this game is stupid hard

[Plaxus]

seriously though, this game is just bordering on complete frustration. I literally can't get past day 8.

If you attack air targets first, there are always too many aces in the group to where you literally never get a break from being locked on. There is no AI management so any number the game wants can swarm and attack a the same time with no breaks. I spend more time spinning the camera around getting ready to dodge than anything else.

Once you finally do break their numbers, there are so many spawn points that they almost respawn as quickly as you kill them.

So you'd think the obvious answer would be to blow up their spawns, right? Well NO! Cause then you earn too many points; taking out that one building after clearing out the fighters instantly spills you over the edge for reinforcments, which have unlimited agro range and guaranteed high tier enemies. They will swarm you from anywhere in the map.

So then a better option is to just avoid everything else and just target the mission, right? Welp NOPE again! Not only are you not earning things, but as soon as you complete the objective, all the enemies swarm on you again WHILE deploying reinforcments, and you get punished worse than if you just chisled away at it all.

Even when you count building HP like a game of poker, fire and forget missles and be on your way out before impact, they will always be faster and catch up.

And worse, again, the dogfights have no AI management. You are just constantly pelted from all sides, no chill, no cool down for weapons and flares, no limit on how many can have a lock on you at once. Just pure chaos! Everything but the drones deploy flares so insessively, you will always miss 6/8 rockets, with no way to pace your shots or tell when they are in cool down from flares. They can just ♥♥♥♥ them out when ever convient.

So the entire game boils down to picking out 1 fighter, locking on, spinning your camera looking for missles while mashing the dodge mechanics,

and if you are finally lucky, that fighter you lock onto and isolated will head right at you, where even if he does deploy flares, they will still strike the craft anyways, while also trying to dodge roll their missles.

The game loses fun factor way too quickly. What is level 100 like if I can't even make it to 10 XD

[Plaxus]

I dont understand the upgrades and enemies either. Why add all this content to the game, all these unique weapons and new enemy planes, when their behavior is completely dwarfed by the vet/ace scaling system, and the stupid quanities dumped on you? It might dumb 2 new planes on you and in that mission and you would never even notice cause they all do the exact same ♥♥♥♥. They all just blend together in the moshpit. Being ace and vet is far more of a factor than the type of plane you are versing, so why even have different planes?

The upgrades are just as bad! Why have all these upgrades, but they don't actually improve your ability to handle these situations? Why shoot 4 missiles with 20 damage, when you can shoot 2 with 40, even though they use flares just as much anyways. It doesn't make sense. There is nothing unique between each item in a class.

The only exception to this rule is bombs for some strange reason, where each upgrade is actually just completely better in everyway and the only reason you wouldn't use it, is because you are rocking a faster plane vs armed to the teeth.

I don't understand where the balance in this game is.

[Ceiling]

Wow - there's a lot to unpack here, but from the years I've spent playing this game and helping people with this game I've gathered a few things that might help;

First off, the difficulty becomes unmanageable to force you to specialise and pick aircraft and weapons to focus on objectives - the first bunch of days are for getting into the flow, picking up cash and upgrading/trying out loadouts - the later days are there to test your flying prowess and force you to focus on only the necessary targets, more of an exercise in survival and planning (you'll note your objective is displayed on the briefing screen).

Secondly the upgrades are there to add flavour and increase the disparity between the weapons - fast weapons get faster, big explosions get bigger, clusters drop more bombs etc. - they amplify the effects of your loadout and aircraft decisions.

If you want to chat and get some tips I'm always happy to help

[Yul Rave (starstrafe)]

Enemies absolutely do NOT have unlimited aggro range. They will only target you from 1000m range, and will stop pursuing you if you escape by putting more than 2000m between you and them. Re-enforcements spawned via building destruction will also not target you immediately, and will generally just fly blindly to wherever the thing was destroyed. It's also rare that these kinds of re-enforcements will ever consist of more than 1 single plane at a time.

Now, Schwalbe Vets and Schwalbe Aces are generally the supreme dangerous powerhouses, since as soon as they slip behind you, they can knock off 120hp with a nigh-undogeable missile volley. Flares are an option, but you may exhaust the very quick if you jump into the midde fo a swarm. Here is where that upgrade system in VERY handy: have you unlocked the AA-LR Longbow yet? It can snipe enemies from up to 2000m away, and can fire up to three missiles in a row when fully upgraded.

One of several strategies i like to use against swarms is to lead with an interceptor and Longbow, manually cycle between targets at long range to see who's a normal plane and who's a scary Vet or Ace, and try to pick them off before entering their aggro range. If they spot you, those schwalbes will generally just charge you, trying to get behind you, at which point you can switch to something that can pick off planes head on.

Now Plaxus, the strategy of picking of spawners is actually quite viable. Usually i'll lead with an interceptor specialized for sniping and long rage dogfighting, then when all or most Carriers and Aerodomes are dead, ill land at my base and switch to a bomber loadout now that the skies are much clearer. Ill proceed to make tons of cash mopping up all the ground targets. If my 2 or 3 champion planes for that run are already sufficiently upgraded though, then sometimes ill just take the fastest plane with flares, and ignore everything but the objective.

Upgrades are anything but "bad", The GUN-H doubles in damage at mk3, MICRO-Hs mk3 can almost kill an Aerodome in 2 volleys, a fully upgraded Kondor has 500hp instead of 200, flares go from, what, 9 uses to 16, i think? The game is actually quite balanced in most areas, you just gotta get a feel for it. Getting past day 8 either requires pure luck, or a proper understaning of both your equipment and enemy patterns, which are still quite consistent. There's a bit to plan and figure out, but once you do, you will find that victory can actually come quite consistently on the red islands. You are *expected* to die often until this point though, since that is the nature of the game.


