I do not like flying ESF because of V-Thrust and Airbreak.

This again goes back the problems with a combined A2A & A2G airframe, you cannot balance one without affecting the other, it is just a plain nightmare.

The burden of proof is on you. You are the one claiming it is awkward. Learning to RM takes 10 minutes at most. There is nothing awkward about having to learn something. Learning to read or drive isn't awkward on its own, you make it awkward for yourself. There is a difference.

So no arguments at all? This is getting old ... What are you even trying to say? I mean I don't wanna put words in your mouth. Right now it sounds that everything you need to learn must be awkward. You know, whole Planetside 2 is awkward... Computer is awkward, writing is awkward, speaking is awkward.

Poor boy, your whole life must be awkward.

Don't fly it.. Problem solved.

I like how the airgame in PS2 is completely different from all other games and makes a tremendous difference in air combats.

Especially when all these people who think they're good pilots from BF3 and such come here and have their bums handed to them because banking maneuvers are completely new things to them as well as having to avoid Libs belly FOV...

The only thing I would change is perhaps have the lib have the same afterburner mechanics as ESFs that is when you're in hover mode and engage afterburners, you're pushed upwards rather than forward (since the afterburner jets are in your wings)

Here's one of my favorite videos from back in the day. You see several examples of a situation with the enemy on his six being reversed very quickly a few different ways, while flying a 109 which is not a good turnfighter.
Not all fights take 5 minutes to reverse the situation. It depends on the skill level of the pilots and the circumstances.




Here's a great video of a 109 vs spitfire fight where he stops throughout the video to tell you what he's doing and why.

It's a good example of many elements that make the fighting more indepth, skillful, and tactical, but is only a small sampling of it.

1. We see how asymetric strengths and weaknesses in aircraft can be leveraged to fight to your strengths.
The spitfire can out-turn the 109, bleeds less energy in turning, and their top speeds are comparable.
The 109 can out-climb the spitfire, and out-roll the spitfire.
Generally the spitfire is a much easier plane to fly. The 109 requires more knowledge and skill to be effective with because of the kinds of tactics and aiming that are necessary for success. You don't have the luxury of turning with a target until you set up a close range trailing shot from their six, as you can in the spitfire against most planes. The 109, however, if played properly with an eye towards not losing too much speed and altitude, has the potential to slap around a spitfire like a cat playing with a mouse. The spitfire is not helpless against a skilled 109, however. If flown well they can avoid being put into this position, and can coax or force the 109 into a turnfight eventually.

2. We see how realistic physics modeling can have a major impact on tactics when it comes to energy state to gain an advantage, using stalls to your advantage, and how having a poor energy state can make it difficult to get and keep your guns on target.

3. We see the importance of aim skill as a way of ending the fight during your windows of advantage, before the enemy gets a chance to reverse the situation. This is why flight skill, tactical skill, and game knowledge, while all being equally important to the success we see in this video, won't mean much if you don't have the aim skill to take advantage of it.

That's the point. Flying towards your enemy to close the gap doesn't constitute there being a mix of forward flight tactics and hover tactics.

To say that a pilot incorporates forward flight tactics implies that they make a choice to reorient their aircraft's direction in ways that minimize speed loss and maintain forward momentum, as opposed to bleeding off all your speed to get yourself reoriented as quickly as possible.

However, those kinds of decisions don't need to be made in PS2, because forward speed has no impact on your combat effectiveness. There's no disadvantage to reverse maneuvers that bleed off all your speed. This has more to do with a lack of fidelity of the plane physics than it has to do with the design of the craft.(ie. Maintaining speed or altitude should matter based on their design, because of the type of craft they are, but it doesn't because the physics involved aren't modeled well enough).

You can evade and fire in PS2 without the need for conserving your forward speed. You only need to use forward flight maneuvers when you need to chase someone down. Otherwise every fight will end up in a hover duel because of reverse maneuvers combined with a flight model that requires no energy management.

Shallow games can be subjectively fun. My issue was not that a shallow game can't be fun, but that some here seem to think PS2's air combat isn't more shallow than a flight sim. That's not true.

However, whether or not this is the best or funnest way of having air combat is not really the argument I was trying to have originally - Because I am totally open to the idea of a flight model that behaves very different based on sci-fi tech.

