[Suggestion] Jet Aircraft

I'm one of those pilots who doesn't really like dogfighting in a futuristic hybrid gunship. Players like me want a real dogfight with boom-and-zoom tactics and actual turn-fights, or perhaps the chance to intercept a group of transports. For this, we need actual jet aircraft.

Fighter Jet
Fast, agile, and balanced specifically for air-to-air combat. Very limited in air-to-ground capabilities. Still capable of hovering for VTOL capability, but is incredibly sluggish and incapable of proper combat while doing so. Very lightly armored and vulnerable to hard-hitting weaponry.

Attack Jet
less agile than an attack jet, but better suited for air-to-ground combat. Equipped with a tailgun for some airborne teamwork. Also a VTOL, but suffers from the same sluggishness as the fighter.

Bomber
Very sluggish, very expensive, very situational, and balanced for one thing: anti-zerging.

So don't play a futuristic game then? If you like traditional turning-maneuver based dogfights there's loads of games out there that already do this well, Battlefield and especially War Thunder. No need to try and reinvent the wheel here.

I get what you want but i dont see them doing that much work on the air part game we have the vtol ground attacker and the lib is suppose to be the bomber but i really doubt they add any fixed wing fast mover

Great idea, Please add more air. More targets to mow down for hoover-framed ESFs.

Perhaps your dissatisfaction with the ''futuristic hybrid gunship'' (s) are simply because you have not (perhaps for that reason) played them enough? Now I don't what ''boom-and-zoom tactics and actual turn-fights'' are supposed to mean but let me tell you what the game offers: customized loadouts.

Fighter jet: Take an ESF with extended afterburner fuel capacity (you can fly fast over half the continent) and a nosecannon, either the one with a large magazine but little DPS or small magazine but high DPS (specialized for A2A). The ESF already has VTOL and is lightly armored, and otherwise fits your description.

Attack yet: corresponds to a liberator.

Bomber: Cert out a galaxy with rocket pods on both wings.

Rather than create alternative aircraft, just make sure the current ESF are capable of this type of combat. Rather than the niche "hover combat plus reverse maneuver" that completely and utterly dominates every facet of the aircraft game, a larger set of maneuvers would benefit the air-game immensely.

Its called vectored thrust, and even exists to some degree today

EDIT
Video of SU30 vectored thrust maneouvers

There is no need for "new" aircraft, you can diversify roles by adding different weaponry and loadouts:

(1) aircraft fight other aircraft with missiles. Begin by adding simple AA missiles in lock, fire-and-forget mode make them fast but not so agile encouraging players to develop skills at evading/dodging them in the air or dive for cover between hills. Boom-and-Zoom is a WW1 tactic because at that time aircraft were slow and with pitiful climb rates

(2) aircraft fight ground vehicles and infantry with missiles (not rockets) and cluster bombs. Again, let's add the same type of missiles for ground targets (vehicles) and cluster bombs against concentration of infantry and lightly armored vehicles. This will give aircraft an edge which can be compensated by making MANPADs faster and with an increase range and making the aircraft weaker against AAA fire, even LMG (aircraft are supposed to be lighter than MTBs...). Again, this is supposed to make life more interesting for both parties. Zoomies will have to learn to dodge missiles (most likely by flying low and fast, then popping up, firing missiles and diving for cover but flying low means to be exposed to AAA, nothing new, exactly what happened in the Yom Kippur war in 1973...)

(3) Last but not least, introduce fixed SAM batteries at the various bases to avoid seeing Liberators hovering serenely at high altitude, impossible to hit with anything. This is idiotic.

Yeah go figure, seems like a tactic from a WW1 game called warthunder.

It's called "missing the point".
I'm not saying that I don't want hover-fighting and reverse maneuver in the game. I'm saying that the complete and utter reliance on HF and RM to be able to do anything in A2A combat ruins it for anyone who isn't hardcore into it.

The video you show actually shows perfectly what I want. Rather than just hover-fighting, use vectored thrusts to increase combat-effectiveness of normal flight. That way you remove the "normal flight = death" scenario that is currently in effect in A2A combat, and you get a much larger pool of maneuvers to pick and choose from, as well as the ability to have masters at different combat techniques rather than the current "only HF+RM wins you the game" crapshow we have now.

