[Strike Vector] Lose Your Lunch in 6DoF Comptetive Online Shooting

Drake

Strike Vector is a game about going fast and dogfighting. No wait. Strike Vector is a game about stealth and ambush. Ok that's not right either. Strike Vector is a game about Decent style 6DoF duels in tight environments. Wait. That doesn't cover it either.

It is all of these things.

Here is a Strike Vector video to communicate all of this in moving pictures.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNAUTcMT1Fo

It is a fast paced, aerial deathmatch game. It is intense. It's making my gut tight just thinking about it. I have had to call on skills from both space sims and fast paced arena shooters. Often at once. The feeling when you are performing well is godlike. Threading the needle through a skyborn superstructure to scrape off homing missiles, slamming into harrier mode then pulling a 180 to deliver a blast of rockets and carbine rounds to your pursuers face is amazing. Using the stealthy perk and a cloak to slip into an optimal attack profile on a domination match control point is brilliant. If you enjoyed Crimson Skies: High Road to Adventure then you are going to really find a lot here to love. If you enjoy fast paced deathmatch arena action like UT and Quake used to provide then you will likely find a lot to enjoy here. If the flying aspect isn't your thing you can set up to rely on harrier mode. If FPS aren't your style and you are more of a space sim jockey then you can set up your profile to reinforce that style too. And all arms and perks are available right from the start. I've actually seen complaints about it being too much to absorb at once! What foolishness! It is a game that has a wide skill range and high ceiling. You will earn every kill, and you feel feel the shame of every crash. You will learn to tear glory out of the very skies and you will do it in four game modes.

First up is Deathmatch. No need for introductions here.

Next up is Team Deathmatch. Like it's crazier bro, TDM is an old friend for many people here.

Then there is Domination. You are probably familiar with the Dom gametype from games like the UT series. In these types of games there are different capture points. When a vector is in the capture zone the capture bar fills up etc. The team that controls the most domination points the longest wins. Kills count for buttkis in the score but they are valuable and make you feel awesome. And if the other team is dead they can't take your shit, right?

Finally we have Bounty Hunter. This is a Death Match style game except score is based on bounties collected instead of kills. When a player is fragged, he drops a bounty. Pilots have to fly through the bounty and collect it, like a power up. Bounties add up of course and when you die you drop them on the spot for anyone to pick up. With the right kill you can go from a nobody that nobody cares about to the most hunted dude on the server! Fun!

Strike Vector is a game that is available on Steam and you should totally buy this game and play it.

Sterica

I assume you didn't intend on making this thread twice, so this is the true thread now.

Drake

No I did not. The forums went kablooey for a moment and I guess things happened. Thanks for cleaning up after me.

Zxerol

I played about 15 minutes of this. The majority of the time was spent getting creamed by dudes with shotguns. Oh, and more than once I found myself pressing X to try to evade missiles because my brain, in little shocks of delirium, thought it was playing Freespace. ("No," my friend said over voice chat, "you barrel roll to break missile locks." What he didn't mention was that you double tap the key to do this.)

Darmak

Guys, this game is pretty great. It's one of the most intense and frenetic games I've played in quite some time, requiring good reflexes and being able to think on your feet.

TychoCelchuuu

I like this game a lot (I gave it a high score on my review site!) but this Steam review is actually fairly accurate from my experience.

Drake

I don't know if I agree with that dudes assessment. Seems to me so far I've been able to come up with a counter for a lot of set ups. Last match there was a guy who was using EMPs and shotguns and he was a real terror with the combo. He was really good at zooming right past you, hitting harrier mode and getting a bead on you FAST. If he got into trouble he'd hit his EMP, clean up and get out of dodge. But setting up with the stealthy perk, Gatling Gun/Carbine combo and a cloak allowed me to keep range on him and start putting him out of action. I think maybe a lot of players fall into an optimal loadout for their playstyle and forget to consider counters on tough opponents.

TychoCelchuuu

I was talking more about having to double tap all the time until your fingers hurt. I wish there were easier ways to dodge.

Drake

Oh yeah, that can happen.

Albino Bunny

Oh neat, we have a thread for this.

