Compensating for ship inertia?

Jarius

J
I ran with a vulture for bounty hunting for a while and I liked it, but I got tired of dealing with its power starvation and limited equipment slots after a while, so I traded it in for an fdl. Now I don't consider myself a highly skilled flyer, but with my vulture I was able to dance around the target with liberal use of lateral thrusters and keep them from being able to turn into me. With the fdl, though, if I try to do that I end up grinding to a halt while the ship tries to overcome its momentum, which lets the target shoot past me and turn to get a bead on me. It's especially frustrating when trying to take on more maneuverable ships; for instance, yesterday I had to jump out of a high conflict zone because a little cobra mk IV was wearing me down slowly but surely, and I just couldn't get the advantage over him. Is there something I should be doing to compensate for this thing's extra inertia, or should I maybe just be flying it in a different way entirely? An answer that means I need to build up more skill is perfectly fine, if that's what it requires. I just want to figure out how to be more effective with this thing.

I'm running with a huge fixed multicannon, a med fixed multicannon, a rail gun, and 2x med fixed burst lasers, if it's important.
 

GilliganTX

GilliganTX
Are you employing FA Off + Boost Turning techniques? IMO, those are essential to getting the FDL moving right.


That said, the vulture is an absolute delight to fly and and FDL just cannot be as agile due to mass.
 

Siranui

S
The vulture is more agile than the FDL; essentially being a box with thrusters bolted all over it. The FDL is a different beast and takes a different style of driving. You'll adapt. The FDL really does not like stalling though.
 

Jarius

J
Can you explain what you mean, gilligan? I've been experimenting with FA off lately trying to get used to it, but what do you mean by boost turning? I'm still pretty green when it comes to flying well, so I don't know many tricks.
 

GilliganTX

GilliganTX
Jarius said:
Can you explain what you mean, gilligan? I've been experimenting with FA off lately trying to get used to it, but what do you mean by boost turning? I'm still pretty green when it comes to flying well, so I don't know many tricks.
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Well I guess let me back-track, you're familiar with the throttle positioning "in the blue" being the most maneuverable throttle position? That's step one.


Pitch rates are slightly improved with FA off. You can really Pitch over quickly if you hit boost while pitching. You can pitch even faster if you use the up/down thrusters.

Start playing with boost turning with FA ON, set you throttle in the blue on a straight heading, pull hard on the stick and hit boost. You'll notice you're going to be flipping over more quickly.

Start throwing in your up/down thrusters and see how they effect your pitch rate.

Once you have a feel for that, try it again with FA OFF.
 

Jarius

J
All right, thanks.

Somewhat on topic, are there any resources for reading up on more advanced techniques? I've been scouring the interwebs for a while now but haven't been able to turn up much beyond the level of "This is what lateral thrusters are." It seems to be one of those things where everyone who already knows doesn't feel the need to talk about it.
 

Odan Brota

Odan Brota
Jarius said:
All right, thanks.

Somewhat on topic, are there any resources for reading up on more advanced techniques? I've been scouring the interwebs for a while now but haven't been able to turn up much beyond the level of "This is what lateral thrusters are." It seems to be one of those things where everyone who already knows doesn't feel the need to talk about it.
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I recommend getting a sidewinder, going FA-Off, and seeing if you can navigate around the station. It helps you get your head around the differences in the flight model.

For instance, the Cutter can power-slide in FA-Off, and it's incredibly useful for swinging your nose around to hit people.
 

GilliganTX

GilliganTX
Jarius said:
All right, thanks.

Somewhat on topic, are there any resources for reading up on more advanced techniques? I've been scouring the interwebs for a while now but haven't been able to turn up much beyond the level of "This is what lateral thrusters are." It seems to be one of those things where everyone who already knows doesn't feel the need to talk about it.
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IIRC there are various tutorials on you tube.
 

Jarius

J
I did just that the other day, grabbed a sidewinder and flew around a couple orbis and ocellus stations and tried my hand at docking. It's something I'm going to need more practice at still, but I was referring more to someplace that's written down the kind of stuff that the veterans seem tend to take for granted. I'm the kind of person who learns better by doing research than by just jumping in.

EDIT: Wow you guys reply quickly. That reply was for Odan; as far as youtube is concerned, I didn't have much success with that either, but I can try to do a little more hunting.

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I actually started considering a federal assault ship after doing some looking around, but I'll need to do some ranking up before being able to get one of those. I have exactly zero rank with everyone so far.
 
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[VR] Enexemander

[VR] Enexemander
Jarius said:
I did just that the other day, grabbed a sidewinder and flew around a couple orbis and ocellus stations and tried my hand at docking. It's something I'm going to need more practice at still, but I was referring more to someplace that's written down the kind of stuff that the veterans seem tend to take for granted. I'm the kind of person who learns better by doing research than by just jumping in.

EDIT: Wow you guys reply quickly. That reply was for Odan; as far as youtube is concerned, I didn't have much success with that either, but I can try to do a little more hunting.

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

I actually started considering a federal assault ship after doing some looking around, but I'll need to do some ranking up before being able to get one of those. I have exactly zero rank with everyone so far.
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I haven't found any in-depth dogfighting guides either. I would consider myself no longer green, but I always love to read and research that kind of stuff. You can find tons of information about conventional dogfighting, and some of it is relevant, but you have to read with a critical eye when it comes to adapting atmospheric flight to E:D's flight model.

