Air Vehicles and their current state

Ground vehicles feel good now, but air vehicles feel insanely neglected. You mainly die to bugs or weird balancing decisions, that have been around since launch, which is really frustrating. It feels like you almost never die because your opponent was simply better, giving you drive to improve, but instead constantly leaves you wondering why you even got into an air vehicle in the first place because you keep dying to the game, not the player playing it. 

Especially jets are practically unplayable right now. I'll compile a list of current ongoing issues, and it's worth noting that in this list, at least 70% of these issues you experience every single match. 

• Air Radar (semi-functional, the minimap is too small for it to actually be usable, especially in dogfights. Also the spotting range of the radar is inconsistent, sometimes air vehicles get spotted across the entire map, sometimes only when they're 400m or closer)
  
  
• Jet Customisation (Lack of loadouts, different ordinance, cannons, active and passive abilities)
  
  
• Heli Gunner Customisation (Lack of different sights and missiles, e.g. thermal and TV-missile)
  
  
• Missiles ignoring Flares (Issue since launch, all AA missiles ignore flares at random, immobilizing you instantly and usually causing death)
  
  
• Flares active time (Flare bug was fixed but Flare time was not adjusted, they fire for 1.5-ish seconds and that's it, not leaving you time to fly below radar most of the time. BF2042 solved this by shooting some residual flares, increasing the time you have to make your exit)
  
  
• Below Radar Consistency (Below Radar is very inconsistent, partially due to the two points down below, however it also seems environmentally, some parts of the map do not properly communicate to the altitude meter, what the actual altitude is. Especially the northern parts of golmud are guilty of this)
  
  
• Below Radar Threshold (Below radar threshold of 25m is WAY too low for jets, given the different obstructions and height differences in terrain. It was 50m for jets in BF4, while retaining 25m for helicopters)
  
  
• Below Radar Buffer Time (There's a time buffer for when below radar activates, likely to avoid it flashing rapidly when you're close to the threshold and fly over rocks, walls, troughs etc. This buffer does NOT exist for when you leave below radar, meaning that if you fly over a small trough in the ground, you instantly lose below radar and take another second or so to re-enter, meaning any stealth jet behind you has enough time to lock onto you, even though you were only above 25m for a few milliseconds) 
  
  
• Jet vs Jet TTK (The Jet vs Jet TTK is far too low. There is currently no skill gap in jet flying, because all it takes is one lucky angle to get 450 damage in and the opponent is immobilized, dumbing down gameplay and removing any kind of skill gap)
  
  
• Jet Immobilization (In line with the prior point, jet immobilization currently happens way too fast, and way too easily. The threshold seems to be close to 450 damage, which is INSANELY fast. This further dumbs down gameplay because you basically need to only hit someone for 450 damage to kill them, instead of adding some kind of immobilisation on critical health state) 
  
  
• Jet vs other Air TTK (In season 2, the jets nose cannon damage was lowered against helicopters. This in itself is fine, however, helicopter vs jet TTK was not adressed in return. Now in season 3 the helicopter rockets were nerfed against jets, which is fine I suppose though it's odd since jets are not an easy target, however the gunner still deals the same damage to jets, immobilizing and killing them insanely fast yet again) 
  
  
• Jet Cannon Overheat (With season 3's combat engineer nerf, the Jet nose cannon overheats too fast for the damage it deals to anything outside of other jets. Especially transport helicopters, but even attack helicopters and little birds are way too hard to kill due to this, paired with a few other issues like render distance, tracers obstructing view, visibility in general and clunky flight mechanics, something i'll get into later) 
  
  
• Jet Bomb Aim Helper (The bomb camera on the attack jet is practically useless and the stealth jet doesn't even get one. It's clunky to use, since you lose control over the jet, so you can't control the circular reticle at all while in the camera. BF4 had a nice system where you had a screen inside the jets cockpit that would precisely show you on the minimap where the bomb would land)
  
  
• Jet Yaw (This one speaks for itself, the yaw on jets is hilariously weak, adding to the issues with fighting especially helicopters, but even ground targets as a jet) 
  
  
• Rear-View Cam (Also speaks for itself, the current iteration of using flick look back is not only awkward, since it requires two keys to actively be pressed to do so, but the crux is that it locks your vehicle controls. This means that if you're in a dogfight and use the rear-view cam, you lose out on any advantage you may have built up to since you stop turning and fly straight to look back)
  (Also: my pilot does not have arthritis, please let him look back further in first person, including leaning over to look past the seat)
  
  
• Vehicle (and target) Render Distance (currently, vehicles do not render in beyond 600m. This is frustrating for jets as it makes it impossible to spot vehicles from further away to figure out what to target. You have to rely solely on people spotting vehicles, and continuing to do so. You spend way too much time on trying to even find targets to go for in jets) 
  
  
• Spotting in Jets (Additionally to the above point, you often cannot spot vehicles in jets. Very frequently, both in third person free-cam and in first person, when you press Q to spot a vehicle, it instead places a ping marker, even when pointed directly at said target. This ping marker obstructs your view and, in third person, is in a majority of cases not even close to where your reticle was actually pointed at) 
  
  
• Object Render Distance (In line with the below radar threshold issue, a lot of objects are very hard to see and often just appear infront of you, causing you to clip them and die. This could also be circumvented by increasing the below radar threshold for jets. Things like wooden poles, electricity poles, entire power lines on golmud, trees) 
  
