orion BFR???

[hex222]

i know this might have been asked before, but what is the orion??? has it ever actually existed???

[Hamorad]

The Orion was the old name for the VS gunner varient, back when there were three types: Solo ground, Flight, and Gunner ground.

They changed it into the aphelion later after people hated the solo ground varients.

[hex222]

i see thnx

[jsloan31]

Orion used to be a Adv. BFR, too, you'd only get it after the merit.

Then, they realized that no one actually USED the Gunner Variants after the Merit, just the Flights.

[ZjinPS]

Off topic a tad but..

Shouldn't the BFR's be AA targetable while they are 'flying' around? Perhaps not as effective against it, but atleast targetable.

[Electrofreak]

that, or at least make them so they can't go above flight ceiling. On Searhus the other day, myself in a Liberator and a few other aircraft were trying to kill some flight variant BFRs that kept jumping up above flight ceiling, making it impossible for us to fly upwards after them. It was annoying as hell and a bit on the unfair side.

[FatalLight]

Electrofreak, how would that work though? As soon as you reach that height you smash your head on it??? Maybe disableing he ability to continue to use the jumpjets above the ceiling would work...

Zjin even though I myself am a FV Pilot I still would like for AA weapons to lock on them :P

[Electrofreak]

Well with aircraft, if you go over flight ceiling it takes control of your aircraft temporarily and descends you back down to flight ceiling. It could operate the same way with BFRs. I just want to have a chance against a flight variant BFR jumping higher than my aircraft can fly, which is sorta lame.

[FatalLight]

There's already something that decends you automatically in a FV, it's called the physics engine, BFRs don't stay in the air forever so your suggestion doesn't work

[Warborn]

Originally Posted by Electrofreak

Well with aircraft, if you go over flight ceiling it takes control of your aircraft temporarily and descends you back down to flight ceiling. It could operate the same way with BFRs. I just want to have a chance against a flight variant BFR jumping higher than my aircraft can fly, which is sorta lame.

Making flight BFRs unable to go beyond the flight ceiling will not make you have a chance against them.

[Electrofreak]

Yes, it will. The problem faced on Searhus is that the BFR can fly above the aircraft, which cannot fight back because it is limited by the flight ceiling and unable to aim upwards unless it is motionless, which spells a death sentence for the aircraft.

Believe me, I know what I'm talkin about.
I take on flight-variant BFRs in my Reaver and Liberator all the time and beat the tar out of them unless they're AA equipped.

The specific problem on Searhus was the other day when we were defending bases on the edge of the crater cliff that is only a few dozen meters below flight ceiling. Flight Variant BFRs would hop up on top of steep mountains next to the base, above the flight ceiling. The mountains were too steep for infantry or vehicles to climb up, the BFRs used the peaks as cover when they took the slightest bit of AV fire, and generally were impossible to kill except with an aircraft, or infantry dropping out of an aircraft. The former was nearly impossible due to the fact that I couldn't get my Liberator to aim up at the BFR without having to sit and hover, thus getting torn to shreds by the BFRs weaponry (even those without AA don't have a hard time hitting a stationary Lib) and I certainly couldn't get above them to drop on them with Decimators and Jammers.

After the BFR pilots figured this out, we literally had a half-dozen flight variant BFRs farming the courtyard of the base from their safe little perch up on the mountaintop. We HAD to defend the base as it was a key to the rest of our lattice.

It really sucked and was exceptionally lame. If the BFRs weren't able to go above flight ceiling, we could have engaged them with infantry and AV weapons, and I could have beaten them down with my 35mm nosegun on level ground. Don't get me wrong, Searhus is built to be up near flight ceiling, which makes it tough for aircraft in the first place. Thats a feature of the continent that gears it especially defensible versus aircraft, but flight BFRs gain a bit of an unfair advantage due to the fact that they can surpass the flight ceiling limitation.

[Warborn]

I am having an extremely difficult time visualizing how any kind of flight BFR, apart from one armed with only NTU or armor siphons, could die to a single reaver or liberator. This is especially strange because you seem to be TR, and it's the TR who have the hard-to-aim weapons.

Also, if I were you I'd have waited until a BFR jumped, then afterburn toward it while it's descending. Flight variants can't adjust their trajectory much at all when they're descending, so it's very easy to find out where they're going to land, and even if they see you coming, they're not going to be able to avoid landing near you. Hell, you can even use this to OS a particularily annoying flight BFR. Just wait until he's reached the peak of his jump, and OS right on him. He won't be able to change his course enough to avoid the OS, and his descent will be slow enough that he won't be able to jump enough to escape the blast that way either.

[Electrofreak]

Actually, my main character is ElectrofreakNC, BR23 CR3 on NC Markov. The sig is about a year old and is in the process of getting replaced, hehe. I've almost got the BFR buster merit (couple more days should do it), and almost all of them are with aircraft.

The trick to killing non-AA flight variants while in a Reaver is to do strafing runs to keep his back to you. You can almost always predict when they're going to jump too. They tend to have a hard time keeping track of you if you pass them while flying, so while they're flying hit them with 20mms, fly past them, turn, and spam rockets as they land. Hover, keep spamming rockets as they turn, then switch to 20mms and strafe them again when they jump. Rinse and repeat. It can take a little while but after a few salvos of rockets their shields are down and you can just plink away at em with 20mm guns.

With a Liberator, its easy to take them down, but you have to be a bit more careful about return fire being big, fat, and slow. Typically with a Lib I just sit up nice and high and strafe while dumping as many rounds into them with the 35mm as possible. Then its just a matter of chasing them down when they figure out that they've lost their shield and are losing armor rapidly. I don't bomb BFRs like most people, I prefer to take em down myself.

Also, my typical pilot setup consists of a CUD (for EMP blast), jammers in backup (in case I just used the blast), a Phoenix with 9 extra rounds, and a Guass in inventory with 1 box ammo. If I KNOW I'm going after a BFR ahead of time I take 3 Decis and jammers. With this setup I can usually drop on a BFR with enough AV firepower to take him down. If a BFR has AA, I'll usually try to swing around from behind him and drop on him while he's shooting something else. You don't last long in the pilots seat versus an AA-equipped BFR.

Generally the Liberator is my BFR-killer of choice, simply because a Reaver takes longer to chew through a BFR, and if he manages to jump over more than a salvo of rockets, you're looking at a good few minutes of 20mm work to get the bastard. And I just love the way the 35mm makes the BFRs freak out. They see a lib and figure it'll try to bomb them and they can just hop out of the way. Then the nosegun starts erasing their precious shield and they panic.

[Warborn]

Well, if we're talking about Invaders with tank defense cannons then it's not as surprising. The NC and VS have straight-firing weapons, but there's the arc/projectile speed on the TDC's that make them harder to shoot. That and the fact that you're usually staring up into the featureless sky make it difficult to properly distance the aircraft to compensate for range. Even still though, a flight variant losing to aircraft 1v1... well, I guess all things considered it's not too surprising. Must be embarassing for the flight variant pilots though. Hopefully enough so that they think flight variants are "walking coffins" as I remember one official forum post calling them. The fewer BFRs there are, the fewer nerfs will come their way, so keep up the good work.

[Electrofreak]

Oh, I plan on it