Re: SOFLAM Useful?

@TTZ_Dipsy In the first weeks of the game I had myself and three friends and we tried running as a squad with a soflam guy, and three M5s with one of as Angel to reload.

It was pointless.

Any intelligent pilot would just turn and burn upward, and if you fire they magic flare and you miss and have the exact same problem you would have firing stingers. Only braindead players would stick around when they got locked on and you didn't need a soflam for them anyway.

It was vaguely useful against ground vehicles but I never had much trouble hitting a vehicle from within the range of a soflam lock in the first place, and now that there's the Liz TGM I'd rather just use that for anti-vehicle shooting.

For it to be useful it'd need to:
* Be at least 600 meters range if not 800.
* Other players stingers & M5's can lock on from 200 meters more than non soflam targets.
* Improved guidance. Instead of typical trajectory, a soflam lock on missile will do a "Javeling" style extreme upward launch before coming down again, helping to avoid obstacles & terrain.

@MackTKau you haven't mastered it if you think it's useless. it's quite possibly the most powerful gadget in the game. spend some more time with it before you write it off

@Psubond In the time it takes for a soflam lock you could have locked & fired a stinger, or launched & guided a liz missile.

Maybe it'll have a comeback after the class rework but I don't think it's gonna happen. DICE can keep trying to make the soflam happen but it simply isn't useful enough by the test of actual gameplay.

Maybe if they changed it to a grenade slot option, and/or made it something you could throw down and it would lock things up automatically (especially with range improvements) that might be enough. Maybe.

The major issue is that no matter what, you're NOT taking your own rocket launcher in order to take a soflam, in order to give another player (or rarely, more than one) a slightly more versatile launcher. When they could have kept their M5, and you could have just taken an stinger instead. Then all you'd be missing is a guided anti-tank missile.

Which now exists in the game with Liz.