Also, making vectored thrust an actual feature, rather than an out-of-control bug, would do wonders. Allow players to control that vectored thrust, making it more accessible and allowing for a larger amount of maneuvers to be pulled off, including in normal flight.
Because the current system is in no way balanced or fair. It's like having a bug that allows you to move twice as fast and reduce incoming damage by 50%, but to activate it you need to pull off an obscure button combination that 99% of the playerbase will only learn from other players. While in theory everyone can learn it, in practice it's just a bug and a massive anti-new-player feature that destroys your playerbase retention. The only way forwards is to either remove it, or to embrace it and make it an actual accessible feature.

Wut? Reverse thrust is learned in 5 minutes in either warpgate or test area. I've teached many players including my brother how to do it. From there, it's practise practice and try to use it in real fights.

We cant have a game where absolutely everything is dumbed down so much that putting practise, hours and work into something doesn't give you an advantage on others.

First, you have to learn it. And you hit the nail in the head: You had to teach people. Additionally you also hit the nail on the head: Practice practice practice. The reverse maneuver has an exponential powercurve. So if you are 90% as good as your opponent, then your opponent is still wielding twice as much power.
any game mechanic. Yes, any game mechanic without a single exception, should always, always always be teachable and learnable by playing the game. During this process, the player has to be able to enjoy it. To be able to enjoy it, the player should not be required to have a masogistic streak. The Reverse maneuver doesn't tick off any of these boxes.

I'm not asking for that. In fact, I just asked for an expansion of the amount of maneuvers available in the game. Also, "dumbing down" and "making something an actual feature" are two completely different things. And I'm asking for the devs to make it an actual feature, rather than an obscure bug. Also, the inclusion of other maneuvers can remove the exponential powercurve that exists now. Only games that use lobbies and other methods to divide high-skill players from lower-skill one's can use an exponential powercurve. PS2 doesn't have that, so any powercurve has to flatten out the more skill you get. Yes, you still get more power for more skill, yes you still get rewarded. The point is that you don't get rewarded as much the more skill you earn. This keeps the game enjoyable for more players, including the leet MLG players that don't get off on mercilessly murdering anything and becoming untouchable.

Currently the aircraft controls consists of its orientation (roll, pitch, yaw) plus thrusters (up/down/forward/backward).

By default roll and pitch are controlled with the mouse, while A+D controls the yaw.
Thrust is controlled by W+S (forward/backward) and Ctrl+Space (downwards/upwards).
Making more controlable thrust vectoring would imply having leftwards and rightwards thrust too.
Thus, further complicating the learning curve for newer players and making it hard to steer with a keyboard and mouse.

The current controls are independent and orthogonal and allows the pilot to freely compose them to move the aircraft in the desired 3D direction. A ''make-believe'' sideways thrust for instance, can be done by rolling the aircraft sideways and then applying a vertical thrust.
It's not ''obscure'', but a natural consequence of 3D space and the controls.

As for the matches, I would say that generally a hovering ESF is like a sitting duck from afar, and easier to drop than if it flies.

Without flight physics, it's all nonsense/

My god how many people are still going to interpret this wrong?
Increase the amount of maneuvers. You can easily make this happen as follows: Make the afterburner omnidirectional. Your button input (not your mouse as that would be too sensitive) dictates the direction you thrust in.

Just the above example shows how it's suddenly easier. No need to be in a specific position or speed, and the amount of maneuvers you can pull off are far more intuitive and easy to learn. Suddenbreaks, U-turns, upwards thrusts (which can be used for the RM), down wards thrust (for the RM maneuver but in the opposite direction), an actual reverse maneuver where you can go actually backwards or do heavy breaks etc.

Alternatively, without touching the controls you can also change stuff. For example: At lower speeds (such as hovering) your maneuverability is reduced, at higher speeds your maneuverability is increased. Add some changes to the maneuverability at different speeds to each airframe and you are completely set. Suddenly, aircraft doing normal flight would have enough maneuverability to avoid the crosshair of their enemy, allowing for dogfights that go differently than the turn-around-each-other-fights that we had and were basically the only way you could do battle pre-RM and HF.

