Comment by jsmthrowaway | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jsmthrowaway | Hacker News Reader

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I agree on Mohawk. Mohawk would be more worth it if score degraded a little more slowly. As it exists, Mohawk is a one-way ticket to the bottom of the scoreboard because it's so difficult to stay alive. (By the way, if you're reading and didn't realize, you can select any other ship any time. The buttons look disabled but they aren't.)

Prowler is awesome against the Goliath. So, so good. In fact, I'd say the Prowler is the Goliath's main counter, and when I lasted ~15min at #1 in a Goliath, it was a skilled Prowler that finally started annoying me, made me start missing my deflects, and knocked me off my balance. I was thinking the Goliath is unnecessarily OP, but the Prowler handles it. (Smart Prowler pilots: go stalk Goliaths.) Might OP the Prowler, but making it shoot a spread like the Tornado might turn the Prowler into basically an instant-backstab Rogue. Now that I've typed that, yeah, that'd be OP, don't do that.

This game is heavily influenced by Subspace/Continuum, and it's fairly obvious. I could even tell which ship mapped to which fighter in this, and I appreciated how well my skill transferred. My main annoyance was that score drop. I maintained about a 5:1 KD across 500 kills and regularly flopped from #1 to #25 to #2 to #30, because the score you lose on death is a little imbalanced. A few deaths in a row and you can lose 10-15 places, which seems a little rapid. Maybe knock a little off that multiplier on death, but leave the killer's score gain alone? The only way to stay near the top is not die, which makes sense since it's called a bounty, I suppose. Still rough.

Other random feedback to the author: Inferno needs a buff. That speed penalty hurts and is a pretty rapid way to die -- I noticed I was avoiding it as I played. Most of the power-ups and abilities could stand to last quite a bit longer, too. And spawners could really use a lockout on shooting for the same duration as their protective shield; you can spawn in, immediately press spacebar, and probably get a kill on a surprised person who happened to float through where you pop up with no chance to avoid.

Great game, though, I didn't expect to get sucked into a browser game for three hours. I'll be playing it again.

Tip I didn't realize until a long way in: 1, 2, 3, 4 map to upgrades. I was the idiot using the mouse.

I think the rapid score moves are psychologically useful. For every person who slides rapidly downwards on a few unlucky hits, there's another who gets a few good shots, shoots up the board, and thinks "hey, I'm actually not bad at this!" which might make them more likely to stick around.

Mohawk is strong on the side, spraying continuously. If they can be flanked its game over (tho a good player can reposition). I didn't play CTF though.

Prowler is not very good against Goliath because the Goliath can deflect, and its deflect ability unstealths the Prowler. Only a Goliath who has bad reflexes and goes in a straight line gets hosed. And one rocket doesn't kill the Goliath. And as soon as they know Prowler is on them, they're on their toes.

Even in a FFA game a Goliath is easy to take, but only once they unloaded their energy bar or took a few hits. Other players can help with that, consciously or not. And if the Goliath has a large bounty on their head, it is in their interest to help. FFA isn't literally FFA all the time. Sometimes interests align. The bounty system aids that, and its fun. K/D ratio is the real, publicly hidden score.

As a player you should avoid being near the spawn points. You learn where they are after a while. Planes always spawn facing north.

I find the Goliath simple to take down with a Prowler. Even when they discover you, you're close enough to fire. Even with a skilled player as long as you're not directly in his line of fire you're safe.

Then you played against bad Goliaths. You get slowly to them, and you don't one shot them. If they don't go in a steady line either (which they shouldn't and wouldn't if they knew enemy was around), then you won't kill them. When I played Goliath, Prowlers weren't my concern. My concern was resource starve or multiple vs 1 (the former usually due to the latter). A Prowler is great to one shot others; damaged airplanes and Mohawk. You don't easily one shot a Goliath. Not in the least w/o external help.

it doesn't matter what direction you're in. That first shot is a surprise attack. Immediately cloak and turn, and ram it two more times the same way, and he's dead. He can decloak you, but it won't stop you. Sometimes you get unlucky and the missile flips, but not often.

