I hear over and over that backrolling is a bad tactic, doesn't benefit combat, etc, etc. Most of these complaints seem to come from pirates.

Now to put forth my opinion I'll first describe my fighting technique, most of the time I like to fight in close to use my preferred weapons at their nominal range (gauss, GT, less than 150m). Obviously against my tactics, backrolling is a very effective method.

The fact that it's effective does in no way mean it's unskilled/dishonourable/evil and so on. It's simply an effective tactic that people (pirates in particular) who engage in close combat with light fighters don't practise against often.

If you can't deal with it then there is only one approach you can honourably choose. You should not insult the other pilot, run off sulking or find and station camp the player who did it. The only correct course of action is to find a willing opponent who is lethal and can backroll and fight them until you can beat them.

I think that if I've succeeded in getting Amarus' Prom down to 50% in a Cent 3 with a Gauss then the only reason I can't get it down to 0% is due to lack of practise. I suggest everyone complaining about backrolling tries the same. It's a valid tactic and one of the best in the game.

PS If you are a pirate then you should practise a lot as you may end up seeing this tactic far more than any other players.

I agree fully with this.

People have their own distinct preference for fighting, I for instance like fights at 300 - 400m. But to make this possible I switch between backrolling and normal rolling flight depending on the opponents way of using his keypad.

However most pirateswant to get a fast and clean kill (why they used to come in close and borderram). There are people that will cater to that desire (eldrad was one of them), but there are also people that prefer a distance and will keep on backrolling as long as the opponent keeps advancing. If you can't deal with that then that is your own fault, not ours. Just as it is our fault when we can't keep you at a distance.

I will not go into the reasons anymore, since that will get this thread closed anyway.

cheers

Heh. Everytime I see somebody complaining about backrollering or missile/rocket spamming, a line from Red vs. Blue Episode 39 jumps to my mind - "It's a legitimate strategy." And I laugh.

i guess if it was an invalid tatic then it would not be in game. and it is very much personal preference. personally, i find it to be dull. same with missle spamming.... where is the excitment in that? give me close 1 on 1 any day! :)

and speaking as a pirate, i don't perfer a quick clean kill... i perfer an excitinng battle where we are both down to less than 10 percent armor.... i especially perfer to be the winner. :D

anyway, i find the best way to combat back rollers and missle spammers is not to engage them. there are plenty of others i can fight.

Sebastian

It's not invalid, it just makes combat intensely boring. If sunflares were brought back to their old usefullness it wouldn't be boring anymore, because the sunflare user could score hits on the backroller. Now, if you do it right, it takes forever to get a hit.

Most people complain because they got used to fast paced, intense combat back in the alpha and it has died down since then. Or, they expected combat to be fast paced and fun, and when they got there they discovered that it's a case of who gets bored of backing away first.

If you want to survive it's a perfect tactic. The problem is that people who seem to want to fight - who fire first, etc - will then backroll away when you turn to engage. If you want to fight someone, you have to initiate and sustain combat, not break off instantly.

Meh. After the ships get some more rebalancing maybe things will have changed... maybe.

If combat is boring you're not doing it right. You have to chase a backroller and get within your favourite weapons range. In my case that means turboing in to under 100 metres. At that range it's pretty hard to miss.

Yes it's hard to do, that's why we fly fighters instead of ragnaroks.

And don't forget, gems are not a backrollers friend.

If you're fighting someone with any skill, they will stop backrolling and annihilate you with Neut3s as soon as you start to turbo. It's not so much that backrolling is impossible to beat, it's that the Neut3 and lessening of other weapons made it a much much stronger tactic than the weapons of the past had allowed it to be.

still I can't see what the challenge is to shoot people at rammingdistances...

If I can kill somebody at 250 - 300m or at 100m, I consider that a severe difference in skill. But maybe that is only me and im getting old :(

sigh

Renegade, fighting at ramming distances is hard because there is literally no time to aim. You have to be taking the shot at where you suspect they're going to be without them even being on your screen at the time. If you stuff up for a moment then they're behind you and your dead.

It takes away the option of dodging shots because you don't have time to see them coming. The only way to win is to get lucky or out-fly the other pilot.

well,

there is no reason to aim, since the gauss will take the aiming over for you, and if you don't take gauss you can always use your knowledge of where your going to make sure that you keep your own nose on him (so targetted). At least I have never had problems with that when I intitiated, only got problems when the other person(aldrad aka) initiated.

and on another note, you are right there is no room for a dodge, but you only need a short dodge, so this gives you more time to let your aiming count.

cheers

Martin.mac.au, you are dead on. This is just pouty foot-stomping. I've been called a backroller even though I neither rolled nor backed away -- I simply maintained at 150m and the name-caller (who himself shall remain nameless) did nothing to change that.

I cannot for the life of me figure out why a combat that lasts 15 seconds is "boring" while a combat that lasts 0.8 seconds is "fast-paced" and "fun." I think it's the opposite.

at 300m, if I concentrate just on it, I can dodge every single gauss shot that you make. Any hits at 300m with energy weapons is almost literally pure luck because each shot takes over 1 second to reach its target - that's a lot of time to recognize that a shot is headed your way, and react.

At 100m, shots take far less than 1 second to cross the distance, so it's less about who can dodge the longest, and more about who can outmaneuver his opponent and keep his guns trained to score more hits the longest.

