Air Combat - Slow Speed

[Dead Dread]

The only thing in the game that i currently dislike is the air combat. Dont get me wrong, I actually LIKE the tactical elements and its mechanics and love the oldskool radar look of it. In fact 1 on 1 it works fine but i loath the PAUSE SPAMMING you need to do when there are multiple aircraft :-/ And auto resolve drives me nuts too, battles that i 100% win manually are sometimes losses, and it just seems odd when you put 3 planes against 1 enemy and autoresolve makes them all come out partially damaged when you know you will have 1 plane massively damaged and the other 2 unscratched if you fought the battle manually. It is also sometimes difficult to rapidly tell which box on the right corresponds to which aircraft, perhaps this could be made clearer with easier to see tags on the aircraft or 3 different colours but thats another issue.

My idea is to have a slow mode, maybe even a few so you could have air battles go at 1/2 speed, 1/4 speed, 1/8 speed, whatever ratio works. This allows the battle to "flow" whilst giving you time to control multiple aircraft and avoids the god-damn pause spamming. Of couse still having a pause button would allow both types of play to exist, im not suggesting its complete removal just options to slow the combat speed down for those busy fights.

P.S. everything else in this game rocks! bugs are being squished and the gameplay gets better and better each build. Cheers & thanks for listening.

[Anon_Spartan]

I'd like to see more hot keys. Air combat only has max of 3v3 so you could have the whole keyboard used.

Plane 1 gets Q,W,E,R,T,and Y. Q rolls left, W is afterburners, E is roll right, R is fire left missile, T is machine gun, and Y fires he right missile. Then the row below handles plane 2 and plane 3.

Now, I don't know what goes into hot keys. They might be a huge amount of coding and in that case my idea is coding intensive. It's just the other method of using F keys isn't really intuitive, and last I checked their big deal was ether holding all missiles or firing them all at once, which really isn't useful since we are usually firing one missile to trick the foe into dodging before unloading on them.

And yeah variable speed would be awesome, also as a hot key.

[zolobolo]

I was always trying to press 1-3 to select my planes in vain- would be nice to have implemented since if someone sees that is plane 2 he will automatically push 2 to select it

Speed control: I was actually missing faster speeds so that initial engagement and running away goes faster.

What I was missing additionally was the clear indication which enemy a fighter has targeted. This is mostly when I combat 3 identical fighters. In these cases the image of the enemy craft becomes useless, and one needs to follow the targeting lines to sort out which is which, and that becomes complicated when they mix it up firing missiles and dodging them at once. We already have red dots above an enemy if targeted, how about making it a different color when it is targeted by a plane that is currently selected by the player?

Otherwise I like the air combat. There is also a lot of potential in it, but is fine as it is. Its a nice brake from tactical ground combat now and then.

Edited October 12, 2013 by zolobolo

[Tobbzn]

I would actually want it to speed up, too. I don't mind pause spamming for fine control, but the starting approach, as well as any retreat or standardized kiting tactic, takes a flow-breaking aeon to finish.

At least, it feels that way once once the crash sites start tallying over a hundred. As for speeding up or down...

[StellarRat]

Now, I don't know what goes into hot keys. They might be a huge amount of coding and in that case my idea is coding intensive.

Speed rates and adding more hot keys would be relatively simple in my experience, but I'm assuming that the air combat code is well written, etc... sometimes "simple" things turn out to be nightmares.

[Anon_Spartan]

Yeah, speeding up is nice too, especially after the enemy is down and you just circle around, or when you're retreating and you're guaranteed to get away.

And I hope hot keys could be put in. But I understand if the coding isn't the best for that. I can't even imagine what goes into a hot key. You have all the codes for an action then add "Lol and the letter B does all this too."

[GlyphGryph]

I too would like the ability to speed up. Don't care about slowing things down.

[Dead Dread]

yeah true, whilst the fights go too quickly to control in real time it does seem to take an age to get in range and after you've won your planes mill about for quite a while so a speed up would be good too. Speed controls for air combat please! :-)

[Safe-Keeper]

I want time compression, personally (especially for when I've called a retreat and have to sit there and wait for the fighters to reach the edge of the map ), but the ability to slow down time would be appreciated, too.