Free Allegiance Forums

Hello all instructors and trainees.
Time for some noob questions of mine:

1. Slang: what (or rather: who) is a voob?
2. Maneuvering: Opening game. I'm in the middle of a sector (1.5-2k away from any aleph) scouting, suddenly I see an enemy scout, who I know is far superior than me. He will almost surely attack and pod me. There's no homerip yet and he's at 2.5k and closing. How do I avoid him and run away (given I probably am in a slower craft)? Lowering sig will in many situations not be enough.
3. Loadout: I tend to go all-probe on the first run and take 1 prox in later probe runs. Otherwise i go all-prox. It works to some degree, but I feel like i could do better, I just don't have an idea how. From the reading I had so far it's "you'll know eventually". Is there some more substantial information around?
4. Driving a bomber: in small PUGs it might happen that I will be asked to bomb. Last time that happened I refused due to lack of experience to make a win-lose run. It cost us game that time (the other novice, Gunjay, took it and accidentally deployed from the wrong base). Could you provide some basic instructions on loadout and in-flight handling, so that I don't embarrass myself if I'm forced to drive a bomber?
5. Orientation: On the above topic, the more silent commanders usually drop "we bomb tac" or "bomb Tau now!" into chat and expect everyone to know where to deploy and what's the route. I end up 1.5k behind (turns out most people know the route exactly) and have to catch up which sometimes make me come too late. How to improve my orientation on the sector locations and quickpick the correct deployment & ripto spots? Sometimes there's more than one taken sector adjacent to the target which I can go from. How do I make my choice FAST?
6. Factions: I usually end up in any ol' faction against any ol' faction and simply do the same exact stuff in each one. Therefore I don't use the faction perks and nerfs, which makes me less helpful to the team. There's a ton of reading about factions, but I haven't come across a quickref of the biggest traits for each faction, which would (after being printed out) help me get my info fast and ingame and eventually get into my head, so I don't need it printed anymore. Is there anything like that flying around/providable?
7. Orientation: how to manage yourself and not fly literal circles for 10+ seconds in a cluster$#@! (5+ ship bomb run; combat nanning in serious dogfight; etc.)? Any tips?

StatsGuy wrote:QUOTE (StatsGuy @ Jun 27 2011, 07:45 PM) Hello all instructors and trainees.
Time for some noob questions of mine:

1. Slang: what (or rather: who) is a voob?

voob is an insulting term for a player who has been around forever but is no good at the game.

QUOTE 2. Maneuvering: Opening game. I'm in the middle of a sector (1.5-2k away from any aleph) scouting, suddenly I see an enemy scout, who I know is far superior than me. He will almost surely attack and pod me. There's no homerip yet and he's at 2.5k and closing. How do I avoid him and run away (given I probably am in a slower craft)? Lowering sig will in many situations not be enough.[/quote]

If you are in a scout, try to prox him while running in a straight line. If you can go uneyed before doing so, all the better. If you can't run, head straight up or down off the plane to get closer to the sector boundary. He'll have to fly farther back to where he wants to go, and you're closer to the sector boundary to podkill yourself on it.

If there's friendly pod pickup available close by, it can be best just to let him pod you and get back to base as fast as you can, or even suicide into a nearby asteroid so he doesn't get KB.

QUOTE 3. Loadout: I tend to go all-probe on the first run and take 1 prox in later probe runs. Otherwise i go all-prox. It works to some degree, but I feel like i could do better, I just don't have an idea how. From the reading I had so far it's "you'll know eventually". Is there some more substantial information around?[/quote]

Keep in mind prox is heavy, and makes your scout slow and unweildy. If your task is probing, go low-sig (no missiles or shields) with a nan mounted and if you really want, pack a prox and gat in cargo. Sometimes its best just to take all probes.

For defending miners or bombers, take nan mounted, shields and missiles up, and cargo full of prox.

For miner O, take two probes (one mounted), one prox, one nan (in cargo), gat and dumbfires mounted, rest of cargo dumbfires. You can drop the two probes and have cargo space for your missiles and shields if you need to go low-sig, and those probes are useful even if they are randomly in the middle of a sector.

For escorting sneaky ships (eg: HTT, low-sig bombers) keep shields in cargo, nan and prox mounted, rest of cargo prox. Don't bring missiles.

QUOTE 4. Driving a bomber: in small PUGs it might happen that I will be asked to bomb. Last time that happened I refused due to lack of experience to make a win-lose run. It cost us game that time (the other novice, Gunjay, took it and accidentally deployed from the wrong base). Could you provide some basic instructions on loadout and in-flight handling, so that I don't embarrass myself if I'm forced to drive a bomber?[/quote]

For high-sig or forced bombing, use the default loadout and swap some of your ammo racks for AB missiles. Even with two gunners, you probably won't need more than one spare rack of ammo. If you don't have gunners (eg: intbombing) then drop the turrets and take all missiles in cargo.

