I've been trying to figure out why I don't like the fighting in this game. It's pretty much strafe/roll and watching as your plasma goes around a bot and occasionally hits them. Once I accidentally went around an asteroid and it was pretty cool, the Apu-tech had to go around and re-orient himself.

It would be alot neater for me if the impulse speed was high enough that it could actually be used. Anytime I go in anything resembling a straight line, I get toasted fast. It would be cool if the speed was enough that I could run for a sec, go around something and come back at the guy. At the moment, you simply face each other holding strafe-roll down and wait it out. I do occasionally try something different, but this always guarantees being hit.

Also, If I get into one fight it's a guarantee that I'll have to fight another before gaining the distance to warp out because of the impulse speed. So if one fight gets me below say 40%, (talking with Apu-Techs here), I just walk away and let the next one kill me and then come back. It's not worth it for me to simply hold down strafe/roll for another 10-15 mins. I want to take hits while doing different things because it's more fun.

To sum up: I think it's bad that strafe/roll guarantees not being hit, but it's also bad that there's no real alternative and I THINK it's because impulse speed is too slow. I'd like more speed so I can do fly by's and take pot shots, dodge/hide and really mix it up.

Straife/roll does not GUARANTEE not being hit...<Double negative>

I do see your point, I think it applies less to fighting people than bots though. Also nothing is stopping you from using turbo in a dog fight, you just have to do it in bursts if you want to turn.

I use it to do maneuvers like you describe. Get some distance or a new angle on your opponent by turboing to a more strategic fighting position. As long as you take off at the right angle you won't get hit.

Also strafe/rolling works good against the leadoff aimer and bots, but doesn't help near as much against a player who knows how to aim. I think you'll find also that when you learn to dodge bots better without strafe/rolling you can actually get much closer to them and will drastically improve your hit ratio.

The games fighting engine is pretty deep it has a long expertise curve like the best fps games, give yourself some time to master the finer points of it.

ed. I just noticed this line in your post:
>I just walk away and let the next one kill me and then come
>back. It's not worth it for me to simply hold down strafe/roll
>for another 10-15 mins.

You know you can just point into space and hold turbo, in anything but a bus with a free engine your guaranteed to make it to 3000m alive, you don't need to impulse spin away for 15 minutes.

I'm sorry the fighting simply isn't fun. I was just in and got jumped by 2 apu-techs and it was pointless to fight back and impossible to run. I have 2 choices, fight lightweight no fun collectors or die repeatedly. You tell me that I should have enough power to make a zone out, but I assure you most of the time I don't and when I do run and have to pause to regain power, I die because they seem to have an endless supply.

Please let me know what you think of the impulse speed idea. I agree it must take some skill to fight, but in this game you can't fight unless you're facing the mob almost continuously, and that's all the mob does. So there you are - stuck facing each other and going in circles. It's not fun.

It sounds to me like you need to listen to hoax. Use your boost to set yourself up in a more advantageous position when fighting bots, if two of them are shooting you, use it to make sure that they're both relatively close together, so you can avoid the salvos from both bots.

Another tactic that I found was effective against bots is to fire while backing, they seem to fire at a range much shorter than the effective range on higher velocity weapons such as tachyon blasters.