Gameplay: Flight VTOL

[Sirisian]

I said this before, but I think it should be mentioned again since it solves nearly all the problems with VTOL planes without breaking them.

Each plane in the game would have an afterburner bar. This would recharge slowly over time. Pretend you get into a jet and press e to go up it would drain the bar applying thrust to lift the vehicle vertically. You would then move forward and drop with gravity and begin flying like normal. If you slow down your plane will begin to fall out of the air. Using the afterburner thrust would stop this.

What this means is that a Reaver could take off in VTOL and fly for a bit to recharge the after-burner and then land vertically pretty easily. It could also slow down and hover for a moment to launch rockets. It would however then need to speed up and regain flight as the bar depletes.

This means a plane like a mossy or Reaver can't do a perpetual hover over a target. It would encourage sweeping quick attacks.

A galaxy and other vehicles would use the thrust to take off also and hover momentarily to release units. A bomber could also use this hover to position itself over a target for a moment before depleting the bar.

As far as I know this system has no flaws. If you find one list it below.

[Snow]

I think that reduces the effectiveness of aircraft enough that they would not be the bane of a foot soldiers existence ala PS1 while still retaining a lot of influence on the battlefield.

Air supremacy is the key to winning most wars and PS2 should be the same, air combat should always be about hitting hard and fast not hovering in circles picking off the weak like vultures.

[FIREk]

I'm pretty sure SOE's idea for separating men from boys in AirCav will boil down to making pllanes subject to physics in general, with an emphasis on making hovering too impractical to use for circle-strafing around cover while kill-whoring infantry.

As far as I recall Battlefield 2 had a JSF fighter which was VTOL and the VTOL bit was tought, for instance.

I won't be flying anything in PS2, but I would hate being gimped by only having X seconds to land before my Mossie automatically rushes towards anything in front of me, or falls to the ground uncontrollably... :P

[CutterJohn]

Being a game, and one where using the keyboard to chat will be necessary, it would be nice to be able to stop and hover.

So, this idea would work, but it should be coupled with an additional hover mode that can be used to just sit there while you wait for a friend or have a chat or run to the bathroom. Hovering with this mode disables everything, just letting you sit there until turned off.

[Malorn]

Lets see how the flight mechanics actually work before we go proposing solutions to its problems.

[Death2All]

Personally, I would love to pull my Reaver and then take off on a runway. That would make sitting in queue a lot more entertaining.

[Lartnev]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

Being a game, and one where using the keyboard to chat will be necessary, it would be nice to be able to stop and hover.

You could always land

VTOL aircraft should have Hawker Harrier physics: it costs nothing extra to hover but you have to be careful to keep the aircraft level. That way you can use VTOL to land and take off but if you're trying to point the nose down to shoot at someone 3 feet away you're probably either really good or about to crash.

I would also like to see helicopter style aircraft as well: far more stable in hover but you have to fly them like helicopters (someone else has previously stated helicopter handling in another thread as well).

Runways won't work because players being players they won't listen to the control tower

[Sirisian]

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

Being a game, and one where using the keyboard to chat will be necessary, it would be nice to be able to stop and hover.

So, this idea would work, but it should be coupled with an additional hover mode that can be used to just sit there while you wait for a friend or have a chat or run to the bathroom. Hovering with this mode disables everything, just letting you sit there until turned off.

Don't worry. The game has built in voice chat. I used TS when playing, but that was a hastle for people joining new squads just for fun. That is a serious problem for those that hate using microphones.

Originally Posted by Malorn

Lets see how the flight mechanics actually work before we go proposing solutions to its problems.

This is just a random idea to make flight more balanced. Personally when I used a reaver the unlimited hover bothered me.

[Malorn]

Its not a bad idea for how to discourage hovering but still allow it for certain purposes. One way is to make it hard to hover, but invariably people could master that, but as long as only a few of the good players did so it is probably OK. To this I think of BF2142 where the vehicles were a lot harder to control than PS. It was hard to keep a VTOL hovering and steady, and if you dipped your nose you went forward. Since most vehicles aim straight ahead it made it hard to over and direct the pilot's weapons at the same time. Instead the pilot could hover and let the gunner(s) do the damage. This is what I mean by not understanding the mechanics. If it works this way the hovering might not be a problem at all because its difficult to hold steady and you can't really hover & shoot without starting to move forward. Still some pleyers do get really good at it, which is OK by me so long as it's not tons of people capable of doing it.

That said, the idea you have seems like anotehr way to a similar thing. But to develop your idea further, how do you plan on handling the situation where the hover bar expires - what happens? Does the aircraft crash? go forward? Is there somethign the pilot can do to recover?

[Sirisian]

Originally Posted by Malorn

That said, the idea you have seems like anotehr way to a similar thing. But to develop your idea further, how do you plan on handling the situation where the hover bar expires - what happens? Does the aircraft crash? go forward? Is there somethign the pilot can do to recover?

I think you missed something. I should have made pictures. Planes would be affected by gravity when not going over a certain speed. The hover bar is just the normal afterburner bar. When your landed your forward speed is zero so your plane is affected 100% by gravity. As you speed up to a certain speed, say 40 kmph, you become less affected down to 0% at 40 kmph. You can press e to spend the bar for vertical thrust to lift against gravity just slightly. Space would activate forward afterburners like normal. So once in the air moving forward faster than 40 kmph the plane would not be affected by gravity and not drop. With a full afterburner you could fly to a target and stop and just hold e to stop the plane from falling. You would very slightly lift when doing this, but it's very subtle.

When the bar ran out you would need to fly forward faster than 40 kmph or just aim up and fly forward to fight gravity while under 40 kmph. Not really a big deal nor require any skill. It just stops unlimited hovering.

[Malorn]

I see, you're controlling the afterburner still its just at lower speeds the afterburner has more of a vertical thrust component than a horizontal thrust.

[Lartnev]

Originally Posted by Sirisian

Not really a big deal nor require any skill. It just stops unlimited hovering.

I think you summed up the problem nicely: If you can have unlimited hovering it should take skill. If it doesn't take skill to hover it should be limited by game mechanic.

I still prefer the skill than afterburner, especially if getting hit by AA unbalances the aircraft!

[krnasaur]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Lets see how the flight mechanics actually work before we go proposing solutions to its problems.

^this

[EASyEightyEight]

This is the reason why I was a little disappointed with reavers returning to being 1 seaters. The BF2142 example explained it best: one guy focuses on keeping the VTOL steady, another guy uses a the on-board weaponry to properly aim and dish out destruction. Maybe the Reaver and the Mosquito will remain 1-man flying machines, but PS2 could really do with a 2 man aerial assault craft that isn't just useful for dropping bombs.

It would be cool if it doubled as a smaller airborne troop transport too. Sort of the Liberator/Raider hybrid of the skies, only instead of bombs it fires rockets (and through the same gunner, a minigun) and side mounted weaponry for use by passengers/dedicated gunners. Mix it with the repel idea, and PS2 will have a true gunship.

[Baron]

Speaking of Gunship, I hope we get one some day in PS2. I always picture a smaller crewed vehicle when I hear "gunship" ..not as big / slow / cumbersome as the old GAL gunship but something more like:

Minimum Crew: 2 (Pilot, Gunner)
Door Gunners: 2