Some random thoughts on air combat in PS2

[Wayside]

Originally Posted by MrMorton

So, from watching the beta footage, I am starting to see the roles the aircraft are designed for, specifically regarding the fighters. Drawing comparisons from tactics used in more conventional flight sims, I would like to just theorycraft on the best use of these aircraft.

The Mosquito is shaping up to be the energy fighter of the game. Energy fighters are usually very survivable as they can run from most every fight. They should be used by starting far from the lines and at max altitude, and diving down on your target using wide sweeping maneuvers to attack your opponent and then immediately extend out of range.

In groups, the mosquito should rush down en masse, grouping and target firing and almost instantly killing multiple targets, then extending away before the opponent can retaliate. Then proceeding to rinse and repeat.

The scythe is the complete opposite, and is a little bit trickier to use against the mosquito, as tr will always have the speed advantage. The scythe is the turn'n'burner of ps2, being able to easily outmaneuver every other aircraft in the game. against anything but the mosquito, the scythe will just be able to chase down and outmaneuver them, however fighting an energy fighter requires special tactics (<3 whitera).

The best option should be to turn to face the approaching enemy (hopefully the scythes have seen them in advance) while not moving very much and using the vs's superior accuracy at range to whittle down the approaching mosquitos (targeting one ship at a time to take it down as fast as possible). Then just as the mosquito's get into their effective range, accelerate towards them and slightly at an angle, minimizing the firing time TR has on the VS. If the mosquitos make the mistake of breaking formation to dogfight, it should be easy to take them down.

The key to this match up is surprise, as an unprepared group of vs fighters will not be able to effectively counter the first sweep.


Now on to the reaver....sigh....As far as I can tell the reaver will be at a disadvantage to the other two races, not to say that it is underpowered, but in a 1v1 dogfight vs two pilots that are of equal skill, imo the reaver will always lose. This is because no matter how durable your aircraft is, once your opponent gets behind you, if you cannot shake him off he WILL eventually kill you (unless you have butt rockets or something).

that being said the reaver's best bet is to fly low and slow, making good use of its durability to soak up ground fire while taking out aggressors from the ground (antiground weapons will be a necessity). This will force the more fragile aircraft lower as well if they want to fight you, exposing them to NC ground fire. When fighting, the reaver will need to use vtol to get a good shot off on the other aircraft.

Against the scythe stay in vtol and attempt to stay with it and out dps the more fragile and weaker firing scythe.

Against the mosquito you should turn around before the mosquito passes you, and punch afterburner right as he overshooting in order to stay with him for as long as possible and get as many shots as possible into him. Hopefully the reaver will be able to turn with the mosquito so that if the mosquito panics and breaks, you should be able to keep up.

overall the reaver seems like it will be the hardest to survive in, but also have the best ability dominate air vs ground.

the vanu will be the dogfighter, but for balance purposes will probably be fairly fragile.

and the mosquito will be the hit and run fighter, rushing into a battle, and extending to the fringes to shake off chasers.


just some theorycrafting and general tactical concepts, what are your opinions?

I think thats a fantastic analysis of what we saw in the E3 videos. On the Reaver, I too was generally underwhelmed with what I perceived to be no real advantage over either of the other empire aircraft in the dogfight. It's survivability or "toughness" didn't seem notably superior to the other two.

They could balance the Reaver out by improving its toughness and giving it a measurable advantage in the Air to Ground game, but I'm not sure what good that would do in the long run if it is forced into a defensive posture every time one of the other empire aircraft shows up.

Really looking forward to how this looks in BETA as the die-hard pilots step into their aircraft and crank out some data thats a bit more useful than the chaos and random nature of what we saw at E3.

[McBane]

One more request: please integrate decent support for pro flight joysticks/setups. I.e., full support of analogue throttles and pedals.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by qbert2

I'd like to see a soft flight ceiling explained by lore and upheld with game mechanics.

What I'd like is if you go above the flight ceiling you have a certain amount of time to get back below it until an orbital platform shoots you out of the air. Lore wise you can explain this by saying that anything below a certain altitude is hard to target and therefore cannot be shot down.

This would allow for dog fighting to still occur at the flight ceiling and not have it feel like a brick wall while also allowing people to decide if they want to risk getting blown up by the orbital platform in order to kill / evade their target.

