(These are my opinions and interpretations based on my own experiences and observations.)
TLDR: The answer is counterplay and control, which is mainly rooted in their mobility. Helis give ground troops very little counterplay and have way too much control over how engagements happen. Ground vehicles in my opinion strike a good balance for both sides.
1: You can’t easily take cover from helis.
Helis can often wrap around your cover faster than you can, meaning you are only safe when you're concealed from all sides. Anything you can loop around faster than a heli can, rockets will blow you out of. And thanks to the fact that they can fly, helis can often simply shoot over whatever you're hiding behind if it isn’t tall enough. You can only hide from a helicopter by getting a roof over your head—finding a building or tunnels—or maybe by hiding in a tight space between tall buildings—typically alleys. These aren't always nearby; a lot of times when a heli shows up you are caught out in the open to dry.
Taking cover from ground vehicles is a lot easier and consistent. Just about anything you can put between you and the tank, apc, jeep will protect you. They can’t as easily wrap around your cover and shoot you as they are slower and confined to the roads/drivable terrain. They can still blast you out if you aren't careful or stay there too long.
2: Shooting at helicopters feels pointless as they are never vulnerable, and can retreat and repair at any time.
Whenever you have a chance to take some shots on a helicopter, they often fly away/behind something or kill you before you can do any meaningful damage. They can disengage from the fight at any time they choose and be back in base in under 30 seconds repairing away your progress. In order to do damage they can’t repair, you have to deal 25% of its several thousand point health pool—a hard threshold to pass even with a rocket launcher—in the time it takes for them to fly away. With them always able to easily and quickly retreat at any time, they are never vulnerable.
Ground vehicles on the other hand are slow enough to be chased by ground troops to a degree, especially if they have to drive through corners and tight areas. Meaning: they can’t disengage as freely as helis can, giving ground troops a chance to push their advantage and take them down an HP threshold. The further a ground vehicle pushes into the map, the more vulnerable they become to this as it takes longer to get back to base. Tanks, jeeps, and APCs are able to take large amounts of damage suddenly—be punished—if they are not careful or get snuck up on by shotgunners, hijackers, RPGs, or just a bunch of guys with AKs. The only parallel you see with helicopters is if they crash.
3: Helicopters can be anywhere and kill you at any time and get to choose their fights.
You can’t hear a heli approaching as the noises it makes don’t reach the ground. You also can easily not see a helicopter coming as they tend to stay far up from the ground—the place where you're looking at for threats. Callouts on the location of a helicopter are essentially useless too (unless they loiter around one area, which is rare), as it only takes them a few seconds to fly to any given point of the map. People can’t run fast enough to respond to callouts before the heli flies somewhere else.
All this means, most of the time, you can't have any idea where a helicopter is unless you're looking right at it or it's already shooting you. If a heli shows up and decides to fight you, you often get caught off guard, out in the open, and without cover. So you die unavoidably. Even if you know where an air vehicle is, you can’t run fast enough to get to it before it flies somewhere else. So if you want to be the one to start the fight, you can only hope it flies over you and stays in sight long enough for you to do some meaningful damage or get a lock on.
Ground vehicles on the other hand, especially tanks, are much easier to keep track of. Their movement is much slower and restricted to roads and other drivable terrain. This allows you to deduce where one is and where it’s going with limited information. Ground vehicles, most typically heavily armored ones, often guard one area for a long time. The weapons on ground vehicles can be heard firing from a substantial distance away, announcing its presence to anyone in range. These factors combined make callouts much more effective, prevents ground units from being caught off guard and helpless, gives them the choice to avoid encounters with the vehicle as they often know where it is, and empowers players to bring the fight to them.
4: It's more fun and fair to lead rockets than to use lock on.
When shooting an air vehicle with a rocket launcher, you are forced to use lock on as leading rockets on them—moving and turning fast in any direction in three dimensions—is just impractical. In order to get a lock on, you need to aim at the heli with a rocket launcher for 3, uninterrupted seconds without it flying behind something and breaking line of sight. This can be especially hard on urban maps that have tall buildings with inaccessible roofs, or in general: maps where you can’t see much of the sky from ground level. You also need to avoid being killed while waiting for the lock on. Standing out in the open staring at the sky leaves you helpless to any who comes by. If the heli notices you, which it often will, staying alive long enough to get a lock can become impossible as you can’t take cover without breaking line of sight.
