HO bubble

[TequilaChaser]

Originally posted by Krusty

AWs ho shield was stupid, as is talk of introducing it to AH. This from the guy that got HOed and rammed by the HO-er over a dozen times in the past 2 days, and only got 2 successful HOs (today, on TC no less, in the CT). So I'm not just some hipocrite or something.  

ROFL, well Krusty, the 1st one I could not believe what you did, I was like no way he drove thru 2  or was it 3 planes, and come down and right at me, something I hardly ever see in the CT. but hey it's just a game right. The second one, well you was 2k above me turning and burning with a spit, I saw ya roll out figured you was coming for me,  seeing how I figured it was gonna be the same I pulled nose up with no E, even hit ya right in the prop with my cannons, nothing, oh well, like I said before is just a game, I lost a wing and some other parts, you flew around got 2 more other kills, ( not sure how or by what means), and landed.

I do not understand which side of the fence you are on, I think you are PRO HO.
AW did not have a shield for HOing, it had a randomizer, it throwed out every so many frontal hits so to encourage dogfighting rather than jousting. but hey it was a game too, and it is gone. People could still kill with Face Shots in AW, and many did, and the P38s was good at it depending on the pilot.

as for the CT tonight, I laughed that off, but the idea of this thread, or my impression of it was how to better mold the flight sim into actual Air Combat Manuevering simulation instead of pure easily accomplished jousting.

yes, I flew straight, didn't flick an inch tonight, I know if I joust I die, because I do not practice it, alot of people do, if I fly angles or E, I am average at best, but I do have more fun trying to earn the win than just jousting it out.


til next sortie ~S~


TC  

[GRUNHERZ]

Wrong:  
It seems that every time I get into a 1 on 1 with a bogey, the goal seems to be that you need to be the first one to get a HO guns solution with the NEME.

Right:
You try to kill the guy the best you can given the situation.  A HO may be right in some situations, though certainnly not all and not most. And in any case it is your decision to accept the HO in a typical 1v1 merge so its clearly open to you to choose a goal.  


Wrong:  
If you try to avoid the HO, you only bleed e and angles.

Right:
In fact it's just the opposite, you should avoid the HO and force the HO shooter to waste his and his angles by trying to jerk hard to get last minute lead on your HO avoidance manouvcer or lead turn.

Wrong:
If you aren’t willing to go head on, you have to dive out of the fight.

Right:
Climb out of fights or fight to get on top of enemy.

[wetrat]

Originally posted by AKFokerFoder+
If you try to avoid the HO, you only bleed e and angles.  If you aren�t willing to go head on, you have to dive out of the fight.

The only solution now seems to be get a cannon plane, get your nose around first and HO before you are HO�d.

Wrong, wrong and wrong. You just don't know what you're doing

[AKFokerFoder+]

Originally posted by GRUNHERZ
Wrong:  
It seems that every time I get into a 1 on 1 with a bogey, the goal seems to be that you need to be the first one to get a HO guns solution with the NEME.

Right:
You try to kill the guy the best you can given the situation.  A HO may be right in some situations, though certainnly not all and not most. And in any case it is your decision to accept the HO in a typical 1v1 merge so its clearly open to you to choose a goal.  


Wrong:  
If you try to avoid the HO, you only bleed e and angles.

Right:
In fact it's just the opposite, you should avoid the HO and force the HO shooter to waste his and his angles by trying to jerk hard to get last minute lead on your HO avoidance manouvcer or lead turn.

Wrong:
If you aren’t willing to go head on, you have to dive out of the fight.

Right:
Climb out of fights or fight to get on top of enemy.

Thanks for the reply

I think that maybe I wasn't clear about the HO as being after the 1st merge where you have gone vertical or turned and the second merge tends to be who can get the HO shot, or 3rd or 4th or 5th or.....  I had one fight with a LA5 just off the deck in a 109F4 (the pre 2.6 F4) And I spent the whole engagement just ducking his HO shots. Merge after merge after merge.  Eventually he augered.  One of the longest fights I've had in AH2.   I was almost out of fuel at the end.  Obviously he was not one of the top sticks in the game.  But every time I seemed to get some e up, I had to use it to avoid the ho shot.

I had a fight with a 110 about 5 nights ago.  I was in a HogD.  I had just leveled a FH at the NEME base and ran like a scalded dog with half the red airforce after me.  As I passed over the fleet I saw a 110 egressing in a the same direction I was going.  I stayed on him and we ended up in a 1 on 1 away from the crowd.

