[Draft] Tips: Dealing With Enemy AA-guns (Aircraft Maneuvering)

You sometimes get shot down when enjoying the glory of flying with a plane.

There are mainly 7 factors which can be threats to your cuddly plane, i.e. enemy planes, AA-guns on the ground, AA-guns on the carrier (=Shokaku), assault rifles (=Bar, StG44), machine guns on the towers, and machine guns on the destroyer (=Hatsuzuki).

Most likely the ones which threaten the safety of your plane the most are those AA-guns.
Because of the fine effective range and accuracy, AA-guns certainly are eligible to be called "bad boys".

The best way to destroy those bad boys is to destroy them before the enemies notice the presence of your plane in the sky. It takes a while for an AA-gun to re-spawn after getting destroyed. Meanwhile you can have the pleasure to sweep out those groundlings freely without any fear.

However, it is possible that the enemies are standing by AA-guns and waiting for some naughty flying beauties. So you might have to deal with several AA-guns that are actually active.

Even though some pilots might already know the difficulty in destroying active AA-guns, I've come to realize that any single active AA-gun can't ever be a threat to a pilot as long as the pilot knows the presence of it. In fact, I can destroy enemy AA-guns without getting shot in most cases. Well, let's see the trick.

First of all, you must know where AA-guns are located at.
In the normal map, there are 6 AA-guns and their positions in the island are as you can see in the following map.

AA-gun map

Click the links below to see how they actually are placed.

AA1
AA2
AA3
AA4
AA5
AA6

As you can see they are all placed at the edge of the island, and this fact reveals the crucial shortcomings of them.

AA-guns can shoot almost any visible position unlike machine guns which can't shoot planes which are attempting to dive-bomb because of the angle restriction .

However, AA-guns can't shoot targets which are located at lower altitude than of AA-guns. Let's have a look at the following image.

This image is showing the area an AA-gun can shoot and the area it cannot shoot. The red area in the image is the danger zone, and the blue area is the safety zone where the AA-gun can never shoot.

As you might have already noticed, an AA-gun being placed at the edge of the island gives attacking pilots great chances to approach it to attack without getting shot. You never get shot if you just go through the safety zone.

The remaining problem is the way to destroy it. Even if you can approach a target AA-gun, it woudln't be a useful method for you to attack it at all if you haven't got any means to destroy it.

To solve this tricky problem, you might need to take a look at another image below.

This image is showing an important fact to us, i.e. the head of the AA shooter is located at a higher point than the barrel of the AA-gun. The shooter can't shoot the person who is having this view (=you) with the AA-gun while you can shoot the shooter dead with your weapon.

The same thing could be said about attacking an AA-gun with a plane. You go through the aforementioned safety zone horizontally, and strafe the enemy shooter out when the head of the shooter turns out to look clear enough for you to aim at.

I just can't say it's easy, but at least I can finish enemy AA-gunners off without getting damaged 80% of the time in this way. (Or using the past tense 'could' may be more appropriate since I haven't played this Demo seriously for quite a while.)


---After Missing Your Shoots---

You've already learnt the way to attack an enemy AA-gun by going through the safe zone.
One remaining problem is the action after missing the target. The Enemy shooter is observing your move quite carefully and keeping shooting, so you can't make an easy decision about this.

Concerning the horizontal direction, there are mainly 2 options, to go forward, or to go backward. If you are really good at controlling a plane, going backward wouldn't be a bad option, but it sometimes gets tough to survive undamaged by going backward. Especially the moment before you put yourself in the safe zone could be quite a chance for the enemy shooter to shoot down your plane. After all, my recommendation is to go forward.

Once you decide the horizontal direction, you need decide the vertical direction, to go up, or to go down. But there's an absolute answer to this question since it's obviously suicidal to go up if the target AA-gun is still alive.

The right decision is to go down and get to the "safety zone" where the target AA-gun can't shoot. It's inevitable to get into the "danger zone" once you miss your shoots, but there's no reason for staying there. Overall, you should move like the ○ Zero-fighter in the following image and get back to the safety zone immediately.

I'll post (some) video(s) regarding this later on.... [I hope(TM)]

[Draft] Aircraft Maneuvering (Updated 20080913)

You see there're some drafts in this blog.
But never mind. I, for now, would rather post many drafts than post a few finished ones.
----------------

This article is to be concomitant with the article describing dogfight.

To control -not to be controlled- aircrafts, you have to know the variety of their movement.
In this BattleField 1942, the most difficult factor, damage by gravity, is not simulated. Therefore things that should be complicated sometimes appear rather simple.

Anyhow, what I'd like to show you in this article is videos uploaded to YouTube. Every video is to be short but long enough to see a feature. Hope you'll find something new.

