Cadet II/Dogfighting

User:Juckto/Cadet II rewrite General Dogfighting

Well if you've come this far in Allegiance, you should understand the fundamentals of flying and more importantly, the basics of combative flying. I'm going to help you expand on that understanding and hopefully bring you to a more competent and competitive standing in the game.

EVASION

This is the most important axis of dogfighting. You can have the sharpest and most precise aim possible for a human being and still have majority of your engagements end in losses or draw with poor evasion. This isn't a turn-based game, combat is real time, so you're going to have to learn how to combine perfect offense and perfect defense. Learning how to efficiently evade fire is how you defeat people with greater kill bonuses and more often then not, people who are much better than yourself.

It's important that you have your thrusters mapped to a convienient location. Here's an example of mine.

Keyboard Joystick W - thrust up HAT as buttons - Strafe thrusters S - thrust down Y-Axis - Pitch A - thrust left X-Axis - Yaw D - thrust right Z-Axis - Roll Q - Roll Left Button 11 - Thrust Fwd E - Roll Right Button 12 - Thrust Bcwd Z - Thrust Fwd C - Thrust Bcwd

Many people do not have forward/backward thrust mapped. I can not stress how important it is to have these mapped and easy to be used. When you're strafing up/down/left/right you are not moving forward or backward unless you manually engage those thrusters. You'll learn how to really make this work for you in a bit.

WATCH & EVADE

This part is fairly simple, all you do is pay attention to incoming fire. Most players make the fatal mistake of only strafing one direction while they hold on to their own trigger. Might as well be flying straight at your target IMO. If you're hit, change directions, if you see particles getting closer to you, change directions. Keep them guessing, make them have to constantly re-adjust. Watch the particles coming towards you to guage which new direction you should be taking.

PLAYING AT MAX RANGE

Gat has a range of 600, gat 3 660, and all miniguns have a range of 400m. The only exceptions are TF and Rix. Learn the ranges well. Use your backthrust while strafing to back away from combat, and play defensively. It's much harder to hit someone at max range then it is at 150m. If you can out range someone, chances are they'll boost in to try and resume the engagement, this is your chance to "joust" with your opponent. You can use their forward momentum to boost over/under/around them while you score a few minor hits while passing. At this point you have two options, continue to play them at max range (This is how a fighter stands a chance vs an interceptor, you must joust or you will die once you're in mini gun range) or simply keep boosting forward to gain a headstart and break the engagement. Learning how to manipulate the ranges of the craft you're facing and knowing the limitations of the one you're in is an invaluable aspect of combat awareness.

CONTROL RANGE

Everyone has a particlar range where they are most comfortable in. Learn your range. It's the point where no matter what, you are going to hit their ship and not miss, a point where you are most capable of precise aim. Now take what I told you about Forward and Backthrusting. Remember when you're strafing, you're not moving forward or backward. Chances are your opponent isn't either. Use Forward thrust to shorten the gap into a range you are most comfortable in, or backthrust to extend it. Learning how to keep the range *you* want in a fight is like maintaining the high ground in a sword fight. If you are facing a lesser or equal skill opponent, they will be forced to give up ground to try and get you to surrender your advantage. Be warned though. Don't recklessly go for the high ground in an engagement, you will probably lose. Manipulate your thrusters carefully and cleverly.

RETICULE

The reticule is hardly accurate. Watching how your particles travel in this fictional space is. I would suggest just using the reticule as a guage to where you should start aiming, then adjusting your aim as you need to to start landing shots. Becareful though, you don't want to be firing for no reason, so once you have a general idea of the target's position, let loose a few tracers. My suggestion is get rid of the stock allegiance reticule. Get a small dot, small cross, or if you want to play like me, nothing at all. It's imperative to have good hand eye co-ordination for this, if you're lacking in that, stick to missiles. Actually if you have a poor hand-eye relationship, you're going to find dogfighting very hard.