[Video] Sky Knight Bushido - Air Game thoughts

Bailing is just kinda annoying.

Only bushido is don't spam airlocks unless it's a means to break up a squad of air, it CAN be unfun for the ground and it's understandable that you simply want to get rid of them, however only using airlocks for singleton fights is just annoying and showing that you are unwilling to learn the airgame; it is comparable to going to school, putting your name on a test and doodling on the rest. It's just a waste of time and unfun on the recieving end.

Sometimes I will tell what the other player did wrong and will give tips on how to improve, it is never a goal to mock anyone trying to get into the air game if they're new and even sometimes sparing them so they have more uptime to learn, the reason for this is because I often see air players complain about the lack of attention to air to air combat, however my reasoning is if there aren't people having fun in the air then there is no point in improving it or moreso less test samples to improve upon it.

Gank squads and Skyknights together can be combatted by simply giving players more fighter-maneuvers that work (IE make sure any of them work and give the player an advantage instead of giving their enemy a chance to catch up)

By doing that, ESF combat can revolve around the excitement of dodging, rolling, changing speeds and tactics from VTOL to fighter-style to VTOL again. You could escape an enemy chasing you and start chasing him/her without having to use the current only effective method of VTOL combat.
When a pro pilot engages you, you can try to avoid and escape with at least some chance of success, rather than instantly having to give up.
When a Gank Squad engages you, you can keep ahead of them, try to avoid them and escape. You might not be capable of winning the battle (nothing wrong there, you are outnumbered after all) but you can at least get to safety... Assuming you have the skill to pull off the maneuvers and keep out of the enemy crosshairs.

This could also easily feature as the nerf for lock-ons. Rather than reducing Lock on damage you could allow aircraft to dodge lock-ons through their maneuverability (you know, the entire premise that aircraft are supposed to have).

lol bushido.
This is a computer game..........

We call that running a rocket into the ground.

For MS-DOS. (Look it up.)

Here is my code:

Do what kills the enemy as quickly as possible.
Lock ons. AA batteries that you pull enemies to. Whatever. It takes so long to lock on anyway.

When I have a squad and I really want an ESF pilot dead, we pull 3 HA with G2A locks. If he doesn't have flares he dies FS ain't going to save you.

You should be capable of dodging a missile without having to dodge around the environment.

Truly spoken as someone who probably used them once or twice. 3 HA with G2A locks require massive luck and skill (yes, both luck and skill) to pull off a one-salvo-kill.

Concerning bailing..
I personally think this is the true ESF Bushido. In actual samurai bushido, the teachings go that though death should always come prederably by sword (esf).. if you or the enemy doesn't have a sword, you use a rock (carbine), if you or the enemy doesn't have a rock, you use yur fists (Umm c4? Knife?), if either you or him can't use your fists, then the one in clear disadvantage has already lost, and should die honorably lest they show more skill.

Basically, there is still honor in trying to obtain victory by whatever means is available. And if you are capable of c4ing me 400 feet in the air whilst I'm moving.. I will applaud you.

I think its F-kn ******** that they are turning A2A lockons into a SOCIAL group based mechanic. Why would you design an entire gun around requiring your teammates.

The zerg is only going to benifit from the new lockon changes as youll need a zerg to kill with lockons. Underpop defenses would only die if they used lockons.

5 lockons to kill one esf is rediculous. Unless they change it to 3 or 4 lockons to kill a lib and turn lockons into a real Lib buster.

What they SHOULD have done is made the lockon time increase the more people are using lockons on your side. Like some sort of network clogging. 2 ESF in the sky = 2 second lockons. 10 ESF in the sky = 5+ second lockons.

I dont give a CRAP about bailing. Its a trivial issue.

This is true you should be able to juke missles if you turn gracefully and perfect enough. Would make Air Combat funner.

lol what??? Its not luck or skill, its coordination between 3 players in TS... Its easy and I've done this definitely more than once or twice XD

So you're saying add in a suite of low skill level ESF moves that (if the opponent guesses wrong) result in the low skill player exiting the ESF-vs-ESF battle successfully and escaping?

I find the ESF-vs-ESF game to have too wide a skill gap for (1) a game without player segregation by skill AND (2) a game that is built to be combined arms and with a real need to be able to deal with (or get support from) each Unit type across varied engagement types. The ability to do moves with the Hover is based on learning to operate or learn tricks with the quirky free swinging engines, the ability to locate and track your opponent is a mixture of visual and audio (which gives huge advantages to using headphones?) spatial awareness combined with various acquired knowledge, and (as you noted) the ability to aim accurately with Nosegun is a complicated juggling of distance, speed, bullet drop, ESF positioning, and predicting vectors.

It doesn't help that the actual learning curve to digest most these variables isn't structured contiguously into the game. Where players have to stumble to tackle even the basics of proper Loadouts (both Grinding and/or $$ing to get them, and in knowing which ones are optimal in a sea of both non-centralized, misleading, and outdated data).

And the upcoming changes seem like they will be widening that skill gap. Less low skill crutch access in A2AM, more reliance on and reward for Aim, etc.

Eh, there's already a tactic that involves not going in hover mode too much, and it's called rushing. It's just not something mentionned often because its not like saying it exist would help any non-pilot. They wouldn't be good enough to do it anyways.

And no, more maneuvers just give more maneuvers for experienced players to use. Crappy pilots will remain crappy pilots and will be dunked on ad eternum. There's literally nothing you can do about it as long as skills are involved.

And for the record, ESF combat is already revolving around dodging, rolling and such. You just can't get to this point without a minimum amount of skills. Kind of like the first thing to do in infantry is learning to put your crosshair on the enemy. ADAD is useless if none of your shots land.

Not gonna get in your whole post, but since this one had a question mark, I'll treat it as a question. The answer is: No. I've played multiple times with the volume turned off - talking on teamspeak about the most random of things, or having debates or anything else. The only thing sound really helps with, is hearing aircrafts coming to gank you from behind - but that's only assuming the sound doesn't bug. And honestly, you should be looking at your 6 from time to time anyways.

So no, headphones are NOT an advantage. And the main use of sound doesn't care that much if you have headphones or not. The biggest imbalance headphones give is actually in infantry gameplay. Because if you just crank fx volume up, and everything else down, you can hear footsteps extremely well. And you basically don't even need a radar. You can hear everybody in a ~20m radius and tell exactly where they are.

I use sound to find Sundy spawn sweet farms ALL the time.

Or the one loitering enemy jumping on tables in the middle of african jungle for whatever reason.

If you learn to use your headphones to hear engines right you can hear the sound transitioning and know about how far to spin just with sound alone.

But air is way more forgiving to play with no sound than on the ground.

Thanks for the info! I was never really sure if not using headphones was a big disadvantage for me.

Using just speakers, I do still find sound very helpful for:
1) hearing aircraft coming from behind (as you said)
2) the different sounds of hit impacts, which can give you an idea on what type of damage you are taking, what type of source that damage is from, how dangerous it is, and what type of evasion (if needed) or engage source to take.
3) the different sounds of weapon fire that is not hitting you or other in-game Unit sounds. You can tell the fire of the Reaver vs. the Mosquito vs. the Scythe, or the whoosh of the Dalton, the chug of AA Base Turrets, or various sounds of Ground Vehicles that are good targets or things to watch out for.

I think ESFs should have more maneuverability the higher your throttle is, in hover mode you pitch and roll much slower than an ESF at full throttle. So fighting in an ESF is more of a fight between two planes rather than 2 hovering turrets firing at each other.

For Libs it should be the opposite.