...Also there are fewer murderfrick panes like schwalbe vets on day 9, so look forward to a respite once you get that far.

[Auspice]

Are Schwalbe vets/aces actually that hard?

I have guns kills on them, like, they're dangerous but pop flares or don't let them point their nose at you? If you're on day 9 without being able to beat one in a turning fight or outrange it with micro-T you're probably doing something wrong, I think

[Det.Bullock]

Just kill everything before doing the objectives and land, the more points you get the faster you can get better stuff.
The only unfair part IMHO is the final boss, after the third time I was shot down without even being able to glimpse it I just said "screw it" and abandoned the game. I usually try to finish arcade flight games (there are just too few of them) but the roguelike nature killed it for me, because in every roguelike I tried it's the same story: main game more or less fun if challenging but then you get a final boss that one-shots you without even giving you the time to understand exactly what you are doing wrong.
Plus having to restart when you die messes with my brain, I came from the time when the "death resets your score" mechanic in X-wing was deemed unacceptable enough they made it optional in the sequel (and frankly I don't know anyone who decided to use that option while playing Tie Fighter) and almost all FPS games had quicksaves, perhaps I'm just in a "too young yet too old" age bracket to like roguelikes and roguelites but sometimes I get the impression that these games are for people that hate fun or have masochistic tendencies.

[Auspice]

The final boss isn't that bad if you bring flares. Also the fastest planes can outrun them if you are diving (at about 20-30 degrees). I agree that missiles that are basically inescapable without flares is a stupid mechanic though.

Of course, then the stupid thing kills me with the railgun -- by swerving the gun into me when I'm doing a guns pass.

If you run low on flares (or health) you can just dock at the carrier. It costs money but you should have a zillion credits by then?

[Yul Rave (starstrafe)]

i try to deal with that railgun thing asap, and use the building pylons to hide behind when he shoots it. The most unfair thing about that boss is the permadeath that stalls you from adapting to its patterns.

And it's not the individual Schwalbes that getchya... it's when there's a swarm of 4 of em, and they catch you whilst in a no-flares bomber loadout, and there's a carrier nearby disgorging new ones every 20 seconds, and there's a buncha small fry planes distracting you at the same time, and... *shudder*. Really, situations like that are why having a battle plan is really important when tackling an island.

[Auspice]

I don't mean he killed me with the railgun shot, I mean I did a guns pass, passed by the side, and it turned into me and slammed me with the gun barrel.

[Det.Bullock]

Originally posted by Auspice:

The final boss isn't that bad if you bring flares. Also the fastest planes can outrun them if you are diving (at about 20-30 degrees). I agree that missiles that are basically inescapable without flares is a stupid mechanic though.

Of course, then the stupid thing kills me with the railgun -- by swerving the gun into me when I'm doing a guns pass.

If you run low on flares (or health) you can just dock at the carrier. It costs money but you should have a zillion credits by then?

I usually went from 100% health to dead when I got hit, kind of difficult to get to the carrier in those conditions.

That kind of almost puzzle-like guess-the-equipment design is perfectly acceptable in a mission-based game with a predefined campaign that just lets me restart the mission like Ace Combat or X-wing but not in a game where I need to essentially start from scratch every time I die.

[Ceiling]

The trick is to use those failures and use them to develop tactics to avoid them; for example the one-hit weapons have a long reload and predictable trajectory so you can try using the terrain/structures to block them then make a gun pass.

It's a rogue-like for a reason.

Another suggestion I have is to try co-op, basically gives you twice the fire-power and health.

But like I said; if you ever need help/tips just message :)

[Auspice]

I definitely agree that the final boss is absolutely awful in terms of game design.

(modern) roguelikes generally don't put you in a failure state that you didn't know what happened when you died or how to prevent it. I would have generally preferred a war of attrition battle (no carrier) rather than the mess of one-shots that the final boss currently is.

That being said, all my deaths to him were due to collisions, although it would be nice if the final boss' collision box actually matched with its visuals.

[Ceiling]

I heartily disagree - it's not bad design, it's a design choice, just because you're frustrated with it doesn't mean it's bad, it might be just your problem.

I must concede that the railgun swinging up and booping you out the sky is frustrating, but after you do it once you don't do it again.

Like I've said a million times in this thread, if you're struggling and need help/advice I'm happy to help, but if you aren't going to seek help/advice or learn from your mistakes then please stop trying to blame the game.

[VTNWesley]

Originally posted by Ceiling:

I heartily disagree - it's not bad design, it's a design choice, just because you're frustrated with it doesn't mean it's bad, it might be just your problem.

I must concede that the railgun swinging up and booping you out the sky is frustrating, but after you do it once you don't do it again.

Like I've said a million times in this thread, if you're struggling and need help/advice I'm happy to help, but if you aren't going to seek help/advice or learn from your mistakes then please stop trying to blame the game.

I'd love some help. Hitting a similar wall. Around day 10 I start to struggle as many have. Mostly playing Bronco? (old school plain) with Turbo or Heavy seekers, and heavy machine guns. Tried toying with some minor tweaks, but nothing seems to make any significant difference. Occasionally tamper with aircraft with more defense.

[Ceiling]

For later days you're better spec-ing into faster aircraft with longer range weapons or going for a dodge-boost build with a maneuvrable aircraft and IR missiles.

My favourite build is the Falke with Longbows for AA missions and the Raiju with bombs for ground missions :)

[VTNWesley]

Good to know. Will have to try that out. I did manage to beat the boss. For some reason I thought the game was WAY longer than it is. Landing mid-mission seemed to help greatly too in situations where I could do so.

My play is still far less consistent than I'd like.