Dogfighting is Annoying

I've been recently trying to get better at flying ESFs in general, and this is a constant issue. It seems like any time you accomplish anything against tanks/infantry there is always some random ESF that attacks you from behind or from a flank. Even if you see them coming, the resulting fight is usually tedious. Both flyers thrusting in random directions while taking off slivers of health per magazine. Take note that this is one ESF in one session. At any point during this huge tunnel vision episode another random ESF (and anything else really) can casually enter the fight and guarantee your loss. This isn't to say that ESFs are underpowered. It's just that playing one puts you at so many risks all the time it's hard to find enjoyment.

I don't understand... You are taking a fighter plane and attacking the ground with it. When another fighter plane intercepts you you lose? I'm here to gurantee you that if I'm shooting at your ESF it's not going to be slivers per clip.

If you are within a certain distance that would be feasible. Outside of that it is small damage and large evasion.

The victor in dogfights between more amateur pilots is usually decided by who crashes first. The victory in a dogfight between more experienced pilots is which one knows the reverse maneuver. Once you know that you're pretty much set to win fights against 3/4 of the ESF's you encounter. I can't think of anything that fits the definition of "crutch" more.

Isn't it just stalling and using vertical thrust + afterburner to give you enough momentum to "reverse"?

You know, there are other people in the air other than just you.
Sounds like your offended by other ESFs being able to attack you or something.

In any fight, number is generally a more important factor than individal skill.
Only organization can scale this.


You don't like to dogfight? Don't fly ESF wich is the main A2A aircraft

It's actually a Bug exploit.

Personally, I think it would be less fun if aircraft destroyed each other instantly all the time. Infantry can do it because they respawn a few seconds later; whereas vehicles cost resources so they should survive longer with more worthwhile engagements.

Tanks can trade rounds because of their armor, aircraft can if they manage to dodge each others rounds. That's not guarenteed either, you need practice. Pilots still get torn to shreds if they mess up, or if they're new. There's no where else in the game that you can get quite that experience.

Or am I misunderstanding your issue?

I'm offended by the mechanics when compared to tanks / infantry. Many people like infantry because there is no real downtime to a loss. This lets you practice thoroughly and get used to the role. Tanks don't have this element, but do retain cover and some sense of safety when fighting. ESFs have neither. Dying results in a large cooldown (particularly for new players). You can be attacked from any direction by all divisions. The one enemy that ensures you won't find cover are other ESFs. A good example of my distaste comes from ganking. If you fixate on anything other than looking for ESFs it seems like there's always some guy waiting to give you a plasma colonoscopy. Just because the gameplay is balanced doesn't mean it's fun.

Can't wait until reverse is removed from the game

I think I get the OP's frustration. ESF vs ESF fights can last very long sometimes. If both pilots have no trouble maneuvering but both struggle to hit anything moving erratically, it's gonna take a while. I'll admit to having this problem myself and have pretty much just given up using my mossy, not just because of this, but rather the lengthy list of cons to using an ESF in general.

Infantry one on one's time to kill rarely exceed five seconds. The only time a vehicle will have similarly low ttk's is when shooting at infantry. Because of this, I've come to conclusion that infantry is the way to play this game if you want to maintain a high spm. I'll only pull vehicles, either to farm infantry, or to counter other vehicles that have an area locked down and can't be countered effectively with infantry (although this is pretty rare).

What? The reverse maneuver is a crutch?

All the reverse maneuver lets you do is quickly enter hover mode and turn.

Knowing the reverse maneuver just means you understand that an ESF can do more than fly in a straight line.

I was focusing more on the risk + skill + cost issue. To me ESFs could have triple the power against each other and the problem would still persist. This is more of an opinion piece rather than anything constructive. I will probably just end up flying less.

It is true that surviving is a lot more difficult when you're in the vast expanse of open air, easily visible and with little cover. However, this makes learning to fly more challenging and more rewarding. Also, Hossin does the best job of giving aircraft enough cover to use. Esamir and areas of Indar are just horrendous.

Vehicle acquisition timers certainly punish newer players, the ones in most need of practice, more than anyone else. They're being removed in the Resource Revamp soon, phase 1 is already on the Test Server. After that, only resources will restrict vehicle use.

That's a shame.

I sympathize with newer pilots but it's difficult to make gameplay that is both easy to learn and hard to master. Then throw in the extra difficulties of massive population that requires restrictions on vehicle use, and the inherent situational awareness required to watch out for threats and it's a nightmare to please everyone.

Apart from removing the timer, weapons like A2A missiles and Coyotes are SOE's best attempts so far.

What if I told you, the devs don't even visit forumside or take it seriously.

It was going to be removed, but it was left in due to player feedback requesting that it remain. As someone with a fully certed Scythe who can dogfight well enough to win a bit less then half the time, I find the fact that it exists to be irritating. I practiced dogfighting for long enough to know that despite the fact I can pull it off, I find it less enjoyable due to constant reverse / hoverspam fights.

As I seem to be in the minority (among those that are vocal, at least) I usually just stay out of my ESF. Personally, I feel the fact that perfecting the reverse maneuver is a prerequisite to being able to be defend yourself in the air to be detrimental to the game overall. The difficulty in learning the controls alone has chased a few of my friends away from learning the game, and the need to master an undocumented (officially, at least) quirk of odd game physics is worse.

SOE will do what it will do, the player base has spoken it's piece about it, and the decision to leave it in was made many months ago. I'll stick to my Skywhale piloting hobby.

I think the difficulty of learning to fly definitely contributes to the rewards of learning to fly well but yeah, the acquisition time (the consequence of not having enough practice) is excruciating, at least to me. Even the amount of time it takes for me to run and get a new esf in VR is too long, lol.

A crutch? Removed from the game? Really now. Calling an advanced maneuver that you can't pull off in any other game a crutch (that I can think of) is absurd. PS2 has a unique flight model and the reverse maneuver has already received a slight nerf in the past. It would be absurd to change it now. This is coming from a pilot who wins maybe, at best, 1/2 the dogfights I enter. It's hard to hover fight at 25 fps when you can't see your tracers on low

Real life helicopters and VTOL craft can do this in real life, so calling it a bug is a little wierd. It's fairly logical apart from the way the physics switches from horizontal to vertical thrust (which can feel unreliable) -> If you vertical thrust then rotate forward, you're going to end up going reverse.