I'm not good either and still learning. Here's what's helped me along the way. Watching streams with interactive pilots and asking "How did you do that?" when they do a specific maneuver. New toys are fun but rarely help you a lot; upgrades are improvements on the margins. The most noticeable upgrades for me were M18 rotary and A2G pods but just because they gave me more firepower didn't really help a lot. You still have to make the pointy ends hit the other guy =) Air frame upgrades are marginal improvements. Go play with them in the VR... everyone is like "OMG DOG3 IS ELITE!" Fly around in the VR with out a frame... and with dog fighter 3.... it's only a marginal improvement. I agree it DOES help but don't expect it to make you better.... it just makes the mosquito feel more responsive to your input. Nanite repair is nice for when you take a little bit of damage and fly off. You don't HAVE to land and top off your HP. It's not going to save you in a fight where you are taking lots of damage. Nanite repair won't be a lot of help until you blow a lot of certs on it. What improves your skill is practice. You just have to get out there and fly more often. If that means you spend a lot of time in the VR... so be it. With regards to how spending certs aren't really going to improve your flight skill.... cert heavily into aquisition timer. You should get to a point where you run out of resources instead of waiting on the timer. There's a sweet spot there and it's different between players and even vehicles on the same player. So just keep paying down the aquisition timer until you feel like you can pull one when you want but not necessarily one right after another if you die in like 4 minutes. To get some stick time in the real world set your personal waypoint to your destination and fly HIGH. When you take off out of the warpgate head at a STEEP angle up to 900+ meters. Stay up between 700 and 950 as you are now out of lock-on range and render distance for low-flying aircraft. Honestly you aren't good enough to play with the big boys down there at 50 to 600 meters... they will own you in seconds, you'll get locked-on all the freak'n time, and when you spasm trying to take evasive action you usually end up hitting terrain or other aircraft. Get used to flying around, looking for other air targets, tracking them with out drawing their attention. May take some pop-shots at libs and gals or the occasional high-flying ESF. Make short, tactical, runs from warpgate to destination and back at these high altitudes. Pick your waypoint, fly out at max altitude and level off around 950, once you are within 900m of your target then dive in, take some pop-shots at anything in your kill-zone, and climb right back up to max altitude using your boosters and SUBTLE evasive manouvers to avoid flak, and fly back to the warpgate. Repair... reload... pick a new waypoint (or maybe keep the same one if it wasn't too bad)... repeat. Right now it isn't about trying to be a dog fighter or ace bomber. Get used to fying around the map. Learn where your warpgate is without having to check the map. Learn where major facilities are. Learn major terrain land marks you can use to help identify your location without checking the map all the time. When you make your dive runs you'll be getting practice at evading threats yet you won't be constantly under pressure of threats like if you were below 600 meters. You will encounter other aircraft even at that high altitude and you'll get some practice in there with out worrying about smashing into things. You'll be able to focus more on trying to keep your target in your cross-hairs or at least OUT of their cross-hairs. Those short, tactical, runs have done far more to improve my flying than any cert upgrade. You get more comfortable just flying the darn thing and commanding it instead of always being under pressure from threats in every direction and always reacting poorly to them.
I'm no expert flyer, but I have been flying more and more, especially after buying the vehicle bundle a month ago or so. I can attest to the might of the banshee + pod combo, the banshee will decimate infantry and the pods will murder tanks and let you keep up the fire in hairy situations. But, it is very important to rememebr you're a pure CAS pilot in this setup, as the banshee is atrocious against air and TR pods aren't worth using against heavy air like Libs unless you have support. If there's enemy air in the area, leave them for friendly AA and A2A, if there's enemy air chasing you, don't try to engage, just flee towards the nearest safe area and avoid damage as best you can. Some people might recommend Rotary above Banshee even for CAS, "as it'll let you engage air too, and does more AV damage", but unless you're a really good dogfighter, it's not going to help you mixing your ESF up this way, as you'll lack a lot of the mobility the dogfighter setup offers you and if you engage from the flanks of vehicles, pods will be all you need to destroy them. All you'll do is lower your efficiency as a CAS pilot and encourage you to fight A2A ESFs who will have an advantage on you. As for dogfighting, I suggest watching vids of youtube fliers such as Ironfist LMS, they'll give you tips and tricks for dogfighting manuevers and how to use the terrain to your advantage. Also, of course, rebind keys and adjust your sensitivity. The flight sensitivity default really isn't rapid enough, I think I raised it by 30 but more experienced fliers will probably have raised it higher than that, just experiment to find the highest setting you find comfortable. And seriously, rebind the eject key. I still haven't yet and so many times I've accidentally ejected mid-flight, I'm definitely gonna rebind next time I go on, this last patch reset some of my keybinds so I have no excuses now.