It is obscure, as it requires specific speeds, turbine positions and nose-positions to pull off (looking down gets you out of hover mode).
Also, the available maneuvers in the current control scheme aren't fast enough. Outside of HF and RM, no maneuver can truly help you escape someone who's on your tail. So all the maneuvers you can pull off are useless. By expanding the maneuvers you don't have to change anything to the controlscheme, you can just improve the maneuvers that are already existing until they offer you power in the form of being able to escape, avoid shots or reverse who's chasing who.

A hovering one, yes. A hover-fighting one. No. Pretty big distinction there.

Risking getting it wrong again (after all why break with tradition), could you name any example for this?
I am asking, because the small tests i was able to do on my own, with any form of "free" or in this case omnidirectional thrust ended up with the plane flying like an ufo and did kinda feel like using an a bit more specialised observer cam.

One of the other issues your flight model would face is the "muddy" nature of planetside physics.
For example take any plane, fly up high and then just free fall ... it certainly doesn't feel like it's air you are in.

Hope we can agree that it would take a lot of work to get such changes up and running and to make them feel just right.
Add to this the fact that any changes to the "physics" (sry couldn't resist the airquotes) also have a profound effect on all other aspects of the game ... a game that currently barely manages not to flip a tank on every speedbump.


So yeah, maybe it's a good idea, who am i to say, but it just isn't likley to ever become a reality.

I am not sure i understand your issue here completly ...
I say this because i think you want this to be a counterweight to the current hover fight based meta and i just can't see it work.

Even if your esf would become more manouverable at higher speeds (and flight mode i assume), it is all for nothing, given the main reason we battle in hover mode.

Stability.


[Way to long and elaborate tirade about how the focus on lack of movement has been the goal and meta since ages]

Now the turns and flips hover mode currently allows are all nice to have but at least in an a2a battle they are mostly the icing on the cake.

If you want, watch some of the esf montages and watch when exactly the pilots do their manouvers.
From personal experience it usually is only during reloads or when your enemy has you dead to rights in his crosshair (altough usually up and down movements via ctrl and space are more efficient to avoid that).
During those manouvers hardly any pilot will ever land a shot, heck most of the better ones will simply stop firering and conserve amo.

To further explain, there are good reasons why the whole ctrl+space became basically the goto defensive option in esf vs esf fights.

It's not that more elaborate manouvers would cause people to crash into something (altough for some it might as well be^^) or that you can dodge every with just this one trick (at best it buys you a few seconds).

It is mostly used, because it's one of the very few movements you can controll extremly well and reliably in an esf.

Meaning, regardless of my initial speed, as long as i was in hover mode when i start doing this i can be certain to know how much my crosshair will move.

That's important, because it means that it's something you can train and once mastered it allows you to evade while still shooting back at your target.


It realy is quite simple ... if your primary weapon is a high dps precision tool, then the pilot that is able to keep his crosshair on his opponent wins.
There simply isn't enough wiggle room here ... no matter how manouverable you are.
Your own movements if not 100% predictable will just add to the movements of your opponent and make staying on target that much more difficult.


To sum it up:
Manouverability is not something the main weaponry of an esf supports ... you want stability and the ability to reproduce what you do during every fight.
Making esfs more manouverable at high speeds simply is something people wouldn't use.
At least in esf vs esf fights, maybe it could become usefull against liberators but i quess in all likleyhood it would just serve to help groundpounding in areas where you cannot stay long enough to get a stable position.

Just add mouse aiming so you just move the mouse where you have to go and make it like warthunder or wowp

The biggest limiting factor in this game is render distances. Weapons need to have a short range and vehicles need to be slow to make up for <kilometer render ranges. A Reaver with Racer and Extended Pods can be on you from nowhere before you're done turning in a circle, anything faster just wouldn't work.

