HOWTO: Twitchy Combat & Controls

[iBeej]

Hi all,

I have been following these forums for quite some time and started playing Evochron last year and just recently got back in to it and got around to making a profile to join the community. I play Evochron almost every night between 4-6 hours and have dedicated a lot of my time to combat. One of my all time favorite games was Descent and used to compete in dogfighting tournaments. I am extremely anal about control setup, as it's the MOST critical aspect of combat next to skill and experience. I have been quite pleased to see how similar Evochron is to Descent from the early years and I would like to share some tips for proper key configuration for twitchy responsive control of your ship. What I'm about to share has been perfected down to a science by many players over the years who use a mouse and keyboard. For those who use joysticks, this doesn't always apply. I would take a mouse and keyboard over a joystick any day but that's just me. This may be very foreign and seem unatural at first, so it's something you need to aclimate to and you will start to see why it's done this way. They keys are selected very particularly to allow "freedom of fingers" so you can perform multiple operations on one hand with little movement of your hand and less travel time for fingers.

SPACEBAR - Afterburner
TAB - Toggle IDS
CAPSLOCK - Toggle cockpit camera
LEFT SHIFT - Countermeasures
LEFT CONTROL - Reverse Thrusters
Q - Roll Left
W - Strafe Up
E - Roll Right
A - Strafe Left
S - Strafe Down
D - Strafe Right
Z - Increase Energy to Shields
X - Equalize Shields
C - Increase Energy to Energy Regen
R - Target ship in viewport
F - Toggle weapon firing mode
V - Next secondary weapon
G - Stealth Genarator OR target subsystem
T - Alternate key for Target Closest Hostile

Now for some explanation on WHY this is setup this way. Many of the absolute crucial functions are mapped closely together on the left side of the keyboard in a typical FPS left hand configuration. To be a successful and skilled pilot you need access to these functions quickly and efficiently. There is much more to Evochron combat than holding down your primary fire with guns blazing. There are critical subsystems for you to manage during combat and is MORE important than your actual gun fire.

Your hand should rest on these keys. Your pinky will rest on shift, your ring finger will rest on A, your middle finger will rest on W, your index finger will rest on D, and your thumb will always rest on the spacebar.

In combat, the MOST important RULE, above all things, is a constant velocity over 750 and your vector heading should NEVER be directly toward ANY ship. This is because the A.I. (especially players) will blow you straight out of the sky because from their perspective, you are an "immobile" target. IE, MDTS not even neccessary. Just fire straight at you. You should dogfight with angular momentum and CONTINUALLY maintain that. This naturally creates an "orbiting" or circling maneuver around your target making you harder to hit. You achieve this angular momentum through the use of your strafe keys. Point your ship directly at your target but strafe left or right and ALWAYS keep the small rectangular heading indicator away from center. This allows you to change your heading without taking your sights off your target. (Visually losing your target is a big no no). I typically keep the rectangular heading indicator near the lines of the circular viewport.

Next, you should become VERY comfortable flying your ship with the IDS OFF. I can't stress this enough. KEEP IT OFF. Not only does it burn fuel, but it requires you to hold down strafe keys 100% of the time during combat. IDS limits advanced maneuvering. Use it as a slowing mechanism only, or to quickly re-align your heading to center. Furthermore, IDS increases your heat signature making you an effective missile magnet.

Due to IDS being off, there is nothing to stop you from moving but yourself. This requires constant attention to your current heading as well as your velocity. In combat, you manage your velocity using the afterburner, NOT your inertial thrusters. Inertial thrusters are too slow and you can't change your trajectory quick enough. Because these aspects are so CRUCIAL it is "key" (pun intended) to have a highly accessible key configuration while allowing remaining fingers to function on other tasks.

Which is exactly why the afterburner is assigned to spacebar. Your thumb never moves and your afterburner governs your velocity. With the afterburner on spacebar, it is comfortable using ANY of the strafing keys while holding down spacebar. As an example, imagine you assigned the afterburner to TAB (which is the default). You no longer have finger placement to strafe left while using the afterburner. That's bad.

Furthermore, countermeasures are your best friend when you are overwhelmed with too many missiles and got yourself surrounded making it hard to shoot them all down. (You should always avoid being surrounded, but hey it happens). Thankfully, countermeasures are readily accessible because your pinky sits on shift. Because you are using inertia to your advantage, you can set an angular trajectory and flip around to shoot down missiles. Get used to this, you will be doing it 75% of the time in combat. Remember to maintain an angular vector at all times.