I'm currently 100% Rocket based. Heavy rockets with damage and range for open maps and double swarm with damage and reload for smaller maps. Either running cloak or one of the mine variants with the low detection perk (because people orient themselves based on orange arrows for most of their gameplay).

It's pretty glorious. Being mucking around with a few of the SE++ Smite guys and topping leaderboards. Don't really get the dodging complaints unless you're back to backing Ion Fortress Domination or something? Barrel Rolls in Jet don't really dodge much so I've only ever chain strafed in Hover mode. Which I don't have long fights in except on very specific maps.

TOGSolid

TychoCelchuuu wrote: »

I was talking more about having to double tap all the time until your fingers hurt. I wish there were easier ways to dodge.

Good ole UT2k4 dodging. Glad I'm already familiar with how much of a pain in the ass it can be. I am not ashamed to admit my G13s thumbstick may get the dodges macro'd to it.

Drake

So far my favorite weapons set ups are mix ups of gatling, rockets, and carbine. I've found homing weapons to be completely unreliable against skilled opponents. Usually if I can hit them with a homing weapon I could have hit them with a weapon that is more effective, like the carbine. Rocket/carbine and gatling/carbine seem to be settling into my favorites, and yeah the stealthy perk is my go to passive perk. Occasionally I'll take the Speedy Harrier perk. I've started to wave off of any kind of damage oriented active perk because of FF issues in the team games. Things like Seekers, EMP, Mines and the Tesla are just too indiscriminate for my taste so I usually go with the cloak or the shield. In DM and Bounty Hunter all bets are off though and then I grab the Tesla because zzzzzzap! Although after experiencing the EMP used by a skilled player last night I'm starting to consider it for team games. It's great for shutting down team coordination (if you are actually seeing any ).

Sokpuppet

The strongest active ability is probably the overboost. Stealth is useful offensively but again, falls flat against more skilled opponents if you use it defensively. The boost lets you GTFO, no questions asked... (unless you crash and die)

There are several really good passives. Ghost is great on maps with a lot of visual cover. Vector speed is useful on maps with lots of open space to run. I routinely get smoked by people running the armor perk - they just win gunfights unless you make perfect shots and they miss a bunch. Really the only one that isn't worth taking is increased zoom...

As you said, the homing weapons are unreliable against skilled players - but I find that a setup with one swarm launcher w/ rapid reload works quite well. The little missiles make a great distraction while you line up a perfect rocket or whatever. Plasma is really good but I'm still not very good at lining up shots in this game. I would go so far as to call it objectively better than the carabine.

Drake

Yeah I totally agree with that assessment of the cloak. That's why I sometimes opt for the shield, it makes for a decent escape perk or gives you few more seconds to pour on the damage if you catch yourself in a tricky fight. I rarely use the cloak defensively. By the time I'm hammering the Q key in a fight I'm usually dead anyway. It's mainly so I can set up a good attack. I should try the overboost out again now that I'm unlikely to overboost myself into the scenery as much.

TychoCelchuuu

I really like the rocket and the carbine. Mostly I've just been dual wielding - I should probably experiment with mixed loadouts. I've been using the Stalker mine to get free kills from noobs, and it's also helpful for buying you breathing room in a tight situation when someone is on your tail, because if you drop it they can't just keep pursuing you, but I agree that overboost is more or less the best. As for the perks, I tend to favor an aggressive style, so speed and armor are my go-to perks, but I also agree that there are lots of good ones.

And I've never even equipped a homing weapon. I feel like those things are an insult to my ability to aim. I'll use homing weapons when I'm an 85 year old invalid! Until them I hit or miss based on my skill and nothing else, thank you very much. No crutches for me!

Darmak

TychoCelchuuu wrote: »

I really like the rocket and the carbine. Mostly I've just been dual wielding - I should probably experiment with mixed loadouts. I've been using the Stalker mine to get free kills from noobs, and it's also helpful for buying you breathing room in a tight situation when someone is on your tail, because if you drop it they can't just keep pursuing you, but I agree that overboost is more or less the best. As for the perks, I tend to favor an aggressive style, so speed and armor are my go-to perks, but I also agree that there are lots of good ones.

