BF 2042 New Vehicle Concepts: Homing Missiles and Repair Tool
BF3 and 4 vets will remember the massive wars that were fought to battle homing missiles vs. countermeasures. I was left enervated by this needlessly drawn out balance process and felt these issues could have been resolved much sooner and more equitably. I have faith that lessons learned from those enterprises will be applied to BF 2042. However, the passage of time can cause memories to fade and it is also the case that people come and go from their roles in companies and with those transitions sometimes that valuable knowledge is lost.
To combat this I've preemptively constructed a model that seeks to balance homing missiles vs. countermeasures. This done not from a pilot's or infantry player's perspective, but rather as a detached observer with the goal of instituting mechanics that are intuitive while maintaining a modicum of depth. In this model I address core topics like:
- Below Radar
- Avoiding the ARM debacle (and subsequent PRM issues)
- Mobility criticals
- and more...
As a compliment to this model, I've also included reforms to the Repair Tool that I believe are long overdue. My primary issues with the repair tool is that, when used from a relatively secure position, it disproportionately affects the endurance of vehicles beyond what should reasonably be expected, effectively creating zombie vehicles that take comical levels of punishment without succumbing.f you are interested, you can have a look here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XOjbXFQq7ZYT0GSsHTlN3iUYhjH-3O3n/view
As an addendum, The Passive Radar missile was patched at the end of its lifespan to allow it to be dumb fired (fired without a lock). Players could then switch to guns and let the missiles fly in the direction of their prey. After a couple of seconds had passed, they could switch back to missiles, lock on the target and the missiles would immediately make a beeline towards the enemy. The target would have very little time to react and would typically not be able to deploy cm in time resulting in two rapid missile hits and a mobility hit. In my estimation, this was even worse then ARM's at the height of their OPness as at least ARM's, some of the time, gave you a slight chance at deploying CM and when they did hit they did less damage.
My model does away with the PRM entirely (leaving just the Heatseeker and retooled ARM for vehicles to use) and focusses on giving players advanced warning of missiles. That's not to say that pilots can't be ambushed but you won't be able to do that from 750m away; you'll have to be in close proximity to achieve surprise missile hits which is a much fairer system IMO. Incidentally, Passive Radar AA missiles would not likely be in use in the year 2042 so this move has good thematic synergy as a bonus.