Let's think about it a possible Centurion vs Warthog fight. The Centurion is smaller, faster and more maneuverable, although it only has a single small weapon port (with a few notable exceptions) and weaker hull. The only real advantage the Warthog has in this matchup is its heavier armor, and large weapon port which can carry a good auto-aim energy cannon, or a heavy missile or rocket launcher. Just simply at over 100m, the Warthog is maneuverable enough that it can pour continuous fire at the Centurion - at 300m, the Warthog has no problem keeping the Centurion in the center of its reticle. Under 100m, the Centurion can easily outmaneuver the Warthog and pour fire into its vulnerable backside.

wylfing, just because some people misuse the term doesn't mean the whole concept is invalid.

Backrolling, at least in my mind, is when someone backs away while rolling, thereby disegaging from the fight unless the other guy continues to advance. You can tell a backroller if you simply stop moving - they'll get further and further away until they realize something is up.

That's boring, and combat like that is tedious. As crippled points out, energy weapons take so long to travel that distance that it is possible, not easy but doable, to dodge everything no matter what the person firing them does.

I think people are blowing it out of proportion, or not understanding the term and using it to flame in game. That does tend to happen.

xrippled,

and that is the reason why you used to pack a rocket together with your energyweapon...

people where focussing on the energyweapon, and boom you fired a sunflare at the position you presumed them to go, continuing on with shooting energy afterwards. Or you used the sunflare to guide your target into dodging into your next energyshot.

And that is exactly the kind of combat I miss, since that was fun and fast paced... In stead of the combat during the 3.2 era of come into 50m range and fire sunflarevollies at full potential. Or come into 50m range and use gauss shot to take over aiming (although little bit same problem with neuts, only harder to pull off)...

Starfisher,

what is boring about it? If somebody likes to create distance, it his opportunity to do so. He will stop once he reaches the distance he feels comfortable with. If he doesn't stop then yes it is boring, but the people that actually are willing to fight will stop once they have reached their 'zone'. Not to mention that it doesn't take that long, the average energyweapon goes against 160m/s, that is 2 seconds for you to dodge. It is doable, but still not that big of a deal if you calc in a reactiontime of 1 sec. not to mention that standard rockets go slower and there has never been a problem with them. But sure if you just want to make it easy, then lets increase the speed of the energyweapons to 1000, and then people will complain that it is impossible to dodge at their preffered distance. If you can't hit jack at 300m then youll have to go closer, there are people that do get hits in at 300... Not to mention that a fun fight isn't necessarilly a fight that lasts 0.5secs. But if you prefere 100m don't complain that somebody else backstrafes. Since if you heighten the speeds of the energyweapons the distances that these same people will feel comfortable with will be adjusted. And then you get the same people complaining that people are backstrafing at distances lesser then 1km...

If I see someone using an overly defensive tactic like constant backrolling. they obviously don't want to fight. they can call me a coward all they want, but truthfully, I don't have time to spend my precious free time in VO chasing someone around.

it's a defence tactic.
it's alright.
leave them if you are not able to kill them.
if they want to get a kill they will be forced on days to attack.
no more comments.

When I fight something like a valk or a cent, backrolling is pretty much the only option I have.
Backrolling is a great tactic for slower ships, you put on some distance from the enemy, thus gaining a dodging advantage. The fun part is when the enemy realizes that he or she won't hit you from that far away and turboes up to you. That's pretty much the only time I have a chance of hitting the target. I once got three or four hits on a tri-tach valk in this way. Very useful.

Backrolling is a perfectly valid defensive tactic, MY problem comes up when someone swoops in, fires a few dozen poorly aimed shots at me, maybe getting a hit, then immediately starts to backroll away from me.

Usually I just turn around again at that point and head on my merry little way, only to have the process repeated a little bit later when the attacker does it again, usually with some accompanying inane chatter about how i'm running and how L33T the attacker thinks his skills are.

Its very irritating. IF you are going to attack me; either stick around and fight, or dont trash talk when I refuse to pursue you.

A little fix to the mass of unguided rockets would fix this, as backrollers tend to fly in a nice neat cylindrical pattern. Occasionally with a really persistant backroller who just holds down the reverse+strafelerft+strafedown keys, you can just turn off autoaim and fire at a spot they are headed to and get some hits, but energy weapons are too easy to dodge.

spellcast, stupid people that dodge that way, even a complete and utter newb should know better...

Anyway best solution for that problem is just a /ignore. And leave the annoying kid. He probably doesn't know any better.

cheers

PS: I agree however that unguided rockets need a small adjustment to their weight, but not to much. Or add a penalty for putting in more then 1 of the same weaponoptions.

I also find backrollers intensely boring. But the way to deal with it is just to let them roll back. It's only a valid tactic if they're not trying to fight. There's no point in turboing close, you're just a sitting duck. (there are some ways to dodge while turboing there, but its a high risk maneuver, anyone with good aim will snag you)

Just stop. let them roll off into the distance. Even better, I switch to physics mode and use a steady sidestrafe, then when they realize they're no where near me and turn around to try to drag me out again, I just wait til they hit 300 meters, switch into FA mode (which, because I had a steady sidestrafe going, turns into full-throttle) and end up 100 m from them.

However, I would like to take issue with those who believe there is some kind of skill with fighting at 300 m. Listen, I will not get hit by energy fire at that distance unless I'm incredibly lazy. Even rails can be avoided by a good dodging pattern.

the close range dogfight between 2 strong players is a thing of beauty. Its not just a "who screws up first" match, or who can actually get someone to follow them while disengaging.

It's all about getting the angle on your opponent, which requires strategy, it requires tricks. Tricks that don't exist at 300 m.

So, feel free to do it... just don't pat yourself on the back, anyone into their first cent can do it.