No need for all of that. Just have the atmosphere get thin above a few thousand meters up. Aircraft start losing thrust and stalling out the higher they go.

Continents are smaller than real world continents. More like small Islands. I don't have a problem with having the atmosphere end lower than on a real world as well.

[Wayside]

Originally Posted by qbert2

I'd like to see a soft flight ceiling explained by lore and upheld with game mechanics.

What I'd like is if you go above the flight ceiling you have a certain amount of time to get back below it until an orbital platform shoots you out of the air. Lore wise you can explain this by saying that anything below a certain altitude is hard to target and therefore cannot be shot down.

This would allow for dog fighting to still occur at the flight ceiling and not have it feel like a brick wall while also allowing people to decide if they want to risk getting blown up by the orbital platform in order to kill / evade their target.

Some thoughts on problems that creep up as you raise the ceiling further and further:

On performance: The higher you get, the more of the continent you see at once. Every PC is going to hit a point where it's getting bogged down by the amount of "stuff" being shown on screen from that eagle-eye perspective. You can counter that by bringing in a "fog of war" effect, scaling back terrain and structure poly counts at certain ranges, and causing player models and vehicles to simply not be visible at a certain point, but eventually you're looking down at mostly fog and emptiness. Not a great game-play experience.

On balance: Depending on the restrictions placed on projectiles in the game, allowing aircraft too much vertical freedom could make them nearly invincible. Just stand off at 20,000 feet, where almost no one can see you, and lob rounds from your Liberator in the general direction of your target of choice. Again, you can balance by tuning how far projectiles can travel or by making ground to air weapons travel very, very quickly to catch those aircraft at the top of the sky, but it seems simpler to just limit the ceiling.

That said, I would like to see the ceiling higher than what we've seen thus far. But not at the cost of the overall game-play experience. My 2c :P

[qbert2]

I'm not really advocating increasing the ceiling though I wouldn't mind it slightly higher. I just would like to see the invisible wall removed when you reach it.

It would be nice as an AA pilot to toy with a gal pilot up at the flight ceiling by moving in and out of the 'danger zone' to avoid the tailgunner. The gal pilot would be less inclined to increase altitude due to the much lower maneuverability.

[Haro]

Positioning is going to be key for the reaver. Get in a good run and hammer the opponent before they have a chance to react. In case the attack doesn't finish the enemy, plan it so you can make a quick getaway to friendly lines, where you can hopefully get more AA cover.

Reavers, as well as having slightly stronger weapons, could have improved accuracy and range. It's well within reason for NC's philosophy, and can really even out the odds. If NC can get surprise and draw first bead, they should be able to finish or severely damage foes. If they get jumped, they need to hope their armor holds out or that help arrives.

I think it'd also be interesting if performance debuffs came along with damage, maybe localized damage as well. A tank gets hit on the treads (or hover thingies) it slows down and can't turn as well, aircraft get shot up, they lose speed or agility.

[Ratstomper]

Originally Posted by Haro

Reavers, as well as having slightly stronger weapons, could have improved accuracy and range. It's well within reason for NC's philosophy, and can really even out the odds. If NC can get surprise and draw first bead, they should be able to finish or severely damage foes. If they get jumped, they need to hope their armor holds out or that help arrives.

This is why I think "packs" of reavers will be very, very powerful. Perfect for air superiority. Their toughness and superior firepower makes them synergize well with other reavers. Whatever shortcomings reavers have with speed and maneuverability can be overcome by having another reaver one or two-shot the mosquito whose trying to kill you before your buddy kills him. Additionally, surprise barrages from reaver packs would be devastating to the slower liberators and galaxies.

That said, hopefully they'll still have some dogfight in them. Air-to-air combat was one of the more fun parts of PS1 for me and it would be a shame if reavers just couldn't hold up.

[LegioX]

Originally Posted by elfailo

Getting shot down before I have a chance to react sounds about as attractive as stir-frying my own puke and eating it.

Tell that to all the pilots who died to Boom and Zoom tactics during ww2. Top leading ace during ww2 Eric Hartman perfered to kill his oppenents up close and personnal without them every knowing where he was.

[LegioX]

Originally Posted by elfailo

So what does that have to do with Planetside?

Moral of the story, just because you don't like dieing without having a chance to fight, doesnt mean they should downgrade the damage sustained during an attack without you noticing it.

