Pilot Archive
Thread: You're a horrible pilot tips that help make you ok pilot :D
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Datink_Nieleft
Wed Jun 08, 2005 8:46 pm
#1
I've come across a few players that claim they are "the worst pilot ever", nothing they do will prevent them from dying. Well I don't believe there are bad pilots,..only bad set ups
- I suggest using a joystick over the mouse,..and here's why.
Using a mouse, your range of motion is actually pretty significant AND your fingers are doing more flying than your ship (unless you have a mouse with a lot of programable buttons) across the keyboard. Granted you have "better accuracy" as some would claim when you use a mouse and you still have to use some keyboard commands with a stick, I stillthink the stick is a better option for the new pilot.
Your stick doesn't have to be top of the line (I use a old microsoft sidewinder precision),..but it should have the following items at a minimum:
- A slide type throttle
- Rudder twist (Twisting the stick to initiate a roll)
- At least three buttons on the stick itself, preferably on the head of the stick within thumb reach.
The beauty of stick flight is that all you need can be accessed pretty much with one hand, in a small area, improving your response time dramatically. Your booster and missiles are a thumb press away while your primary guns can be keymapped to your trigger. You can mark your slide throttle to the position for optimal turning.
So..a stick pilot can put his/her ship into a climb, twist for a roll, fire guns, and hit the counter measures/missiles in less than 2 seconds using only one hand.
The stick also gives you a limited range of motionas far as hand movements are concerned. You know pulling back on the stick to its limit will cause your ship to climb. Using a mouse you have to visually confirm this. Now instead of watching stars start to go up, you can narrow your attention to your Heads Up Display or HUD with the Radar/Shield/Armor statuses. Okay..thats enough on my stick vs. mouse rant.
To be a "ok" pilot you need to learn a few things:
-Situational awareness, know where the enemy is (and who the enemy is). This is where narrowing your attention to the radar and the cross hairs comes into play. Put your radar at the top of the screen, under your hotkeys. Now you can see whats red, and whats in your cross hairs almost at the same time. With everything pretty much on your joystick, the only keyboard strokes you will really need is the function keys maybe. KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE SCREEN! If you find yourself hunting on the keyboard,..those seconds could mean the difference between you being a ace, or being cosmic dust.
- Lead the target. You see that little + thing floating around offsides of the crosshairs? That helps to tell you where you should be firing. Best tip I can impart here is,..the area between where the enemy is when your crosshairs is are on him and the lead reticle is the spot to start firing your blasters. If you sweep this area you will hit him. This leads me to...
- Droid commands. Before you think about getting equipment..go for droid commands,..specifically Capacitor Overload (up to 3 only) and Capacitor to Shield Shunt (again, only up to 3). Even at low levels these commands will give you that sweeping ability between the target and the lead reticle instead of running out of juice after a couple of shots. Cap to shield..well,...when your shields start to drop..tag this and you will buy yourself a couple more seconds to get out of dodge or whatever. When you get to the level three of ANY of the commands...I recommend only going to 3 in order to prevent permanent dmg to your components.
- Chatting. Wait till your done fighting unless your on teamspeak.
Well I hope this helps,..I suck at writing guides.
quadpers0n
Wed Jun 08, 2005 8:59 pm
#2
good hint about moving the radar. (the rest are good hints too)
i put my radar right next to the main hud in the middle of the screen... try it out.
Br-10n
Wed Jun 08, 2005 9:09 pm
#3
That's almost correct, but I'd recommend using the stick twist for Yaw and side-to-side for roll. That's the way 99.99% of other flight sims have the axes mapped, and that's the way real airplanes with sticks fly. Actually, real airplanes with sticks use side-to-side for ailerons, and you have to use rudder pedals for yaw, but that's beside the point.
Datink_Nieleft
Wed Jun 08, 2005 9:30 pm
#4
quadpers0n wrote:
good hint about moving the radar. (the rest are good hints too)
i put my radar right next to the main hud in the middle of the screen... try it out.
Aye..I run two tool bars which put my radar right on top of my HUD. I use the second bar as my "boot up" droid commands..top for specials and shield to shunt (should my joystick buttons craphamster on me)
Datink_Nieleft
Wed Jun 08, 2005 9:31 pm
#5
Br-10n wrote:
That's almost correct, but I'd recommend using the stick twist for Yaw and side-to-side for roll. That's the way 99.99% of other flight sims have the axes mapped, and that's the way real airplanes with sticks fly. Actually, real airplanes with sticks use side-to-side for ailerons, and you have to use rudder pedals for yaw, but that's beside the point.
