How Does One Counter Hover Duelers?

Fly with someone else, and use the simple tactic of one player being the bait, and running away from/dodging the enemy and his shots, while the other player does the damage and switching duties if the ace switches targets.

Rotary noseguns + AB tanks are a good idea for this.

Ask yourself: are you willing to become that which you fight? Because as soon as you start using coyote missiles consistently against other pilots, you're not going to stop. Coyotes teach you nothing about aiming with a nosegun, so you'll be just as crippled if you try to switch back, so you won't. Soon, you'll be frustrating new, inexperienced pilots as you gank them with frustrating "I win" missiles they can't do anything to combat, and don't learn everything from fighting, thus driving them out of the airgame.

Also, if people start using coyotes to start countering prey, prey will start using coyotes to start countering those people, and since coyotes stack extremely well with size, you'll have absolutely no way to counter prey, and will perpetually be getting ganked by roving coyote squads without a chance to improve your skills whenever you try to fly on indar.

The problem with the air game besides the 'pro pilot ganking newbs' is that due to the really low Time to Kill on certain weapons, it turns into whoever can surprise the other guy first WINS. I see reavers constantly sneak up on me (their sound is bugged for me compared to mossies / scythes who I can hear a mile away). Due to my situational awareness, this fails 9 times out of 10. They just run and keep trying, and eventually win.

As far as the buddy system, that works. But good luck, I have yet to see under 3 reavers. There's *always* a bunch in every hex I see one in, even miles from the closest fight.

It's just not *fun* for 99% of us. Damn that 1%!

I can't speak for the effectiveness of Coyotes, but I can offer this advice:
1) find where other Scythes are flying and join them in packs (or fly near them so you can return to them for support)
2) find out where your VS zergs are and fly near them, using them like a Clown Fish uses a Sea Anemone. Especially if there are VS in AA Base Turrets.
3) put a personal waypoint on your Warpgate so you have easier direction finding when in the heat of battle
4) find which continent has the most VS presence and fly there (more allies, less enemies, and much faster resources to respawn Scythes)
5) check the map to see where the enemy is zerging so you know to be careful of those situations

All the above helps put the odds of encounters more in your favor. This will help deal better with Ace enemy pilots and help extend your lifetime in the air, both of which will give you more time to become a better pilot. Once you are outperforming your opponents more, you can move away from the above and do your own thing.

This isnt really true anymore since the ontroduction of A2Am and Coyotes.

The Vortek only performs at close distance, you do have the Saron which is the best nosegun. The trick is to keep some distance. The Reaver is a brawler, made for close distance fights. the Scythe performs better at mid/long distance.

First thing that you should learn that will help you in hover dogfights and will allow you keeping distance is the reverse maneuver. Instructions can be found on youtube.

I really believe that a2a and a2g is messed up. Flares should be passive on ESFs, but when they move on small fights where anti air is minimal. They mow everything down. Making them overpowered. In big fights, they are flimsy, and get locked on a lot, with only good pilots being able to weave their way through the ballistics and flak while dodging missiles that cant really be dodged with even the most complex maneuvers.

I have now purchased a microphone. Fun times ahead.
I enjoy the "Abort to Tree" maneuver. When you are low health, start juking to make sure the enemy does not hit you for at least 10 seconds. Try to find a tree in this time. After 11 seconds of juking, ram the tree with maximum speed. This takes their Certs away.

In other news, I killed 3 reavers last night. Seems that PREY was not online.

we still get XP if we hit you within 10 seconds. I always get a hit on a juking ESF atleast once every 6 seconds. People like rguitar will one-clip you while juking or destroy you in those 11 seconds.

Was rguitar on last night? The only things that killed me were a skyguard, 2 reaver rammers, and the ground while dodging.

Well with coyote missiles, the 1% don't have any fun either, so enjoy getting good with a weapon that doesn't let you experience what a real (for planetside) dogfight feels like. You'll get certs, sure, but you could do that more effectively farming ground or playing medic in a large fight. Also, coyotes will not allow you to kill superior numbers, they just let you unfairly win dogfights 1 to 1, if your primary issue is being massively outpopped in the sky, you'll be screwed no matter what.

I'll have you know that I'm in a mossie right now, rocking not coyotes, but the other animal: HORNETS! I'm so gonna get the purple medal thingie for these, try and stop me

Good luck, from what I've heard hornets are pretty bad. IMO, AA nosegun/rocketpods are the 2nd best mossie loadout anyways, as it's effective against everything, and you learn to fly better using them often (plus, you still have a way to train noseguns.) M14/racer/ab is the best loadout though, because M14 is okay against air (higher dps than the rotary at extra-close-range, actually) and seeing squishies fall over is so gratifying. If they were worthy of respect, they'd obviously get in a glorious skychariot and honorably aerial-knife-fight with me anyways.

I gotta say the Light PPA is the best weapon for farming peasants. Run lolpods to destroy their peasant wagons and carriages and you can farm all day.

Projectile speed is abysmal though. You can afford to have worse aim against ground, but you'll have absolutely no chance against air. With the banshee, I can serve a minor AA role, and terrorize any noob that thought flying at me with their uncerted ESF was a good idea (although admittedly, that would probably fail against the PPA w/a decent pilot too.) All the AI weapons one ESFs are great, it's just that pros prefer AA only/rotary lolpods (with the exception of some AA airhammer pilots).

Airhammer is useless against ESFs. I personally run Rotary/Lolpods, and I don't play TR, so I have no idea what the banshee can do. I gladly defer to your experience.

Airhammer has insanely high close quarters burst damage (350×8 per shot), so some reaver pilots have perfected the art of getting up close and air-shotgunning enemy ESFs to death. The trade off is that it's the worst AI nosegun, so the AI noseguns end up balanced from best AV/worst AI to best AI/worst AV where the banshee is in a very good missle place since its craft synergizes with it well (easiest to escape with.)

From what I've heard though, each faction is pretty happy with their AI nosegun though, some balance issues remain, but you don't really see pilots QQ'ing over them. The opinions of ground peasants are of course irrelevant.

Oh PLEASE, OP.

The only pilots allowed to cry about hover duels are mossie pilots. It's definitly the worst of the worst when it comes to real dogfighting (aka helicoptering around like maniacs). Even most pros agree...and even if they won't say it....the ship use in competitions say it ;p

Mossies are the hardest ESFs to hit in hover fights. We're massive discs. If the enemy craft is above or below us, they will hit by default.

This can't be serious, unless you're talking about when people sneak up on you and hit you from above/below.

99% of the time when I hear the scythe sound and laser pew pews, I do my little turn on the cat-walk and see this shooting at me

_________ <--PEW PEW PEW



Good luck hitting a randomly moving line!