TR Max lockdown - Not again!

[xSlideShow]

Originally Posted by BUGGER

Because you're trading off 100% of your mobility you should be giving that 100% of your mobility to either your guns or defense. Personally, i believe it should be both.

You are trading 100% of your mobility to your guns. You trade not moving to full focus on aim, and you have increased accuracy.

Originally Posted by BUGGER

I feel the downfall to the TR Max was when they switched the Anti-Vehicle/Anti-Infantry Maxes around. An AI-Pounder Max surely had a chance in lockdown when his spray was an entire doorway, fear the ring of fire. But a Cycler Max was nothing. Shooting BB's with sniperrifle accuracy at speeds uncomprehencable sounds nice, but put him inside a zerged tower with choppy framerates and slight lag nerfs him to a freshly spawned zergling.

That said, either those Cyclers better shoot explosive rounds or he better turn into Fort Knox when he hunkers down in the doorway or I'm getting my greencard in the NC.

I would be fine if the TR had a larger offensive buff when locked down. As far as damage. I also think that the faster TTK may help with this.

[Marsgrim]

Originally Posted by Kouza

If you find your having an issue getting grief locked a lot. Learn 2 Aim.

Like I said... I find getting grief locked VERY hard when using an actual gun... AOE weapons..... With more damage comes more grief. Thats your trade off.

Do you play TR? It's a genuine question because the DC and the MCG are both continous fire weapons requiring you to track the enemy with your crosshair.

Unfortunately a number of TR players have a habit of running in front of you to steal the kill. You can be the first person fighting or engaging the enemy - and maintaing your range if you know what you're doing - and some people will jump in front of you to get the kill whilst causing you greif because you're tracking the target.

[Kalbuth]

Same in all empires, Marsgrim. You have in fact more options for correct cross-fire with MCG than with JH

[2coolforu]

I think a lot of people are missing the point, MAX'es are required to have two roles

Attack/Breakthrough Assault

This is why the MAX has 650 armor + no health leakthrough, a MAX is designed to break through the camps on doors/bottleknecks where an average infantryman cannot sustain the DPS to defeat the enemy. The NC and VS MAX'es have abilities that makes them extremely proficient at this role, the VS MAX can jump over/onto walls, roofs, towers and attack from behind the defense line or from flanking angles which is an extremely powerful ability. The jump also allows it to dodge deci's due to lag/warping.

The NC MAX has a shield that when used en-masse (say a MAX crash) allows it to break through lines while sustaining little damage.

Now the important thing to note is none of these abilities provides a direct bonus, they are just versatility improvers. This is where lockdown is gimped, lockdown is required to reach DPS parity with the other factions MAXes however the MAX must sacrifice mobility to gain it, it also must sacrifice losing in a 1 on 1 fight with any of the other factions MAX'es (not including their special abilities) if it does not sacrifice mobility AND until recently could not fire while locking down (at least for the majority of Psides active 'true' life it could not fire during activation of lockdown).

Lockdown is not something you can use during assault, it effectively took you down to 0 DPS for a second and without it you would be defeated by any other opposing MAX easily. It also made you easy to flank and blocked friendly units behind you. The TR MAX ability denied its use as the primary role it should be filling, an offensive breakthrough unit. There's a reason why NC MAX crashes are relatively common and relatively sucessful in comparison to a TR MAX crash.

Base Defence

The defence role is also a useful role for MAX units, but not their main one. They are mainly pulled to tank DPS from the attackers and deal with enemy MAX units. The TR Lockdown is less gimpy in this role, but it effectively leaves you a sitting duck - softies ADADAD'ing near the door know where you are and can easily hit you with repeat deci's before you can react. The NC could use the shield to escape however the TR would be locked in place and still effectively on equal DPS par with the enemy MAX'es.

Anti-Air

In an anti-air role the starfire is considered the best AA for multiple reasons

1) It can jumpjet over Reaver rockets, this effectively allows it to survive a reaver surprise attack whereas a locked burster is doomed to flanking or even a close range reaver attack. The DPS of an unlocked Burster is so terrible that locking is effectively the only option which limits you to a very small arc of the sky.

2) Ease of use, the Starfire does not require much skill to use adequately whereas the Burster requires a lot of knowledge of target leading and the projectile speed. A noob can put up an effective AA defence with a starfire, not so much with a burster. And lest we forget the hilarious days where the TR couldn't hit beyond 300m leaving them sitting ducks for liberator raids.

[Kalbuth]

Faster, or instant with capacitor (I actually like Redshift's idea) lockdown like system would be usefull for your points 1 & 2, I'd say.