For low-sig sneaky bombing, keep your shields in cargo, missiles in cargo, and gunners optional.

Most of the work driving a bomber is setting up the run. Pay attention to the route you are going to take, which base is best to launch from, if there are enemy probes which need to be destroyed before you go. When you're in the enemy system, aim 15 degrees off of a straight line towards the base. Curve towards the base as you get close. If you see a scout in front of you, adjust your path to avoid prox.

Fire your missiles at 1000 + (your speed * 5), even if you don't have lock. AB missiles don't need a lock to fire at the base. If I'm travelling at 60mps in a bomber, I can fire at 1300m and still hit the target. 1500m at 100mps, etc...

QUOTE 5. Orientation: On the above topic, the more silent commanders usually drop "we bomb tac" or "bomb Tau now!" into chat and expect everyone to know where to deploy and what's the route. I end up 1.5k behind (turns out most people know the route exactly) and have to catch up which sometimes make me come too late. How to improve my orientation on the sector locations and quickpick the correct deployment & ripto spots? Sometimes there's more than one taken sector adjacent to the target which I can go from. How do I make my choice FAST?[/quote]

Watch the minimap. Try to pay attention to sector names. If you aren't sure which base/sector the run is mobilizing in, ask in chat. Good comms will call which sector to mobilize in.

QUOTE 6. Factions: I usually end up in any ol' faction against any ol' faction and simply do the same exact stuff in each one. Therefore I don't use the faction perks and nerfs, which makes me less helpful to the team. There's a ton of reading about factions, but I haven't come across a quickref of the biggest traits for each faction, which would (after being printed out) help me get my info fast and ingame and eventually get into my head, so I don't need it printed anymore. Is there anything like that flying around/providable?[/quote]

The wiki has everything:
http://www.freeallegiance.org/FAW/index.php/Factions

There are some quirks you only learn with experience, but the major differences are those faction modifier percentages you see, such as sensor strength, signature, ship speed/accel, armor and shield strength.

QUOTE 7. Orientation: how to manage yourself and not fly literal circles for 10+ seconds in a cluster$#@! (5+ ship bomb run; combat nanning in serious dogfight; etc.)? Any tips?[/quote]

Set up your targeting keys and get used to using them. Here are mine:
1 - bomber
2 - fighter
3 - miner
4 - constructor
alt+1 - enemy bomber
alt+2 - enemy fighter (and so on...)
right click - target object in centre (this is a really important one).

Install bigger pointers:
http://www.mesialonline.com/Allegiance/pointer/pointers.html

Use your targeting keys to cycle through targets quickly. For example, you can cycle through all friendly nans in a bomb run while still aiming at the bomber to see if any need crossnanning.

Watch the edges of your screen. Its confusing at first, but you can gain a lot from it.

Hissatsu wrote:QUOTE (Hissatsu @ Jun 26 2011, 11:11 PM) 17) In cadet 2 test, they say that correct reaction to being booted is to log in with another account. And today we had a person who had newbie status and another person acused him of using another account, and that persons was not denying he was using another account to hide his real rank. So, what is this about? I've read that game actually records your pc so that you cannot run 2 accs on one rig? Or can you somehow? What is the cadet 2 test question about? Joke?

StatsGuy wrote:QUOTE (StatsGuy @ Jun 28 2011, 01:00 AM) That was me teasing watchout(0) for his overskill compared to the (0) rank.

Well those are two different things.

1. You can have up to 3 callsigns (one mainnick and two "hider"nicks). These callsigns are linked and will have the same rank. ASGS recognizes your pc and will automatically do so. If you get booted, you can log back into the game with one of your hiders and continue playing.

2. Creating an unlinked account on another machine to abuse newbeeprotection, or to screw the gamebalance is bannable offence.

Thanks again for the answers.

About keybindings, you misunderstood me, its not that i complain that i dont like his keybindings, its that his keybinding file differs from his keymap picture. Thats what i was talking about. Not a matter of preference - but a mistake that can (and should) be fixed.

About reply - yes i understand now there is no such option. I meant how in common MMORPG's you can use single key to answer to the last communication towards you, usually by pressing r or typing /r message

About ripcoding and minimap icons - the red dot icon does not show until i initiate ripcoding. I know i can look for teleporters icons but that requires hovering a mouse over a sector. Ripcoding red dot is shown close to a sector which is more convinient. But having to initiate ripcoding in a useless direction just to know wether there is a good ripcoding location around kinda nullifies that...

