only purpose to kill that tank/plane/heli your driving, so why would not that weapon do it's job

[CAS_117]

Well by that logic you shouldn't ever attack another soldier because he has a rifle and a rifle is meant to kill you. Its not rock paper scissors. Think of each weapons role as, "capable of, but not limited to". Ranking threats relative to yourself means that when you are done with one, you can instantly move to the other.

[joethepro36]

Quite, but all the same there is a mentality that planes should be perfectly able to take on aa and tanks should be able to knock out helos and other such nonsense.

He's just trying to say, "i'm fed up of people attacking their hard counters".

[Snazz]

This just sounds like a rant from someone who gets owned by AA alot.

Oh yes, just a rant because one individual doesn't like being shot down period, how conveniently simple.

I wouldn't care if i was being 'owned' by AA that someone actually aimed, you don't see me posting several threads about being killed by other weapons. I only have a problem with the lock-on system because it takes nothing but looking around you to shoot down any aircraft the majority of the time.

a dumbed down PR is frankly a sh*t PR.

The lock-on system is dumbed down, doesn't get much easier than auto-spotting and auto-aiming.

disagree. I think its pretty easy to evade AA.

You may be an awesome pilot who's got a good tactic for AA evasion, but if you're spotted by AA first they can fire a missile at you before you even hear that tone.

How often do you see BMPs downing jets on Kashan at the moment?

What the BMP can hit is irrelevant as I never suggested using them as AA and their cannon is nothing like an AA cannon.

How often in previous versions did tunguska's down jets that weren't carelessly flying down the AA's throat?

Previous versions? Are you talking about the dodgy lock-on missiles?

The Tunguska's the easiest of all AA weapons, you just have to spend some time in a populated Kashan training server to see how effortlessly one can deny airspace.

Now. You are forgetting the balance from the jets side of things. When a jet drops a bomb on target (meaning it's lazed and all that jazz). It's a one shot/bomb kill. So the AA also I believe needs to be a 1 shot kill of sorts. That is the way it is right now.

No, You're forgetting the skill and teamwork involved in keeping the aircraft operational and armed, whilst accurately bombing targets. It's nothing like sitting on your *** in AA spinning the mouse around till you pick up something.

Jets are the most deadly thing in game.

If they're unchallenged yes, but they're rare in PR and good pilots are even rarer. There's a lot to counter the jet's power as it is without giving the other side such an easy way to shoot them down.

[Zoddom]

Why do you want to take out "lock-on" weapons??? WHAT?
it would be at least as unreal as Unreal to have a jet without guided weapons. There is no AA missile which you dont have to lock on with. same for SA. it doesnt make sense.
I agree that we could use some REAL infrared missiles, like the sidewinder, grail or gramlin, which dont trigger an alarm. but i think this would be hard to include, because afaik theres no difference between stationary AA missiles, which use to be sa-7, and the grissom of the tunguska ingame. and in addition youd have to make them less effective against flair-using jets and IN addition to the addition youd have to make an extra radar-countermessure like chaffs or ecm ...

edit: @ snazz:
the trick is to use flairs BEFORE somethin locks on you.

[CAS_117]

Quite, but all the same there is a mentality that planes should be perfectly able to take on aa and tanks should be able to knock out helos and other such nonsense.

He's just trying to say, "i'm fed up of people attacking their hard counters".

Well tbh the current AA in PR is fairly easy to neutralize. Not because of accuracy but mostly due to countermeasures and lack of early warning. 1000m view dist/ 200m/s = 5 seconds to hit you. Not really great odds for the gunner. So I really have trouble accepting that the anti-air is overpowered or too easy. And that's only when no one knows where you are. If you get lased as an AAV you may as well get out.

[Logaritm]

Well by that logic you shouldn't ever attack another soldier because he has a rifle and a rifle is meant to kill you

that not what i meant, one of the infantry man's role is to attack other infantry men's

[CAS_117]

that not what i meant, one of the infantry man's role is to attack other infantry men's

Google "SEAD".