And I've never even equipped a homing weapon. I feel like those things are an insult to my ability to aim. I'll use homing weapons when I'm an 85 year old invalid! Until them I hit or miss based on my skill and nothing else, thank you very much. No crutches for me!

I've been using rockets and carbine and lmg and gatling mostly, but I will say I enjoy using dual swarms because it's cool to see a bunch of missiles swarm out after people.

Drake

Yeah it feels pretty Macross to cut loose with those things.

Ratsult2

For those new to the game, first thing you should do is rebind the W key. For some reason it doesn't work by default and you won't be able to move forward in harrier mode and boost forward in jet mode.

Some_tall_guy

I've been having good success with dual wielding the plasma sniper rifles. I've rebound zoom to right click and both weapons to left click. Works wonders, one shot everything like this. You'll have trouble using the menu without being able to right click I found though. Hopefully they'll fix this in an upcoming patch.

Sokpuppet

TychoCelchuuu wrote: »

I really like the rocket and the carbine. Mostly I've just been dual wielding - I should probably experiment with mixed loadouts. I've been using the Stalker mine to get free kills from noobs, and it's also helpful for buying you breathing room in a tight situation when someone is on your tail, because if you drop it they can't just keep pursuing you, but I agree that overboost is more or less the best. As for the perks, I tend to favor an aggressive style, so speed and armor are my go-to perks, but I also agree that there are lots of good ones.

And I've never even equipped a homing weapon. I feel like those things are an insult to my ability to aim. I'll use homing weapons when I'm an 85 year old invalid! Until them I hit or miss based on my skill and nothing else, thank you very much. No crutches for me!

Now call me crazy, but it seems to me that a "Stalker" mine might be considered a homing weapon.

Drake

True story. I was just in a Team Deathmatch, and I saw a teammate dude so I formed up on his left wing and figured I'd fly with the guy. Nope. Instead he just casually drops a stalker mine right in my face. Later on I check the dudes score and it was in the negatives. I imagine they were friendly fire Stalker mine kills.

I also saw a guy complain about all the crashing his teammates were doing. Hey buddy, your pals may be able to fly better if you stop EMPing them every time you get a charge up.

I love how indiscriminate this stuff can be. If you don't use some of these weapons and perks intelligently you are most likely totally boning your own team.

Grimthwacker

Okay, I feel kind of bad for saying that Drake's gifting of this to me was wasted since I suck at dogfighting, so I'm giving Strike Vector another shot - can anybody give me some general noob tips on how to avoid crashing and trying to hit stuff? I realize that Harrier Mode is supposed to allow you to strafe and vector mode's more for maneuvering - still I can't seem to hit anything even while I'm tailing somebody.

Albino Bunny

Main thing to stop crashing when you start is to get used to quick switching into hover mode. You can switch, do a 180 turn and switch back in half a second.

Basically use the thing like a handbrake, if you think you're going to crash just smash space.

Other than that it's just practicing the maps a bit.

Drake

When you are in flight/vector mode you have some of the properties of a classic plane. If you need to pull a really tight turn for example then roll until you are pulling "up" (relatively speaking) into the turn. Banking into turns gives you a wider turn radius and nosing down into a turn is the shallowest turning radius.

Also It's easier for me in cockpit mode and with the Harrier Free Aim turned off.

TychoCelchuuu

I'll quote my tip from the space sim thread, which is mostly about dogfighting but which also has piloting tips:

Played some more Strike Vector. My biggest tip: turning battles are for chumps. Going into vector mode lets you turn on a dime, whenever you want, so the name of the game is all about popping into vector mode the moment you're not in someone's sights, quickly reacquiring your target, jumping into harrier mode, and blowing them out of the sky. If they are aiming at you, pull some kind of evasive maneuver (double tap left or right, go into vector mode real fast and fly in a different direction, or whatever) and then go back to step one. Also, there's pretty much no reason to ever crash into a wall in this game because vector mode lets you stop on a dime.

Basically, if you're ever going to crash into something, just hit spacebar. There you go - no more crashing.