Ace Combat series

Bought AC4 on a whim. Should arrive in a few days!

Ah, so the Ace Combat festivities have started I see!

Long-time Ace Combat player here, I've started playing the series with Ace Combat 2, 21 years ago now, buying it because the box art looked cool was definitely one of my best decisions ever!

For anyone who's interested in getting into this series, it could be a good idea to watch this video by two of the biggest Ace Combat Youtubers out there, Ace Combat Fan and Tomcat171, it's a great introduction to the series. It does spoil some story elements, being more of a way for people interested in Ace Combat 7 to catch up with the series in terms of lore.



Also, here's the latest Ace Combat 7 trailer that was released, if you want to take a look at it.

As noted I will be booting up AC4 soon, can I just jump in or is there something I should know first? :)

I know it has a tutorial mode so you want to do that first because from what I've seen there are moves you need to know like if someone's behind or avoiding a missile lock. That and general flight control.

Yeah I'm going to be diving into the tutorial, that's for sure. I've never played a single game like this so I'll really be out of the loop. Fun though, something new!

Yeah, as Birdman pointed out, there's a tutorial you should follow, flight games are pretty unique so they take some getting used to, even if it's pretty arcade.

As for advice of my own, there are two control schemes in the game, one is called Beginner while the other is Standard (Or Expert, I'm not too sure anymore), basically what they do is that Beginner controls simplify things for you, pushing the stick to the right will make your plane go right without any further input from you for example. Meanwhile, Standard/Expert makes your plane roll to the right instead, and you then have to push the stick down to pitch up and go into your desired direction. It takes some time getting used to it (At first you'll probably go barrel-rolling for a while), but when you get accustomed to that, you get much more precise control of your aircraft.

My advice is to try and use Standard/Expert controls when you feel confident enough for it, the payoff is very worth it since it gives you a lot more possibilities when it comes to maneuvering your plane.

Damn it it seems the PAL versions of the PS2 games are all 50hz. It's too hard to import a US version. Takes months to arrive.

I might try an ISO but the PS2 I have for running Swap Magic is breaking down and barely loads anything.

Might wait and start with AC7. It will have multiplayer right? How did it work in previous games? Can you form squads or have 1v1?

Would you recommend I just start on Expert? I tend to not like to switch controls, rather just start it out hard.

Got my copy for the cheap. 2 bucks! I didn't end up playing it though (just boot it up to see if the disc worked and browse through the menus) since I wanted to watch a film with my girlfriend. Have to say the game already won big points with me by allowing us to set it to a better metric system.

I imagine it would be better to start on expert. It sounds similar to DMC's easy automatic. Not the kind of thing you want to get used to.

Yeah I figured, immediately switched it. It is called Normal and Easy btw in the version that I have.

Your country uses PAL right?

Yeah man. 50 fps for life.

That's why I'm not going to get the PS2 ones. Only solution is import the US version but it's too much trouble. Might grab the Japanese version of Zero for Christmas though.

Ace Combat 7 is indeed confirmed to have Multiplayer, although as of now, we only know about a typical Deathmatch mode in it, with two teams of 4 pilots facing each other.
Past games in the series had various modes such as Co-op (Up to 8 players tackling a mission together, although it's generally 4 players at most), Capital Conquest (Two teams of up to 16 players trying to defend their base while destroying the enemy's) or Naval Team Deathmatch (Two teams of 4 players trying to destroy the enemy's entire fleet before their own fleet is destroyed), but there's no guarantee any of these will return just yet.
In any case, it's mostly squadron-based modes, which will likely happen again, although you can always do private games to make it one-on-one if you so desire.

And yeah, I do recommend starting with the Expert controls (Or Normal) to get used to it, mastering that mode should be your end goal so the earlier you start it, the better!

The series does allow to switch between Metric and Imperial systems, yeah, which is great! The only drawback to that is that you're sometimes given altitude restrictions, and the dialogues almost always give those in feet, so for the record, 2000 feet is around 600 meters and 5000 feet is about 1500 meters, those are two restrictions that are used a few times in 04 and 5, best to keep those in mind.

I've never actually noticed the 50hz when playing, but that might just be because I'm that used to it.

Also, the top AC Youtubers have just released a video of their first lesson for newcomers, centered around aircraft control in various situations, you might be interested in it!

Nice video. This is just what I was after.

I might grab Fires of Liberation.

Multiplayer
I don't normally like multiplayer, but the idea of a squad of fighter jets sounds freakin' awesome.

I played three missions in AC4 including the tutorials. This might shock you but I actually died in the tutorial. I was doing some bombing runs and suddenly the game went over to auto pilot and rammed me into a mountain. Glorious.