If you do manage to get a lock on things only get more soul crushing. You don’t move fast enough relative to it to meaningfully change the angle you're firing from, nor do you have much time to wait for a better shot (not that doing either changes much). You can either take the shot or don’t. Whether or not the rocket hits is entirely dependent on what the pilot does and how good the rocket's tracking is. Both are entirely out of your control. It might as well be up to RNG. It's very frustrating when a rocket doesn’t connect as there is nothing you could have done differently.
Shooting at ground vehicles (ignoring striders), where you use unguided rockets, makes for much more fun and intriguing gameplay. You don’t have to look into the sky and wait for a lock on. Instead, getting a good shot is much more involved. It's all about positioning, and getting close by flanking, sneaking, and avoiding its attacks as they keep their head (or rather turret) on a swivel trying to find and shoot you. You aren't forced to rely on the inconsistent guidance system. Instead, you must predict where the vehicle will be and lead your shot as such, taking into account the vehicle’s speed and acceleration, your own rocket’s travel time, and any evasive action the driver may employ. It is your own skill vs the driver’s that determines whether or not the missile will land. This isn’t nearly as much the case with guided rockets.
This raises some good points. Will be interesting to see what comes of the conversation here.
Idea: what about different types of RPGs like Battlefield? A dumb fire but strong one for props and ground, or a dedicated lock on stinger missile? Could be fun to play with. Maybe even a ground pickup, extremely strong rocket launcher? Who knows
(6 Apr 23 at 3:24pm)Minishogun721 Wrote: This raises some good points. Will be interesting to see what comes of the conversation here.
Idea: what about different types of RPGs like Battlefield? A dumb fire but strong one for props and ground, or a dedicated lock on stinger missile? Could be fun to play with. Maybe even a ground pickup, extremely strong rocket launcher? Who knows
We got bolt action rocket launcher
We got burst fire rocket launcher
I think it's time for fully automatic rocket launcher
I can agree that fighting helis can be on either:
-You get rocketed down in a few seconds even if you take cover.
-Or you die by other units who got you trying to fight the Heli.
Even while i agree flying vehicles show a much greater trouble than ground ones, i don't see a way to fix it, obviously there is but i don't know.
Ground vehicles, especially tanks, feel like a piece on the board. They are something you can work around and against with intention and a plan. A heli on the other hand feel more like a COD kill streak---you can only ignore and hide from it with you being little more than a target in its gallery. You can't go on the offensive besides taking pot-shots when it flies by.
Heli should be way easier than what they were before (unless you play city13). As for ground vehicles a majority of them are indeed way easier to fight excluding the strider evidently. I won't go into detail regarding how broken that vehicle remains to be.
The main reason I said "ignoring striders" was because you can and have to lock on to them as they move too sporadically to realistically hit them with unguided rockets.
TLDR: The answer is counterplay and control, which is mainly rooted in their mobility. Helis give ground troops very little counterplay and have way too much control over how engagements happen. Ground vehicles in my opinion strike a good balance for both sides.
1: You can’t easily take cover from helis.
Helis can often wrap around your cover faster than you can, meaning you are only safe when you're concealed from all sides. Anything you can loop around faster than a heli can, rockets will blow you out of. And thanks to the fact that they can fly, helis can often simply shoot over whatever you're hiding behind if it isn’t tall enough. You can only hide from a helicopter by getting a roof over your head—finding a building or tunnels—or maybe by hiding in a tight space between tall buildings—typically alleys. These aren't always nearby; a lot of times when a heli shows up you are caught out in the open to dry.
Taking cover from ground vehicles is a lot easier and consistent. Just about anything you can put between you and the tank, apc, jeep will protect you. They can’t as easily wrap around your cover and shoot you as they are slower and confined to the roads/drivable terrain. They can still blast you out if you aren't careful or stay there too long.
2: Shooting at helicopters feels pointless as they are never vulnerable, and can retreat and repair at any time.
Whenever you have a chance to take some shots on a helicopter, they often fly away/behind something or kill you before you can do any meaningful damage. They can disengage from the fight at any time they choose and be back in base in under 30 seconds repairing away your progress. In order to do damage they can’t repair, you have to deal 25% of its several thousand point health pool—a hard threshold to pass even with a rocket launcher—in the time it takes for them to fly away. With them always able to easily and quickly retreat at any time, they are never vulnerable.
