I was in my FAS last night and got into a fight with a deadly FDS, and while it was an interesting fight and I eventually came out on top, I found it interesting that the FDS was able to out-turn me and reduce the fight to a jousting match battle of attrition.
I found this interesting because as anyone who has flown a FDS knows, it has a much worse pitch rate than the FAS, although not as bad as, say, a Python. So the only explanation was that he was using FA/off, which is something I don't use that often except in my corvette to do boost turns. Anyway, it got me thinking about the whole concept of dogfighting and roles for ships in this game, compared to something like WW2 dogfighting.
Back in WW2, every airplane had a role, and a technology level, which is to say it was either cutting edge, or outdated for the time it was fighting. Every plane that had any business in a dogfight had its own dogfighting style, failure to adhere to which would result in pilot death. For example, you didn't try and play a turning game in a P-47 against a BF-109 or Zero. P-47 was a boom and zoom fighter that started from high altitude, dived down at high speed, made ONE pass against its opponent using high alpha strike damage and converted that speed back into altitude to either escape or to repeat the attack and make a second pass.
Conversely, if you were in a Zero, you tried to catch a less maneuverable fighter like the P-47 unawares or goad a rookie pilot into playing a turning game with you at which point you would tear them apart. They couldn't outclimb you or outturn you so all they could do was dive to gain speed and eventually hit the deck with nowhere to run.
Throw in obsolete aircraft like the P-40 Warhawk compared to the then-new Zero, or the aging BF-109 in 1943 against the new P-51 Mustang and you end up with some challenging parings.
So looking back at ED, how can we compare dogfighting in general and categorize ships by role and effectiveness?
Are there in fact different roles at all in ED in terms of dogfighting or are we forced to all play one style?
Generally i'd say that in ED, alpha strike is vastly inferior to ship defences compared to a WW2 craft. What I mean is, that in WW2 using my example of the P-47 diving down to attack an unaware Zero, it was quite possible for that P-47 to kill the Zero in one burst of .50cal fire. Even a heavy bomber could be taken out in one accurate pass if you hit it in the right spot.
Not so in ED.
Take the FDL, commonly referred to as a boom and zoom fighter. I can't think of many situations where one could use that tactic properly in ED -flying at high speed to an opponent, blasting them with high alpha, killing or crippling them and then zooming away at such speed that they can't respond. It just doesn't happen in my experience, feel free to correct me if i'm wrong though!
What we have in ED is a game of jousting. Fly at your opponent, shoot them, hit FA/off, turn around, rinse/repeat. That's what the AI is doing whenever possible. Big ships, small ships, agile ships, clunky ships. it all comes down to keeping face-time on your opponent for as long as possible to pound them with your guns because combat in ED is first and foremost a battle of attrition. It does no good to do some fancy flying and get your opponent in your sights for 1/2 second because you can't kill him in 1/2 second, so you need to joust him and just dish out the pain and if necessary soak it up at the same time, and hope you are more durable.
Ships like the FDS and FGS excel at this for some reason, even though they have horrible maneuverability. The AI just gets around it by doing endless FA/off turns and forcing you to joust their many hardpoints. In addition, they are resistant to ramming, and do high ramming damage themselves.
So the problem I see is that boom and zoom alpha strike is too low in ED, and ships with alpha strike designs simply aren't overwhelmingly fast enough in a straight line to make use of that tactic.
FA/off is a bit of an equalizer in ED, in that it allows basically any ship to cheat its turning radius limitation and do incredibly fast 180 turns. If you forced everyone to play FA/on, 3/4 of the ships in the game would simply suck at dogfighting, because they would all be P-47's fighting Zero's. My corvette is in that situation, and I get around it by using 5 turreted burst lasers to take care of all the ships that can outturn me.
What's a general solution? Well there could be a rebalancing of ships so that there is a bigger differentiation between straight line speed and turning speed. You could take, say, a Viper MK3 and give it incredible turning ability and the ability to sustain relatively high speed in "the blue zone", but give it average overall boost speed. Take a ship like the FDS and FDL, and give it double or triple the straight line speed of the Viper3, and 1/2 the Viper's circling agility, and you'd create a viable boom and zoom vs circling mechanic. To complement these changes, the FDL boom and zoom fighter would need hardpoints that give it high alpha strike and such weapons should have some form of restriction, such as high reload times or extremely limited ammo or high accuracy and damage from long range. The Zero-style ship (something like say the Vulture), would have fast firing weapons that are accurate at close range.
Tinkering with high alpha vs defence is tough though, because nobody wants to be 1-shotted from out of nowhere, so I still say the game favours a grinding combat style.
