[Video] Sky Knight Bushido - Air Game thoughts

No worries. Most of the information that you get out of sound can be compensated for by experience. I don't need any indicator to know I'm being hit by flak or by a walker, they feel different. And there's already some visuals for that, so it's not that bad once you get used to it.

But yes, being able to hear random vehicles hidden somewhere is definetly a plus, but most of the time you'll see them anyways. But it sure can help to have sound. As far as headphones being the answer to all, I don't think it matter as much in the air as when you're on the ground.

Rushing only works when you have the drop on your enemy, not when you are being chased.

Actually it would give inexperienced players more room. They aren't stuck to learn one specific move, and even if they master the move they still have to go up against the experience of the players who learned it before them and were kicking their butt anyway.
By adding new maneuvers the inexperienced players can become master in a specific field, a field that said experienced players might not be as capable of defeating. It also means that new players don't have to look for those one or two highly specific, unintuitive maneuvers we have now.
Even if the inexperienced player didn't have the skill to defeat the more experienced opponent, the option for escape would be present, rather than "well I don't have the skill to match this guy, now I'm dead since the viable skills in the game are both used for attack and defense and since I'm not as good as my opponent I lose either way".

Dodging, rolling and such... While in VTOL. Even so the game is clearly in need for an expansion of the viable maneuvers. The standard method of flying for new players is fighter-style combat rather than VTOL, and they invariably get shot down. There should be just as much aircraft as ground vehicles available in any fight, but there just isn't because of a massively unfun gameplay to get into as average player.

I'm saying add in a suite of viable low skill-floor moves with high skill-ceilings (rather than just the few high skill-floor moves with higher skill-ceiling) that have a chance of helping you escape, but even if your opponent guesses wrong it's no guarantee you'll escape.

Best scenario would be that both players would need a series of good/bad guesses to escape/keep the enemy in their crosshairs. So the one being chased won't escape just because he got lucky once, but he'll have to learn to dodge the enemy several times to get rid of him completely, each time he manages to make his enemy guess wrong he'll have an easier time to make him guess wrong again.
And it wouldn't be a black&white deal either, so if the chaser guesses left while you go up you get less extra room compared to the chaser guessing left and you going right. So it would (in this tiny very limited example) mean that only 1 in 4 choices gets you the desired effect, 2 in 4 choices don't help you or him and 1 in 4 choices means the chaser gets a wonderful shot on you.

Air needs a sonic boom function for Speeder airframe. Like if you hold throttle all the way up for 5 seconds and then use your afterburner it puts you into supersonic mode so you can run from almost anything, or catch up to almost anything.

Make it so to go super sonic with hover frame you gotta hold full throttle up for about 7 seconds and then use your after burner for about 3 seconds.

So racer frame can supersonic in 5 seconds and hover can supersonic in 10 seconds.

Bushido, chivalry, honor, concepts symptomatic of idiocy and primitive thinking.

Kill the enemy. By any means necessary.

I like the concept. Any specific ideas on what to implement for this on a changes and mechanics level?

If the player wants every game to look the same, that's literally not my or anybody's problem honestly. I really don't care "what they are used to". If there was an actual impedement to their learning, that I do care. Because I do want the most of them to be able to have fun flying. but crying because the game isn't a carbon copy of every game out there?

Primitive -> (uses a ps4)
LEL

Good come back! No explanation, no facts, just stating your completely false opinion! Good job!

Let's see about a developer conversation:
Dev 1: "Hey dude, I created this game and I only put in one weapon: A sniper rifle."
Dev 2: "Sounds weird. Shouldn't you introduce more types of weapons so that players who enjoy different types of combat can play the game? This system you thought off only benefits the snipers"
Dev 1: "No, every new weapon can only be used by the experienced snipers, so it's better keeping it this way".

You are actively opposing adding new ways for players to combat each other based on "but experienced players will be able to use them too!"
Well so? Every mechanic can be used by experienced players, does that automatically mean they will A: be better at it and B: Will be capable of keeping up with every new maneuver that their opponent can use? Your logic means that we shouldn't have added any weapon or ability other than the first that were in game because any extra "can be used by experienced players to kill inexperienced players who would have no chance of escape".