My issue with the PS2 flight model was that it's not modeled realistically enough to be considered sci-fi. It's just fantasy. My thrusters point in one direction but my aircraft moves in another. It makes no sense.
If you want your aircraft to behave this way then develop enough of an understanding of aerodynamics and aircraft design that you can reasonably model something that is capable of these kinds of maneuvers.

I do believe the aircombat would be a lot more interesting if they constrained the behavior of the aircraft according to higher fidelity physics principles. It do believe that depth would be a lot more interesting for the game and funner in the long run.

Overall skill can be measured by the amount of time it takes you to become effective, and master it.
A shallow game is unlikely to require more skill because there is less you need to master, and less variables to consider while playing.
The more realistic a flight sim is the longer it takes to master. It requires you hone your skills to new levels, have greater knowledge, and manage more variables at once.

Point a reaver strait up, holding S, while equipped with hover stability 3. Your thrusters are pointed 90 degrees to the side, but you will float there maintaining your altitude, moving slightly in the opposite direction of your thrusters.
There's nothing holding it up at that point, based on the position of it's thrusters.
This shows that the flight model of the ESFs is very arbitrary, having nothing really to do with the design of the aircraft or physics.

This makes about as much sense as a tank that launches over a small hill to fly for 200 meters before landing. It just makes no sense based on the type of vehicle it is or proper physics.

My only expectations is physics. I wouldn't have a problem with the ESFs if their behavior came out of the physics of the aircraft's design instead of being contrary to the physics of the aircraft design.

I already said it and I'll say it again: I'm pretty sure that this game is fun for hardcore sim fans. The other 99% of players will find it quite boring and incredibly slow, even though the aircrafts move faster than in PS2. PS2 is NOT primarily about "flying", it's about "shooting". I don't WANT a flight simulation where I shoot at enemies every few minutes. I primarily want to SHOOT, that's why I play SHOOTERS. It's the same reason why Ghost Recon sucks for me. Moving around for 10 Minutes for a 10 second shootout? No thanks. It may be oh-so tactical and require sooo many skills, but in the end the actual shooting is quite boring.
If you want a game that focuses on flying you shouldn't play PS2 for that.

Yes. Still it's not enough to just do a RM and you're fine. There are situations where hover doesn't help you, where you have to go forward. And you have to know when and how. That's what I wanted to point out.

You know, I'm starting to have enough of your arrogance. Only because a game doesn't have as much tactic it's not automatically more "shallow". I agree that tactics are less important in PS2's airgame, that does not mean that's it's more shallow or requires less skill. The fact that you can't rely on superior tactics can mean that it's even more important to be good at other skills.
If you look at competitive gaming you'll see a lot of relatively simple games and very very few complicated ones. Sometimes less is more.
Your preference for tactical games is subjective. These games are in no way better or require more skill because of tactics. You may enjoy them more and that's ok, but don't come over here and try to lecture people - who just happen to have a different taste in gaming - about the lower amount of skill the games you don't like as much require. That's ******** no matter how often you repeat yourself here.

Maybe we have grav-stabilizers? I don't know, show a bit of imagination. This is a game ffs. It doesn't matter that we don't have realistic physics. It doesn't matter that we can run and jump without ever getting tired. It doesn't matter that we can eat 10 bullets, eat a medkit, eat 10 more bullets, eat a medkit and again eat 10 bullets without ever bleeding out. It doesn't matter that we don't limp when getting hit in the legs. It doesn't matter that a headshot from a .50 doesn't kill you when hit in the chest. It doesn't matter that you can survive a fall from 200m just by equiping a freaking implant. It doesn't matter that tanks slide around like they were always on slippery ice and it doesn't matter that aircrafts don't behave like you would expect with RL physics in mind.

I almost always find myself alone at high altitude in Warthunder, because it takes longer to reach high altitude than the map lasts.

I guess there's no point in researching the TA-152 now is there. Actually there's no point at all in playing the game.

TLDR (again);

I wan't a flight sim.

I find hover is the thing that makes it hard in larger battles. I can rm into cover np, but at the end of the day I do no damage and have little impact on larger battles.

I find when I keep at full speed in and out of battles I do more damage with less dying.

I also think A2G damage has been nerfed to uselessness because air can hover and farm.

Personally I would prefer to get rid of hover and get more powerful weapons.

