Quick suggestion for A2A lock-on missiles.

[wasdie]

I'm watching the May 4th Squad Beacon on youtube right now and Higby was talking about making A2A dogfighting between ESFs more skill based and fun for a larger amount of players.

We'll ignore ground based threats for the sake of discussion. Right now you're either great with the main cannon or you're dead. Great for skillful players and I'm 100% supportive of that kind of gameplay. However the A2A lock-on missiles have become pretty much irrelevant since flares have become near mandatory for ESF survivability thanks to the abundant amount of lock-on weaponry.

What I was thinking of adding to the selection of A2A weaponry, or changing what we currently have, is lifted from a gameplay mechanic in Ace Combat. Certain kinds of specialty weaponry in Ace Combat are lock-on missiles that only locks on if the player can keep their target within a circular area on their HUD. The missile is a near guaranteed hit if the player could do that, as long as the target wasn't flying straight at the missile and would dodge at the last second.

I believe a mechanic like that would add a great layer of depth to the pretty lackluster A2A combat and give pilots who aren't as great at A2A combat with the front cannon another option. The missiles fired would be high velocity and have a decent range, but would only track targets within that radius. It would be up to the player to make sure their target stays within the radius on their hud. It's kind of like a wire guided missile only you're just maintaining a lock.

The kicker is that these missiles will ignore flares (as they are going to be radar guided). The only way to escape is to evade the missile by getting out of the radius on the enemy's hud so the missile loses track and just flies straight out of radar guidance range.

That may sound OP but hear me out. This actually works if the missile is high velocity enough. A pilot would not be able to use these missiles in a turning battle, they would need to boom and zoom their enemies bringing a whole new subset of tactics into the fight. A turn fight would still require the pilots to use their nose cannon. The missiles are higher velocity which means there is only a bit of time to guide them to their target. Evasions and afterburners would be a great way to counter such a threat as would be getting in nice and close. The missiles would also also need a small warm-up period for them to reach maximum maneuverability, thus making them useless in a turn battle. You would have to have some distance between you and your target.

These weapons would be great for catching pilots who like retreat from any fight the second they take a bit of damage and it would bring a nice set of tactics into the A2A game.

I've thought about these kind of missiles since the whole problem with the fire-and-forget A2A missiles were introduced to the game causing all sorts of problems. Right now they are just too shallow and most of the time just absolutely useless. Nobody likes being chased down by something that isn't actually guided by a player and takes no real skill (this is also why I hate lock-on launchers). This would require much more active player input and would encourage the use of new tactics during dogfights hopefully giving them some depth.

Feel free to poke all the holes in the world into this idea. I'm just throwing it out there.

I don't even pilot, I just know this is a gameplay mechanic that I enjoy in other games that seems to have some merit here.