Currently we have VTOL combat and RM that can help you. If you are worse at either, you automatically lose because the options to try and escape your enemy... Are all based on VTOL combat again, since doing high-speed maneuvers will help your enemy get closer and a good shot on you in 95% of the cases.
By adding new maneuvers you add more ways to play the game. Which is a winner for both the experienced and inexperienced players. By making sure new maneuvers can be used for multiple goals, such as trying to escape, engaging, changing from being chased to chasing your opponent etc you can make sure players have a larger chance of escaping.

I understand it just fine, it is a defensive and offensive maneuver rolled in one.

No the player does not want every game to look the same, but they want elements to be predictable. Creating a game with ESDF to move instead of WASD is "unique" but that does not mean it's better. Creating a game with completely different shooting mechanics does not have to be better.
Creating an air-game with VTOL combat is great! Cutting away every single high-speed combat maneuver isn't because then you are suddenly limiting the game for no reason but "uniqueness", even though you already have uniqueness in adding VTOL combat. The original plan for air combat was that you could do high-speed combat and the VTOL was some fun tacked on mostly because they couldn't make sure the ESF could land with a runway.

Omni-directional afterburner.

It gives you a massive new range of maneuvers to pull off, without having to change the current air-physics to allow high-speed combat to be useful without afterburner.
You can pull off stunts like breaking much faster, going straight backwards, doing the RM while moving at 200KM/H, forwards maneuver would become available (RM moves you in a circle forwards and upwards while facing down, FM would move you forwards and downwards while facing up) and the side-ways afterburn could either move you side-ways for a dodge or give you extreme turning capabilities for U-turns.

Since you are expending afterburn fuel for maneuvers rather than escaping you have to use the maneuver to get at an advantageous position, preferably forcing your enemy to look for you and having to turn a lot before catching up to you. If your enemy has made a mistake he'll need extra fuel to compensate (or even look for you!), if the mistake wasn't that big he can still keep chasing without expending extra fuel, if he guesses right he probably needs less fuel since he's chasing and can cut some distance if he reacted quickly enough.

You realise if that existed, new players would get turbodunked SO HARD they would not even look up anymore. That would widen the skillgap ten thousand fold.

I don't even know what to think. This is literally only adding to the skill ceiling, and making the skill floor higher. You're weird demigan

No it's not. Keep trying though, I'm curious to see how many guesses it'll take you to figure out what it actually is. Without any kind of jedi non-sense added on top of it by people who've never flown farther than the first tree/rock outside the warpgate.

Uhh, no. My machine specs and benchmark are in my signature.....

And honor codes are indeed primitive. They all have their origins in stratified social class and caste systems.

I don't know what you think, but a differentiated combat system does not equal "experienced players instantly win harder".

Yes there will be more ways for experienced players to attack new players, but it's better than leaving it as it is guaranteeing that an experienced player will trump an inexperienced player, because what you happily gloss over is the fact that inexperienenced players would have more options to become better. Given time the difference between what's experienced and inexperienced will fade, and players will be experienced in different fields. You are assuming that experienced players would instantly be masters at these new maneuvers, which is also the biggest fallacy since the experienced players would first stick with what they know since it'll still give them the biggest advantage, while the inexperienced players would still try out the maneuvers they think should work... And now they would work! They would actually get the jump on the learning curve of these new maneuvers. This gives the inexperienced players ways to get experienced without having to learn the exact maneuvers of their opponents which only pays off when you finally rival their experience in it.

Also, you are weird Jawarisin.

Sad deflection method is sad. It's not a guess, it's the truth.

And so do manners, and so does education, and so does civilisation. But I guess you prefer the good 'ol non-primitive "au naturel" rock smashing right? That doesn't have any origin in civilisation.

You dug your own grave - and a deep one at that.

