Was in the test server last night with a few people and we were tooling around a bit to see how worthy air to air this thing will be. Granted 35 min of gameplay on a brand new aircraft to everyone is far from proper testing at first glance the thing seemed powerful and fun to fly. Air to air- Its power seemed to come from the shooting angle that the default nose gun has. At first I was flying it like a lib and couldn't track the aircraft my gunner was shooting then I realized how high the weapon could shoot on the vertical axis If i was level. I began to dog fight the reaver like I was another esf attempting to ram him which allowed the gunner to be on target just fine and I could just focus on making the revaer evade rather then shoot me. Its maneuverability seemed very good with the evasiveness frame and once we figured **** it out we were able kill the reaver. We had 2 guys repairing and 1 guy gunning. An even crazyer set up would be to have a heavy on each side with lockons. It seemed like its biggest weakness is its air to air combat at range. An ESF making it a point to keep its distance will be ******* hard to deal with. Additionally an esf who decides to run will be able to do so with ease which is where the lockons come in. I was told (i personally didn't try lockons) that it was pretty easy to track the airplane if I flew steady and get a lock. In the end the esf is FAR greater then the valk at air to air but the valk didn't seem as helpless as I expected. If you get in close with it and it has a capable crew you will have your work cut out for you I believe. Air to ground - While I admit I didn't try to do any low speed maneuvering or shooting ground targets Its ability to fly pretty quickly in its "hover" mode over top of bases in circular motions made me think this thing could be the new lib for farming infantry. This will be a hard target to hit with rocket launchers for sure so if the guns aren't bad and the gunner has decent tracking accuracy it will be able to do some damage to infantry on the ground for sure. I suspect flak will be able to easily keep them away/kill them since their health seemed pretty low. Biggest complaint: Its flying characteristics doesn't match with the other aircraft as far as hovering goes. If you are landed and tap space and while holding S hoping to take off slowly and hover you'll notice the aircraft will fly forward at a pretty good speed. Since I was mainly focused on seeing how it did in air to air combat I didn't pay attention to it that much. As as a result I never did actually figure out how to make the thing hover with zero (or very minimal) forward momentum. All I did was fly forward when I tried to hover. I would have crashed so many times had I not been in the warp gate with invulnerability. I was bouncing off everything either trying to land or take off slowly/hover around and I'm not exactly a new pilot. The only way I could actually land the thing was using analog throttle. I hope they fix this...
Well, she got banned from Osgeard, and there was a ton of drama with her father, but it was well worth the ride.
Put this in the PTS area, attention seeker. *Edit* Fine I'll bite. It's a helicopter. That is why it doesn't fly like the other craft. It reminds me of a Hind if anything. It feels just a little too soft.
the reason the Valk flies Forward is very simple. it's artificial horizon is calibrated to be at 0° when the noes Looks down about 15°