You will often be making circular passes around your targets. So at some point you will be getting a negative reading on your velocity gauge, which means your are facing your target while drifting backwards. Use your afterburner to counter this effect to alter your direction and maintain your orbit around your targets. It's best practice to proactively do this just before you are making a pass, or you end up 3-4k away from your targets very quickly and this eliminates your orbit putting you in a forward vulnerability to your targets as you attempt to re-establish your orbiting maneuver. It helps to keep your speed around 1500.

The only other operation your pinky can perform is hitting the control key. For this, we use reverse thrusters. THIS is really handy when doing maneuvers to increase your backward momentum while looking forward. This is very easy to do now that your pinky is holding down control and your thumb is holding down spacebar. Your strafe fingers are still available!

Also, you can switch the IDS on and off as neccessary. But remember to stay out of it most of the time. Heat signature is SO critical it needs to be a huge priority in it's management. Because we are using our afterburner so much in combat, it's important to USE inertia to your advantage and stay on top of your maneuvering to reduce moments in time where excessive amounts of afterburner is needed to correct trajectory you failed to stay on top of. The afterburner raises your heat signature to astronomical proportions so it's CRITICAL you use it only during the times you don't have missiles trailing you. How? Missiles are almost always trailing you!! For this I use a simple rule. If ANY missile indicator is red, the afterburner is forbidden. Countermeasures are necessary here. With your already angular maneuvering, the missiles are most likely approaching from the side and can easily be shot down or handled with countermeasures. Take care of the reds and then continue with your afterburner.

At this point, the most USEABLE finger in your arsenal is your index finger. It's more mobile so the keys assigned around it are ALL quick tapping functions which don't require a key hold. (Because you need it for strafing right) Its very easy reaching over to hit R to target something in your viewport, or T to target your nearest hostile. Tapping F to switch between your cannons and lasers, etc.

Not only will your strafing fingers perform strafing maneuvers, they will be the fingers utilizing your roll and one of the more critical aspects of your ship; the shields. Tap Z with your ringer finger to increase power to shields. Tap C with your index finger to increase energy regen. Use your middle finger to tap X for shield equalization. I have found in COMBAT, using directional shield modifiers is a waste of time. (and a lot of keys making it near impossible without taking your hand off the keyboard which is bad). Since you are moving at all times anyway, it is more likely to sustain an impact else-where. For this reason, shield equalizing is cheap and quickly accessible. Forward shield boosting may be valuable in backward drifting combat where your front is really the priority. For pilots with this playstyle, feel free to change X to forward shield boosting.

I use the shield keys CONSTANTLY. When I'm in an advantageous position, I'm not worried about shield power. So I boost power to energy for increased weapon fire. But when shields are hit or you end up in a situation where you anticipate active damage, boost shield power. Especially WHEN you sustain shield damage so they regen quickly. Furthermore, when using a stealth generator you want energy at +5 while it's running for longer duration and as the generator reaches 10% remaining time, boost shields to +5, as they will be completely down and you need them up quickly.

With all these keys and functions to balance, it's quite a lot to do and will keep you very busy. Now it just takes practice, practice, practice and experience. It is at this point you need these keys or whatever you use to be muscle memory. Second nature. You don't even have to think about it.

And finally, the last bit of advice is an advanced one. While in combat, hit F1 and plot a course directly in front of your ship. The marker will be EXTREMELY close to your ship indicator. Almost on top of it. Do this QUICKLY and hit launch or F2. With practice you will be able to effectively warp behind your targets during combat. I do it all the time at 1500-3000k and you have the added benefit of instant speed due to inertia coming out of warp. When this tactic is used properly it is astonishingly DEADLY.

So that's it for now. There is more, especially with maneuvers utilizing rolling and/or combat spirals. But that's a whole different post! Try this stuff out and I can assure you huge success and improvements in your combat skills!

Good luck!

edit: typos

[Edited on 4-22-2010 by iBeej]

[MMaggio]

I don't understand your "complaint" iBeej.
Am I missing something or you? You can re-assign any keystoke in the game to any keystroke you want. If the previous is where you would like the keys to be, just put them there! It might take some time to do it, but then you would have the perfect setup for your style of play. Personally, I am amazzed at how agile some of you K&M players can be! Me, I wouldn't fly around the corner w/o a joystick!

[iBeej]

What? That wasn't a complaint lol. I was sharing my key setup and how I play.

