Hard Light Productions Forums

General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Valcion on October 08, 2008, 01:08:38 am

Title: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: Valcion on October 08, 2008, 01:08:38 am
Hey guys, I was just wondering what are some good dog fighting techniques to use. I tried to play the campaign on Hard level and above and is constantly getting my ass handed to me because either one or both of two things happen.

1. Every single damn fighter decides to focus me. With 4 fighters even if they have the craptasic Prometheus R I still die just from the sheer amount of enemy fire.
2. Something gets behind me and I can't shake it off, it's like it knows where I will go and adjusted its aim so I die.

This has gotten especially frustrating in bombing missions, since I can't really rely on my wingmen to do anything useful other than dying, and I can't really dog fight in a bomber. The other thing is that I've been stuck on the first mission of the first SOC loop, where I have to escort the Iceni. Either those bombs decides to go head to head with me, or the Taurets get behind me and kill me. I was under the impression that a Myrmidon was supposed to be able to out maneuver a freakin heavy assault.

Also, is it me, or is it that in harder difficulties my weapon do less damage, their weapon do more, and they have more shield/hull?
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: MT on October 08, 2008, 01:32:47 am
Hey guys, I was just wondering what are some good dog fighting techniques to use. I tried to play the campaign on Hard level and above and is constantly getting my ass handed to me because either one or both of two things happen.

1. Every single damn fighter decides to focus me. With 4 fighters even if they have the craptasic Prometheus R I still die just from the sheer amount of enemy fire.
2. Something gets behind me and I can't shake it off, it's like it knows where I will go and adjusted its aim so I die.

This has gotten especially frustrating in bombing missions, since I can't really rely on my wingmen to do anything useful other than dying, and I can't really dog fight in a bomber. The other thing is that I've been stuck on the first mission of the first SOC loop, where I have to escort the Iceni. Either those bombs decides to go head to head with me, or the Taurets get behind me and kill me. I was under the impression that a Myrmidon was supposed to be able to out maneuver a freakin heavy assault.

1. Never ever charge head on like you do in Medium and below. Be polite and let others go first.
2. Dog-pile on each enemy. C-3-1

Quote
Also, is it me, or is it that in harder difficulties my weapon do less damage, their weapon do more, and they have more shield/hull?

Your weapons do the same damage. Their weapons do damage closer to the original (ie yours) damage values.
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: eliex on October 08, 2008, 02:32:22 am
Aim for target lead indicator of the targeted fighter. If you shoot there, most of your hits will be accurate. It's especially important as on the higher difficulties, your afterburner recharge rate slows, as well as energy recovery for weapons.
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: MT on October 08, 2008, 02:55:18 am
Aim for circle near the targeting fighter. If you shoot there, most of your hits will be accurate. It's especially important as on the higher difficulties, your afterburner recharge rate slows, as well as energy recovery for weapons.

You mean the target lead indicator?
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: eliex on October 08, 2008, 03:10:54 am

You mean the target lead indicator?

Yes.
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on October 08, 2008, 04:28:33 am
This has gotten especially frustrating in bombing missions, since I can't really rely on my wingmen to do anything useful other than dying, and I can't really dog fight in a bomber. The other thing is that I've been stuck on the first mission of the first SOC loop, where I have to escort the Iceni. Either those bombs decides to go head to head with me, or the Taurets get behind me and kill me. I was under the impression that a Myrmidon was supposed to be able to out maneuver a freakin heavy assault.

        Personally I never even fight on that SOC loop. I don't want to kill Vasudans, I like them. So I just circle around, scan the Hinton, and let the other people do their stuff. With the occasional need to defend myself.
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: aRaven on October 08, 2008, 04:47:52 am

You mean the target lead indicator?

Yes.

lol
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on October 08, 2008, 04:48:03 am
Check out the FreeSpace Wiki for a weakness in the GVCv Sobek that you may wish to exploit. I wrote it in after doing it myself.

Spoiler:
Underside! Weapons subsystem! BLOW_IT!
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: eliex on October 08, 2008, 05:13:03 am
Oh, and I nearly forgot.

