Let me preface this with the note that I have been testing this game for some time now and have seen the BA's change a lot. Believe it or not they used to be a lot harder to kill, both due to armor as well as even more excessive mobility. Maybe I've had time to adapt or whatever, but I have been extremely efficient at killing BA (as long as I'm not also swarmed by mechs or vehicles) with beam lasers, MG's, flamers and the like. After an hour or so of play last night, there were a few persistent BA players who started running when they same me coming and would go looking for an easier target. Slow down or come to a complete stop, zoom in if need be, and use your mouse for fine control. Easy-peasey.
As for aeros, KingLeer is exactly right (as usual): while I successfully ranked up many many times (2x all the way to Khan) using nothing more than a Tbolt Hawkmoth (and only a few actual kills, mostly just a lot of damage), it doesn't take that much to take one down, even with rubber-banding due to lag. I believe you'll find that as soon as you either start pointing missiles at an aero, they'll hightail it before long, and if you're being bombed, get an aero yourself, or park a partisan strategically and take them down.
Seriously, one of my strategies for most games like this is that when I'm trying something that isn't working - and is fact only getting me killed - I instead try something else, usually involving direct vengeance on the last person(s) to do me in. If I'm being killed by BA, I go get something to kill BA with, or if there are no mechs and vehicles around - and I had enough money to buy a ManPack PPC and a BearAC - Ill actually shut down and get out of my mech, assuming it's taking damage and I can't run fast enough to get away, and then take the BA on. Aero's got you down? Get something to do something about it. This isn't CoD or Battlefield where all the weapons are more or less the same, with minor tweaks in accuracy/spread, rate of fire, etc., and everybody runs at the same speed and you can just pick the one thing you like best and expect to be able to do it efficiently, all the time. Similar to a real battlefield, the battles in this game are fluid, changing situations, and you will have to adjust your tactics and play-style to respond to it sometimes, at least if you want to be successful.
For example, I'd generally rather pilot a mech. Sometimes I like piloting VTOLs, and once in a great while I'll take a BA out on Extremity (since I can more or less fly across the map anyway), but sometimes, in order to be useful to my team (by killing the enemy and gaining cbills, of course), I have to change tactics and do something else. But then, I'm generally ok with doing whatever it is I have to do that lets me kill the enemy, and I have no difficulty finding fun in trying other stuff: even at this early stage in the mods development, there is plenty to try.