Omnidirectional afterburner, not thrust. You fly normally, then enhance your flight capabilities by using your afterburner. Press space+afterburner, you go up. Press C+afterburner you go down. Press space+W+afterburner you go diagonally upwards and forwards. You press S+A+afterburner, you break more strongly than normal while starting a tight turn etc etc.

How is that a problem for my flight model? It's not a problem for the current afterburner is it? So why should this be a problem?
And the 'muddy' nature is there when faced with gravity. Turn upside down, nose downwards or nose upwards and gravity doesn't have a lot of effect on you. Get out of your aircraft and suddenly gravity takes control of it again and pulls with full force. Still, how can that be an issue for my flight model? Especially when afterburner and all the other input is already there?

Why would it? It's the same afterburner as always, but instead of connected to your turbine direction it's connected to your input. The afterburner still has the same acceleration and forces, just in directions it couldn't previously.

I'm not changing the physics. I'm changing the directions the afterburner can function in.
If you are referring to my intention to change the maneuverability the aircraft have at different speeds: We already have that in the game in the form of the current air-frames you can pick. Hover frame has a pronounced effect making the aircraft more muddy, dogfighting makes you more maneuverable in normal flight (but you can't really use that as your opponent can turn fast enough to keep up regardless of what air-frame it's using, making dogfighting useless and giving all the power to Hover Frame). So all I'm asking is enhancing those physics that are already there, and making them more pronounced features so that air-combat consists out of more than hover-fighting and RM.

It can become a reality, as soon as people stop misinterpreting the idea.

You aren't talking about stability, you are talking about the maneuverability required to keep track of your opponent.
Tanks have stability: Vanguards and Prowlers are heavily influenced by the terrain, which messes up their aim and can flip them. Magriders overall are much more stable and thus less affected by terrain, up until you bump into something that is, at which point the Vanguard and Prowler are more stable.
You also have simulated stability in the form of COF and recoil. More stable weapons have less recoil and COF increase.

But what you are talking about is that in normal flight, you can't maneuver fast enough to get out of your enemies crosshair. The fact that if you don't go into hover-mode, that your enemy will start chasing you, and will have the 'stability' he needs to mercilessly murder you while you can't even turn fast enough to engage him and barely dodge anything fired at him... Unless you go into hover mode and use the massive maneuverability that this gives to turn around, to dodge fire and the rotation-speed to keep track of your enemy.

Hover-mode isn't "more stable" than normal flight, all it does is give you the easiest tools to dodge your opponent, while actually being less "stable" during combat. Whenever your opponent hits you, you change direction by going up or down. It then takes your opponent a moment to re-adjust, fight against the physics still forcing his crosshair upwards and aim downwards again... And the moment you've re-adjusted and hit your enemy, he goes the other way again. Then when you are reloading, you use RM to dodge out of the way, while still having the maneuverability to keep your enemy in your sight.

You are missing something really important here: It's not just about keeping your crosshair on your enemy, but also on preventing his crosshair to be on you. And that last part, that's the big and giant advantage that Hover-mode and RM give. They make it much harder to keep aim on you and hit you consistently.

Normal flight isn't 100% predictable? You mean that going forwards is affected by wind or something? That your speed and direction changes over time, that you don't fly in the same diagonal forwards if you have a certain speed and press space?

There's massive "wiggle" room. The whole point I'm making is to give normal flight similar advantages as hover-flight. The ability to dodge, the ability to get out of your enemies crosshair, the ability to get your enemy in your crosshair.

Maneuverability is what you are calling 'stability'. And you are saying "the fact that normal flight currently doesn't give you the same advantages as hover-flight means it never can". Which is bullshi t, because I've already named two right there that can do that.

No, current Skyknights wouldn't use it. Everyone else would use this en-mass.

Go ahead, try again, because you were completely off again and made up something in the process.

Ahh yes the RM talk has reared its ugly head again. RM is not used for fighting its used for merely doing a 180 turn and getting into a fighting stance, hover mode. For this reason RM is usually done in 3rd person so one can see when the engines have flipped into vertical. There is no fighting in 3rd person. Once in hover mode its ctrl,space, and roll while using AB to enhance those movements. There is no RMing once the fight has begun generally.