[Maarschalk]

LOL....I'm impressed iBeej, you gave away a lot of combat secrets used by many of the more advanced players. I used to be a preferred keyboard and mouse player, but when the joysticks got tremendously improved, with amount of buttons and flexibility of programming, I was glad when I bought my first and only joystick ever a Saitek X52. A properly set up X52 beats keyboarding hands down and the buttons of the joystick becomes like second nature in combat. It makes sense to me your setup because that is how I setup my joystick. that the fingers for the most important task are always free for those tasks I could give examples but that would give away some of my combat secret skills against some of my rival fellow pilots that use advanced joysticks... not that I know of many enemy rivals that is....just maybe one or two.....LOL...:P:P:P:P

[Edited on 4-23-2010 by Maarschalk]

[Marvin]

I'm amazed you guys managed to read that whole first post.

[Maarschalk]

LOL...Marv...you must have read all of it to and must have read ours as well......although relativily short but hey I can elaborate longer....if you are intrested in reading more but iBeej certainly can beat my posts with a longer one but not my amount of posts as Mr. Muchtalk....LOL....:P:P

[Marvin]

If I'm going to read all the way through a very long post, it's usually gotta be from Vice.

[Earl]

I don't see Evochron anywhere near as 'twitchy' as Descent was.... but man, that was a fun one. My brother and I used to try to play keyboard only... He was murderous....
Here's what I have, because I have spidery fingers...
I keep my left hand resting on the directional keys- Up and down strafe, and the right and left are my rolls. To strafe left and right, I hit my delete and page down keys. I actually spread my knuckles across them so that I can strafe vertically, over and roll all at once with two fingers... not that it makes a ton of difference in Evochron, you don't get those speed bonuses like you did in Descent, but you can react fast.
I don't mess with my throttle or my inertial forward/reverse. I use my IDS mapped to my 1(keypad) to brake or slow down, and use my afterburner for all forward thrust (mapped to 0-keypad). Countermeasures are mapped to 4.
Energy settings are just above my strafes, on my insert and page up keys. I don't mess with any other keys, the rest is on my joystick, and I don't my moving my left hand over to hit a button over there for those functions.
About the warping around... I don't do it like that- Nobody is ever moving in a straight line at you, that wouldn't work. Plus, it would sap your weapons energy and leave you open. EL combat often takes a while, so you can better use that energy rebuilding your shields during a long battle.
Try this one- Get your best missile ready, and get him following you. Jump a good distance off so that you can correct for his new heading, as it will change when he thinks you've run off (his lock will break even if you don't leave the area). Target him again quickly before he figures out you're still in the area, and close fast. That usually gets them.

[iBeej]

Originally posted by Marvin
If I'm going to read all the way through a very long post, it's usually gotta be from Vice.

c'mon Marvin, where's the love?

I had everybody telling me to run from Oasis today. Apparently I was being hunted. Took care of that problem twice. But I'm sure Oasis would blame it on something else, even though the dogfights lasted 10 minutes.

Next up, Romulan. I love the flavor of griefer jerky.

[Maarschalk]

LOL, you must have chalanged Oasis some how, he never chased me around.....:P:P:P:P

[MMaggio]

"HE" is a she! LOL!;)

[iBeej]

You saying Oasis shoots like a girl?

[Marvin]

Did I say you should run? Or did I just warn you she was headed your way ... and to be on the lookout? (How did the battle go ... who won? I took a phone call before it ended and the call lasted almost an hour.)

[iBeej]

I won. She came back for more so I blew her up again. I was alt tabbing a tiny window without sound so I couldn't go a 3rd time. She's a good pilot though!

[NewPlayer]

Originally posted by iBeej

Next up, Romulan. I love the flavor of griefer jerky.

For the benefit of some people on the other side of the Atlantic to yourself, please define 'griefer jerky'.

[Maarschalk]

Originally posted by MMaggio
"HE" is a she! LOL!;)

LOL...some girls never seem to be willing to chase me around........:(:(:(:(...................................:P:P:P:P

[Marvin]

That's 'cause you're too easily caught.

[Maarschalk]

No, not if they are ugly, but than again ugly is also relative....LOL...:P:P:P:P

[Marvin]

Yup ... relative to the number of beers you've had in the last couple of hours.

[Maarschalk]

I don't drink but my sense of beauty or ugliness gets affected by other related factors that are relatives of the effect of beer on eyesight like extensive computer display radiation exposure due to long uninterupted hours of Evochron game play.....LOL.....:P:P:P:P

[MMaggio]

"What's the difference between a fox and a dog"?





About 4 beers!:P:P:P

[Maarschalk]

ROFL...MM....:P:P:P:P

[Star King]

Spoken like a man who went to bed with a fox and woke up with a dog! lol

[MMaggio]

Close. I went to bed a FOX and woke up a DOG!
At least I felt like dogpooh.
And it wasn't just "4 beers" either!:(

[Maarschalk]

LOL.......:P:P:P:P:P:P:P:P:P:P:P:P