This is the sign that says you need to practice with them more, they only fire the retros or side thrusters and kill you if the rocket AI decides that it's required. If you leave the rocket in a position where it's not required then it won't do it. Heck, even hving it pointing mostly straight will let you get off unharmed in mid-air if you can get it right.

I lol'd

I've already forgotten it used to be that way. Your bunker was never safe since a skeleton could just stomp his way straight to your brain and you wont even know what happened while you were defending the base somewhere else.

Don't forget the rockets "Burning their way through the map like the fist of an angry god"... What's the way to a man's brain? Smash straight through the earth with a rocket.

Yeah kicking those around underground with that old instagib rifle of mine was fun.

We need to mod angry fist rockets back into the game.

Hehehe... I remember that I solved all of my problems with one rocket and hundreds of explosives. Just land it, open the doors, and let the explosions propel the rocket to victory.

Unless it flips round and hits your brain instead.

on the topic of AI suggestions, I think the AI should be made to look for relatively flat grounds to land its rockets. I think about 30% of AI landings result in one sort of accident or another.

30% !? you must be damn lucky! i think its more of a 65% to 80% range.

Only if a sniper's training on your craft.

It really depends on what you've loaded into the craft. For example, one coalition light with auto-shot pistols is going to get an accident very rarely, whereas 4 coalition heavys with heavy auto shotguns each are going to have near constant mishaps.

Conceding that the sentry AI will be improved, would anyone agree that it will at least always be (intentionally) worse than enemy AI?

I just think that attackers have the advantage due to the fact that they're attacking and therfore have initiative - if an attacker goes out of sight then the sentry will not actively seek out said attacker, but said attacker will continue to actively try to kill the sentry.
Yay for game theory.