You either didnt check your 6 from time to time, or you have a bad case of tunnel vision and only look at whats infront of you. Not our problem. Learn better SA (Situational Awarness).

[Rendar]

Im sure things will get evened out in Beta.

But from the E3 footage only thing that has me a little worried is the sturdiness of the liberator.

There was a few times in the footage we saw a health liberator get taken all the way to red and flaming from 1 pass buy an enemy aircraft.

For a large, slower gunship that is supposed to be doing close ground support, seems kinda weak to get taken out in 1 pass from enemy Air.

[Ratstomper]

Originally Posted by elfailo

Yeah it was fun, so let's ruin it by letting Reavers 2-shots Mosquito's.

Bear in mind, 2 shots means aquiring a lock (which alerts the enemy pilot), firing the rocket, loading another rocket, aquiring another lock and firing again. Assuming both of those hit, then that mosquito should be destroyed, yes.

[LegioX]

I'm hoping i can put about 6 laser guns on my scythe. I don't want any missiles. Rather have all air-to-air gun options for quick dispatching of enemy air. Something that would make a big punch like 6 50.cals they placed on the p-47.

[LegioX]

Originally Posted by elfailo

Yeah and how much would that alert matter when you're dealing with 3+ Reavers that all decide to focus on you? It wouldn't at all. If you have countermeasures, there will probably be a cooldown. If you can dodge one missile, the next 2 will still instagib you.

That's what I don't want. I want higher TTK's where dumbfire rockets and homing missiles are used situationally, not as primary damage dealers.

You can forget about interesting dogfighting when you're going to die in 2 rockets that can't be avoided, it's just going to make it impossible.

Maybe you should bring a wingman with you instead of lone wolfing. That would solve 90% of your problems right there.

Besides they did say you can outfit your AC soley for air-to-air combat. I would think that would suggest flares and such to help out with increasing the time it take for enemy AC to lock onto you.

[Haro]

Need I remind everyone that this is planetside: Death is always an option. There are always moments where you get caught with your pants down. A flash vs a liberator, infiltrator vs max, galaxy vs a half-dozen interceptors.

I'm not saying it needs to be a two-hit kill. I think a guns kill should be rewarded fairly quickly, but ttk is still completely up in the air (no pun intended.) Poor choice of words on my part. But at the moment, concerns about a mosquito constantly outrunning a reaver, or a scythe constantly staying on a reaver's tail are far more realistic than reavers shooting everything out of the sky before they have a chance to react..

Reaver's can't just be better at air-to-ground than everyone else. No fighter will ever beat a liberator with that, but if the NC can't bring valid competition to aerial combat, none of that will really matter. Longer range and a little more firepower gives them just a little bit of an edge if they see the enemy first.

[Ratstomper]

Originally Posted by elfailo

It wouldn't solve anything. The point the guy was making was that "Reavers synergize well in groups because of armor and damage". I have no clue how he reached that conclusion and frankly it seems he just threw it out randomly because he thought it sounded interesting, but I find that kind of gameplay utterly lame.

In PS1 you always had a chance to fight back. I got tag-teamed on a daily basis but I never felt completely without chance. The TTK's were high, but unfortunately the flight mechanics were dumb. The latter seems greatly improved in PS2, but the best isn't going to come out when you don't give pilots survivability and tools to turn the tables (getting back on top after someone gains the initiative on you).

Of course if it's 40vs1 you should lose, but nobody's arguing that.

Wait, you don't know how I came to the conclusion because you find that style of play lame? I fail to see how that makes any sense, but I'll clarify for you....

A pack of reavers will be better than a pack of mosquitos because a mosquito only has a speed advantage over a reaver. This allows the mosquito to, theoretically, stay a step ahead of a a reaver and keep him from getting any hits on it. This is negated by having another reaver or two nearby to knock the mosquito off the first reaver. Since reavers have superior damage and toughness and the speed of the mosquito is no longer a factor, a pack of reavers could, theoretically, wipe out a pack of mosquitos. Same with Scythes. Now in a 1v1 dogfight, a reaver will probably come out on bottom. That's just the way things are.

Anytime you're outnumbered, you're probably going to die. You shouldn't be surprised or infuriated by the fact. Noone will be able to fight 3v1.