The missions were good fun so far and the anime-cutscenes are very endearing. The story itself isn't too special (yet) with the ISAF and so on. Gameplay-wise it is great, but the main difficulty comes from controlling the thing so far. I haven't gotten any damage yet and am getting straight A ranks without a clue on what makes for a good rank. The soundtrack is really cool. A bit sad it is all first-person though, would've liked a cockpit view or third person camera. Or is it in there somewhere but I don't know how to get it working just yet?

Cheers!

Ive watched vids of various AC games and they all seem to be able to switch views. I wouldnt be able to stand first person all the time.

Lemmy, I like the idea of co op but how are vs battles? Specifically 1v1. I see you can escape missiles, so would 2 good players go about actually landing a hit without going in circles?

Played some more, getting more into it. I do feel like there's an invisible wall in the ceiling or something, have the feeling something is sending me back down if I try to loop. All in all really fun so far!

Did you get out of first person?

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that. Just press Down on the Dpad fixes that.

How would you compare the gameplay, at least in terms of movement to say, Star Fox? That's probably the only flying game I've ever played.

Hard to say, as that series was always on-rails from what I recall. It controls a lot differently, but very similar to Rogue Leader (if you've ever played that). Controls are harder though, never had this much problem with RL (play it, it is probably one of the best GC games).

Sorry for the delay to respond, I've been pretty badly sick these past few days, now to answer your questions...

I'm not too surprised about you dying in the tutorial, especially if it's because of the autopilot taking over! The number one cause of death in any Ace Combat game is usually crashing into something rather than being shot down!

Your rank is purely based on how many points you can accumulate by shooting down enemies, enemies that appear in red on your radar are mission critical enemies, destroying all of those ends the mission so if you want to improve your ranks, you need to take care of the other targets first (Those that are in White, Yellow or Orange on the radar, the colors indicate roughly how many points they're worth, and locking on to them gives you the direct value), some missions are timed and just require you to get a certain amount of points before the timer ends, the more points you get above the required ones, the better your rank, the game always tells you your current rank next to the points so you can have an idea of how far you are.
As you've found out since then, yeah, you can change the view by pressing Down on the D-Pad, for the record, pressing Up triggers the autopilot which stabilizes your aircraft, it can be useful at times.

Birdman, straight deathmatches don't tend to work too well in Ace Combat since avoiding missiles is relatively easy so it quickly devolves to what most of the community calls circlejerking, just two pilots making circles without being able to hit until one of them screws up or someone else interferes. The objective-based PVP modes are a bit better since having an objective to fulfill means you can't waste time just going in circles.

As for the flight ceiling, yeah, there's one of sorts, most planes will stall once you reach about... 12 000 meters, I believe? It tends to vary between games so I'm not entirely sure of the value for 04, but even at lower altitude, if you don't have enough speed, you'll stall before being able to complete a loop, so basically, push those afterburners to the limit and gain speed before starting your loop and you'll be able to complete it without stalling.

How's DFM in Assault Horizon? I was watching a video of it and it looked cool but at the same time seemed like it might be similar to a QTE and somewhat automatic.

Edit: some more questions about 1v1 and other odd stuff.

1- If you can't get a lock with missiles due to the turning angle, are machine guns of any use?

2- Can they keep looping each other too? Can you stop a loop and fly in another direction?

3- If both are circling, is it possible to slow down to let them move ahead, then accelerate into a sharper turn toward them as if to cut them off?

4- Can missiles be used without lock-on?

5- It it possible to cancel all acceleration and just drop? If you've seen The Sky Crawlers you'll know what I mean.

Played the game some more, really enjoying the dog-fights the most. I assume it is impossible to kill members of yellow-squadron? I tried and they 'magically' dodge everything I do.

The things I dislike the most is air-to-ground combat, feels very wonky to me still.

One thing I've seen in a lot of videos is it's hard to see the ground stuff. A lot of players, whether they're bad or not I can't be sure, seem to like flying pretty much at near ground level to hit ground targets unless they're in first person.

I did see someone fly up then fly directly downwards from above a base, raining missiles down. That was cool.

Birdman:

DFM in Assault Horizon is pretty much the one reason most veteran Ace Combat players dislike the game. It does look cool and all, but what it mostly does is make every single playthrough of any mission extremely similar since you are forced to go through the scripted sequences everytime, and main enemies are pretty much immune to all damage until you initiated DFM and saw the setpieces linked to it.

