Battlefront Starfighter Combat

[Nemarus]

So I got an early access code to the Battlefront Beta. It does not contain the "Fighter Squadron" mode, but the "Walker Assault" mode does let you fly TIE Fighters and Interceptors, along with X-wings and A-wings (you have to find a powerup that lets you fly one). Obviously these fighters are just one aspect of a much larger and complicated mode--we can't judge them as a potential rival to GSF until we can play the dedicated "Fighter Squadron" mode.

 

It definitely took some getting used to, but here are the interesting points I came away with:

 

* Controls are super sensitive--perhaps too much so. It's hard to do any subtle movements, except perhaps in the X-wing, which handles most sluggishly of the three.

 

* You can fly in cockpit or third person mode, but the former loses too much visibility to be viable.

 

* You cannot roll independently. If you press right or left, your ship does a combo yaw/roll in that direction.

 

* You do have free movement of pitch. You can do a manual loop and end up upside-down for sustained periods. If auto-leveling exists, it is subtle and waits a long time for you to take your hands off the stick.

 

* The skybox above Walker Assault is far larger than the ground area, allowing for pretty wide (and high) dogfighting area.

 

* You can hold down a button to enter "soft lock" mode. This simultaneously auto-aims your blasters (to a limited degree) and attempts to achieve missile lock. However, if you hold down the "soft lock" button, you will turn slower. So you don't want to engage it until you've more or less manually centered your target.

 

* You can set throttle anywhere between 0 and 100%. Using less throttle not only slows you down but gives additional power to your blasters. It's not yet clear if this increases their damage or just extends how long it takes them to overheat.

 

* Every ship has three evasive maneuvers. Left aileron roll. Right aileron roll. And a K-turn. All of them share the same cooldown and will cause you to evade a missile. I do not yet know if the cooldown is the same for all four ships or if it varies (for example, can A-wing can use it more often than X-wing?)

 

* All four ships get a missile on a cooldown. Not sure if there are damage/cooldown differences between the fighters yet.

 

* The two Imperial ships get a speed boost cooldown. Not sure if it is identical between them or if it affects anything else.

 

* The two Rebel ships get a temporary invulnerability shield. It's like Charged Plating but with a much shorter duration. Not sure if it is identical between X-wing and A-wing or if there is a difference.

 

* There is collision detection. Sometimes you will kill someone in a game of chicken, only to get killed by their debris.

 

* The Rebels can use their shield ability to survive a collision with no damage. I killed many fighters by ramming them with my shielded A-wing.

 

* Sensors are very rudimentary and cluttered with info from the ground game. It will be interesting to see if they are better in Fighter Squadron mode.

 

* As such, 3D awareness of both yourself and your enemy are key. You will often be slowing to minimal speed and turning hard to try and follow an opponent--only you'll be going off intuition of where it looked like they were going, and not what your sensors tell you. This actually created a neat WWII feel, as you could escape a bad turning war by pivoting off-angle when you were out of sight of your enemy.

 

* Not sure on relative maneuverability yet, but TIE Fighters could turn tighter than A-wings it seemed, unless my opponents just didn't know how to slow down.

 

* Overall, I had the most success in an A-wing. The combination of speed, maneuverability and the temporary invulnerability ability were a very good combination. Where have we seen that before?

 

I'll gather more information as I can. In general, I would say that it's a bit more instinctual and a bit less cerebral than GSF. Fighter Squadron mode will have 20 ships on each side (10 bots, 10 pilots). It will be interesting to see if it's just utter chaos as everyone shoots someone who is shooting someone else, or if aces can actually set themselves apart and get kills while not being killed in turn.

[JediBoadicea]

Thanks for sharing, Nemarus! These are definitely some intriguing glimpses of a mode I've been eager to try out.

 

* You do have free movement of pitch. You can do a manual loop and end up upside-down for sustained periods. If auto-leveling exists, it is subtle and waits a long time for you to take your hands off the stick.

 

That makes me extremely happy. Few things frustrated me more in the learning of GSF (and still annoy me to this day) than the auto-leveling the evasive maneuvers do. They have always messed with my instinctive sense of spacial orientation; I always still expect to be upside down, or sideways, or whatever, and have a fraction of a second of adjustment time required to re-orient myself at the end of a maneuver.

 

* There is collision detection. Sometimes you will kill someone in a game of chicken, only to get killed by their debris.

 

That's fun. I enjoy touches of realism like this.

 

* As such, 3D awareness of both yourself and your enemy are key. You will often be slowing to minimal speed and turning hard to try and follow an opponent--only you'll be going off intuition of where it looked like they were going, and not what your sensors tell you. This actually created a neat WWII feel, as you could escape a bad turning war by pivoting off-angle when you were out of sight of your enemy.

 

This also sounds like fun... although granted I can also imagine it becoming annoying after extended gameplay. But I kind of dig the vibe, as it feels pretty in keeping with the "low-tech future" of Star Wars as we knew it in the original trilogy. Use the Force to feel where your opponent went. Right on.

 

It will be interesting to see if it's just utter chaos as everyone shoots someone who is shooting someone else, or if aces can actually set themselves apart and get kills while not being killed in turn.

 

Something I also look forward to discovering!

 

Thanks again for the update and info. I'm sure we'll eagerly gobble up any future tidbits you can provide.

