On your right panel, you’ll find a self destruct button under your systems (landing gear, ship lights, etc. Should be near the bottom.
I never tried M+K but I’m doing pretty good with the 360 controller. I went with the “Gamepad with yaw” config. I plan to try the advanced gamepad setting soon, but I’m generally terrible at games where too many combos are on the controller, so I’m hesitant.
I’m going to order the Thrustmaster T-Flight when they become available again. I hate that I missed all the BF/Holiday sales, but who knew I was going to get hooked on a space sim? :)
I had a shameful amount of trouble with it too. He won’t shoot until you do, so just get on his tail and practice staying there. Pretty soon your eyes will start flicking to the distance indicator. When you feel comfortable following him, open fire. At that point you should be ready with the throttle to adapt to him. He may try to boost away. Boost after him. If things should mess up, keep throttle around the blue zone. If things REALLY mess up, all power to engines and boost away until you can come back on him.
Thanks deanco for the tips.
I just watched a combat tutorial video. The guy used Voice Attack which was actually very helpful because I could hear what commands he was implementing during combat, so I learned a bunch.
Question: this guy constantly alternated between Power to Weapons and Power to Shields. Is this an approach that’s vital to success? Or does it matter little?
Thanks, krayzkrok. Do you use Voice Attack or are you adept at making this changes manually while in a dogfight?
Me neither, the way your post was worded confused me a bit. ;) I’m also pre-coffee.
Actually, now with some more coffee in me I think I do understand your question – is my problem targeting them in the first place, or keeping on them once targeted? If that’s your question, my answer is the latter.
That said, thanks to all the quick and helpful replies here, I’m going back to the tutorial and practicing. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, son, practice.
Pip management is very important to getting good at the combat. That’s not to say you can’t get away without it against much of the AI, but learning to use it will make a significant difference.
And that’s including power to Engines too, not just Weapons and Systems. All three are important depending on circumstances and you will want to change them frequently to get the best performance in combat.
Wow, thanks. I think I have to try Voice Attack. I can’t imagine being quick enough with my fingers to make those changes, even with those options programmed into the Hotas buttons.
Yes, yes, that’s what I was asking! Yay! Coffee!!!
And yeah, that totally takes practice. I mostly do it by active throttle and thruster usage, with a little bit of flight assist off here and there (which I’m using more the more comfy I get with it), but yeah, at first I was trying to fly it like TIE Fighter or Freespace, which is a no no.
I am really used to the Logitech Extreme 3D Pro I use now as the 8-way hat switch on top is accessible with my thumb that is used to shift pips between the 4 options. I am not sure what options work well on the other sticks, though. I tend to run full weapon power until I start taking significant damage and then shift around as needed.
Now that I am getting more comfortable with my fighting skills and my ship and getting my bank built up a bit, I am looking to figure out what these war zones are all about. I wonder where there is one near Gilgamesh to try out.
The best FAOFF guide I’ve found is this one by Isinona, he gives a step-by-step series of things to practice, first left hand, then right hand, then putting them together, then the types of maneouvres you can make. Really, really cool and in-depth, to get you to understand it right down to the bones of it.
But, as one of the most recognized experts, even he says right at the beginning of the video that it’s a lot of practice for “no notable advantage” (relative to FAON), because the fact that FAOFF doesn’t help you turn (i.e. pitch) any faster essentially makes it just a cool trick that gives you a hardmode challenge to practice and get right and impress your friends with.
From what I can gather, and with the little experience I have, judicious use of up/down thrusters (effectively, circle-strafing in the y axis - and also occasional lateral thrusters) with FAON gives you more or less the same results for much less effort (you just go in a shallow J curve and turn on your axis rather than a straight line and turn on your axis).
Most people seem to integrate a little bit of FAOFF just on those initial turns - I’ve seen several methods of integrating a bit of FAOFF: reversing then boosting, or just turning with FAOFF and boosting, doing it just decelerating and not boosting, doing it all laterally rather than vertically, etc., etc., but (apart from the cool trick of fighting pursuers in reverse) they’re all basically just variations on vertical/lateral circle-strafing at the end of the day.
The old tricks are the best tricks :)
Finally got enough to buy a Hauler and start mining, woo! So much fun. I make about $5k each expedition when mining silver. Its slow but DAMN swooping in over the the ring of a gas giant, then plunging deeper , ever deeper testing each rock until you find the one… so satisfying.
Yay, I use thrusters with FAON all the time, as I find I have much better control that way. FAOFF is like trying to dance with one shoe on.
How do you test the rock? So glad you’re having fun!
To solve that problem I mapped thrust up and down to my mousewheel and it works like a charm. Find a throttle interval that works for you. W+S are then my vertical thrusters, A+D yaw, Q+E lateral thrusters.
But, as one of the most recognized experts, even he says right at the beginning of the video that it’s a lot of practice for “no notable advantage” (relative to FAON), because the fact that FAOFF doesn’t help you turn any faster essentially makes it just a cool trick that gives you a hardmode challenge to practice and get right and impress your friends with.
From what I can gather, and with the little experience I have, judicious use of up/down thrusters (effectively, circle-strafing in the y axis - and also occasional lateral thrusters) with FAON gives you more or less the same results for much less effort.
That’s not quite true, FA-OFF combined with boost can be the fastest way to turn. It’s a bit difficult to explain… Using boost and turning gives you a faster turn speed, but as the boost wears off you will start bleeding speed and the turn will start to slow. However if you have FA-OFF then the speed from the boost wont bleed until you finish the turn.
This doesn’t mean going FA-OFF the entire time, just turning it off at the right times.
From what I’ve seen various people say on Youtube vids, essentially, you only really need the FAOFF trick if you’re facing something that natively has a faster pitch rate, just for that slight edge, or rather to equalize. But apparently it does take a lot of practice for that slight edge (i.e. as the man said, no notable advantage).
In a class-A Viper rolling down in Durius, schooling the Empire on foreign relations. Definitely a tricky warzone; unlike other warzones (Barnard’s Star, etc.), the Empire comes in with top-level gear. This means that even their Eagles can take a (relative) beating, their Cobras shoot purple shit, and their Pythons can do evil shit. At one point I was even down to 30% hull and a critical cockpit – not something I’m used to! Fun stuff if you’re up to the challenge.
From what I’ve seen various people say on Youtube vids, essentially, you only really need the FAOFF trick if you’re facing something that natively has a faster pitch rate, just for that slight edge, or rather to equalize. But apparently it does take a lot of practice for that slight edge (i.e. as the man said, no notable advantage).
FAOFF is more than turn rate, it’s also effects turn radius. Rate kills, but when you combine it with a shorter radius, it makes FAOFF vital in knife-fights (and AIs that can somehow turn a Python on a dime).
Doesn’t it depend on weapon range? If you have close-range weapons, don’t you want the slow down, so you can stay closer? On the other hand, the advantage of keeping distance is that the opponent will be covering less of an arc with the same speed (so easier to keep in sights), so that method is more suitable for long-range weapons?
I may not be fully understanding though, still nooblet. Good discussion!