Countermeasures for fighters

[CrystalViolet]

Originally Posted by Bags

VS countermeasures should be purple and teal confetti.

Perfect countermeasure to the TR cupcake launching max.

[Sirisian]

One thing I would like to see is if AA rockets could lock onto enemy rockets. Like if flak could detonate rockets or an aircraft's rockets could shoot down other enemy air rockets. It would make the flight combat really entertaining with multiple people.

[2coolforu]

What would be cool is to litter heat sources around the map A'la BF2 that rockets lock onto to allow experienced pilots to use them to shake an infrared lock. I'm thinking the overflow gas burners on Oman etc.

[Aractain]

Originally Posted by CViolet

Perfect countermeasure to the TR cupcake launching max.

What about the balloons? Can't have a party without balloons!

[CutterJohn]

Originally Posted by Xyntech

It does kinda suck a bit when flying is either a matter of being completely safe or just turns into getting out of dodge, with no real gameplay in between aside from dog fighting.

Thats why direct fire is so superior to lock on and, to a lesser extent, flak. You can introduce damage degradation if needed, and shots are more difficult to hit with at range, meaning the danger the AA represents gradually escalates as you near it. In PS1, the lock on AA was 100% effective at range, and the flak based only slightly less effective due to the huge aoe on the blasts. It made them far too effective at covering far too large an area.

[Brusi]

Air to ground missiles that counter-lock-on to whoever/whatever is currently targeting and locked on to you.

[CutterJohn]

Oooh.. Wild Weasels. Nice idea.

[NapalmEnima]

Lots of potential fun here with different kinds of detectors, jammers, suppressors, decoys, and so forth.

Things that could be detected:

Various sections of the EM spectrum (radar, IR, visible light, etc)
Target's mass
Different particle emissions (subatomic or otherwise) released by sci fi engines, comms, etc.
Acoustic tracking (not so good if your target can exceed the speed of sound)
Pull a "Predator 2" and hunt for their trail (exhaust) instead of them.

Each type could have different kinds of "stealth" systems, jammers, decoys and so on. Each type could be used for tracking systems for missiles, proximity detectors for flack, or Magically Attract Funky Energy Projectiles.

A stealth system that masked your gluons, mesons, and quarks might be useless against good ol RADAR (thanks to the return signal from that spiffy hyper-alloy armor you just unlocked). An EM holo decoy projector won't help at all if they're tracking your mass using gravitic distortion detectors.

[Traak]

Yeah, and all the jammer systems would be defeated by good ol' unguided flak.

[NapalmEnima]

Originally Posted by Traak

Yeah, and all the jammer systems would be defeated by good ol' unguided flak.

Flak still needs some sort of proximity detector to know when to go boom.

Active jamming makes you much more detectable, but precision goes out the window. Of course if your jammer is designed to overload-n-fry their sensors, that fried gear isn't gonna care, but all the other sensors of that type will know RIGHT where you are.

[Kouza]

Aircraft should be able to avoid most if not all AA at very high altitudes but, as it gets lower it should be VERY vulnerable to ground fire. It does not take much to take down an aircraft.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by Kouza

Aircraft should be able to avoid most if not all AA at very high altitudes but, as it gets lower it should be VERY vulnerable to ground fire. It does not take much to take down an aircraft.

I support this mentality because at high altitudes, aircraft shouldn't be as able to do damage to ground troops either. The only real exception would be a liberator bombing from extreme altitude, but you could avoid this by either giving libs a lower flight ceiling, or making bombs (maybe along with air to ground missiles) self detonate after traveling a certain distance.

Speaking of flight ceilings, I really hope they get it right and put in a soft ceiling where you start climbing slower and slower until you can't gain any lift and start stalling out. So much more fun and dynamic than having an invisible roof that you run into. I'm not worried though, they would be crazy to take inspiration for so many other things from other games but leave in the PS1 flight ceiling.

I like the idea of safer high altitude skies because it would leave more room open for uninterrupted dogfights. An aircraft who was starting to lose a dogfight could still duck lower to hide behind friendly AA units if they were below, but only if the pilot was a yellow bellied coward.

[Brusi]

I like the idea of bombers being less useful at higher altitudes (bombs drifting off target?) but i wouldn't want them entirely limited to mid-low altitude bombing.

It might negatively affect game play to have libs safe from AA damage, carpet bombing them... but i do think that leaving the upper atmosphere for fighters hunting bombers and dogfighting other fighters sounds like it could create an awesome aerial gameplay element and work really well.

[Traak]

Originally Posted by Kouza

Aircraft should be able to avoid most if not all AA at very high altitudes but, as it gets lower it should be VERY vulnerable to ground fire. It does not take much to take down an aircraft.

That altitude will have to be very high. Which would open up a new category of weapons: the high-altitude dual-stage interceptor surface-to-air missile (SAM).

I would gladly man a SAM site. The satisfaction level of shooting down high-altitude aircraft would be similarly high.

I would also like to see, if very high altitudes are available, AA artillery, like the Skysweeper of the WWII era. Flak at 10,000 feet or SAM at 20,000. With that much altitude available, the air war becomes far more amazing, and a whole entity unto itself, with pilots able to find plenty of combat up in the clouds.

Best countermeasure for surface-to-air fire? Altitude, baby! Lots and lots of altitude!

[CutterJohn]

Originally Posted by NapalmEnima

Flak still needs some sort of proximity detector to know when to go boom.

Most flak is timed. Manually set long ago, now they have systems with rangefinders that do so automatically before the shell is fired. Making it adjust for the motion of the craft would just be a small bit of additional programming so that it explodes at the range the aircraft will be when its fired.

If you can see it, something can track it.