1. Standard Position
This term might not tell you what exactly it is. However this is the thing which should be regarded as basic of basic. Yes, this is just horizontal flight.
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XLGSF0xhTM

2. Roll
Roll, or spin.
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFD_SHwDO0U
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aileron_roll
2.1 Barrel Roll
Similar to Roll. The most remarkable difference between Roll and Barrel Roll is the change in the axis of your plane. Roll is an important feature of aircraft maneuvering, but it is easy for an enemy plane to shoot down your plane while your plane is Rolling since the axis of your plane doesn't change while you're doing it. In that case, the enemy plane just needs to shoot at the direction of the axis of your plane. To avoid getting shot down in this way, you may perhaps use Barrel Roll unconsciously. While you are doing Barrel Roll, the axis of your plane changes constantly and this certainly makes enemy pilots have less chance to shoot down your plane in a short time. But I've found Barrel Roll even more effective as a means to evade shoots from the ground, like from an APC or a tank. One certain thing is that you'd better not rely too much on this technique.
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMMLylJ7DxI
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_roll

3. Loop
Loop. The circle your plane would draw in the sky can't be a perfect circle because of the simulated gravity (it should be an ellipse which is vertically long).
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzcdW_GhJVY

4. Immelmann Turn
A technique on dogfight.
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4aUxzL_mnI
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immelmann_turn
4.1 Immelmann Usage On Ground Strafing
Most certainly, you sometimes fail in destroying ground objects in a single stroke of strafe. In this case, a trick using Immelmann Turn might help you give the survived ground objects the second wave of strafe in a quick motion. As you can see in the following video, after missing the objects, you must fly straightly for a few seconds since Immelmann Turn itself takes a certain distance horizontally to turn back. If you don't take this action, you would fly over the objects vainly and miss them again. You can choose at which point of the stroke you get back to the Stanard Position, but my recommendation is at the point when you finish strafing, since it's hard to aim at objects while getting back to the position. But note that you might get hit by those AA guns while turning IF THERE'S ANY OF THEM AROUND. So the absolute condition to do this should be "there's no active enemy anti air weapon around".
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2r8-YR-MpQ


5. Split S
Another technique on dogfight. Immenmann turn is used to go up and change the direction, Split S is used to go down and change the direction. Split S is slightly more dangerous than Immelmann turn, especially when you haven't got enough altitude.
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt7qmIq5v6A
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_S


Let me continue this later on (again this cliche!).

Bug?: Twisted Clothes

This game is just a demo. The final version of the fullversion is 1.6+ and this demo is 1.1.

So there should be some glitches and bugs and there really are.

I have no idea if this is a bug kind of thing. But it's just weird to see clothes twisted.

I should check up the fullversion to see if this bug? remains in version 1.6, but I'm just lazy to do that.

Special thanks to the AT lover in the picture (20071220/why the heck is he holding a wrench?? traitor!).

[Draft] Tips: Tips On Dogfight

Planes (fighters and bombers) are quite powerful vehicles in Wake island. They can strafe, bomb, run over soldiers. And even the most reliable antiaircraft weapons, the aa-guns, don't bother them, as far as there isn't any in-flight enemy plane.

However, once an enemy plane becomes airbone, you might have to fight fircely against both the enemy plane and the antiaircraft weapons and vehicles on the ground since you can't fly the limited area which the ground weapons can't hit you while being chased by the enemy plane. The possibility to go through the attack decreases if you choose the option unless the enemy pilot using the plane is unskilled. So as I mentioned the above, planes are quite powerful, reliable vehicles in the island for us, and for enemies.

So you must get familiar with dogfight strategies which would make your fight slightly easy. If you think you don't have to fear the enemy planes because you can destroy all of them while they are on the ground, that's a huge mistake. At least there should be 2-3 enemy planes up in the sky right after a game begins, you never can destroy then while they are on the ground because they are located to the positions to be like that.

There are several factors which show the degree of risks of getting shot down by an enemy plane when you are being chased by it. The following is the list of possible factors.

• The visible surface area of your plane (from the enemy pilot's view).
• The performance of your plane and the enemy plane.
• The current speed of your plane and the enemy plane.
• The current altitude of your plane and the enemy plane.
• The amount of left ammo of the enemy plane.
• The current damage on your plane.
• Variability in your movement.
  
• Your and the enemy's skill in controlling planes.
  

As you can see there're many factors to be considered.
So let's define the risk quantitatively. It might help us understand the situation intuitively.

BUT

I'm just sleepy, let me continue this later.

[Draft] Notable Players

Obviously, some players don't regard this DEMO as a game they play to decide whether they should buy the full version or not. And the same thing goes for me, I regard this game as something rivals other games. I've got the full version of BattleField 1942 (with the extention pack "Road to Rome"), but still have a great urge to play this DEMO regularly. Actually it's because I don't really love the full version since there has been some changes in sound and such. I've no idea why those players who have the full version are still playing this demo, but my reason for doing that is as I mentioned above. I don't intend to disparage those DEMO players, but just notice that there're some fine DEMO players with some kind of "experience" at the sacrifice of playing the full version.

Anyhow, in this article, I'd enumerate some of those fine DEMO players. It's quite difficult to do such thing on this game since a player name doesn't belong to anyone (in other words, you don't have to register your player name to the service). I.e., there is a possibility to find another player playing the game using the same player name as yours. Nevertheless, those legendary (a bit exaggerated) players with legendary playter names are still legendary. And I'd love to leave a note about the players not to forget them.
-20080106


(The list shall come in a few days (you know, however, the sense of "a few" depends on the person who takes the words :P) )