As for your 3, I already stated why I beg to differ. To me, Burster is the best AA MAX of all 3, hands down compared to NC AA MAX, probably more a matter of taste when compared to Starfire (ie, they are on par, just work differently)

(nota : you don't get DPS parity when locking down, you get better DPS)

[Redshift]

Originally Posted by Kalbuth

Faster, or instant with capacitor (I actually like Redshift's idea) lockdown like system would be usefull for your points 1 & 2, I'd say.

ta

Originally Posted by Kalbuth

As for your 3, I already stated why I beg to differ. To me, Burster is the best AA MAX of all 3, hands down compared to NC AA MAX, probably more a matter of taste when compared to Starfire (ie, they are on par, just work differently)

i beg to differ there though, the burster is good if you happen to be pointing in the right direction and are locked down already, unfortunatly if you're not you waste a second locking down and may have missed your chance. And you don't have the option of not locking down because a burster does no damage unlocked, i'm pretty sure it looses a straight up fight with a reaver by a pathetically large amount.
Starfire is superior massively.
Given the choice i'd make all AA MAXes similar to the sparrow and give planes the option to chaff to reduce the chance of some missiles hitting

[NapalmEnima]

Originally Posted by Redshift

...and give planes the option to chaff to reduce the chance of some missiles hitting

Higby has specifically stated that aircraft will have "countermeasures and radar signature reducers", that there was a lot of gameplay there he was eager to reveal.

Ah, I was close. From the "Mossy is a TR vehicle" thread:

Originally Posted by Higby

Each of these fighters will serve multiple roles depending on how the player loads out the vehicle, you can configure any of them to be more air-to-air orientated, air-to-ground orientated, etc. You'll be able to change out afterburners to get more speed, or armor to get more durability, countermeasures, radar dampening, etc. We're working on a lot of really cool gameplay here, I think you all will be stoked and I can't wait to share a bit more about them soon! =)

Emphasis added.

Sounds to me like different missiles will use different tracking technologies, (heat, radar, visual, FancyTechnoBabbleThing, etc) and aircraft can be fitted with Various Devices to counter (to one degree or another) them.

The default ECM gear might be lousy-but-not-"nothing" against all techs, while various "side-grades" might specialize on a small cross-section, at the cost of dropping protection entirely against others.

TR pilot about to go into a TR vs NC fight:
"NC tends to use more IR and RADAR tracking, so I'd better go with the photon scattering suite". Which is great until some hot-shit air-2-air outfit shows up with a variety of different missiles (various particle detectors, maybe something that tracks your mass using super-sensitive gravity detectors) specifically to screw over min-maxing types like our TR pilot here.

Different engines might make you more or less exposed to different tracking techs. An anti-gravity drive might utterly defeat mass detectors, but gives off LOTS of excess heat, while cold-fusion charged air thrusters might run very cool but give off a lot of gluons or tachyons or something.

Ditto for armor/internal structure. SuperAlloy X might be tough as hell, but has quite a radar signature (by default... we have radar absorbent paint NOW), while the ceramic/carbon-nanofiber composite is lighter and has very little radar signature, but isn't as strong.

Lots of potential there.

[Wahooo]

Burster is more fun, and there is more satisfaction in killing with it.
Locked down a Burster has the fastest TTK of all AA maxes AGAINST UNAWARE AND HOVERING TARGETS, those people are dieing regardless so the exact TTK doesn't really matter much does it? Against real planes flying and ABing away at the sign of death? Not as much.

Lock down is a death sentence, hopefully you get a kill or three from people running infront of you in the mean time.

The pounder/DC debate is tough. AI pounder was frankly OP in the places it was meant for, like holding base doors and towers. However DC is a little underpowered in the same roll, but mostly due to hit-reg and warp issues. The ability for somone to srafe into a doorway loose a Deci and step back against a DC is silly and since there is no dodging at all it only take a few guys doing this to take them down. Against an AI pounder? Good luck even getting through the door, no chance. The improved accuracy of the DC simply doesn't help when people are warping back and forth, maybe with better netcode and not one world wide server that 3/4 of the population pings >150 ms to it would be a different story.

[Kalbuth]

Originally Posted by Redshift

i beg to differ there though, the burster is good if you happen to be pointing in the right direction and are locked down already, unfortunatly if you're not you waste a second locking down and may have missed your chance. And you don't have the option of not locking down because a burster does no damage unlocked, i'm pretty sure it looses a straight up fight with a reaver by a pathetically large amount.
Starfire is superior massively.
Given the choice i'd make all AA MAXes similar to the sparrow and give planes the option to chaff to reduce the chance of some missiles hitting

From my experience, if you're in a position where you don't have time to lock down and kill with a Burster, you're not in a position to get a lock and fire enough to kill with a Starfire either, or your orbs will be evaded anyway

[Kouza]

Originally Posted by Marsgrim

Do you play TR? It's a genuine question because the DC and the MCG are both continous fire weapons requiring you to track the enemy with your crosshair.

