u/Cladderool

As far as I know, SAM sites have largely been unchanged since they were added, but maybe someone can correct me on this. However, in their current implementation, they are extremely un-fun. Right now SAM sites

• Cannot be authed for other players, including your teammates. I mostly play on modded servers and it seems they don't target clan members of the person who placed them, but I'm not sure if this is vanilla behavior
• Attack empty helicopters, so they attack helis on your roof if you jump out of them before they fully power down (I know you should place them higher than your roof to avoid this, but still)
• Can hold hundreds of missiles that are dirt cheap to buy
• Fire an entire salvo of missiles before the base that they're on even renders in. This is even worse if the base has multiple SAM sites
• Potentially have next-to-zero lock-on time and no indication to the pilot that they are targeting their heli
• Cover pretty much the entire map after a few days into wipe. This is especially bad on monthly servers

I love helis in this game, they're insanely fun to use, but not when you can be potentially shot down in seconds by SAM sites that haven't even rendered on your screen. If you hear them shooting at you and you're flying high enough, they're easy enough to evade by diving, but if you're unlucky enough to be too low or dive into the range of a different base's SAMs, you're pretty much screwed. Even just flying a mini back to your base after buying one from Outpost can end in disaster, considering how a lot of people build close.

However, they are also a requirement on any decent sized base to mitigate MLRS attacks, which is why they're everywhere on the map. For this reason, I don't think they should be removed, but there a number of improvements that can be made, in my opinion, to make them less annoying:

• Allow the person who places them to auth people on SAMs, much like how turrets work today
• Increase the time it takes for them to lock onto a helicopter, so you can fly quickly over a base before they have enough time to shoot. This means you can traverse the map in relative safety, but they will still defend against people who are scouting your base or trying to take out roof turrets from a heli
• Play an audible alert to the pilot and passengers while a SAM is locking onto their helicopter like how the homing missile launcher does currently

What do you guys think, am I overreacting to the bad experiences I've had recently or are these suggestions valid?

Please Facepunch, I just want to be able to traverse the map in (relative) safety without getting blown up by SAM sites that aren't even visible on my screen.