Air Combat Tutorial

[Dranak]

Hey guys, I finally got my stuff together and put together an air combat tutorial video. I cover basic controls and tactics, how the autoresolve works, and some demonstrations of normal air combat engagements.

[video=youtube_share;LEpjEwr6Bdg]

And here's my older Condor video with no commentary, but several all Condor engagements versus various UFOs.

[BULIGO]

"This video is unavailable". What? Why?

OK, it works now. Quirky Youtube server

Edited August 4, 2014 by BULIGO

[Dranak]

Weird, it seems to work fine for me.

[kabill]

It's working now, apparently.

[steave]

Very nice. I've been doing fine in air combat as it is, but still picked up a few useful tips from that

[radek]

How to chose in which direction we want to roll?

[Dranak]

How to chose in which direction we want to roll?

Q rolls left and E rolls right, both relative to the plane's current direction of travel.

[Gauddlike]

Quick tip that might be useful to your tutorial.

If you launch the game with the -aircmbt tag then it will jump straight to an air combat.

The easiest way is to create a new shortcut and just add the tag into the target field like this:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Xenonauts\Xenonauts.exe" -aircmbt

The forum adds the space into .exe btw so remember to remove that if you copy/paste it.

You can define the aircraft used in gameconfig.xml. The enemy craft are set at the bottom of the file, just alter this section:

<!-- STARTING UFOS FOR THE aircmbt TEST -->

<acTestUFO1 value="airplane.alien.interceptor" comment="This is the main UFO." />

<acTestUFO2 value="airplane.alien.interceptor" comment="This is the first UFO escort." />

<acTestUFO3 value="airplane.alien.interceptor" comment="This is the second UFO escort." />

The human aircraft are set near the top in this section:

<!-- STARTING AIRCRAFT -->

<startingAirplane1 value="airplane.human.f17" comment="This is the first starting airplane." />

<startingAirplane2 value="airplane.human.f17" comment="This is the second starting airplane." />

Change those to whatever setup you want to use in your tutorial then launch the game using your new shortcut.

Choose new game and place your base as normal. The game should then jump straight to an air combat between your selected fighters.

One major down side seems to be that you can only define two human craft instead of three which might not work with the whole tutorial thing very well...

Wonder if the community coders would be interested in fixing this?

Edited August 4, 2014 by Gauddlike

[Gauddlike]

Incidentally this does actually allow you to play as the alien craft, just change your starting craft to aircraft.alien.lightscout or even .battleship...

[Dranak]

Wow, I did not know that. Neat to know.

[BULIGO]

Thanks for the credit, Dranak

[gnarly]

Dranak or anyone, don't suppose it possible to bullet point high level tips for air combat, or point me towards such a resource? (30 mins is a little too long for me unfortunately...)

e.g. I didn't click that you could control the direction of evasive roll (the number of times the auto-roll goes the wrong way, and breaks missile lock is annoying)

[BULIGO]

e.g. I didn't click that you could control the direction of evasive roll (the number of times the auto-roll goes the wrong way, and breaks missile lock is annoying)

Heh, it's amazing how many people miss that. When I started, a week or so ago, I went to game options and started to write down all the hotkeys on my pad, like I do with every new game I start. There it is, under 'air combat': Q=roll aircraft left, E=roll aircraft right.

I was like: What? Roll? How? Where? Why roll? Had no idea but later in air combat I clicked all the clickables and eventually on the button ROLL and it dawned on me: A-HA!

I felt soo clever for a moment