Whenever there are Stellito II missiles available in the weapons loadout, at least, load out one secondary bank with Stellito II's. It's always so handy whenever fighting the NTF, as Terran AAA beams are far more efficient than Shivan ones.


You mean the target lead indicator?

Yes.

lol

lol?  :wtf:
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: MT on October 08, 2008, 11:46:30 am

You mean the target lead indicator?

Yes.

I thought that is basic dogfighting? Telling people to adjust their aim for the Myrmidon's 4 guns bank is perhaps more advanced.
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: Fenrir on October 08, 2008, 01:31:43 pm
Personally I never even fight on that SOC loop. I don't want to kill Vasudans, I like them. So I just circle around, scan the Hinton, and let the other people do their stuff. With the occasional need to defend myself.

Really? I love that opportunity to participate in legal Vasudan hunting.
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on October 08, 2008, 02:13:15 pm
Personally I never even fight on that SOC loop. I don't want to kill Vasudans, I like them. So I just circle around, scan the Hinton, and let the other people do their stuff. With the occasional need to defend myself.

Really? I love that opportunity to participate in legal Vasudan hunting.

      Vasudan ships are sexier. There's a reason my pitiful little campaign takes place on a Vasudan Destroyer with Vasudan fighters rather than a Terran.
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: Mars on October 08, 2008, 03:39:04 pm
Would you like the GVF Woeful Armor, GVF Underpowered Reactor, or the GVF Deathboxcurve?

The only decent fighters they have are the Thoth and the Seth.
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: captain-custard on October 08, 2008, 03:56:33 pm
Aim for circle near the targeting fighter. If you shoot there, most of your hits will be accurate. It's especially important as on the higher difficulties, your afterburner recharge rate slows, as well as energy recovery for weapons.

You mean the target lead indicator?

if your playing multi aim slightly ahead the target indicator at medium or long range, also if your being honed down by swarm missiles use your after burners and weave eratically , try to keep them to your side and pull up and away at last moment or hide behid an enemy ( i also quickly turn around and use my afterburners to head for them they tend to miss)

always keep an eye on your sheilds ad equalize them if your missing a section , if your being ass raped divert your shield power to behind and remember if all else fails eep a good supply of beer in the fridge .....
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: Valcion on October 08, 2008, 06:25:04 pm
        Personally I never even fight on that SOC loop. I don't want to kill Vasudans, I like them. So I just circle around, scan the Hinton, and let the other people do their stuff. With the occasional need to defend myself.

Um...how do you beat that mission if you don't fight? The second Vasudan ship can 1v1 Iceni and win, especially with the asteroid field as far as my experience with that mission goes.

As for the underside of the Sobek cruiser, how do I deal with the 5 turrets on the underside? With that said, how do I deal with those beam turrets in general? There is seriously one time I killed the 4 smaller turrets, then got 1 shotted while having about 40% shield from that big turret near the aft thrusters -_-

The one thing I've noticed is that luck play quite a bit of role in that mission, I tried to do the same thing every time, after killing the first cruiser and fighter/bomber wave, some times Iceni/Hinton each have >90 hull, some times Hinton is near dead while Iceni is stuck with <80.
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: Mura on October 08, 2008, 06:46:18 pm
Smaller turrets aren't as bad, you should take care of the anti fighter beam turrets, after that it should be lot easier to divert your shields energy to the front and make hit runs, alternatively, try to disarm one section of the ship and stay attacking from there, as it shouldn't be able to hit you at that spot anymore, also try to go for the weaker side of it, in that case of the sobek being it's belly.

Disarm it's belly and every time you approach or fly away from it use that route to avoid getting shot too much.


