easy, really? ffs!

[leroy_1964]

Sorry guys the game is beautiful, however I was enjoying doing the training missions and such right up until training mission six and then I turned the game off annoyed as hell.

I mean I spent 10 -15 minutes trying to get into position against the very 1st a/c, could never accomplish this as this 'easy' setting pilot shot the sh%t out of me. Suddenly the fun factor died, well done I say. I mean i am not new to flight sims so that is what anoyed me more as this seemed so hard right of the bat.

Anyway to anyone that managed to complete mission six in training well done, I mean that as I said previously the 'easy ai pilot' was too difficult to say the least. At every turn he was above me, behind me and I honestly couldn't get the advantage. This early, really a game stopper.

Cheers

[startrekmike]

I would give it some practice, I had a tought time shooting down anything for a little bit, you just gotta learn that air combat in WWI was much faster and much closer than it would be in WWII onward.

Some tips to get you started,

1.) This is the more important and I say it because for some reason it is not obvious to some, GET A JOYSTICK! This sim was designed with at least a joystick in mind, anything else is going to give you a lot of trouble.

2.) Only fire on the enemy when you are pretty sure you can hit, this is complicated at first because WWII sims teach you to fire a lot further out as the guns were more accurate and reliable, in WWI, the guns are not terribly accurate and therefore you must fire at point blank range.

3.) Don't worry so much about the training missions, there is nothng you can learn from them that you can't learn by setting up a quick battle against a AI opponent or two, I would just forget the training missions and just learn yourself.

4.) If you have a joystick with some extra controls on it (or even a HOTAS), make sure you are flying in full realism mode, many onlne servers only run that way and it teaches you good habits, don't be afraid of full realism, it is not nearly as hard as many would make it out to be, we are hardly talking about DCS A-10C here, these is very basic stuff.

5.) Ths is going to take some amount of time to master, these aircraft are not so much about learning technical processes as much as just learning how to kinda "feel" your way around in combat, this is something you won't find a tutorial for, you just have to have patience, the learning part is supposed to be fun and if it is not, well, I don't know what to tell you.

Really, it is not a terribly complex sim, at least as far as operating the systems of the aircraft, the hard part is just learning the flow of combat and when to shoot, these are things that only come with experience and you need to be willing to challenge yourself in order to get that experience.

[defiant]

I recall that campaign. got stuck when taking on the 2 bandits a few years ago and never bothered again (its trying to teach you boom and zoom tactics if I recall with the Spad 13), yet I am doing better and having a lot more fun flying career with the very rare stint on multiplayer.

Try quick missions also, they're quicker to setup and more fun, then maybe go back to the training mission, alternatively there might be training on New Wings. Try the main forums:

http://riseofflight.com/Forum/

Hope that helps.

[leroy_1964]

Thank you for your detailed reply, I have a joystick and it the HOTAS the 'hat switch"? As I said beautiful game no doubt.

[defiant]

I used a hat switch for quite sometime and learned how to get kills with it. You will be fine :).

[Paul]

I just finished mission 6, your plane is alot faster then theres let them follow you till your about 0.90+ from them (use the hat to watch them behind you) then turn and hit them head on, for some reason they never even shot at me when going head on with them just keep doing that till there dead, (class of 1985) your not that much older than i am leroy i have played all the old school games as well in respawns to the other post.

[Wardiaper]

Gawd I remember that mission a couple of years ago. I was able to get one of them but the second one was hard. I think I even ran out of ammo a couple of times. I finally beat that mission after many, many, many tries.

You gotta try to enjoy the learning process as being part of the game and making you a better pilot. If it was easy then any noob could shoot you out of the sky and then the game would suck.

[Zychon]

Yeah, I think everyone remembers this mission. It's essentially your first air to air engagement, and it is way too hard for that. I wasn't able to finish it until I had a lot of hours under my belt in SP and MP. ...A lot. Many of the veteran guys were able to complete it without issue, but people who were new to flight sims--or guys like me, who last played one in '98--struggled to complete this "training" mission. Don't let this turn you off to the game.

Defiant is right. Try quick dogfighting missions with the SPAD XIII to refine your piloting and gunnery. As far as online goes, there are guys like New Wings that have training servers, but as you might expect, online is also the place where you will find the most challenging fights you will ever have. The first time I got an online kill (after at least 50 deaths ...I honestly stopped counting), I jumped around the living room cheering. :)

When you say you are "not new to flight sims", I don't know exactly how much experience you have. If you've never seen them, first check out IRFC Requiem's rise of flight tutorials on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Requiem10NS/videos

This was a godsend for me. The second "must see" is the free pdf version of Johan Kylander's book "In Pursuit: A Pilots Guide to Online Air Combat".

http://www.virtualpilots.fi/feature/lento_ohjeet/inpursuit/inpursuit.pdf

In short, don't attempt a linear progression through the missions in RoF, because it just isn't set up that way. There are a ton of combat scenarios in the single player end that are much easier. If you think the first fight with the Albatros DVa was daunting, wait until you fight the two Fokker D VIIs. I started playing RoF exactly like you did: beating my head against the brick wall that was training mission 6. I gave up and tried the rest of SP and then MP. It was still almost constant failure, but the rush from success was addictive enough to keep me going. If you can beat this mission, you've arrived at at least journeyman level skill.

