Did Air Superiority in BF3/4 have lock ons?

Been playing BF since BC2 but never learned aircraft, started learning how to fly and actually shoot people in BF6 and I love it, recently got back to BF1 again and took my craft at airplanes there and I’m addicted to Air Assault mode.

Feels pretty nice to fly around without having 32 lock ons on you and just focusing on pure aerobatic skills and shooting. So I’m curious if BF6 ends up having back Air Superiority as an official gamemode aside from Portal gimmicks it should just disable lock ons for all jets. Wondering if BF3/4 had lock on missiles in Air Superiority?

Yes, both 3 and 4 Air Superiority had lock-ons. With that many jets around though, locking instead of looping was a quick way to get shot down.

BF4 had a handful of community hosted servers on PC that didn’t allow A2A missiles. It would just automatically server kill anyone that spawned with them equipped. These were fun for people who wanted to dogfight and hell for anyone who just wanted to complete their assignments.

BF4 had a handful of community hosted servers on PC that didn’t allow A2A missiles. It would just automatically server kill anyone that spawned with them equipped.

Lock ons only hold you back from becoming better anyway though. The amount of time it takes to lock and hit someone, you could just aim and kill them faster. Great pilots won't get hit too much by them either. Just best to learn without them and free up a spot to help your attack jet do some ground work.

Unfortunately yes… but good pilots were still dominating lockon noobs.

if i wanna not use lock ons in BF games i'll play bf1/5/1942/1943.

i don't fly that much but some of my most memorable kills are where i fly high and wait for a plane/chopper to pop their ECM/flares from other sources of lock on, then swoop down and unload 2 of those active radar missiles and chase it down with a few shots from my gun.

pretty fun to do, assuming you don't get noticed :)

Modern tech and how it actually works dosen’t make a great gaming experience… modern air to air combat is mostly about who gets discovered on radar first and then is attacked by missiles from beyond visual range, trying to survive the incoming missile.

Lock-ons take away from a very rewarding experience shooting the other jet down, with your own skill.

Furthermore it was horrible implemented into a game mode that was like 12v12 where everyone can immediately fire air to air missiles but you only can use counter measures once every \~30 seconds.

it gets messy, but damn it is hilarious

also, I usually play conquest where my enjoyment comes form helping the team win, not purely from my "skills". taking planes and choppers down with the help of lock on helps with it immensely

Not saying you can't do it, just saying if someone is looking to improve, lock ons aren't the way (and faster and more reliable methods out there).

I hope you realize that lock-ons only worked reliably against bad pilots… for a good pilot it was only a signal telling them who wants to go to respawn screen.

i've seen very few pilots able to escape the short window active radar gives.

I think that's the name of it, been a few months since i played in planes

You will not get kills with active radars from far far away against good pilots.
Trust me experienced pilots are used to all the cheap shot methods… laser lockons, actives, pre fired passives or regular lockons.
It might work once but the rest of the round it will fail since the pilots will adjust to it.

Why are people here against lock ons? It’s how modern jet combat is suppose to be fought. If I’m wanting to use guns on hope on V or I.

I wouldn’t mind it if in BF6 they nerfed their damage in jets-to-jets combat like 25%.