So far as the general broad strokes, this is what I came up with when 2.1 hit and I started to really get into combat:

After focusing on fighting since 2.1 hit, plus looking around the forums and youtube videos, I've come to a thesis on how combat works in E:D. It's a rock/paper/scissors system at base.

Rock- Flying backwards face to face (a tanking battle, essentially).
Paper- Turn battles. Trying to maneuver around to your opponent's rear and not get hit.
Scissors- Jousting. Trying to hit hard and fast head on while taking minimal damage.

Which one you should try to do depends totally on your ship. Fast little guys like the Eagle are going to do best with a Paper approach. A tanky ship with lots of shields and/or hull is going to want to go Rock. And your jousting ships are going to be those with lots of firepower, but relatively weak defense (Scissors). I'm guessing your scissor ships would be like an FDL, but I don't have any flight experience with those yet.

The great thing is, you can force the AI to fight the battle you want to fight. If they're trying to joust or turn battle you, then you can boost away in a different vector. From there, you can either FA:OFF and flip your ship to take it to Rock, or you can do a large barrel roll into them and make it a Scissor joust. With fine control, instead of the Scissor joust you can maneuver into a Paper turning battle situation.

So the basics of a fight are to size up the competition (rank+ship type), then decide which type of battle you want and maneuver to make it happen. (If you want to turn battle, you don't have to boost away.) If instead you see the battle as something you'd rather not engage in, you can High Wake out and avoid the battle.

That's what I see as the basics so far, and then from there your specific load-out and pilot skill branches out the different paths to either combine styles or refine one down to a fine point.
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Jarius

J
Good information, thanks.

How is Scissors different from Rock, in your example? Since they're both head-on, they seem like the same thing to me, unless I'm missing something. I get the feeling that's the one that's most relevant to me.
 

the100thmonkey

the100thmonkey
Check out z4.Mafia and Jesse USMC (iirc) on YouTube - those guys are very good indeed with FA-off. They will give you a flavour of what you can achieve. Flight assist is a hell of a lot easier, and frankly there's no instrinsic advantage to pure FA-off flying except it feels great when you finally "get" it. Most pilots use a combination of assist modes.

This is an old series of videos, but it all still applies:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhCXvyI3HSA

I learned to fly with assist off in a Python. It... takes a while before it really starts responding to the inputs, which helped me to get my head around the First Law of Motion. Basically, you need to learn to give the opposite input to your previous in order to cancel it.

With regard to researching stuff versus doing it, in my opinion and experience, there's not really any other way to learn fully Newtonian flight than doing it. Babies don't read about walking before they do it, and their carers don't read them language textbooks to help them learn to talk. In this regard, there's no substitute for experience, and I too prefer a theory-first approach in many aspects of my learning. FA-off is one of those activities where theory rests on an appreciation of the fundamentals.
 
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DrakeAurum

DrakeAurum
Jarius said:
Good information, thanks.

How is Scissors different from Rock, in your example? Since they're both head-on, they seem like the same thing to me, unless I'm missing something. I get the feeling that's the one that's most relevant to me.
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Rock is flying backwards to match the enemy's forwards flight, preventing them from leaving your field-of-fire at the expense of remaining firmly within theirs. It's good if you're confident that you can outlast them in a straight-up battle of firepower and defenses.

Scissors is flying very fast towards an opponent, unloading a lot of firepower in one burst, then boosting away out of range before they can return too much fire. It's good if you have weapons that deliver a lot of punch but have a reload time between shots, but relies on the enemy being less maneuverable, so that they can't track you through your attack run or keep up when you boost.
 
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Jarius

J
I assume you mean Scissors, not Paper? But that makes sense, thanks.

Thanks for the links, the1000thmonkey, they look like they'll be useful once I have a moment to sit through them. As far as researching is concerned, I was referring more to all sorts of advanced tactics in general rather than FA off specifically. FA off does pretty much seem like one of those things you can't learn just by reading, yeah. But if I can find a place that can explain what some of the more complex tricks are, and then go off and practice them on my own, that would be ideal.
 
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GTwannabe

GTwannabe
Use turrets on the medium hardpoints. That will compensate for the FDL's propensity to slide all over the place. FAS is better for killing big ships as it can hang outside a Python/Anaconda's field of fire and shoot out the powerplant. FDL excels in combat zones as it can shield tank and there's plenty of room for wide turns.
 

the100thmonkey

the100thmonkey
Well, the first one to do is the boost flip - FA-off > boost > flip > FA-on. It's explained in the second video of the series.

There's also the circle strafe, where you set up rotation in FA-off and use forward thrust to prevent your ship drifting away from the target. You effectively fly in a circle, always pointing your nose at the enemy, or at least in its general direction ;)

*edit*

And I respectfully disagree about turrets on the FdL. Gimbals knock about 30% of your DPS compared to fixed weapons. Turrets about 60%.

As someone said above, the FdL is extremely sensitive to distributor settings - there is a massive difference in turning performance between 0 and 4 pips to ENG. The difference in translation thruster performance also reflects this, and the thrusters become much more effective when boosting. If you can get your head around that, turrets will be totally unnecessary. The FdL can turn very well, if you know how.
 
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