2 l1ngus - yes i understand now about dupe accs to avoid boots, but in that situation, the person (watchout) did not deny he was much higher skilled than a newbie, but uses newbie acc to hide it. StatsGuy acused him of cheating and he was going around like "oh, how do we define cheating?" etc. Well maybe it was all a joke i didnt get.

Question about music mod remains...

Thanks.

Hissatsu wrote:QUOTE (Hissatsu @ Jun 27 2011, 04:28 PM) 2) The "Steady hands" control set available on the wiki has some mistakes in it.
* first, i uses ctrl in some bindings, however it states ctrl should be reserved for mumble (for example it uses ctrl+t for something with targeting)
* also, it has alt+s bind to "group fire mode" for weapons, instead of the "look right" as it is proclaimed on the layout picture
* maybe more, those are what i found
Can they be fixed so other people receive the correct file? Should i upload a changed mdl file somewhere so it can replace the one with mistakes?

hang on I'm working on it... it happend so that you bumped into a very first version of that keymap I've posted... you will be able to download a correct version shortly, although what you already have should give you a good start, remember you can always adjust keymap for yourself just follow wiki instructions

Spectroskop wrote:QUOTE (Spectroskop @ Jun 28 2011, 09:43 PM) hang on I'm working on it... it happend so that you bumped into a very first version of that keymap I've posted... you will be able to download a correct version shortly, although what you already have should give you a good start, remember you can always adjust keymap for yourself just follow wiki instructions

Yeah sure i just want to ensure others wont have to do it as well, but can download the already fixed keymap

New questions!

1) How do i learn to aim with a joystick?
With a help of a fellow forum member i am now starting to use my Saitek X52 in Allegiance. I heard people play this with joystick on competitive level, but i am having not that good results. To say it this way, with mouse it was easier.
But i want to play with a joystick. More immersive, and i just love to use that thing (like, paid serious money for it and almost no games to utilise its power).
Is quadratic input any good? It seems to have helped, but still, i have trouble to fine tune my aiming, even in simpliest scenarios (like training 6 where enemy is going around me for another targets).
should deadzone be smallest?
My problem is with percise aiming when i need to find exactly where to target in order to hit the flying by enemy craft.

2) Is there a way to switch off this bobbing when thrusters are on? It makes aiming ridiculously hard

3) I installed some mods (nothing unusual, just CortUI, custom crosshair, some replacement graphics, all from that famous mesial site) and my game started crashing. It can be unrelated since i played not that many games w/o those mods, but still. Crashes are silent, instantanious. Allegiance just closes w/o any message or something. It happened when i made a game for myself and clicked "force start", it happened when i was jumping into a busy system through aleph, it happened when being on the base. Etc. How do i diagnose which element is causing the problem without reinstalling the game clean and installing addons one-by-one? How do i at least see the error message?

4) I tried music mod and its awful. On my quit powerful rig (i can play most of the common games with high or ultra high settings without problems) it lags to death when it changes track. 1 or 2 seconds total freeze. Its obviously tied to it not caching the music ahead but trying to load it all at once and in syncronous mode apparently (or in main thread), which causes the hangup. My question is - the original game was supposed to have some kind of CD music right? Why doesnt it play the audio Cd i put in? How do i make the game play the audio CD, and what is the original track list (so i could burn tracks that fit the mood)?

You will need to submit a debug log. More savvy guys will have to walk you through that, though.

Meanwhile try starting Alleg in safe mode and use the option update/repair critical files. Safe mode is under Allegiance on the ASGS client window with which you log in. You will find repair critical files under Tools.

I suspect using Beta mode will give you that log file which should make things clearer, but others pls confirm?

Double check that your texture size setting under Graphics is 2048.

Quadratic input is probably a matter of preference, but if it helps, it helps. What it most likely does is increase your sensitivity at the edges of the response envelope. You probably can also tweak your response on your joystick software. Thrustmaster Cougar allows you to do sensitivity curves, so maybe your Saitek has such a feature. I do not know if your current setup completely bypasses the Saitek drivers, though. Contact Wanderer if need be.


You should not bob under thrusters. Something is wrong. I do not.

Unless you are talking about boost (When you press the TAB key and use fuel). That is a game feature.

Tip: Boost in spurts, and only fire when not under boost. Stops you from overboosting, too. I do not use boost for more than a few seconds at a stretch.

Dead zone should be smallest, to allow smaller movements of the joystick when aiming. Unless you have pot jitter. No other reason to use Large Deadzone.

My turn again.

Any way to put waypoints off grid in F3 view?

I am confused. How do I hop on a turret if the bomber is not in base? (I assume this was the cause for ->)The last time I ended up in a turret in base automatically, so I assumed this would happen again when I transferred. This time not.

Edit: Wait a moment. Maybe I misclicked on the base instead of the bomber. Correct?

(Time for yet another moronic moment award, I think)