As for the other questions...
1- Guns can indeed be very useful, they require skill to use, but they can shred an enemy very quickly if you manage to keep them in your sights for a few seconds.
2- You can of course break off from a circle fight, but you have to be careful not to expose your back to the enemy as you do so, but taking some distance can indeed serve to reset the field.
3- Yeah, you can do that as long as you don't stall in the process, it won't help much if the enemy is also trying to slow down for tighter circles though.
4- You can fire missiles without locking-on, yeah, if your aim is good enough, you can get kills like that, it can also be used to fire air-to-air missiles at ground targets, and in the same vein, you can drop bombs on enemy planes if you're very accurate.
5- You can't go instantly from full afterburner to zero acceleration, but you can perform High-G turns that make you lose speed very quickly, and in the games that allow customization, you can add parts that increase your braking.

Royta
Members of the Yellow Squadron are invincible until Mission 8, Shattered Skies, in that one, you can hit one of them (They're very evasive though so closing in and using your guns is your best bet) to make them all retreat. Later on you'll have real fights with them.

As for air-to-ground, it's mostly a matter of practice, I tend to use LASMs (Long-Range Air-to-Surface Missiles) so I just toss a missile from 8000 meters away and focus on other things, but with sufficient practice, you can toss unguided bombs from afar and clear clusters of enemies that way, the smaller versions don't have a huge radius, but once you get access to UGBLs they have a very respectable area of effect.

Also, while I think about it, here's AC7's latest trailer, focused on aircraft customization!

Does stalling make you drop like a stone?

Can you recover from stalling? Can you shoot while stalling?

The effects of stalling depend on the game, in Ace Combat 2, it instantly pointed your nose towards the ground, in 3 (Which had the most unforgiving stalling mechanics in the series) your plane just stopped and slowly turned towards the ground, which made gaining speed to recover from it extremely difficult.
In the recent games (PS2 Trilogy onward), stalling tends to be pretty forgiving, it just stops you there and points your nose towards the ground, at high altitude, it gives more than enough time to recover, at low altitude, it can be a death sentence though. And of course, if there's a missile on your tail as you stall, you're eating that one unless you use Flares (Which are so far available only in Assault Horizon and the upcoming 7).

But yeah, recovering from a stall is generally as simple as pushing your acceleration to the max for a few seconds to regain control, and you can indeed shoot while stalling, so if you manage to get an enemy to overshoot, you can take the opportunity to get a lock on them.

Ace Combat 7 will actually feature Post-Stall Maneuvers, which are apparently a tool skilled players can use to turn things around in a dogfight, and has been shown to be used with great effect in a gameplay video, here's the trailer on these.

Looks similar to this clip from The Sky Crawlers. It looks like the plane pointed upward and slowed right down so the one chasing flew right by it.

Yeah, Project Aces (The team behind the Ace Combat series) actually developped a Sky Crawlers game for the Nintendo Wii, Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces, and it had maneuvers like these you could perform, it's actually quite possible that this system was the foundation for Ace Combat 7's Post-Stall Maneuvers.

I see an AI issue, though I'm not saying anything for sure because I haven't played these yet, but this is what it looks like.

The AI doesn't seem very good, but due to the nature of the game, I can't see how they would do it right. When you lock and fire a missile, what can enemy jets do about it?

What you said about pvp where they circle each other sucks, but it also makes sense. If the AI was better, it would probably just do something like this.

If not, then you're pretty much guaranteed to hit enemy jets, and even if they dodge, they won't forever. I imagine it to be like those action games where a boss will randomly dodge attacks.

This is just what it looks like so correct me if I'm wrong.

The AI is generally not extremely challenging, yeah, although it varies depending on the games, Ace Combat 5 has a nearly brain-dead AI for example, Zero has a much more aggressive AI that won't hesitate to go for head-on kills if they see an opportunity (Although you can exploit that as well).
Ace Combat X has the most aggressive AI in the series, if they get a lock on you, they will not miss their chance to fire a missile at you, and these are pretty accurate, combine that with the one-hit kill missiles on Ace difficulty and... well, it's a quick mission failure.

Of course, the enemies do dodge sometimes, and even if you can eventually kill them, it's not like you have unlimited ammo, you can eventually run out and you can't always go and rearm.
And do keep in mind that you rarely have one-on-one fights, even if an enemy is at your mercy, he only needs to evade long enough for another enemy to sneak up behind you and fire a potentially one-hit-killing missile at you. Enemy Aces tend to have better AI, controlling their acceleration and making tighter turns (Sometimes far beyond your possibilities), and the few enemies you face one-on-one are naturally even better at that.

Also, a new tutorial video has been uploaded a little while ago, that one focuses on the different armaments and various things related to actual combat.

So if you fire a locked on missile, is it guaranteed so long as they don't pull one of the evasive moves?