But most of all, just keep at it. As with anything else in life, the more you do it the better you'll get. Just always remember to push yourself and don't be afraid to try new things. Experiment with your maneuvers in VR when you have the time, cut as close to the rocks and trees as you can, fly under them whenever you can, fly through the VR facility itself (the infantry shooting range side, the other side is a bit too low to fly through I think), from multiple angles and at multiple speeds. Eventually you'll have it nailed and you can bring these manuevers onto the Live continents.
You have it easy bro, you have the VR to practice in. What I wouldn't have given for a VR when I was learning to fly.. Make frequent use of it, there's no better place to practice. No cooldown timers, no resources, no enemies, no pressure. As for keybindings, this is all up to user preference and what kind of equipment you're working with. I have a Logitech G600, so I have just about everything I need to fly bound to one of 12 keys on the side of my mouse. Obviously this isn't something everyone is going to be able to do, but at the very least you'll probably want to get a mouse with at least two mouse keys on the side for pitch up and pitch down. As far as what to cert, a lot of that depends on what you're flying and how you like to fly it. I'd recommend playing with different frames and loadouts in the VR and see what works best for you before you put any certs into anything. Hope that helps.
well i must say that planes ARE different than infantry and tanks. so the game physics should be different. and its in the far future, so what's wrong with having planes that behave more like helicopters at the same time?
Tanks ARE different from planes and infantry. So should the game physics be different for them too? Infantry ARE different from planes and tanks. So should the game physics be different for them too? Your argument doesn't justify the game applying different physical rules for planes.
Practice reverse maneuver and barrel roll until you can do them in your sleep, without them, you're gonna suck. No amount of certs will help you. Focus on 'enemies detected' areas at first, then move up to enemy squad(s). If you start practicing in platoon size fights you'll probably end up dead within minutes.
see that makes no sense because planes are flying, in the air, with no obstructions like trees or rocks or terrain. and, as i said, this is the FAR FAR FAR future, so i would almost hope the physics are different from current times
LOL Really, you can't make this stuff up. "Physics in the future [for aircraft only] I hope will be different."
- Never fly alone. - Always engage tanks from behind. Massive bonus damage. - Don't go toe-to-toe with Liberators. Attack from above & use A2A missiles. NEVER fly under them or it's guaranteed insta-death. - Play it safe. Or expect to lose your aircraft.
For beginner pilots great certs to grab are NV scopes (50 certs), Stealth rank 1 (30 certs), and Flares 1 (100 certs). Do you have other specific questions about flying? Want to know what makes the 3 ESF good in their own way? Join me at http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/video-hot-sweaty-reaver-action.118339/
at this point in the argument i dont even know what is going on anymore. im going to end it here, have a nice day. i dont care what you say about me now that i quit the argument, bye
what do you mean by physics. that are different from tanks and infantry that make you not like planes
Don't listen to these people talking about A2A missiles... A2G rocket pods are capable A2A missiles with enough practice... ones that are actually effective enough to take down gals & liberators in a timely fashion.
If i can ask a question to those that fly please. Do you use a keyboard and mouse or is it easier to use a x box pad?
Bear in mind though that A2A Missiles are better than Pods in 2 things: - Targeting fleeing aircrafts that are too far away for your nose gun to be effective.(very useful vs Faster ESFs) - Taking on Air-to-Air Dalton Liberators. You want to kill them from a distance, lock-on timers are shorter vs Libs, and you DON'T want to tangle with a A2A Dalton Lib.
I have no problem with planes. I have a problem with the game applying unique rules to planes. The game models physical laws like gravity and momentum, but if you've ever seen ESF's do somersaults and flip around on a dime, or Libs fly upside down despite having no thrusters to keep them aloft in that way, you realize planes don't follow the model.
well i guess thats your problem. i personally dont like the people that disect the game physics and call stuff out as unrealistic. just play the game, its fun. AND unless you fly yourself a lot ESFs turning on a dime should not affect you at all, now that rocket pods are useless. and libs flying upside down is a good thing, it means your safe because the main gun is pointing away from you on the ground