  
• Lack of speed control (It's unclear at the moment what actually results in an attack jet outturning another attack jet. There seems to be no speed at which the aircraft has the highest turnrate, instead it feels like generally speaking, when you slow down you get better turnrates. This makes it very weird to dogfight and try to get an angle on someone and further lowers the skill gap)
  
  
• AGM Consistency (This affects the attack jet and attack helicopter, though I have seen this happen with the Javelin / Glaive as well. For some reason, AGMs love to fly towards a locked target and then just either shoot off in the distance or plummet into the ground, missing the target, albeit no countermeasures being used anywhere near said vehicle. In one instance, I was shooting an attack jet AGM towards an AA sitting in the vast open field left of the golmud B objective. There was no smoke, the AA itself did not deploy thermal smoke, no other air vehicle flew past and used flares, yet somehow my AGM fell just short of the AA and hit the ground infront of it, dealing 0 damage)  
  
  
• AGM Lockon (This belongs to the above point due to it being very inconsistent. Sometimes you can lock a vehicle behind a hill, where at another time you are staring dead center onto the top of said vehicle and your lockon progress will either not start or start but then begin stuttering, until it either eventually locks on or you have to re-approach because the lockon process took so long. When the AGM then also misses it is insanely frustrating) 
  
  
• Shared Resupply (This one is immensely frustrating, especially for jet players. I cannot begin to count the amount of times I had to do 5+ loops in my base in order to not have a burning engine anymore, simply because there are 5 other air vehicles on golmud and mirak, and 4 others on firestorm. The Season 3 Vehicle Health Regen changes made this a bit less of a problem, but it continues to be a problem regardless. Air vehicle resupplies should be per vehicle, with a clear indicator of when it is available and when it isn't) 
  
  
• Attack Helicopter Rockets (The attack helicopter rockets got nerfed way too strongly in the case of heavy rockets. They were the lowest ammo count, but in return very rewarding. Hitting an air vehicle had impact. Now you need half of your total ammo to kill a helicopter, that is assuming that you even hit all 4 rockets. The ground vehicle damage of heavy rockets is fine, though the minimum damage of 94 is too low as well in my opinion, however the damage of heavy rockets to jets and helicopters should seriously be buffed again, as well as their effectiveness against infantry. They were so strong because the tradeoff was that if you shoot infantry, you in return have less rockets available to destroy vehicles with. Right now, the attack helicopter feels like the pilot is merely an Uber driver for the gunner) 
  
  
• Attack Helicopter vs Little Bird (Currently, the attack helicopter has to be scared of the little bird, when it should be the other way around. The little bird deals far too much damage to attack helicopters, while attack helicopters just had all their missile damage hard-nerfed. The issue is that the little bird has a lot of maneuverability, so hitting rockets on them is already a feat to master, especially heavy rockets. Hitting a TOW missile is also practically impossible. The gunner only gets 12 rounds, with the issue being their spread, travel speed and drag. Because of this, the gunner projectiles are unreasonably hard to hit on a little bird that is within a reasonable distance to do so) 
  
  
• AA missile Oneshot (This one is rare though I have had it happen, where both the mobile AA and the attack helicopter oneshot my jet with a single AA missile. It is possible that this was instead 2 missiles, however the hud indicator did not show multiple missiles, so i'm unsure if this is actually an existing bug, but it's worth looking into) 
  
  
• Clunky Flight System (The flight system and physics in general are clunky. The attack helicopter desperately lacks mobility. Even the little bird cannot recover from a nose dive from a height where it should definitely be able to do so. Often your vehicles seem to just not generate any lift whenever you point yourself down just a smudge too far, which has lead to many deaths due to flares now not lasting long enough and needing to drop altitude fast. In general, the flight system just feels a bit clunky and questionable at times)
   
• C-RAM and Spawn Protection (This one is a big one. the C-RAM often ignores enemy air vehicles just happily flying through spawn, while other times it obliterates you. On some maps, the C-RAM intercepts every form of ordinance, even beyond it's indicated range, where on other maps it lets half of the missiles just fly through. It shoots jet bombs out of the bomb bay and instantly kills them, while inside of the spawn area, vehicles can simply sit and shoot across the entire map. Paired with lockon distances and general map size and philosophy, this is not only a viable strategy but also one that cannot be countered. There needs to be ways for air vehicles in particular to deal with AA tanks sitting in spawn and not being damageable) 
  
  
• C-RAM Shooting Vehicles (Tying into the above point of inconsistencies, the C-RAM will often shoot at you albeit you not even remotely being close to the enemy spawn. You can additionally see "enemy air space" pop up on your minimap while you're literally behind your own spawn. This bug was severe enough that I wanted to make it a separate point) 
  
  
• Vehicle Spawns (Currently, there is a lot of fighting and toxicity brewing with air vehicles that spawn on the ground. Players blocking the spawn, ramming other people away from it to get it before them. This often results in that vehicle just not being available to your team because two or more people are fighting over it. Air vehicles should either not spawn on the ground or in an area that is inaccessible to players. This would also solve the issue of helicopters camping the enemy teams helicopter spawn to kill it before even taking off. Same thing for jets, which often you don't even get a chance to take off with the current iteration.) 
  
  

I'm sure there are more issues that i may have forgotten to mention or am unaware of, but again, these things that I listed are things that you encounter in every single game. Dice, please fix.