Lastly, the idea is to make it easier for casual players to get into this game since more players is the core of this game and that means more money for more development after the ps4 version comes out and more of a chance ps2 last as long as ps1 or even longer. Having a flight model where it takes hundreds of hours to learn to RM and aim is going to drive casual players away since most players have other stuff to do. RM is easy enough, but it takes dedication to learn how to lead targets.

Again this is just decending into ad hominem insults rather than reasonable debate.

However if it weren't awkward there's be nothing to get over, there'd be no issue, which is exactly the point - why retain the awkwardness over losing it but retaining the useage?

If it were not awkward everyone would be able to do it straight away without having to see it or even know about it, because it would be straight forward.


At the end of the day an arguement about "what is awkward" is meaningless and point, it is simply a case of accessiblity, and with changes Air would be (and most importantly could be) much more accessible without the current awkwardness wall.

You must have misread what I said.

Having the ability to give yourself a net advantage is what does add tactical depth.

Even games that start out even, like chess, give you the ability to gain a net advantage by setting up advantageous positions or knocking out key enemy pieces while preserving your own. The reason you can gain a net advantage in chess is because it's so complex, with so many variables involved, that your opponent will eventually make a poor decision that you can exploit if your game knowledge and analytical skill is higher.

The reason that most tactics in Quake revolve around controlling spawnpoints is because this is really the only way the game gives you to gain a major net advantage over your opponent, by denying them weapons and giving you more of them. Attacking from high ground and having cover to jump behind does give you more options, but the consequences for attacking an enemy in that position are not as great, and it's usually easier to find ways to nullify that advantage. Plus, in the grand scheme of tactical considerations, having control over the best weapon spawns is going to give you a greater net advantage in killing power than having superior positions will.

A net advantage implies you have something the enemy doesn't.

Let me put it this way: If every player started with a BFG in quake and unlimited ammo, then having a BFG would impart no net advantage to you in the fight. The enemy would be able to do the same thing to you with equal potential.

But cover is not linear in the same way as giving everyone a BFG would be linear and equalizing.
Cover benefits are usually asymmetrical, and you have the ability to make decisions that will result in you gaining or losing a net advantage over the opponent.
Rarely is cover something that both sides can utilize equally in a way that gives no net advantage, and even if that is the case there's always the possibility that one player can change what they are doing in order to gain an advantage over the other (by attacking from a different angle, using a different weapon, or using different tactics and teamwork).

This is not the case when it comes to something that both players can do equally without any negative consequences - like jump dodging in a shooter, or maneuvers aimed at evading fire in an ESF.

Tribes is a bit different, and requires more tactics than a typical arcade shooter, for two reasons: First because you can gain a significant net advantage based on height and speed advantages, so you want to fight from a superior speed/height state and do things that preserve that momentum.
Second; because your limited energy pool forces you to make good decisions about how and when you choose to use it, which means that tactical decision making matters a lot more in determining the outcome of a 1vs1 fight even if neither started with a net advantage.

The increased depth of tribes doesn't come just because it's harder to hit a moving target. It comes from the tactical decision making inherent in it's design.

As I already illustrated for you once wiith an example about a game where all you do is shoot at a static target; Even if it were tremendously difficult to learn to compensate for the variables like random aimsway, that doesn't mean there's any tactical depth involved. Even if the target were moving and you had to account for bullet lead on top of it, there's still not tactical depth/decision making involved in just standing there and hitting a target. It's just rote learning of how to compensate for your aim in a very quick way.

Your statement is so far off that it's stunning.
You will never, ever, win a battle in world war 2 online if all your infantry players never use cover. Cover is absolutely a requirement for victory.

Getting an occasionally kill by random chance doesn't mean cover isn't required, especially if you die 40 times before you get a kill and lose the town in the process - That's not victory. So cover IS required for victory.

Go try to tell soldiers in a real war that cover isn't necessary for victory and they'll mutiny against you for making them charge blindly across open fields against entrenched positions - Cover can be the one factor that determines victory or defeat if the circumstances are right. That's what caused the stalemate in world war 1. Machine guns would not have been as difficult to defeat for the attackers if the defending machine guns weren't also able to entrench in cover.
A realistically modeled shooter has all the same necessities for cover. Armies in world war 1 discovered that they needed to develop more complex tactics to overcome new defensive firepower combined with cover. You are required to out-think your opponent to create a more equal situation, or even an advantageous situation.

