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The creative Descent Multiplayer Tactics Site
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Flying your Pyro GX
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Content:
simple flying, double and trichording
Dodging
The Afterburner
Flying your Pyro-GX
Newbies tend to loose orientation. Every level has an upside and floors.
Try to keep the floor on the bottom of the screen. This will help you keep
orientation. To be comprehensive you need to be able to:
- Fly around corners with a slide that makes you look into the new direction
while passing the corner.
- Turn around while flying into one direction (Full Speed turn).
- Turn and slide at the same time (circle strafing)
That's the basic flying but things like 2 and 3 Axis flight will improve your
skills. 2 Axis flight means that you fly sideways and forward at the same
time. This move increases your speed from 1,0 using forward only to 1,41
using 2 Axis. When you have no more problem with it you may try to add
the 3rd axis (looking down and movin up). This can increase your speed
to 1,73 but you will get stuck very often in the beginning.
The ship turns much faster left and right than up and down. To fly into
a hole in the floor or in the roof you have to bank 90 degrees and turn
left or right in the new direction.
Learn to combine the afterburner with 2-axis-flying. You will be able to
fly very aggressive and fast attacks.
And Last but not Least increase your frames per second. Typing "Frametime"
will give you numbers how often your screen is updated. As long as you
do not have a high end PC with VooDoo 3D Board you will have to play VGA
with all detail (except wall render depth and sound) set on lowest. Get
used to this setting, it is really ugly but a better framerate increases
your flight performance. To do everything well you NEED to setup your computer
in a way that you can simultaniously use all axis and directions as you
like it. Keyboard only or Keyboard + mouse players have some difficulties
doing this. Nearly all of the good pilots use high quality Joysticks (Sidewinder
3D, Gravis Phoenix, Wingman Extreme, SpaceOrb just to name some)
Some people say that changing directions is faster when you play with the Keyboards. This is because you have to move the Joystick all the way from the left all the way to the right. Good point, but try to calibrate your Joystick in an other way than before:
Do not move the Joystick to all the extends! Just move half the way left and right and half the way up and down. Doing this will increase the sensibility of your stick and the maximum roll rate of your Pyro will appear sooner (this will NOT change the roll rate - therefore you need a SpaceOrb).
Changing the sinsitivity of your joystick has to fit the level you are playing. In small levels with sharp turns I personally prefer a very direct steering (Minerva, Dogfight! Level 1 etc...). Flying in huge halls or aiming long distance shots is done better with long steering ways on the joystick (e.g. CracyX Level 2, Descent First Strike Level 4).
Dodging:
There are several possibilities to evade incoming shots. While moving backwards this takes out the speed of the incoming fire. Just sliding to one side is very often too slow to escape the bullets. A combination of double chording and use of the afterburner is the fastets way that I know to change place. This move is a little hard to do (and even harder to explain). Please refer to the animation to the right. The bullets show forward /backwards and left /right movement.
The Afterburner
The Afterburner is from my point of view the real difference between Descent 1 und Descent 2. It is the most powerful "weapon" that you can collect for your Pyro GX (I really thought about taking this paragraph to the weapon page). Like you can see above in the dodging animation a short but precise use of the afterburner can speed up every single move. Try to avoid to empty the accumulated energy for the afterburner. Whenever you get out of energy for it an expirienced pilot can outmaneuver you very fast and you end as a dead duck. And never ever forget that the afterburner is a very noisy tool. Donīt think about using it to speed up you cruise while searching for your opponents. They can hear you while you are *blocks* away. Last but not least it makes the engine glow lighter making you easy to see.
Using the afterburner with double chording movement can give you a speed above 2.1 making you for a short time nearly as fast as a lasershot. You can use this to perform attack maneuvers like the "Afterburner Attack" or speed up to get behind the enemy while circle strafing around each other. Remember the use of the afterburner when you have a look on the graphics in the basic flight maneuvers section. You will understand that the "Descent 1-Killermove" Circle Strafe dies out when using the afterburner.
From my personal expirience in 1 on 1 dogfights the circle strafe is still the basic movement, but it is weakend by sudden afterburner attacks and dodging maneuvers with afterburner use - it morphed over to something that mixes a point and hit with a dodge and fire tactic.
[intro] [flying Pyro] [basic flight situations] [weapon selection] [advanced flight tactics] [Proīs part][democontest][personal]
Send questions or comments to lhoppe@iname.com