Would it be possible to speed up weapons...? At the current speed it makes it extremely difficult to hit things unless you're close... because by the time the salvo reaches its target, the target has ample opportunities to move...

As you gain levels, you will gain access to the faster weapons.

Practice practice practice practice. And then practice some more. And you will then be able to hit your target while sipping on a cold drink and reading the message boards on another monitor.

Well, since I use the Neutron Mk III, and the people I practice with use it... I've found that you're virtually impossible to hit if you just strafe + roll and do it randomly...

The regular laser weapons are close range weapons. You can't expect to hit someone that's far away, there are other weapons for that.

I've destroyed players with a Neutron Mk II, so it definitely works. You just have to get used to it.

"I've found that you're virtually impossible to hit if you just strafe + roll and do it randomly..."

It was this discovery that nearly ruined Vendetta for me. I'm still somewhat upset about it. Prior to figuring this out, I'd been trying to dodge responsively. It didn't really matter back in the day, because before the damage bug was fixed the game was all about rocket jousting. After the bug was fixed and the era of circle strafing began, there was a time in which I was still tring to dodge responsively - strafing left or right in order to avoid oncoming fire, and barrel rolling only as it seemed necessary. I assumed everyone was doing the same.

You can imagine my surprise the first time I just stopped trying to dodge and held down strafe+roll continiously. Amazingly, my opponent couldn't hit me, even though my pattern was almost completely predictable. This is what I call 'dumb' dodging. It gives people the impression that they are actually doing something skillful, but in fact they aren't. The majority of times I hit someone with a gun, its because they think that they are being clever by varying thier dodge pattern. In fact, they would be better off just holding down two keys.

Which isn't to say that dumb barrel rolling is perfect*, just that 95% of us are beneath the skill curve beyond which you know when to actually bother varying the dumb evasion pattern.

Frankly, I think this sucks big time.

As far as I can tell, the problem is that the auto-aim - which is normally so helpful - has a 'bug' in it that causes it to automatically miss anyone that is both strafing and rolling (even if at a constant rate) because it fails to lead the target correctly. The shot always falls slightly 'below' a craft rolling clockwise, and 'above' a craft rolling counterclockwise. The only way to correct this is to turn off the auto-aim (I forget the console /command, but I think there is a toggle) and lead the target on your own. This is not easy.

So in the future, if you are barrel rolling, the problem is not that your opponent can't aim, or that you are just so clever that he can't hit you, its that you are exploiting what is basically a bug.

*Also, if your craft is big enough or sluggish enough, barrel rolling won't be effective beyond a certain distance because it won't actually move you far enough out of the way to cause a miss. See my discussion of why barrel rolling works.

it's easy to hit the dumb roll, the problem is that you are dumb rolling at the same time. stop rolling, fire a spray, continue your roll heh.

but on topic with the thread sort of.........i'd like to see wepaons that actually had varying ranges, the rail has a nice range but every other energy weapon is 500m. it'd be nice if there was a varying range per energy weapon, my old time favourite wing commander had the best fighter of all time, the rapier, which I'm using now as an example as it was so perfect of a fighter that it perfectly fits this perfect thread.

it had 2 laser cannons and a neutron cannon, the lasers were weak but incredibly long range and the neutron were heavy damage but short range.

examples! if a tach vult could fire at a flare valk jock from 900m or a gatling cannon rag vs an adv gat hog, the adv gat hog would have to move in closer because it would be a bit shorter range...etc

Longer range sounds nice but to be effective at long range it needs to move fast which could over power it at short range. What if the dammage inflicted grew the farther out your shot went?

As to the whole barrel role thing, turn off auto-aim, you'll suck for a bit but once you start to 'get' it, it's really pretty easy to hit a strafeandroller with tachs. Your most important advantage will be that you can now fire where you think your opponite will be, not where the lead-off says they are going. You know better how humans dodge...the computer doesn't even try and guess it just shoots where they are currently going.

You can spray your fire in such a pattern that they will have a hard time dodging it, as opposed to a line comming at them from the auto-aimer.

Practice on the fat gaurdians, you'll find that once you get a feel for leading your targets without auto-aim you'll get a much higher hit percentage than you used to.

>It was this discovery that nearly ruined Vendetta for me. I'm
>still somewhat upset about it.

I hear ya! Me too...

"but on topic with the thread sort of.........i'd like to see wepaons that actually had varying ranges, the rail has a nice range but every other energy weapon is 500m."

Agreed, I would like to see the default range of a weapon be around 5s. That way, fast weapons would generally have longer ranges than slow weapons.

But I'd like to be able to play around with this number too. I would be cool have a very fast weapon with a very short effective range (say 1s).

I think we need weapons/equipment that encourage people to 'joust' more. There needs to be more breaking and running to gain range, and more oblique passes. Circle strafing like this was Quake without terrain just isn't interesting enough. To do that, we need a variaty of 'knife fighting' (get up close and gut them) and 'saber dancing' (stand back and bleed them to death) weapons.

And to a certain extent I do agree with the original poster. We need more viable fast weapons. The current railgun is still mostly nerfed. Railguns need to be viable against NB's or rockets.

I second every word of that, Celebrim.

Railguns aren't nerfed. They're the only things that I have success with against players.

Ok, lemme point this out:

I almost NEVER barrel roll, except against people who learn to strafe against me, and even then, I never do it continuously.

I OWN those who do barrel roll, either by switching off autoaim, or by getting in nice and close and watching them try to respond. my aim is always better, and they can't hit donkey waste.

you know, it would be awful if guns were faster, anyone who has entered a 10 m death spiral, knows how much fun they are, and there's no way you would get that close if guns had rail speed.

You're not going to hit anyone outside of Flight assist mode, face it, you can't be happy and long distance and safe, AND deal with their dodges. I personally spend most of my time in FA mode, only switching it off when I want to get some distance between me and my target.

Please people, quit whining, these "problems" of aim, simply require more complex tactics from you to solve.

>> You're not going to hit anyone outside of Flight assist mode,
>> face it, you can't be happy and long distance and safe, AND deal
>> with their dodges. I personally spend most of my time in FA
>> mode, only switching it off when I want to get some distance
>> between me and my target.

Hehe. I think there's quite a few of us who can hit people without Flight-Assist who would disagree with you...

Absolutely.... the only time I turn on flight assist, is if I'm trying to dock and am at 1% health.. (don't want to blow up in the docking bay) I am quite proficient at combat w/o flight assist (which in my opinion, FA mode makes combat HARDER)