I like that! When I get home I am going to try it out. Thanks for the tip!
Dorjhe
Wed Jun 08, 2005 10:17 pm
#6
That's for Atmospheric flight. The space shuttle for instance has 2 controll setups. in space the control stick rotates the ship on both axis up down and left right. The pedals roll it. When gliding home the side to side motion on the stick rolls the ship while the pedals YAW the nose side to side. See my point. Ask a NASA dude about it 2 different control setups for the same vehicle depending on atmosphere or in space. Also 99.9% of the other flight sims are for atmospheric fighters, see above.
gaarawarr
Wed Jun 08, 2005 11:35 pm
#7
i think his whole point was that more people are used to atmospheric fighter sims then space sims. i used to play IL2 alot and setting up my controller the same way for JTL made the learning curve alot easier.
Jaissen-Dunan
Thu Jun 09, 2005 8:02 am
#8
An additional note on droid programs...
Always run the programs before starting the mission and make sure your ship is fully powered and programmed out before you start, this way your not using the time when you might need cap to sheild shunt, rather then just hitting cap overcharge and tying up your flight comp for a good minute. The slower your interface, the longer you wait. Might as well do this right when you first arrive space side. Droid Programs last until you repair or land. ALWAYS repair at a station before landing (overload 3's will run you about 26-32 cedits, overload 4's will run you 40-60 credits average). The overload programs do cause damage to your system components when you use them, so take this to mind and always repair before you land after a mission.
When you first hit space and run your programs... Always run them in the same order. I always go with reactor overload first, then engine overload, then weapon cap overcharge, then weapon overload, then weapon tuning. In that order. Since your overcharging alot of your components, you will be sucking more energy from your reactor, so its common sense to run this first. The weapon tuning I use alot more now, specially since im running heavy weapons on two hardpoints. I find my cap keeps up even better and can actually recharge while I have the hammer down on both weapons, this does effect the overall damage of the weapons, but I feel its a decent trade off for deep space and for more intensive, consistant damage required missions.
With this in mind you should also look into a reactor that is either crafted for gen, or a re-ed reactor with a decent gen rate. Im running a crafted 3300mass 12k power generation in my Oppressor with reactor overload 4. All other overloads are 3's. This helps me when I launch in the red, everything stabalizes just fine. This saves a great deal of mass :-) at the cost of replacing my reactor once in a while.
Droid Overload programs are faction specific for programming them yourself, so if your of Imperial flavor, you might need to search out a privateer pilot for a swap of programmed chips, and vice vs..
One final thing, your flight comp might be limited as to the amount of programs you can store in it, so be decisive on what you will need or wont need. Most of the stabalization and normalizations programs I feel are useless as you can just run to a station and repair yourself to return everything to normal.
Hope this helps a little,
Jaissen Dunan
REDSUN
Imperial Pilot Ace
Master Shipwright
Kauri
Always run the programs before starting the mission and make sure your ship is fully powered and programmed out before you start, this way your not using the time when you might need cap to sheild shunt, rather then just hitting cap overcharge and tying up your flight comp for a good minute. The slower your interface, the longer you wait. Might as well do this right when you first arrive space side. Droid Programs last until you repair or land. ALWAYS repair at a station before landing (overload 3's will run you about 26-32 cedits, overload 4's will run you 40-60 credits average). The overload programs do cause damage to your system components when you use them, so take this to mind and always repair before you land after a mission.
When you first hit space and run your programs... Always run them in the same order. I always go with reactor overload first, then engine overload, then weapon cap overcharge, then weapon overload, then weapon tuning. In that order. Since your overcharging alot of your components, you will be sucking more energy from your reactor, so its common sense to run this first. The weapon tuning I use alot more now, specially since im running heavy weapons on two hardpoints. I find my cap keeps up even better and can actually recharge while I have the hammer down on both weapons, this does effect the overall damage of the weapons, but I feel its a decent trade off for deep space and for more intensive, consistant damage required missions.