[phalczen]

What is the control scheme for the PC? Joystick, gamepad, m&k?

[Nemarus]

What is the control scheme for the PC? Joystick, gamepad, m&k?

 

I don't know. My early access key was for Xbox.

 

I've seen videos of PC players flying and it seems like they must be using a mouse, given their ability to make subtle course corrections, even in a TIE. PC pilots also seem to be able to use first person cockpit view for precision aiming--the reticle stays fixed and centered, locked to mouse movement, allowing them to correct their aim FPS style.

 

Then they switch out to third person mode to do their turns.

 

The beta is open now on all three platforms, so anyone can try it.

[Gavin_Kelvar]

What is the control scheme for the PC? Joystick, gamepad, m&k?

 

I would assume since it's a DICE game they probably ported over whatever control scheme they've used for Battlefield aerial combat. Which I think had joystick support.

 

@Nem: I don't know if you'd ever played Battlefront II but if you did how do you think it compares to the starfighter combat from there? Things like the evasive maneuvers sound like they're taken right out of BF II. I'll be curious to see if the BFII tactic of locking missiles and launching while simultaneously doing an aileron roll to evade incoming fire still works. In BFII that was an incredibly effective jousting tactic against all but the best pilots.

[FlavivsAetivs]

Thanks for posting this! Great review.

 

I have a pre-order on PC so when I get it downloaded today/tomorrow and get a chance to play it I will let you all know how the PC controls are.

[Verain]

Nem just scooped literally every game review site by actually printing the answers that matter.

 

 

I'm excited about Battlefront, but not really because of its starfighter stuff. Everything you've said confirms my opinion about it not being close enough to a flight sim to be real, but it still sounds amazing as part of the battles, and I'm sure they'll add some depth to the squadron mode. But without roll and yaw independent, it's never going to be right. But it will be right for what it's trying to do.

 

 

I'm pretty sure we all have to play it on PC, as the console serfs will be segregated to their own little wood huts as is the normal state of events.

[Archonitek]

One really annoying thing i found on PC was that I had to keep toggling my vehicle sensitivity when i switched between flying and ground combat. What worked up in the sky made my turret/vehicle unplayable.

[zaskar]

I've played the hell out of this and if this is any indication of the fighter squadron controls, GSF is still the "king". It's worse than arcade controls it's twitchy limited axis controls. Perfect for the type of person that can headshot from across the map but not to fly.

[Archonitek]

Also, goddamn muscle memory. I can't describe how many times i've died because i've hit 3 when i get a missile lock only to shoot a missile out into space and getting blown up from behind.

 

The animation for manoeuvres is also seems kinda jerky.

 

On the plus side, sweeping down and blasting away at ground targets is loads of fun, even if I don't hit anything. I've killed a few at st's that way and manage to get one at at.

[Nemarus]

Also, gosh darn muscle memory. I can't describe how many times i've died because i've hit 3 when i get a missile lock only to shoot a missile out into space and getting blown up from behind.

 

The animation for manoeuvres is also seems kinda jerky.

 

On the plus side, sweeping down and blasting away at ground targets is loads of fun, even if I don't hit anything. I've killed a few at st's that way and manage to get one at at.

 

Yes, the meta game of clearing/avoiding other fighters in order to attack objectives on the ground is definitely fun and fresh.

 

I am hoping the objective shuttles in the Fighter Squadron mode also drive that tension between dog fighting and pouring damage into the objective.

 

I really wish GSF had that tension, too. Unfortunately, playing for satellites in Domination doesn't put you at risk--instead it gives you extra cover and safety. They really need a GSF mode where playing the objective requires risk, and you have to balance it with battling other fighters.

 

Some more data: It looks like all Starfighter evasive maneuvers have a ~10 second cool down. Missiles have about a 20 second cool down. This means that generally, missiles will not settle 1v1 duels. But missiles do pretty much guarantee that it is hard to survive a 2v1 or 3v1.

[DarthTyranid]

How the heck do TIE Fighters have missiles?

[FlavivsAetivs]

I really wish GSF had that tension, too. Unfortunately, playing for satellites in Domination doesn't put you at risk--instead it gives you extra cover and safety. They really need a GSF mode where playing the objective requires risk, and you have to balance it with battling other fighters.

 

I've been saying that for a while on Jedi Cov. Would like to see a game mode where each side has to get like a Corvette across the map or something and prevent the enemy team from destroying it. Would be cool if one player controlled the corvette/whatever and it had a few weapons to defend itself with.

 

But then again, I just want to fly a a Hammerhead-Class Cruiser or Thranta-Class Corvette

[Shoraan]

How the heck do TIE Fighters have missiles?

 

Unless my memory betrays me, there were some missions in the original Tie Fighter game that allowed Tie Fighters to carry a limited amount of missiles.

[FlavivsAetivs]

They had them in Battlefront and Battlefront 2 as well.

[Danalon]

From what I've seen starfighters are exceptionally good tools to kill Skywalkers of any kind.

[Archonitek]

After about 6 hours of game play I have now confirmed that I am utter rubbish at ground game and that I am a true stormtrooper.

 

I do much better in the skies, win 1v1's 8 times outta 10, sometimes I can pull off a 2v1 depending on which ship i'm flying (usually a wing).