Unfortunately a number of TR players have a habit of running in front of you to steal the kill. You can be the first person fighting or engaging the enemy - and maintaing your range if you know what you're doing - and some people will jump in front of you to get the kill whilst causing you greif because you're tracking the target.

I am TR..... Learn to aim... Its ok to left off the left mouse button when in a fire fight.

[Redshift]

Originally Posted by Kalbuth

From my experience, if you're in a position where you don't have time to lock down and kill with a Burster, you're not in a position to get a lock and fire enough to kill with a Starfire either, or your orbs will be evaded anyway

Then you don't have enough experience, locking down took a second, thats 1 second longer to engage in every encounter, starfires and sparrows were instant. I can think of many occasions where the second wasted locking down let the pilot fly over or out of the arc of the burster (and thats another 2 seconds to unlock and lock again), that simply can't happen with the other two MAXes

[Wahooo]

Originally Posted by Redshift

Then you don't have enough experience, locking down took a second, thats 1 second longer to engage in every encounter, starfires and sparrows were instant. I can think of many occasions where the second wasted locking down let the pilot fly over or out of the arc of the burster (and thats another 2 seconds to unlock and lock again), that simply can't happen with the other two MAXes

Right, but not 100%. That 1 second to lockdown is the same 1 second the enemy plane is hearing a beep beep beep from a sparrow before lock on that lets them turn and burn away.
BUT once those missle are fired many, many places where you can't lose it around a mountain if you only have part of your AB left you get full damage from whatever was fired at you.

Starfire? If you were in the exact same place in a starfire as you were in a burster you are probably doing it wrong. There is a reason they are always in trees besides the ability to avoid some of the reaver rocket splash damage. Most pilots dodge AA by going low and AB away. A starfire already higher can then jump jet and be higher yet to keep lock-on and hold it long after a burster loses LOS.

[NapalmEnima]

Originally Posted by Redshift

Then you don't have enough experience, locking down took a second, thats 1 second longer to engage in every encounter, starfires and sparrows were instant. I can think of many occasions where the second wasted locking down let the pilot fly over or out of the arc of the burster (and thats another 2 seconds to unlock and lock again), that simply can't happen with the other two MAXes

You're ignoring the time between when their missiles lock on to when they hit.

The moment that alarm goes off, most pilots will get out of dodge. With a Burster, they have a chance to lock down and start Actually Inflicting Damage before the aircraft knows they're there.

The one disadvantage there is that a Burster can't use that alarm to chase aircraft away.

In my experience flack is superior to missiles.

[Redshift]

Originally Posted by NapalmEnima

In my experience flack is superior to missiles.

Flak can be superior, i'm not denying that, a nice close hovering plane stands zero chance against a locked down burster, but i'm not talking about all those times i'm more concerned about all the other times when missles are by far and away better.
The main problem with the burster is that it has to be locked down, and since it has to be locked down that makes lockdown a disadvantage for the TR MAXes, if the burster could actually kill a plane while mobile i'd not mind it one bit

[Kalbuth]

Originally Posted by Redshift

Then you don't have enough experience, locking down took a second, thats 1 second longer to engage in every encounter, starfires and sparrows were instant. I can think of many occasions where the second wasted locking down let the pilot fly over or out of the arc of the burster (and thats another 2 seconds to unlock and lock again), that simply can't happen with the other two MAXes

This 1 second is at the very least the time between 1st beep in pilot cabin and first hit. This 1 second is the one when he knows he's targeted and goes away easily.
In a burster, your target will not take any evasive action and won't know he's going to be hit.
If your firing window is that low that you cannot kill in a Burster, then it is too low with the others too, and they have also time to evade between first beep and last hit in this window.
I usually begin firing mid lock-down while having over-tracked target to get the largest arc of fire possible on the target route. I'm not getting a kill 100% of the time, far from it, but I deal damage.


Now, take a full fight as example, make it 2 burster, and 2 SF.
The 2 burster will hit and kill. No warning, just brutal damage from the start. The TTK from pilot reaction is very low.
The 2 SF will see their last orbs evaded and the target will live. Because of the initial lock + travel time, unless the target is right under SF nose (and it is the situatioon you described as the only way to get a kill with a Burster, btw). The pilot as the same lock-on + travel time reaction window for both SF, more or less. The damage stacking starts after this delay, this is what makes the whole difference.
Not saying SF is bad (the only bad one is the Sparrow), far from it, but Burster is at least on par. Jumping over reaver rockets is not everything, SF MAX's job is to actually kill
Ofc, in certain situation (SF over base antenna and such), SF is ultra annoying