Padlock doesn't HAVE to be a crutch, nor does it, IMO, necessarily provide any great advantage in a fight. Two things I don't like about padlocks:
1) By focusing your attention continously on that small 90-degree FOV that follows your target around, you actually LOSE considerable SA about the orientation of your plane. In a real plane, you have plenty of aural, visual, and tactile cues as to what your plane is doing, which way is up, and where the ground is. With padlock, you can be pointed straight at the ground, going 500 mph, with the bogie padlocked visible against the sky in the top of your canopy, and have NO clue about where the ground is until you smack it. Using keys or hat switches to follow the bogey around actually ENHANCES your OVERALL SA because simply by being "in command" of the view switching, you know where the bogey is in relation to your plane. With padlock, you have to wait for the bogey to be "in screen" with a familiar piece of airframe to get that same info. To me, following the bogey with the views is an intrinsic part of computer sim ACM, i.e. a skill worth having.
2) You don't actually have to "see" a target to engage padlock. Suppose, someday, icons are reduced to a point where you actually have to be close to a target to see it, and camoflage actually becomes somewhat useful (i.e. the neon crutch is taken away). If you suspect a bogey is around somewhere, all you need to do is cycle through your views, select padlock, and the padlock will FIND him for you, right? Maybe that's no factor NOW, when every plane already has a big "shoot me" sign overhead, but presumably someday you guys are going to want an arena with icons visible only at short range, or no icons at all. Padlock will completely short circuit that. It'll just become standard procedure in combat to sweep your views every few seconds and hit padlock to find any targets THEORETICALLY "in view," as opposed to those you actually DO see.
Now, maybe if you make it required to actually "mouse click" on the target you want to padlock, that might work, but that's hard to do in combat. Once the padlock is actually engaged, I don't see it as a crutch tho. It's very easy to follow a target in a real plane once you acquire him. No reason to FORCE guys to use the keys.
A more interesting question, tho, is, "Why now?" This is the hottest issue to handle right now? I can think of about 5 things that keep me from signing up, and lack of padlock isn't even in my top 10 wish list items. Can EZ-mode in the arena be far behind?