Given that obvious truth about the necessity of cover for victory, it is stunning to me that you can't recognize that. It shows you either have no real knowledge of what is required to succeed in a realistic shooter, or you have very poor analytical skills when it comes to assessing what goes into victory.
Either way, if you are really a professional game designer, it would be to your benefit to have an open mind and learn something here - Because you don't have it all figured out, and your viewpoint is based on incomplete information. When you think cover isn't a necessity for a realistic shooter, and you think a realistic flight sim is just about turning in endless circles, it shows you really have no idea what you're talking about.

Regardless of the variables, your example was still fundamentally flawed because it assumed that aiming is somehow less important in a flight sim compared with PS2 because other variables are involved (and therefor, you wrongly assume that you can eliminate aim skill from a flight sim and still do ok because more things matter to victory).

Your premise was wrong, as I explained: You can't be effective in a flight sim without aim skill, even if you are a master at everything else. Aiming is just as, if not more, necessary and difficult in a flight sim compared with hoverduels in PS2.
It's so difficult that it's the reason modern fighters have aim lead calculators for their guns. It's why in WW2 that the most common tactic was to get at point blank behind your enemy so you had near zero degrees of deflection with limited bullet drop.
What compounds the difficulty of leading aircraft properly at a distance with high degrees of deflection is the fact that you often have only a limited window to fire, so you don't have the luxury of sitting there spraying constantly for half a minute until your bullets finally hit.

This is where your stark ignorance on the subject is exposed.
Even the other people in this thread who vehemently support PS2's air model don't try to pretend that PS2 is 95% in line with what is required to succeed in a flight sim. That statement is about as stunning as claiming that cover isn't required in a realistic shooter.

In PS2 you don't have any of the tactical decision making that comes from gaining and losing advantages based on position and energy, or the variables of different planes strengths and weaknesses.
That brings in a world of depth that requires advanced knowledge of aircraft, tactics, and requires the incorporation of more teamwork to succeed.

PS2 has stripped out all that so that the only thing that is left is aiming and evasive maneuvers. Both of which are no less important in a realistic flight sim, but they probably only seem more important to you in PS2 because they are the only thing that really matters and you spend more time doing it.

It's more shallow because there are less variables and tactical decisions involved in determining victory.
There's no way to gain a net advantage over your opponent if they see you coming. Every battle is trivial to equalize, which is why it turns into a hoverduel to see who can aim better.

Actual flight physics would be nice. They'd add some strategic depth to dogfighting that amounts to more than "reverse turn to win'. You know, split-s's, immelmans, and lag-rolls? The stuff that makes dogfighting fun?

Got br100, decided to learn the RM.

Learned it, hate it.

It's called getting skill. Oh, it is accessible, just go to the terminal and spawn an ESF. You can shoot / fly. Noone said you'd be wrecking others right away. Same as infantry, spawn, run, shoot, die / kill.

Your arguments make no sense. Basically you want things easy (not "awkward"). Well, some of us like a skillful gameplay.

I used to be a BF3 pro-kinda dogfighter. There were a lot of maneuvers, speed control for tightest turn and situational awareness. Of course it was no flight simulator either. And it wasn't any simple circlejerking unless 2 noobs fought each other.

In PS2 there is a lot of maneuvers too, a lot of them start with RM, there is a lot of tactics involved, if there was no tactics, there wouldn't be any people going on solo killstreaks.

@Goretzu, @Stargazer86
You want it to be a flight simulator? Or closer to it? Remove hover mode? Well, go play flight simulator, no offense.

Funny thing if it was a simulator kind of flying, NOTHING would change. Elite pilots would stay elite and wreck people who don't wanna get better.

I personally think it's stupid that ESF's get VTOL's and fly so slowly. Just make them regular fighter jets because you'd never see an F35 hovering over a take dropping bombs like that. Only the Scythe should get to hover and should only do so for a few seconds. The rest of them should just be strictly air-air dogfighters and strafers. VTOL fighting is the dumbest and most awkward thing I've seen this game.

This is precisely what I've been saying: PS2 aircombat is basically just about pointing and shooting at each other.
There are no real tactics you use to gain or leverage an advantage over each other.

Some people don't seem to be able to recognize that about PS2, and think it's just as depth filled and tactical as a realistic flight sim. At least we can be in agreement then about what PS2 really is.

