After flying AH for a few months, there are a few things i wish i'd known to start with, aspects of the game it took me a while to piece together from my own observations and reading many of the posts on these boards. Now, i just wish some of the people whose abuse i squelch on channel 1 knew these things as well. So i thought i'd post my observations in the hope that they will save some newbies like me a little frustration and confusion....
The first thing to know is that no matter what the quality of your connection, your Front End can see different things to the other guys. Basically you and the other guy are running separate 'gameworlds' which are constantly updated over the internet so that they tally with each other. This ongoing process is not instantaneous, and as i understand it, the game does a lot of clever guesswork to fill in any gaps. The end result is, you have to accept the fact that what the other guy sees is occasionally slightly different to what you see.
This ‘everyday lag’ effects play in four different ways
Simple Plane lag. The other guy's plane may not be exactly where you see it. A common problem here is when you tail chase someone and shoot them down at d800, and they get on the air whining about how you hit them from d1.5. Objects in the rear view mirror may be closer than they appear. The further away the other guy is the more pronounced; if you're seeing him as a dot about 5k out, your image of him may make some quite startling jumps.
Angle off. If the other guys is pulling violent maneuvres, or even a simple barrel roll, you may see his plane do the ‘floppy fish’, change its attitude and angle in impossible ways. This is intensely frustrating, I find the best thing to do is break off and grab alt, if he does it twice I’ll leave him alone.
However, on his front end he has to be flying according to AH’s strict physics and his planes flight model, only you see the anomaly, so when his plane stops flickering, there are only so many things he can have done, so many places he can be.... Sometimes you can predict from his behavior and attitude beforehand, and the knowledge that he must have given it some on the stick and rudder to cause the confusion, to guess what he’s up to and anticipate where he’ll be when things get back to normal.
Also, if you’re close enough, remember that if you hit him on your F.E., you’ve hit him whatever he’s doing at the time.
A milder form of this problem is when you see the other guy’s nose not quite pointed at you in a turning fight, he’s about 5 degrees off bringing his guns to bear, you’re relieved, then you hear the bullets pepper your airframe…if he’s stomped his rudder into a skid, or simply gained a bit more angle on his F.E., you may not see it. The lesson here is just not to let him near you with those pointy bits on his plane that spit fire.
Bullet Lag. Again I reiterate, the other guy may be seeing a slightly different scene on his F.E. but if he hits you on his F.E., then he’s hit you, period. Because of this ongoing sitaution, and the simple time it takes information to travel, bullets can lag a bit. A common experience is the high speed pass where you don’t hear the bullets hit you until after the merge. This isn’t so bad, you were dead anyway, you just didn’t know it yet
Collisions. “great ram, you so-and-so” another twit exercises his powers of wit and sarcasm over the open channel. A lot of you will know this already, and it’s been addressed in plenty of threads, but I thought I’d include it here because it still ruins some peoples day when they think they’ve been rammed and they get all hot under the collar.
You may see a different situation on your F.E. to what he sees on his. In AH, if your bullets hit him on your F.E., then that information is passed along, his F.E. is told to hit him, and bang! He’s dead.
However, If your plane hits his plane on your F.E., well that was dumb, you’ve most likely damaged your plane past the point of being flyable, and, lol, he’ll get the proximity kill. Now, chances are he won’t have seen the collision on his F.E., so he flies away unharmed, unless he gives himself a hernia laughing at you.
You can’t ram anyone, you’ll normally just kill yourself. Nobody can ram you. I’m not being unkind here, 10% of my deaths are as a result of this, I close too fast on the enemy (particularly bombers), give him a blast of my guns, and fail to pull out quickly enough, bang! And even though I’ve filled him full of lead, my extra speed and lower drag means I’ll hit the ground first and he’ll get the kill. This should be a no brainer, you’re in a plane, it’s fragile, it’s going fast, try not to hit any solid objects.
Now if you combine all of the above, you've got a 'Head On' situation, your combined closure rate can be over 800mph, making any lag an issue of hundreds of yards, You'll see him not quite pointed at you, you'll open fire, scoring hits all over his aircraft, then zooming past him, you'll start to pull up when all of a sudden you'll hear the hits he scored on you, and, bang, you're dead.....but at least you didn't accidentally crash into him during your supersonic nose-to-nose....
I love this game, but it’s a game, and we play it on computers, connected by antique telephone lines. Personally, I think AH deals with the limitations of the medium in the best way possible. We can help as well. Firstly we can help by understanding the game and not making unjustified or plain wrong whines and criticisms. Secondly, we can play to the games strengths rather than it’s weaknesses, most of the time this also means playing it in an historically realistic way:
Don’t crash into things,
Don’t put yourself in front of (or nearly in front of on you F.E.) the other guys guns if he’s within (or nearly within on your F.E.) range.
Avoid Head Ons, why put yourself at risk? If one party avoids the head on, then they normally gain an angle advantage as a result. I’ll only head on if I’m low and slow against a faster, better turning plane, and even then it’s desperation, I’m hoping he’s got the sense to break off.
I hope what I’ve gone over here is of some use to someone. If you fly around in an enlightened state, you’re far more likely to enjoy the game than if you get ram-rage and HO-rage every time you die. At least that’s what I’ve found, I’d be grateful for any feedback.