You'd be increasing the skill floor, and raising the skill ceiling. Yes that does mean the gap between hardcore and casual players will widen. And yes, new players will just get turbodunk'd. There's plenty of evasive ways right now, but new players don't even get a chance to use most of them cause they got no clue and dont care. The same thing would happen, except now experienced players would basically become humming-bird like vehicles that would wreck players even more.

I could easily see an experienced player dunking 10 players with your system. Something which is not possible right now.


As far as the reverse maneuver. We both know I've flown way more than you, and you only have that false idea you created yourself. Did you invent yourself a demiganland too while I was away? Because you sure seem to be getting some ideas with literally nothing to back it up.

No, manners are useful in civilized society, as is education, but honor is not.

Honor is a series of assumptions governing hostile behavior that intends to preserve a power structure against intrusion by "less than honorable" hostile behaviors, namely perpetrated by people considered undesirable. Honor codes are all patriarchal and tend to enhance the brutality of the already brutal exercise of war.

When you said I had dug a grave I'm afraid you didn't notice the hole you started out in.

Gotcha.

I agree moving the vector of the thrust away from a free swinging engine is a great way to make flying more intuitive: players simply control the position of the engine or the thrust.

But in your model, how does one actually control the different vectors? Is it individual hotkeys? If so, give us a possible map layout.

I had posted a while back on manual control of engine position, that (1) giving players the options to toggle the thrust from hover to flight, (2) see in 1st (image inside cockpit) and 3rd (add this to Scythe, others have it already) person the exact position of that engine, (3) *maybe* be able to lock it (or otherwise set via hotkey) in positions between full hover and flight. Maybe more, can't remember off hand.

I also think they should add an in game center crosshair option for 3rd person. It's an auto disadvantage for any ignorant new player vs. someone with an overlay. It's silly not to support in-game.

The skill floor would be lower, since players will be much quicker to find a method that works for them.

Yes the skill ceiling would be higher, but since there's more methods to counter them reaching the skill ceiling gives you less power for each bit of skill, which is exactly how a skill curve needs to be: Every skill earned when you are at the low end needs to earn you more effectiveness than skill earned at the high end. This gives a better sense of progress and balance for the average player vs experienced players.

Yes, that does mean that the gap between hardcore and casual players will be closed up, since players would have a viable combat strategy sooner and their viable combat strategy does not have to be the same one as their opponent, creating experienced players in different fields and tactics, which is good for the game especially since players will quickly have not just one, but multiple combat strategies lined up. This means that an experienced player with 14 viable strategies will still have to choose one against the 3 viable strategies of an inexperienced player... But those 3 viable strategies are viable and can be used to some effect. Even if the experienced player can switch to a strategy that works against the one the inexperienced player has chosen there does not have to be a guarantee the inexperienced player is automatically dead... Which is the case now.

Whatever happens, the expansion will be better than the current system, because the current system is already the pinnacle of making sure experienced players trump inexperienced one's.

And yes, new players will suddenly have ways to combat experienced players, especially in the first weeks and months because the experienced players will be sticking to the combat fields they still have an advantage in, rather than starting from square one alongside with the inexperienced players. Therefore the inexperienced players will have time to develop a different combat strategy, get ahead of the current experienced players and equalize the playing ground between experienced and inexperienced.

They might not have a clue, but they definitely care. That's why they stop flying and the air is mostly dominated by skyknights and gank squads.

No they wouldn't.

That's because you think that experienced players would instantly master every single maneuver and inexperienced players would remain inexperienced, even though the opposite would be true.

"I've flown more than you" isn't a good argument. Hey how about this: LA carbines can kill tanks in about 4 shots.
Can you deny that? Well I have more experience in LA's! So I am right!
(funny thing is, theoretically it's possible)

Anyone would simply point out that my experience means nothing if my statement is incorrect. And I am doing the same to you: You haven't even said what it's supposed to be and just say that I am wrong because you don't like the truth, then say "well I have experience flying!" and pray to whatever twisted god you have that it's enough to convince someone. I stated the truth: RM is both a defensive and offensive maneuver rolled into one, as it's capable of doing both at the same time (and separately).