With this in mind you should also look into a reactor that is either crafted for gen, or a re-ed reactor with a decent gen rate. Im running a crafted 3300mass 12k power generation in my Oppressor with reactor overload 4. All other overloads are 3's. This helps me when I launch in the red, everything stabalizes just fine. This saves a great deal of mass :-) at the cost of replacing my reactor once in a while.
Droid Overload programs are faction specific for programming them yourself, so if your of Imperial flavor, you might need to search out a privateer pilot for a swap of programmed chips, and vice vs..
One final thing, your flight comp might be limited as to the amount of programs you can store in it, so be decisive on what you will need or wont need. Most of the stabalization and normalizations programs I feel are useless as you can just run to a station and repair yourself to return everything to normal.
Hope this helps a little,
Jaissen Dunan
REDSUN
Imperial Pilot Ace
Master Shipwright
Kauri
Dorjhe
Thu Jun 09, 2005 8:52 am
#9
gaarawarr wrote:
i think his whole point was that more people are used to atmospheric fighter sims then space sims. i used to play IL2 alot and setting up my controller the same way for JTL made the learning curve alot easier.
But that is not the case in atmospheric you roll your ship to cause a turn. in JTL rolling does nothing but change up from down. you can roll all day long but will continue in a straight line. In an atmospheric aircraft rolling in a straight line requires other inputs to maintain a straight path, The aircraft naturally tends to turn when banked. That is not the case in space, hence the difference in setups. However this is pointless argument, fly however it works best for you.
Kharn
Thu Jun 09, 2005 10:43 am
#10
Ryuukon wrote:I still prefer mouse to joystick. With a 3 button mouse I have access to blaster, missiles, and countermeasures with my right hand. Left hand I have fast access to the first 4 buttons on both hotbars (shift with the pinky), throttle control (W and S), roll (A and D), match speed (F key), boosters (E key), target under reticle (Q key), target nearest (Tab key), target last attacker (R key), plus I have custom macros bound to Shift-W for full throttle and Shift-S for full stop.
I have access to more things with these easy to access buttons than I would key hunting with my left hand after letting go of the joystick's throttle.
I've got a joystick with 12 programmable buttons on it, so I don't have to move my hand from the throttle area to hit the keyboard. AAMOF, the button closest to my throttle is the 'target next enemy player' command, and when I'm in DS, I am hitting that sucker every 3 seconds or so. Helps me get the drop on most players..... At least the first time. These are the commands I've got programmed in:
Fire guns
Fire missile
Target next under reticle
Target closest enemy
countermeasures
booster
cap->shield shunt macro
target next component
target previous component
target next enemy player
/launchmiss (to let the players know I'm coming)
And I've still got 1 button left to think about. I never use match speed unless I'm flying in a precision strike mode, so the keyboard is fine for that, and I've never used 'target last attacker'. So I'm still trying to decide on that 12th button.....
Dragon942
Thu Jun 09, 2005 11:11 am
#11
quadpers0n wrote:
good hint about moving the radar. (the rest are good hints too)
i put my radar right next to the main hud in the middle of the screen... try it out.
I put my radar right on top of my reticle. They are both circles and the radar is translucent, so it works out well. This also allows me to put the targeted ship information right above the radar/reticle so I can see the status of my target's shields, hull, and systems without ever taking my eyes off the target.
Also, for the axis setups, I fly both Flight and Space sims and prefer to use the side to side to yaw in space sims. It helps me keep the two seperated, so I remember about that whole gravity thing when I go back to the atmosphere
Narrganocca
Thu Jun 09, 2005 11:42 am
#12
here is another tip for "horrible" pilots
read the guides that 1st_Viduus created: Learning to Fly, KISS, and 2 others...all are stickied in the FAQ thread
Ryuukon
Thu Jun 09, 2005 12:14 pm
#13
I still prefer mouse to joystick. With a 3 button mouse I have access to blaster, missiles, and countermeasures with my right hand. Left hand I have fast access to the first 4 buttons on both hotbars (shift with the pinky), throttle control (W and S), roll (A and D), match speed (F key), boosters (E key), target under reticle (Q key), target nearest (Tab key), target last attacker (R key), plus I have custom macros bound to Shift-W for full throttle and Shift-S for full stop.
I have access to more things with these easy to access buttons than I would key hunting with my left hand after letting go of the joystick's throttle.
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