I am not experience enough to answer you...

But why don't you press space bar to do mouse flight and just keep mouse on the "+" and click right mouse?

Yup - use mouse flight. And of course stuff like when to use guns or mines or missiles...how to use the afterburner and kill engines...there's a lot of more advanced stuff you can learn to do - it's not just point and shoot as a lot of people seem to think it is (though I'll grant it is simpler than a standard sim).

Run into asteroids... doing so allows you to do very sharp turns.

But seriously, try combining sharp turns with AB... Tapping the AB also helps at times.

against the ai you don't need to know anything but wait till they line up and blast em.

other players are harder, learn to change speeds. its funny watching someone blow by you when you cut your engines to 0 and then blasting them from behind. you'll be able to turn a lot sharper by slowing right down your engines.

careful though, you can pb (pointblank, gooo subspace) yourself with mines and torps. sunslayers hurt like hell if your caught in the blast. but you can take out huge groups of enemies from far away with them, target one fire, next fire, next fire. with nomads you can kill a wave of 4 in about 30 seconds with em.

erm... donno if it's a typo error or u really donno that. u shud be shooting the "+" sign instead of the "X" sign... the "+" sign indicates the location of the ship when ur weapons reach it, so if u can shoot the + sharply, accurately, the ship will blow up in no time (considering u hav powerful weaponsof course"

another tactic, use afterburners to avoid missiles and other plasma weapons. very effective

i think he means the larger "X" that shows up instead of the small "+" when the enemie is targeted.

One fun way to engage enemies is to cut your engines with z, then just use after burners to thrust when you need to change direction or catch up with enemies.

hit x to kill your engines, then use tab for forward motion - allows you to slide so you can fire while "strafing"

I think that that X or + is not correct. I found that if I shoot right in + I mess. But if I shoot a bit far + then I fire right in bulleye

Use the force... err... you own judgement... The cross doesn't always indicate exactly where to shoot; it will only hit if you fired at that exact time and if the target travels at the exact same speed on an exact same vector for the time period that the munitions take to fly such distance.

In another words, you have to manually lead the target; the cross is only a reference.

Its a shame you cant bank your ship... that would make some pretty cool dogfighting!

-Just when you thought your flying days where over... they pull you back in[!-

If you are firing at the + and not hitting, check your weapons for matching projectile speed. If your weaons do not all have the same speed, the '+' is only able to calculate where SOME of the weapons will hit. I have no idea if it calculates for the fastest, slowest, most damaging or trys to average them. If it's the last one (some average), you may NEVER hit the target while shooting at the '+'.....

Matching speed (not range, damage or power) is the most important aspect of a weapons loadout to ensure you HIT your target with all weapons at the same time. Certainly damage is important (as is power drain), but you can only deliver your FULL damage if speeds don't match, when you fly at the target head on or you are directly beind. This certainly happens during the first run, but not very often after that.

Edited by - Brother Grimm on 14-03-2003 17:47:44

Edited by - Brother Grimm on 14-03-2003 17:50:24

well, I've been using plasma guns with refire rate of 2.00 / 500m/s compared the the 5.33 and 8.00 / 750m/s that seem pretty common for most weapons. The target leader always seems to be off so I have had to use 'the force' on about every shot, but i love killing about any enemy in the libery system in one hit.

MP tactics PK:

1) reverse thrust then after burn - this can throw off an enemy. Basically they will be leading and when you stop suddenly, that will most likely keep turning and shooting ahead of you. Then you can either change directions or afterburn in the same direction after they turn back to start shooting at you again

2) stay on your enemies tail - yup, try to stay there. If the enemy start slowing down and you end up right on his tail, I suggest the reverse thrust again to put some distance between the two of you so you don't lose your target.

3) engine kill and afterburn - if you need time for you shields to charge, engine kill and after burn all over the place, changing directions fairly often. I find this makes you an extremely difficult target.

4) confuse your enemy - try pulling up over your enemy and then break left or right so you're actually going to his left or right. Keep your enemy on his toes

5) cirlce fighting - if you are more manueverable, just circle them, try to get out of their arcs and pound them. Something I've been working on is ciricling lets say right, then breaking left and reversing if the enemy is hot on your tail. If you do this right, your enemy will fly right by you letting you slug them on the tail for a bit

AI tactics SP/MP

1) afterburn - use your afterburner a lot, the AI doesn't seem to hit that often when you just circle around afterburning

2) missile dodging - simply pull up and afterburn when you hear incoming missile if you don't know where it's coming from. You'll dodge it almost every time.

3) running - getting away from enemies can be a pain if they have cruise disrupters, a friend of mine said if you drop a bunch of counter measures before/while running you should be able to use your cruise engine to get away.

4) reverse thrust - someone else pointed this out on the boards before. When the AI charges you head on, use your reverse thrusters and light them up. They'll keep on charging a lot of the time making for a very easy target.

Controls

call this personal preference but I was WASD for pitch down, pitch up, turn left, turn right and never have mouse flight engaged. This allows me to manuever while attacking. I find it easiest to fire a long burst, change directions and fire another burst. Here are the pros and cons of my control scheme -

Pros

1) Attack at angles
2) Evade and fire at same time
3) You don't always have to attack head on

Cons
1) takes some getting used to before you can coordinate the freelook mouse and manage to stay on an enemies tail simulataneously with the keyboard
2) when you turn or pitch in a direction, you are always turning/pitching as strongly as possible.

Well, thats about all.

W

Edited by - sellout on 14-03-2003 20:32:34

When fighting groups of enemies, spend more time shooting at the guys you are'nt targetting. The AI is fairly stoopid and only tries to run/dodge when they're the active target. You can do more damage to the other, and they do have a small + lead indicator so its not that hard to hit