Ah, you got unlucky. Yeah whenever I read "lucky" or "unlucky" in gaming I frown. Its a self deception to deal with the painful truth that you didn't play good enough.

That wasn't luck; that was skill. They reacted to your missile. Either you're in range of him and he can decloak you, or he has enough time to deflect, or is resource starved due to bad play or overburdened from you (unlikely given you're Prowler) or others (bingo), or he is actually not moving in a straight line which he shouldn't (a premise you ignored thus far). Especially not if you just rammed it already, or if you kept killing them. Like, hello anticipation? Heck, if you kept killing them then they shouldn't stick to Goliath.

I found the Mohawk much more suitable to kill Goliath. He can't deflect all the missiles, and if he does its just a matter of avoiding him enough. As long as you can aim you'll deplete his resources way faster than any other airplane can. I found it great in CTF (though not in FFA; although FFA doesn't interest me as much as CTF). I find FFA unrewarding because you can't compete on K/D radio and there doesn't seem to be some kind of goal (the bounty # just dampens your K/D ratio and seems to be have the purpose of a recent scoreboard). To me, FFA is practice for CTF/BTR. Ironically, a good enemy of Mohawk is a skilled Prowler who can anticipate movement and aim. Didn't see many of those around though.

Another observation is that the Mohawk is great to spray with the flame buff.

Its also funny how much more defensive people play in BTR. If they put in that effort during CTF and FFA I'd have a way more difficult time.

Were you BeatDaddy on the Euro server? I was zkdbnz.

Reason I bring this up is to back up this point with a caveat: a skilled Prowler pilot is able to solo take down a Goliath only if the Prowler is faster (with upgrades).

On the EU server, the meta was missile spam fest over Europe. So I took the stealth ship to the North Atlantic and Arctic Ocean. There, the playstyle of the Prowler is one of patience.

Your first goal is to never die. Period. This is how I was able to be consistently top 4, and off-and-on #1 on the server depending on the other players's fluctuations.

The second objective is one of cowardice. You are paper thin. One hit will decloak you and worse, you are so low health that a single helicopter missile will finish you off. This means the playstyle is to find a handful of jet pilots that are dogfighting. Be close enough to them you can zip in, but far enough away you are still on the outskirts. This means you have to learn to be incredibly agile dodging missiles and learn how to read dogfights, which takes practice. It also means no one else gets to see your skills doing this, and therefore will assume you are a shitty pilot.

The third rule is one of ruthlessness. As soon as one of the dogfighters is damaged, swoop in on top of them and fire right before you pass over them. This takes timing so you don't run into other missiles (rule #1). The reason for this is because you do have 1 shot before you have to flee and re-stealth. But the other reason is for the surprise factor and hiding amongst the explosion (if you hit your target). It buys you precious milliseconds to re-stealth.

With this playstyle I rarely died, and went after the top dogfighters over Africa: k, jj, test, qjp (?). After a couple of pickoffs and being told to fly a real plane, I sat near the top of the score board regardless of fluctuations.

That is, until BeatDaddy came along. A Goliath pilot of great skill, he took out most challengers. However, as a Prowler I was able to almost solo him until jj out of the blue took my kill. So I killed JJ. :)

The strategy is simple. Only shoot the Goliath from the sides or back (avoiding the big missile) and only when in range of the AoE effect. Why? You want to force the Goliath pilot to waste their energy spamming the AoE. You have time on your side, you can hit them once every 10 seconds or so and still whittle them down because of the slow Regen.

But beware, big missile is 1 hit kill!

I never was able to fully solo BeatDaddy, as once I lost my upgrades from an unrelated death the Prowler cannot tackle a more upgraded Goliath.

For Goliaths the optimal strategy I found was to tail them and wait until they ran into some trouble on the front end. Its easier to make it a pack kill. Wait for a moment of weakness and then finish it off.