EDIT: once you are at it's belly, destroy the weapons subsystem, that way it will fire even less  :drevil:
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: Mongoose on October 08, 2008, 07:05:24 pm
I can't count how many times that mission wound up for me with the Iceni and Hinton trying to occupy the exact same cubic meter of space right in front of the jump node...which inevitably resulted with the former bludgeoning the latter to death.  I was not a happy SOC operative. :p
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: Mura on October 08, 2008, 07:11:51 pm
AHAHAHA, that must be really funny and annoying at the same time, never happened to me before... shows how much the game experience can vary between players.
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: Valcion on October 08, 2008, 09:30:19 pm
Ugh...then I get shot to death by the 2 AAA beams in the back. Anyways, I finally beat it, more due to luck than skill though (Iceni's beam killed the weapon subsystem for me like, 3 seconds after the Sobek jumped in). I'm starting to believe that mission hates me, since I can ALWAYS count on one of these things happen.

I fight back the first wave, I have good shield and hull (>80).
-Hinton get's mobbed, then Iceni dies because it refuses to fire it's beams
-Iceni refuse to hit the asteroids. I seriously failed this twice because Iceni went from 50 to 0.
-The Sobek hating on me. 6 times I got killed by it's anti-ship beams when it blasted through me to get to Iceni when I tried to use Iceni as missile blocks to evade the hax Taurets.

I fight back the first wave, I have poor hull(<30) due to Taurets using aim hax and I can't shake them, therefore taking a boatload of dmg.
-Taurets either all focus me, or they try to ram me, or both. This happened far too many time for it to be coincidence

I finally the both ship to the node, Iceni jumps out, all the fighter jumps out, Hinton's being a slowpoke, unlimited wings of Tauret (saggitarius iirc) jumps in and try to fry me while I'm alone and Hinton is taking it's sweet time.

Anyways, I don't imagine I'll be flying that mission again anytime soon, especially considering the bomber unlocked is bugged. Although I took comfort in that the last mission of the 1st SOC loop, I stayed back and all the fighters except Alpha2 got fragged by the turrets. The next few missions went really well, I even managed to save the AWAC ship during the TAG testing stage, something I've not been able to do the four times that I went through the campaign on normal.
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: Mura on October 08, 2008, 10:56:08 pm
well, i don't see how the two AAA beams in the back hit you if you aren't in the firing arc of them... don't go out the back, get in/out through the front and or sides,  or be a man and trample the beam turrets leaving you with barely any hull left and smash trough any tauret!   ok, that might be a bit tad stupid and insane to do, but it sure would be manly!  :pimp:

good thing is you actually beated it, thumbs up fer ya, pal  :yes:
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: Valcion on October 09, 2008, 12:55:50 pm
Hmmm...ok so this is what I've noticed.

When the Taurets(or anything, for that matter) were going head on with me, I would turn away, then try to flank them, except when i turned away, it gave them the initiative and they stayed on my tail the entire time and I couldn't shake them.

What I've noticed is that I had to vector the shield to the front, afterburner past them, then get into a turning contest.

I've found quite a bit of success using the second method, but the problem is that I still can't reliably dodge their shots, and especially if they decide to send a few missile my way since counter measure don't seem to work properly when I collide head on with missiles.

The other thing is that they don't seem to attack until they close in to about 600 range, which means quad Prometheus S would be great to snipe them from afar.
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: eliex on October 09, 2008, 06:08:59 pm
Yes, you'd think that some fighters are quite lousy but its only because of their current loadout!

Just look at the SF Basilisk. It has the capacity to carry about 80 hornets in one bank, IIRC, but gets destroyed by faster fighters. If the Basilisk's missile banks were changed to Tornados, Basilisks can easily take down the majority of fighters, head-on.
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: Excalibur on October 09, 2008, 09:49:06 pm
Ugh...then I get shot to death by the 2 AAA beams in the back. Anyways, I finally beat it, more due to luck than skill though (Iceni's beam killed the weapon subsystem for me like, 3 seconds after the Sobek jumped in). I'm starting to believe that mission hates me, since I can ALWAYS count on one of these things happen.

