Share your tips and tricks!
So I imagine a number of people (myself included) are new to flight simulator games and have been drawn in by this release due to it being a part of the star wars franchise. So to those of you with ...
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@MandatoryIDtag Roll a lot! I always roll such that the trajectory of my target is "up" relative to me. From what I understand this is true in real life and often reflected in flight games: you can turn faster by pitching up than you can down or yawing left/right.
If you have trouble keeping crosshairs on target because it keeps wobbling left-right-left-right and you just can't make it sit still, consider flying a craft with low maneuverability(for example tie bomber, or a tie fighter with reinforced armor). This makes the crosshair move relatively slower and makes it easier to line up target(the effect is similar to setting your mouse sensivity to low when using a scope for headshots in a FPS). Once you get used to the way ships move, you can gradually switch to higher maneuverability.
Another tip for making the flying simpler until you get used to it: You can set the throttle so that it only has three states: 0%, 50% and 100%. That way you can fly at 100% throttle until you need to make a turn, and then go to 50% throttle(best turning) instantly with a single button press, without having to look at the throttle gauge, then go back to 100% with one button press again.
To do this, go to settings, change throttle from continuous to discrete, and set the minimum step to 50.
Okay, after playing fleet battles for a while on random servers as well as with coordinated teams I would like to drop in my 2 cents (or rather 10 tips).
- Communicate! Be it via voice (preferred) or just pinging targets and reacting to other pings.
- Learn the flow of the battle. When you know what the enemy will be doing in the next phase and prepare accordingly, your chances to win will increase tremendously. Don't attack when you're supposed to defend. Hide in a strategic position and take out attackers from there. Don't get lured into the deadly AI fire.
- Be flexible with your ship class and try to find something that matches the task at hand.
- Experiment with setups - AI battles are perfect for this.
- Situational awareness - what setups are the enemies using? Try to find a counter. It's a bit more complicated than rock - paper - scissors, but basically boils down to that principle.
- Perfect your boost drifting. Missiles are quite slow and you can often literally outrun them with your boost. Turn around an obstacle and boost in a different direction. Directing power to your engines while targeting your attacker should become a natural reaction in such a situation (remember tip #1 and ping him. After zooming out you can set up a new attack while he is busy fighting another squadron member.
- Perfect shield management and power distribution skills. If you're playing on a Thrustmaster HOTAS or similar, you can put these functions to the paddles on the thrustlever plus another button for balancing out.
- Don't die! You cost the team morale.
- Pay attention to the scoreboard. Is the enemy squadron farming your AI fighters? That may be the reason you are always in defence. Identify the culprits and eliminate them systematically.
- Don't quit, it's a guaranteed loss for you and not a polite thing to do.