In general the optimal strategy seems to be sniping. Stay on the edges of the map (N. Europe, mid Africa) and then sweep in to more highly trafficked areas and pump in missiles. If you are ever hit retreat immediately until you recover your health. That's a pretty low risk way to stay at the top of the leaderboard.

JJ here, that was a nice skirmish, well done on the stealth kills.

Thanks, had a lot of fun! Hope you did too.

You should definitely get a proper plane ;). k

> Your first goal is to never die. Period.

> The second objective is one of cowardice.

Those should be your goals in BTR and perhaps also in FFA (with less punishment so requires more discipline). If you find yourself unable to follow this playstyle I recommend trying out BTR for a while and apply the lessons from adapting your playstyle there on FFA. But FFA is just warming up for CTF/BTR IMO.

The reason why I quoted this is that it is untrue in CTF. Cowardice doesn't yield you the flag in CTF so you need some people on offensive. How many? That depends how good your defensive holds as well as how good you're at intercepting (f.e. I like to switch to Predator when I want to intercept). In CTF, the strategy you mentioned allows for a strong long term solution because defending is much easier than offending. But sometimes you need to sacrifice yourself for the team, or you need to attack (which puts a massive crosshair on you). Getting a lot of kills (and pretty much therefore upgrades) isn't difficult whilst you're not going for the flag. Also, if you're escorting the flag carrier your first goal isn't you not dying; its them carrying the flag to safety. There are some tactics like spraying and stopping the enemy with distractions but that won't stop players who have strategic oversight. At best you're a nuisance to them; that could be your goal.

The Mohawk (helicopter) is great in CTF because of its speed and because it can put pressure on key points, and its a strong contender versus stationary and slow. Strafing required some practice but eventually you will get the hang of it. Its sometimes a bit "YOLO", like for example flying through explosions where I am not entirely sure if its friendly missiles or not. Then I end up with say an upgrade, but I wasn't sure it was safe. I took quite some risks grabbing some upgrades. Defensive upgrade can safe you there. Another thing to remember with Mohawk is that Prowler can be seen on radar and they cannot keep up with you if you don't want them to. If you can strafe and spray and be a bit unpredictable with your movement you can give other players a hard time aiming (although I found many people to be rather terrible with aiming).

> I never was able to fully solo BeatDaddy, as once I lost my upgrades from an unrelated death the Prowler cannot tackle a more upgraded Goliath.

That's because the Prowler isn't that great against a Goliath; it is good to snipe one shot kills.

I found the best recipe in non-CTF for Goliath is to ignore them. The Goliath players are constantly playing "you can't kill me nanana". True, I can't, but you can't kill me either in my Prowler/Mohawk/Predator/Tornado and even Goliath itself. Instead of seeing them as a target you want to kill, see them as something which is out there to lure you to beat them in tennis or (ping) pong where they have an easy time to bounce all your balls back. Yet if you don't play, you can't lose, and meanwhile you can win from all the other players and they (the Goliath players) can't beat you either. If more people would do this, it gets very boring for the Goliath players. That's when you read in chat "I'm at the Canary Islands come and get me". I'm still chuckling on that one. You just know he's bottomfeeding from noobs who go for the "challenge", to grab some upgrades.

That's for FFA. That doesn't work in BTR though. BTR makes for a very boring Goliath matches IMO. In CTF, Goliath is very weak IMO. I don't see the point. Its very slow, it can't easily build up upgrades, and it can't troll/lure. It can sit on a chokepoint but then there's other stronger contenders. Only thing is 2 or 3 of them I couldn't get past when they were defending. Cause I couldn't kill them and they shot me. But that was me soloing on offensive versus 5 people on defensive. Some good Tornado players were also able to kill me. And in the end I did get past.

I don't agree Prowler is good against Goliaths. Even if you find one that stays on the edge of the crowd and doesn't use radar, it takes so long to kill a G because of your poor damage potential. It's easy for another player to swoop in and steal your kill. And it only gets worse as Goliath upgrades Defense, Speed, and Energy.

Prowler is even better against Mohawk, especially those staying on the edge. One shot, one kill, they don't see it coming.

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