Here is the controls that i believe would make sense: mouse: pitch and roll a and d: yaw w: accelerates forward when in aircraft mode. s: hovers in place. crouch: decrease vertical thrust space: increase vertical thrust But i believe there would be an option for you to change the aircraft controls...?
I am partial for the C&C:Ren style. I'm not really looking forward to fixed wing flight. Mostly because I suck at it. I think empires is a arcade first, simulation second, the aircraft should reflect this IMO
Will it be possible to shot while flying? When yes, will it be possible to rotate the guns in every direction or are they fixed and the aircraft have to be rotated to aim? And one short suggestion: I would be nice, if the pilot of an aircraft can't control every gun. So he need to pick some team members, which will then able to control them.
Make the controls simple and intuitive, it's not the controls but the enemy team you should fight with. In Battlefield 2 flying without a joystick is a pain in the ass, that's clearly NOT the direction Empires should head.
Both. Default to the Renegade style one, name it 'Basic Aircraft Controls'. It makes it not too hard to use aircraft, but, you can't do anything over advanced either. Make BF2 style available from a dropdown in controls as 'Advanced Aircraft Controls'. This is for when players get the hang of the basics and want to play with access to the more advanced stuff that harder to do.
i'll be happy so long as aircraft (except the transport, obviously) can't hover. I think that's the most shockingly sad thing that many shooters with planes do, and it means that instead of aircaft coming in for attack runs and weaving around the sky, they just hover and pelt you for as long as is possible from one position. totally ruins the whole point of aircraft, it just becomes "lol flying tanks"
Sandbag: Most games don't have the map size needed for a proper non-VTOL aircraft to take off without the airstrip going into enemy territory. If you let something take off via VTOL, but don't let the player use it mid flight, well, thats rather difficult. What if the player wants to land in the battlefield? It sucks hard if you limit the player to only being able to land on predefined locations or buildings. You can't just say 'ok, you can take off and land via VTOL, but we wont let you use it to hover' because 1; that would be so anal to code and 2; it just doesn't make sense to the player. Don't you find it frustrating when in games you suddenly lose the ability to do/use something simply because the developers couldn't take the time to find a better way?
B and D are nearly the same though, and both ok. Auto-correction would be a bad idea (A) but a "Help mah copter is teh tailspin" emergency hover key would be a good idea to help noobs.
My favourite experience of flying in a game was GTA:SA harrier. I actually sometimes play even now just so I can get 6*s in a harrier and have dog fights. This used Q/E to rotate the body of the aircraft (or the rear rudder, basically easy, slow turn), which made helicopters possible to fly and planes easier to cruse. This was actually pretty unrealistic, unlike BF, because it turned you really tightly without losing any height. A+D/mouse made craft bank/tilt, for sharp turns and dogfights where you end up dodging homing missiles. The chance of hitting things when flying low is high, but it's strangely thrilling. Noobs can drive their transports around and just stick to q/e, and the kool kids can go around dog fighting in fighters. There were also turning thrusters to allow hovering, but it takes time for them to come round, so if you wanted to camp outside an enemy rax it would take a bit of manovering, and you'd constantly have to correct yourself. perfectly possible, but means you have to concentrate. also your ability to dodge rockets vanishes, because you lose the ability to do anything other than rotate and go up/down slowly. You could also just go around barrel rolling once you got the hang of it, the banking doesn't make you go crazy like a sim. To the problem of small maps' skyboxes, just slow the plane down. It will make it possible to hit with an RPG too, which is good imo.
BF2 style, because it is mouse controlled, it will feel a lot more natural than using the keyboard. Fliers will get a feeling for their plane and have a special connection with it
Anyone who votes bf2 is an idiot. Noobs can barely manage to drive over the bridges on mvalley. Any even semi-difficult controls would destroy public games.
I've only played bf2 out of those games. I liked how it was but if ones easier then thats my vote. Which is C&C rite?
Then noobs should practice aircraft handling in single player, or on private vehicle training servers. Why should controls be dumbed down so people can be uber 1337zors with no practice?
So the mod doesn't die. Emp loses like 1 player every day but gets replaced by the newbie flow. Make aircraft too difficult and people will leave more due to frustration faster than the newbie flow can replace and emp creeps ever closer to death. The strength of the player base is more important than anything.
Yeah because making the planes not easy to crash somehow makes them automatically no-skill for combat???? Riiiiggghhhhttttt. There is no point in an overly complicated flight system for an arcade style game where there are serious consequences to crashing planes not just going "OMFG NOOB NOW I HAZ TO WAIT A MINUTE FER TEH RESPAWN". Yeah, the noobs we can't get to read a manual are going to go learn to fly by themselves and become pro before coming to play with everyone else. I don't know what fantasy island you live on but the drugs must be great.