However, you are also wrong if you think a game can't require more tactics and still be face paced. It depends. Some game modes in warthunder can be incredibly fast paced with lots of action. You can dive in and turn and burn, maintaining situational awareness while you do all kinds of maneuvers in an effort to get kills without getting killed in the process. If you are good you can get many kills before you die, and sometimes this more reckless style will help achieve the objective easier for your team - but if you want a more sure way to fly you'll be more methodical and fight from advantage. In that case you're trading time for security.

You don't need to point out the obvious: That one needs to go forward in order to chase an enemy that is fleeing, or go forward in order to shoot at an enemy that is far away.

That doesn't mean the game incorporates forward flight tactics.

Depth and skill are not synonyms.

Depth is a measure of the how much beyond the surface must be understood in order to master the game. The increased variables mean decision making is more complex and indepth. This is why games with depth are interesting for very long times, because you can play them for years and still feel like you are learning more, encountering new scenerios, and improving your ability to respond to them.

Skill would be particular actions that require practice to master their execution. A target shooting game might require a lot of practice to hit the bullseye, but eventually you will get bored because there's no depth to it.

PS2's aircombat requires a lot of aim and twitch reaction skill, but that doesn't mean it has a lot of depth in terms of tactical decision making.

So, yes, it can be both a game that is more shallow than a flight sim but still requires skill. Not necessarily more skill, because you might spend years learning to master deflection shooting in a flight sim.

I wouldn't call Starcraft or Dota simple.
Many competitive arcade style fighting games aren't simple either.
With the amount of variables involved they require a lot of decision making that are aimed at gaining and maintaining an advantage, and require you to draw on a very deep pool of game knowledge in order to make the right decisions.

Saying a game requires more skill or tactics is not a subjective exercise. It can be stated very objectively that PS2's aircombat requires less tactical decision making (remember tactics is about gaining and maintaining a net advantage) than a realistic flight sim.

I enjoy both types of games, and have always played both kinds. I enjoy past paced and simple shooters as much as hardcore realistic ones.

However, I find PS2's air combat to be disappointing because I expected more tactics to be involved.

If someone has never tasted an air game with more air combat tactics then I don't know that this would bother them.

I'm the one saying you should use more imagination if you want a plane that flies like this - Come up with a reasonable sci-fi basis for why it moves this way, and model your aircraft to correspond to that.
Don't give it thrusters that point one direction while the plane flies in another direction. That's just a lack of imagination.

Part of what makes sci-fi good or bad is the depth to which they use their imagination to craft reasonable possibilities. Otherwise it's just fantasy. Fantasy doesn't care about the how, they just do whatever they want and say "well, it's not real, so don't worry about it".

It all does matter, because it alters the way the game plays.

The fact that we don't have more realistic plane physics in PS2 is the reason we don't see more tactical depth.

I disagree. You execute the reverse maneuver and shoot at each other. Whoever is better at aiming wins. That's the extent of 'tactics' as far as PS2 is concerned. Sure, learning how to aim and RM at the same time requires practice and a certain type of skill, but in comparison to actual flight sims it's woefully lacking in the 'tactics' department.

Sure, bad pilots would stay bad and good pilots would stay good, but flying itself would be more interesting. There'd be more to it than "Reverse maneuver. Shoot. Rinse and repeat." And no, there's nothing more to it than that. It just doesn't hold a candle to what actual flight sims throw at you. Which is disappointing to me at least. The air game in Planetside is just stone cold boring.

Though to be fair, I hated the air game in Planetside 1 as well.

I get what you mean. But for example, your "AIM" depends a lot on your enemy's movement. If someone has worse aim than you, but better movement, he still may win, he'll make the fight longer, but will land more bullets - since you don't move so good.

If your movement and thinking is even better, you can rush in and position yourself such way, that your enemy won't be able to use his perfect aim, you'll confuse him as where he should RM and where to look. You can position yourself such way, that enemy loses hover, which gives you some advantage.

In BF3 it was about who was smarter and performed right maneuvers at the right time, with use of EMC flares that would hide you from an enemy's radar. In that sense - BF3 took a lot more tactics than AIM. So I understand what you mean, but removing hover would mean a total change of flying in the game. And in that sense PS2 is unique.

PS I also wanna say that to understand these things would take to fly at that level. You can't possibly grasp to full extent what flying involves until you've done it.

Lets turn it around then, if as you claim there is absolutely no awkwardness in the current system (I completely disagree, but for the sake of argument lets pretend I do).

Then where is the issue with making it more straight forward still?