Yep, had some good fights in delta this evening.
I wonder if it'd be worth sticking together more in the air squad. I rarely saw another pilot and if we fly as a single squadron it'd split their AA up more while letting us concentrate our fire. May take some practice because it's easy to fly miles of course in the heat of battle, but maybe something like gathering at a fallback point, flying out in strength and then returning to the point when you either need a repair or get separated.
While I've not been a part of air ops yet (and am still getting the sense of the flying in PS2) I definitely think this would be a good thing to do. Being able to coordinate air ops and have wingmen able to take heat off you, cover each other in dogfights etc. Also close air attacks on sundies with two Scythes rolling in with pods = goodbye sundy.Originally Posted by LordKiwi
argh my gigantic post on Flying Squad and how it worked got bottom page'd, now no-one will read it! But yes, air requires lots of coordination. Actually I figure the coordination needed is pretty similar to what a good ground squad needs - know where your squadmates are, call out threats to them, help them engage, support them if they are injured - but made more difficult by the frantic nature of air combat and the infinite size of the arena.
I joined you late, it was fun, but by that time you were more on the ground than in the air. I have a question regarding the air squad : What certs are you expected to have to be efficient in the air squad ?
I often use the Scythe as a transport (have ejection seat and stealth 1), but I'm rubbish when it comes to fight with it. So far I haven't had time to check if it was my own ineptitude or a lack of cert on my scythe (defense, frames, weapons, ...) ? Even worse with the Liberator. I can be gunner, but my own Liberator is never used nor certed.
Whilst I wasn't in last night's air squad, I imagine the correct answer is "The things that make you efficient in flying generally." Maybe with more of a focus on A2A though.
Scythe's in the outfit guide, but tl;dr: Dogfighting 3, some level of auto-repair, Hailstorm Turbolaser, and either A2A or rocket pods.
(Go with rocket pods, A2A pods are kinda crap)
That wasn't exactly the sense of my question. I know there is a cert guide. My question is more like "I have no certs, will I be useful for the squad and/or be able to train, or should I get some certs before ?" Ie, the minimum set-up expected to join the squad.
I love flying, but currently I have a lot of others things to cert/buy that are more urgent (main infantry classes + SL-related stuff) so I know I won't be able to get great Scythes / Lib / Gal right now. I need to know if I can still help the air squad with my current set up (or with let's say...200-300 more certs put in the Scythe), or if I should wait till I get a lot more certs/SC (ie enough to buy weapons, frames, etc.).
I don't want to drag the team down.
Last edited by Ksempac; 18-05-2013 at 01:09 PM.
Time to revive this thread? http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/foru...Flying-Scythes
Sir Hoc is the dude with previous experience of running air squads. I think they are a great idea, good co-ordination with friendly AA is really helpful as well in keeping the skies clear enough for you to operate.
As before, I want to make a bigger post about this at some point (and thanks so much for the link to the monty's scythes thread, I hadn't seen that!) but as a short version I really feel that anyone that wants to join and get a feel for flying should be welcome and useful. Even as a baseline, no-cert scythe you will
1) freak out enemy air
2) cause enemy ground to pull some anti-air, weakening their anti-ground capability
both of these are useful. Far more important than certs is that you have some idea how to handle a scythe (reverse hover thruster maneuouver, lots of flying under bridges training in vr) and a handle on squad communications (call targets, share info, report in when asked etc). Certs will come once you are a more experienced PS2 player (I myself am concentrating on unlocking medic and squad leader stuff over air at the moment, so no worries) as boot certs will always be useful whereas air is a bit more of a specialised party thing.
tl;dr: please do not be hesitant to join my air squads even with no certs, you are always welcome. If you die in a fire immediately you can always gun for a lib pilot and get comms experience that way anyway!
Set up: TacGir
Continent: Amerish (alert)
Strength: 10-15 Tactical Giraffes
Time: Monday evening
Objective: Being tactical
Debrief:
I hoped for us to be more 'tactical' tonight and I think it was a mixed result in that regard. The objective wasn't taking territory but the TR were absent from the western side of Amerish and we ended up taking a fair bit just to provoke them into attacking. Sorry for the ghost capping, I couldn't see an alternative. Besides the lack of an enemy for much of the evening I think we had some tactical successes. My highlights were:
1. Travelling with a mixture of flashes and sundies. Felt more effective to get the infs in first to start hacking.
2. Moving as a squad. I thought we did this really well on a number of occasions and it helped a lot. I got a lot of squad revives so thanks for that.
3. Calling targets. We got a good little Lancer squad going outside the tech plant and took down many Prolwers by coordinating our fire. Also worked for AA.
4. Securing places. We secured generators, cap points, tactically important rocks effectively. I felt more comfortable than usual that another giraffe was looking the other way to protect my back (so to speak).
I had fun, particularly in the latter half, and got a reasonable score per hour to boot which was nice.
Things to improve on:
I invite others to offer constructive criticism on my SL'ing but personally I found it slightly tricky to get the balance right between authoritatively telling people to 'get over here NOW!' and keeping a relaxed atmosphere. Thankfully everyone was good at sticking together most of the time. I think we all have a tendency to go chasing kills in the bigger bases though. I'm also more unsure than before about the role of tactics in PS2. It's a fun thing to try but more than once I felt that with just a squad working together we couldn't attack/defend against vastly superior forces. And when in the company of many friendlies it's hard to be quick enough to be at the cutting edge - a zerg has an efficiency of sorts in that it'll go straight into every cap point and generator room without thinking. Leaving the tactical giraffes gathering up outside. That made it feel to me like we were late to the party sometimes. That's not a personal dig in any way I just think it's the nature of being in a group.
Thanks all for bearing with me this evening. I hope it was fun and perhaps a little bit useful. I aspire to the day when TacGir feels easy!
WallyTrooper = TrooperWally
Hmm... there were a few times, playing with the casual platoon, that we really could have done with a surgical strike to take out a bunch of bursters or secure a couple of places at once. At those times I asked what TacGir was up to, thinking we could get some support, and it sounds like TacGir needed the main platoon to put some muscle behind their own efforts as well. From my experience TacGir has more opportunity to hit strategic targets and swing the tide if it's operating alongside another, blunter force. So coordination between all squads = good thing?
WallyTrooper > Don't have much time to write a full post, but I will just say I think you were on the right track, and that since people are volunteers, you could push for more from the squad.
For example, we started with 6 medics or more because you asked for it, but then we slowly drifted back to others classes, ended up with only 1 or 2 medics, and lot of corpses everywhere. I admit I drifted myself, since I played something like half-infiltrator/half-medic.
For me that means both that 1- what you're doing is useful, we can do more things when we run as a tight squad 2- we still have a lot more to improve on/the SL can get a lot more from us.
Really enjoyed the evening and your SLing in particular. Yes we can improve, but that's still a huge step forward
Last edited by Ksempac; 20-05-2013 at 10:11 PM.
Medic is usually one of my top played classes (the other being light assault) but lately I've been having a lot of fun with the lancer so I take some responsibility for not being a medic enough :O
I did enjoy the tacgir last night for what I played of it, possibly a little much ghost capping but that seemed unavoidable in places.
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