I decided to try and turn with him just for grins.  I cut throttle and went vertical with him, then hit flaps, got equal speed and we danced. We went round and round and he eventually got the angles for a ho, and as I tried to dive to my left, (from a vertical slow), a 30mm took off my wing as I tried to avoid.  Now I am sure a good stick would have taken him out with a hog, but I don't fly the D hog that much, I fly the -1 a bit (nice plane lousey American 50 cal guns), nor am I particularly good at flying. But if I had my old pre 2.6 109, he would have been toast, but that is another story.  All in all a fun fight, but again, get the guns up nose to nose...

Maybe I should just stick to vulching in a Dora

[AKFokerFoder+]

Originally posted by wetrat
Wrong, wrong and wrong. You just don't know what you're doing

Well the fact that I don't know what I am doing is well known

[AKFokerFoder+]

Originally posted by TequilaChaser
but the idea of this thread, or my impression of it was how to better mold the flight sim into actual Air Combat Manuevering simulation instead of pure easily accomplished jousting.

 

Well that was kind of the idea.  At least to get some discussion on it, and maybe some solutions.  I heard a lot of complaints about the HO's, it is a common thread on this BBS

[Vortex]

Originally posted by Krusty
Don't change it or it'll just make them try MORE! If they see they can HO and not die, but oops -- I died when he was behind/above/below/totheside, I better only HO again, at least I was safe then!

Your conclusions are entirely incorrect, but if you have some experience with both sides you would know that. Allow players the ability to joust, that will be the dominant tactic as is the case in AH. AW tried opening the front quarter to more shots at one point, and the game changed to Joust Warrior overnight. They rolled it back fairly fast.

So its a simple equation. Take away the big bullet rake on the nose, and you force people to fly for a kill. Jousting goes bye bye and you end up with a sim that rewards ACM first and foremost. I know which I prefer. I just have never understood why folks prefer the joust dominated model. *shrug*

[Vortex]

Originally posted by DoKGonZo
Another contributing factor is the range icons. Players just have gobs of time to line up for a HO shot.

Very good point DoK.

[Octavius]

If you matched the 110's speed and saddled up, I dont see how the 110 was able to hit the head on.  Did you bleed so much E that the 110 had time to create a large distance cushion and reverse?  I prolly read that wrong.

Now if a Hog and a 110 were equal E and directly opposite each other in a FLAT turn, the hog should win by default with badass flaps and higher deployment speed.  

But pure flat turns are a basic tactic... not very aggressive, no suprises, what you see is what you get... it be the common sense approach.  Throw in some yo-yo's, play with your E state, and you'll have a very interesting fight.  In some cases a very slight high yoyo would allow you to dip your speed to allow for more flaps and gain a few degrees on the other guy.  This may be all you need to get a shot, but if not, follow up with a low yoyo and 'reset' your E.  Dip down further to get closer to your plane's cornering speed and get that much closer to his six.  Imagine this is done within 1-1.5 full trips around.

High yoyo, kill speed, lower flaps.  Low yoyo, gain speed, raise flaps.  At very low speeds both the 110 and F4U should drop flaps a ton, with slight variations if needed.  A 110 may be fat, but one notch above full flaps at 90-100 can get over the top and gain an angle very quick.  The hog is the same.  Full flappage at 90-100 coming down from a high bank should be instinctive.

2 or many vs. 1, disregard everything up there ^.

[Dead Man Flying]

HOs are not a problem.  Seriously.  Let me say it again for the old AW people who don't believe that.  HOs are not a problem.

Sure, you'll believe that they are for your first year or maybe even two after transitioning from Air Warrior.  Then you begin to realize that HOs are only problems if you allow them to become problems; they do not detract from air combat because if you're doing things properly, they never really become a deciding factor in air combat.  Not in Aces High anyway.

Does anyone here honestly believe that flying straight through an opponent's nose like many folks did in AW was some sort of superior ACM?  Seriously?  That the way actual pilots avoided BnZers was to point their nose at them in the vertical so they couldn't hit the HO shot on the way down?  Hm.

-- Todd/Leviathn

[AKFokerFoder+]

Originally posted by Octavius
If you matched the 110's speed and saddled up, I dont see how the 110 was able to hit the head on.  

Did you bleed so much E that the 110 had time to create a large distance cushion and reverse?  I prolly read that wrong.