Nah, far from it, actually, you still need to have the right angle to hit, if you fire on an enemy at a 90 degrees angle, you're probably not touching them at all, even if they just go straight. Some games have indicators telling you when you have the perfect angle for optimal accuracy if they don't pull off an evasive maneuver.

I get that you still need to have your plane aiming in their direction, but even with the perfect setup they can still dodge right?

The question becomes what decides their dodge?
They have to make it so they can't do it forever, because then you'd never hit them and run out of ammo.

So there has to be a time when the game forces them to get hit?
It seems similar to action games that have dodging enemies or bosses, but in those there's no ammo so randomness isn't as much of an issue.

What would be really cool, is if you could do something like shoot a missile (either real of a fake version) to make them evade then fire your real shot while they're evading.

But even then, it might eventually boil down to doing that constantly, and making it guaranteed isn't fair, but then having the enemy not respond would essentially mean we're back to where we started on the missile dodging issue.

Wow, now I see how hard it must be to design combat in a game lol.

Mostly, they'll dodge if they're not already in an evasive pattern or you're attacking from such long range that they have time to react, if you're close enough, have the right angle and they're not already being evasive, you're pretty much certain to hit, the main difficulty is of course to be able to line up your shot in optimal conditions while one or more enemies are trying to do the same to you.

Regarding the possibility to fake out a shot, you can do that while they're on an evasive pattern to force them to turn sharply, lose speed and expose themselves to your guns, not all of your kills need to come from missiles, and at very close range, guns can make short work of most enemies if you're accurate enough.

And indeed, coding an AI for enemies to be challenging enough to put up a fight while still remaining possible to defeat seems like a challenge in itself!

And indeed, coding an AI for enemies to be challenging enough to put up a fight while still remaining possible to defeat seems like a challenge in itself!
I see a similar issue in action games where you get bosses that dodge a lot. Sometimes they just won't, but as I see it, they have to stop because if they didn't you wouldn't be able to hit them.

Games like Monster Hunter World solve this issue (in part I guess) by having all these huge monsters with super armor coming straight at you at all times so the dodging and getting in attacks is all on you.

Some action games do it, usually with large bosses or tough enemies that don't take hitstun.

It's good to know I could possibly fake them out. I feel like it's a game that's better in multiplayer than single though.

Oh crap this is coming out on Friday.

Pre ordered today. Here's what it comes with.

Full Game - Ace Combat Squadron Leader (also known as 'The Unsung War')

Playable F4E Aircraft with 3 Differing Skins:

SU-37: Yellow 13
F-14D: Razgriz
F-15C: Pixy

I don't really know what these are. At first I thought it was 3 planes, but it's just one with 3 skins.
Is this plane any good?

Lemmy, where are you? Get in here boi.

Hahah, Lemmy is probably hunkered down playing his secret early copy! Would hope so for him at least!

Played for a few hours today.

I find fighting other fighter jets kinda annoying. I can't tell what they're doing so I end up following the arrow and trying to get behind them. Are they just flying around randomly or are the using the same evasive moves we have?

High G turns are making a world of difference.

This game just became my GOTY with this track. Try climbing some ninja stairs to THIS Roy.

Let's give it a listen!



Well, I know what I'm putting on my next stairs-video. Fantastic ost all around again, AC4 had some great tracks too. Really great.

Now I get it.

I was watching this video. This guy is considered one of the authorities on AC.
Look at how he manipulates the camera to see where the enemy is then smoothly takes them out. Fantastic.

Read and watched a few insights into the latest entry, have to say I'm really surprised still how good a game can be just about its movement - that seems to be the biggest deal in this title. Great video by the by. Was interesting to just see him toy around at the start seeing the weight testing the manuverability of the craft.

Great soundtrack even in that video. Also surprised by the graphical presentation, looks excellent! You liking it so far now that you're getting it down?

Yeah it's really fun, though I will say there have been some missions that got annoying. I put this down more to my low skill level than the game though.

These were the ones with some form of environmental hazard. One stage took place in a lightning storm, where you can be struck and it messes up your display so you can't lock on, and it breaks your lock if you have it. Very annoying when it happens just as you're about to fire.

The other, which I genuinely felt was awful, was having to locate trucks in a huge sandstorm and it screwed with the radar. You could fly above it or below, but no matter what, the radar would flicker on and off, giving you glimpses as to where the trucks were. All the while grounded missile launchers and other jets are harassing you AND there's a time limit.

Did you see the upgrade tree? On the far end are some seriously insane jets.

Here's some good laughs from IGN.
Title should be 'Uh-oh! Learning!