One hint I can offer is the SPAD is very much a Boom and Zoom a/c. Do not even attempt a turn fight with the DVa until he is well hurt. The D VIIs are good at both boom/zoom and turn/burn. Beating them is essentially down to exploiting the fact that they are AI and therefore somewhat predictable.

Good Luck!

[Zychon]

Actually, a bit more help -just in case you're crazy enough to keep trying this.

1) Take out the DVa by boom/zoom. If i remember, the enemy a/c doesn’t spawn until you enter the area. Start out at a higher altitude than the waypoint marker and zoom down into it. When the enemy spawns you want a lot of speed. Then, immediately zoom climb back up. The DVa is a terrible climber. Level off and regain your airspeed and start a very shallow climb. He should be attempting to chase you. Find him but maintain your shallow climb with a slight turn. You want him many meters beneath you. Keep circling until you get him in a position where you can boom down on him. Commit to the attack. You will probably not down him on the first attempt. DO NOT TURN AND CHASE HIM. Make one attack and then zoom back up. Before you go back in, level off and regain some initial speed. Then repeat the attack until his a/c is obviously crippled, then you can chase him. The AI in this game has good accuracy but is very stupid. He ill end up about 30m from the ground with nowhere to go.

The trick here is that B-Z attacking usually has shooting opportunities that are high deflection. You can waste a lot of ammo that you will desperately need in the following fight. Do your best to dive in and get as low of a deflection shot as possible and shoot when he is in prime range. You want to escape this fight without a scratch and with plenty of ammo for the two DVIIs. If you boom and zoom correctly, he won't touch you, so the harder part of it is the ammo conservation.

When I started playing RoF, I was used to WW2 a/c and later. The WWI fights are at lower speed and much closer. I was leading my targets by way too much. A good rule of thumb in RoF is to aim at the prop to hit the cockpit. Most of the time, that’s all the leading you need.

As far as the two DVIIs go, Orboc has a point. They are not very good at head on passes, but from my experience they WILL shoot at you. You can try a head on attack. If you're lucky, you can take one them out of the fight early on. That aside the engagement is the standard AI air combat scenario where one a/c will play possum with you while the other tries to get on your six. Don't fall for that. And under no circumstances should you attempt a turning battle with these two. Disengage (dive if you have to) and try to break out where you have a lot of distance from them and they are at roughly the same altitude as you. You can then try to out climb them (harder against DVIIs than DVa) or you can try another head on pass.

Once you're down to one bandit, you might want to try a "lead turn" head on pass. Just remember if it doesn’t work, you need to stop turning and disengage, because the SPAD is not a turning a/c. Just continue to extend away and try to regain the altitude advantage.

[leroy_1964]

Thank you, I will keep going, excellent advice from you all.

[6./ZG26_Emil]

I wouldn't bother with the campaign I've had similar nightmares with it, 2nd or 3rd German mission was damn near impossible. There is a lot of fun to be had flying the quick missions and it is a much better learning platform to wrap your head around combat. You can give yourself an altitude advantage and/or a better plane although your goal should be to learn the strengths and weaknesses of each plane and use those to your advantage. You best bet is going to the ROF forum and asking your questions there, also this youtube channel has a lot of very useful information http://www.youtube.com/user/Requiem10NS

ROF isn't an arcade sim it's very hardcore even though the planes looks simple. You get punished much more when you make a mistake because you don't have the speed or power to bail you out. Stick with it though, success is very rewarding :)

[Jorri]

DONT BOTHER WITH THAT MISSION!

I came back to it after 1 year of flying Rise of Flight and I still had the most difficulty to complete it.

In stead, use the Quick Mission Generator to set up your own encounters and practice there. Also, choose the Albatros D.Va rather than the SPAD 13 to fly in....it's a much easier plane to start with! Very friendly to fly, great visibility, and a bit of an all-rounder.

[Max Eisert]

Good advice to choose the Albatros instead of the SPAD. New players should start practicing via quick missions AND in the Albatros. The SPAD XIII is actually a very powerful plane but I had a terrible time trying to dogfight with it. To have an easy battle choose an Albatros D.Va and dogfight agains one Nieuport with novice AI.

[Yar]

I have noticed, that enemy AI levels are weird. For example, "novice" is actually pretty tough. Veteran is not much more tough on the other hand. I woul expect novice not to be able to shoot you down unless you are flying straight ahead.

[Reaver]

Game suffers from 777 Studios' "Headshot AI". Sorry, but it's true. No other flight sim has the AI pilots flying the planes to the edge of the flight envelope 100% of the time.

That said you can beat them with correct aerobatic manuevering 60 percent of the time. Check Youtube or the tutorials pages here for instruction. You need a Joystick. Period. Some sort of head tracking software or TrackIR makes ROF amazing.

Probably the first manuever to learn is the barrel-roll attack. You simply attack with an altitude advantage and roll over in the opposite direction that the enemy passes under you. You should come up on their tail or at least get a few shots at them. Repeat as needed keeping your altitude advantage. GL.