I fight back the first wave, I have good shield and hull (>80).
-Hinton get's mobbed, then Iceni dies because it refuses to fire it's beams
-Iceni refuse to hit the asteroids. I seriously failed this twice because Iceni went from 50 to 0.
-The Sobek hating on me. 6 times I got killed by it's anti-ship beams when it blasted through me to get to Iceni when I tried to use Iceni as missile blocks to evade the hax Taurets.

I fight back the first wave, I have poor hull(<30) due to Taurets using aim hax and I can't shake them, therefore taking a boatload of dmg.
-Taurets either all focus me, or they try to ram me, or both. This happened far too many time for it to be coincidence

I finally the both ship to the node, Iceni jumps out, all the fighter jumps out, Hinton's being a slowpoke, unlimited wings of Tauret (saggitarius iirc) jumps in and try to fry me while I'm alone and Hinton is taking it's sweet time.

Anyways, I don't imagine I'll be flying that mission again anytime soon, especially considering the bomber unlocked is bugged. Although I took comfort in that the last mission of the 1st SOC loop, I stayed back and all the fighters except Alpha2 got fragged by the turrets. The next few missions went really well, I even managed to save the AWAC ship during the TAG testing stage, something I've not been able to do the four times that I went through the campaign on normal.

You think you have problems? Try it on insane... :rolleyes:
I ended that attempt and skipped. :)
'would have been good if I'd endered it. (first meaning)
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on October 10, 2008, 10:00:17 am
The Sobek always scares the living daylights out of me,...

Spoiler:
...so I fly below it, while keeping out of the corvette's beam range, target its weapons subsystem and close in. I park myself directly below the corvette and pound its Weapons subsystems to smithereens. It seems to work wonders, because I never got hit by it after that.
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: S-99 on October 13, 2008, 07:18:56 am
be a man and trample the beam turrets leaving you with barely any hull left and smash trough any tauret!
Manly indeed :yes: There's also flying through a lilith main beam in an ares, manly also :pimp:

This all reminds me of the last mission of the soc loop. Back in the day when i first started to play. I didn't know that you could destroy the ntf wing that you were part of right off the bat and the gtva just comes in. I always played that mission like 2 or 3 times taking on the ntf fighters by myself, and then when they're all destroyed after much difficulty, then my gtva ride comes for me.

I always liked the soc missions, they're very well done, and are nicely difficult missions. The second soc mission, that ones still pretty difficult. Talk about thin escort for a couple of ships.
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: ravi80k on January 23, 2010, 09:09:40 pm
undercover SOC missions are great. Do you remember the Mission 19 it is called But hate the traitor. i really liked it, because it is bit challenging, If you can recall we have to destroy 6 (I think it is right) targets.  ;7
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on January 24, 2010, 08:44:57 am
...But Hate The Traitor is okay. Not exactly my cup of tea. I prefer Their Finest Hour, which is probably the closest mission to a turkey shoot that the single player campaign has to offer.
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: General Battuta on January 24, 2010, 09:34:19 am
Yeah, Androgeos, think you might be talking to a bot.
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: Goober5000 on January 24, 2010, 03:08:21 pm
Maybe not a bot, as it was topical and coherent.  But brass knuckles are illegal in the USA, and posting links to illegal things violates our TOS, so that's good enough for a ban.
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on January 25, 2010, 02:09:58 am
Maybe not a bot, as it was topical and coherent.  But brass knuckles are illegal in the USA, and posting links to illegal things violates our TOS, so that's good enough for a ban.

Did he do all that? :confused:
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: Goober5000 on January 25, 2010, 11:51:36 am
Didn't you see the link in his signature?
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on January 25, 2010, 12:14:28 pm
He had a signature? I guess I missed it, because I never did see him having one.
Title: Re: Advanced dog fighting techniques?
Post by: Mongoose on January 25, 2010, 10:50:22 pm
I was confused as to why the post was reported as being from a bot to begin with, as it correctly referenced a specific mission within the game and was actually on-topic.  I don't want to meet the bot that's capable of doing that. :p

(Huh, I wasn't aware that brass knuckles were flat-out illegal in multiple states.  Learn something new every day.)