What do you think? Is dogfighting fine in ED? Are there really ship roles in combat? If not, should there be?
I found this interesting because as anyone who has flown a FDS knows, it has a much worse pitch rate than the FAS, although not as bad as, say, a Python. So the only explanation was that he was using FA/off, which is something I don't use that often except in my corvette to do boost turns. Anyway, it got me thinking about the whole concept of dogfighting and roles for ships in this game, compared to something like WW2 dogfighting.
Back in WW2, every airplane had a role, and a technology level, which is to say it was either cutting edge, or outdated for the time it was fighting. Every plane that had any business in a dogfight had its own dogfighting style, failure to adhere to which would result in pilot death. For example, you didn't try and play a turning game in a P-47 against a BF-109 or Zero. P-47 was a boom and zoom fighter that started from high altitude, dived down at high speed, made ONE pass against its opponent using high alpha strike damage and converted that speed back into altitude to either escape or to repeat the attack and make a second pass.
Conversely, if you were in a Zero, you tried to catch a less maneuverable fighter like the P-47 unawares or goad a rookie pilot into playing a turning game with you at which point you would tear them apart. They couldn't outclimb you or outturn you so all they could do was dive to gain speed and eventually hit the deck with nowhere to run.
Throw in obsolete aircraft like the P-40 Warhawk compared to the then-new Zero, or the aging BF-109 in 1943 against the new P-51 Mustang and you end up with some challenging parings.
So looking back at ED, how can we compare dogfighting in general and categorize ships by role and effectiveness?
Are there in fact different roles at all in ED in terms of dogfighting or are we forced to all play one style?
Generally i'd say that in ED, alpha strike is vastly inferior to ship defences compared to a WW2 craft. What I mean is, that in WW2 using my example of the P-47 diving down to attack an unaware Zero, it was quite possible for that P-47 to kill the Zero in one burst of .50cal fire. Even a heavy bomber could be taken out in one accurate pass if you hit it in the right spot.
Not so in ED.
Take the FDL, commonly referred to as a boom and zoom fighter. I can't think of many situations where one could use that tactic properly in ED -flying at high speed to an opponent, blasting them with high alpha, killing or crippling them and then zooming away at such speed that they can't respond. It just doesn't happen in my experience, feel free to correct me if i'm wrong though!
What we have in ED is a game of jousting. Fly at your opponent, shoot them, hit FA/off, turn around, rinse/repeat. That's what the AI is doing whenever possible. Big ships, small ships, agile ships, clunky ships. it all comes down to keeping face-time on your opponent for as long as possible to pound them with your guns because combat in ED is first and foremost a battle of attrition. It does no good to do some fancy flying and get your opponent in your sights for 1/2 second because you can't kill him in 1/2 second, so you need to joust him and just dish out the pain and if necessary soak it up at the same time, and hope you are more durable.
Ships like the FDS and FGS excel at this for some reason, even though they have horrible maneuverability. The AI just gets around it by doing endless FA/off turns and forcing you to joust their many hardpoints. In addition, they are resistant to ramming, and do high ramming damage themselves.
So the problem I see is that boom and zoom alpha strike is too low in ED, and ships with alpha strike designs simply aren't overwhelmingly fast enough in a straight line to make use of that tactic.
FA/off is a bit of an equalizer in ED, in that it allows basically any ship to cheat its turning radius limitation and do incredibly fast 180 turns. If you forced everyone to play FA/on, 3/4 of the ships in the game would simply suck at dogfighting, because they would all be P-47's fighting Zero's. My corvette is in that situation, and I get around it by using 5 turreted burst lasers to take care of all the ships that can outturn me.
What's a general solution? Well there could be a rebalancing of ships so that there is a bigger differentiation between straight line speed and turning speed. You could take, say, a Viper MK3 and give it incredible turning ability and the ability to sustain relatively high speed in "the blue zone", but give it average overall boost speed. Take a ship like the FDS and FDL, and give it double or triple the straight line speed of the Viper3, and 1/2 the Viper's circling agility, and you'd create a viable boom and zoom vs circling mechanic. To complement these changes, the FDL boom and zoom fighter would need hardpoints that give it high alpha strike and such weapons should have some form of restriction, such as high reload times or extremely limited ammo or high accuracy and damage from long range. The Zero-style ship (something like say the Vulture), would have fast firing weapons that are accurate at close range.
Tinkering with high alpha vs defence is tough though, because nobody wants to be 1-shotted from out of nowhere, so I still say the game favours a grinding combat style.
What do you think? Is dogfighting fine in ED? Are there really ship roles in combat? If not, should there be?