I was on his six as fast as the D Hog would run, he was a bit slower.  We went vertical with I cut throttle to match his speed,  we stalled at the top. and then I tried to stay with him. My normal approach would have been to roar up with WEP and fire as I went up, then roar past him as he flopped over, and dive down on him to keep him turning to avoid me.  Either that or usually just keep above him so I don't get cherry picked and go look for another cherry.

I just wanted to try dancing for a change.

He flat out flew me, and eventually got the angles for a HO

And as for your other stuff, I am reading and studying it, thanks!

[Krusty]

TC: I'm with Levi on this one. I guess you could same I'm "pro HO" because I don't want gamey restrictions on which angles I can actually land shots, etc. I'm for not reducing or restricting them, so I guess I'm for them.

EDIT: I was dealing with one spit and 3 more in a row come in at me, I can't hit 1 because bad angle, I can't get 2 because you'll just pull up and nail me if I zoom around for 2, I had to go past them to the "end of the line" and pick off tail end charlie, it was for my own safety. Nothing personal (didn't know it was you an' all).

[DoKGonZo]

HO'ing has been with the games since they started ... 1987. There are many contributing factors, the most obvious are that it takes a lot less thought and skill than ACM, and it's the one shot you're almost sure to get in most engagements. So most people will take it, obviously.

The problem really arises when the majority come to depend on the HO as a primary means of accomplishing their objective. The Tiffy plowing through at 400+ mph HO'ing everything in sight being a good example. He expects to die and just wants to take at least one or two with him. This puts the "work" on the people who can actually fly to avoid the HO-beast. And that's where the frustration kicks in.

Why are HO's so "easy?" As I mentioned before, the range icons allow one to line up a HO shot at 1000's of yards out instead of knowing the inbound plane is friend or foe in that last few hundred yards - which doesn't leave much reaction time. Next there's no real risk of death in AH, whereas HO'ing in real life is playing chicken at 500+ mph closure rates - no way people would gamble their lives away like that in real life unless there was no other option. Next the problems of "blanks" and what-not seem much less with HO shots - probably the network lag issues aren't as big a factor when the target is heading into your bullets as compared to trying to calculate lead on a tracking shot. And lastly it's just much easier to track a jinking target at 500+ mph closure rates in the game than in real life.

What's the answer? I dunno. The contrubuting reasons why HO's are easy to achieve are artificial, so I'm less opposed to an artificial mechanism to reduce their effectiveness. Throwing out some percentage of hits based on angle-off from the head-on and closure rate is fine by me. That wouldn't stop HO's, quad-20mm planes will still try for a HO ... they only need one or two hits to kill. But the time of exposure needed to land those hits would increase, whicih puts the "work" on the HO'er to dump a pile of ammo into the HO pass instead of one quick burst to vape the oncoming plane.

But I seriously doubt HT agrees with me on this one.

[Karnak]

Originally posted by Dead Man Flying
HDoes anyone here honestly believe that flying straight through an opponent's nose like many folks did in AW was some sort of superior ACM?  Seriously?  That the way actual pilots avoided BnZers was to point their nose at them in the vertical so they couldn't hit the HO shot on the way down?  Hm.

My thoughts almost exactly.

HO Shields massively distort aircombat and then we may as well play X-Wing vs TIE Fighter.

[Dead Man Flying]

Headons aren't easy unless you allow them to be easy.  Seriously, with enough experience they become very simple to avoid or exploit.  We can't dodge them all of course, but then even AW allowed 3% or so of HO shots to hit.  But having flown Aces High for an inordinately long time, and also having come from Air Warrior prior to that, I can state two things confidently.

First, HOs prove extremely frustrating to people with an AW background.  They are difficult to avoid because AW players never learned how to avoid or exploit them.  They were essentially non-issues in that game and are anything but non-issues in Aces High.  I felt this way the first year after I moved from AW to AH -- I wanted headons removed so I could fight, damnit!

However, after awhile I realized that HOs weren't a big deal.  You could fight and avoid them almost at will, and in many cases you could make players pay for their lack of creativity.  I developed moves I wish I'd known years ago in AW instead of relying on the old "fly through the nose" routine.  Once you realize this, a great new world of ACM and air combat opens up to you.  The game is not worse, but it is quite a bit different than AW.  Once old AW folks realize that fact and adjust to it, it really does not present the sorts of problems many claim.  I see people complain about headons and I just scratch my head wondering what game they're playing.

-- Todd/Leviathn