Ground vehicles on the other hand are slow enough to be chased by ground troops to a degree, especially if they have to drive through corners and tight areas. Meaning: they can’t disengage as freely as helis can, giving ground troops a chance to push their advantage and take them down an HP threshold. The further a ground vehicle pushes into the map, the more vulnerable they become to this as it takes longer to get back to base. Tanks, jeeps, and APCs are able to take large amounts of damage suddenly—be punished—if they are not careful or get snuck up on by shotgunners, hijackers, RPGs, or just a bunch of guys with AKs. The only parallel you see with helicopters is if they crash.
3: Helicopters can be anywhere and kill you at any time and get to choose their fights.
You can’t hear a heli approaching as the noises it makes don’t reach the ground. You also can easily not see a helicopter coming as they tend to stay far up from the ground—the place where you're looking at for threats. Callouts on the location of a helicopter are essentially useless too (unless they loiter around one area, which is rare), as it only takes them a few seconds to fly to any given point of the map. People can’t run fast enough to respond to callouts before the heli flies somewhere else.
All this means, most of the time, you can't have any idea where a helicopter is unless you're looking right at it or it's already shooting you. If a heli shows up and decides to fight you, you often get caught off guard, out in the open, and without cover. So you die unavoidably. Even if you know where an air vehicle is, you can’t run fast enough to get to it before it flies somewhere else. So if you want to be the one to start the fight, you can only hope it flies over you and stays in sight long enough for you to do some meaningful damage or get a lock on.
Ground vehicles on the other hand, especially tanks, are much easier to keep track of. Their movement is much slower and restricted to roads and other drivable terrain. This allows you to deduce where one is and where it’s going with limited information. Ground vehicles, most typically heavily armored ones, often guard one area for a long time. The weapons on ground vehicles can be heard firing from a substantial distance away, announcing its presence to anyone in range. These factors combined make callouts much more effective, prevents ground units from being caught off guard and helpless, gives them the choice to avoid encounters with the vehicle as they often know where it is, and empowers players to bring the fight to them.
4: It's more fun and fair to lead rockets than to use lock on.
When shooting an air vehicle with a rocket launcher, you are forced to use lock on as leading rockets on them—moving and turning fast in any direction in three dimensions—is just impractical. In order to get a lock on, you need to aim at the heli with a rocket launcher for 3, uninterrupted seconds without it flying behind something and breaking line of sight. This can be especially hard on urban maps that have tall buildings with inaccessible roofs, or in general: maps where you can’t see much of the sky from ground level. You also need to avoid being killed while waiting for the lock on. Standing out in the open staring at the sky leaves you helpless to any who comes by. If the heli notices you, which it often will, staying alive long enough to get a lock can become impossible as you can’t take cover without breaking line of sight.
If you do manage to get a lock on things only get more soul crushing. You don’t move fast enough relative to it to meaningfully change the angle you're firing from, nor do you have much time to wait for a better shot (not that doing either changes much). You can either take the shot or don’t. Whether or not the rocket hits is entirely dependent on what the pilot does and how good the rocket's tracking is. Both are entirely out of your control. It might as well be up to RNG. It's very frustrating when a rocket doesn’t connect as there is nothing you could have done differently.
Shooting at ground vehicles (ignoring striders), where you use unguided rockets, makes for much more fun and intriguing gameplay. You don’t have to look into the sky and wait for a lock on. Instead, getting a good shot is much more involved. It's all about positioning, and getting close by flanking, sneaking, and avoiding its attacks as they keep their head (or rather turret) on a swivel trying to find and shoot you. You aren't forced to rely on the inconsistent guidance system. Instead, you must predict where the vehicle will be and lead your shot as such, taking into account the vehicle’s speed and acceleration, your own rocket’s travel time, and any evasive action the driver may employ. It is your own skill vs the driver’s that determines whether or not the missile will land. This isn’t nearly as much the case with guided rockets.
Idea: what about different types of RPGs like Battlefield? A dumb fire but strong one for props and ground, or a dedicated lock on stinger missile? Could be fun to play with. Maybe even a ground pickup, extremely strong rocket launcher? Who knows
We got bolt action rocket launcher
We got burst fire rocket launcher
I think it's time for fully automatic rocket launcher
-You get rocketed down in a few seconds even if you take cover.
-Or you die by other units who got you trying to fight the Heli.
Even while i agree flying vehicles show a much greater trouble than ground ones, i don't see a way to fix it, obviously there is but i don't know.
Anyway balls