Post by magnifiscent on Apr 1, 2013 14:03:25 GMT -8
Introduction:
Air combat can be very quick. A wrong decision can lead to disaster in mere moments. Most new pilots feel hopelessly outmatched by the so-called "aces" because they are already out maneuvered when the fight (as they see it) starts. Air combat begins well before you acquire a target or press the trigger. Often the fight is won or lost before you ever start to take damage. Air Combat is not a gun fight - Air combat is a chess game. Learning to break down that game, understanding the pieces, and learning to reflexively make the right decisions is the key to winning.
What's "Physics," precious?
Planetside 2 has a "unique" flight model which is a nice way of saying the developers couldn't figure out how to make their game engine simulate flight physics without completely breaking.
Altitude is limited, gravity exists only the loosest sense, and there is no air resistance to speak of. Your aircraft do not "fly" so much as move through some sort of weird 3-dimensional space in a loose approximation of air combat. Because of this, aircraft in Planetside 2 are immune to certain realities of air combat and are thus able to perform some unconventional maneuvers.
Air Combat Maneuvers, or ACM, are a bit different in Planetside 2, but understanding what is possible and what is not is a vital part of learning to fly in this game.
Energy-less fighting and Altitude:
One of the biggest "features" of the flight physics in Planetside 2 is the nearly completely absence of potential energy (PE). In more robust flight models (and the real world) aircraft are able to store large amounts of PE in the form of altitude and air speed. Learning how to conserve PE and knowing when to trade it for maneuvers or when to keep it, is a vital part of learning ACM.
In planetside 2, there is no means of storing PE. There is no way to trade altitude for energy or speed. The developers tried, early on, to implement a system for this, but found reavers doing reverse maneuver dives at 800kph for quick map travel and decided they were not up to the challenge of programming complex flight physics. I don't blame them, mind you, but there it is.
What does this mean for a pilot and ACM?
It means your altitude advantage is nothing but a positioning advantage. While that is somewhat disappointing for pilots used to the extra energy that provides during a fight (energy = life), there IS still some value in flying at high altitudes. Planetside 2 is very much focused on the ground game. Render range for infantry is about 300m or so. Render range for ground vehicles is about 700 meters. This means most aircraft will be operating at an altitude of about 200m - 650m and most will be focused on the ground.
This affords high-altitude aircraft a great advantage - surprise. Attacking a target that is not aware of you is the easiest way to ensure a kill. The more damage you can do to an enemy before they are able to act in their own defense, the easier it will be to kill them.
Be aware, however, that the altitude affords you no other advantages you would normally expect. Your maximum speed is capped and will not increase appreciably with a dive. Your enemy can point themselves directly up and climb from a dead stop with little trouble. Once you've given up the element of surprise, you are more or less on equal footing (with regards to energy) as your target. Make the most of it, and only trade it for a clear gain.
A brief word on gunnery
I'm going to end up using the word "lead" a lot as we go on. It is important to understand what a "lead" is. Projectiles have travel time. This doesn't mean much when you shoot at a stationary target, but when your target is moving things change. Trying to hit a moving target is difficult. If you aim at where the target is when you pull the trigger, because of projectile travel time, your target will have moved by the time the projectile arrives. That means that if you want to hit a moving target you have to aim at where the target will be when the projectile arrives. This means that your point of aim will be out in front of the direction of travel for your target. This is called a "lead." Remember that word.
Turn Fighting
This is what flying in Planetside 2 is all about. One way or another, just about every fight turns into a turn fight. Turn fighting is about one thing - geometry. Ha, not what you thought I was going to say, was it? Stay with me here.
Before we get right into it, let's talk about some underlying principles that are important to understand. First up, Pursuit Angles. There are three Pursuit angles in ACM:
Lead - Lead pursuit is what you use when you want to close with your target. You point your nose ahead of the nose of the enemy. This can be called an "intercept course" and will naturally close the distance between you and your target as you converge on the same point. This is an extremely important idea to comprehend - when two aircraft are pointed in the same place the distance between them will diminish until they are occupying the same airspace (collision). When you and your wingman are firing at the same enemy, you will naturally move closer together and WILL collide eventually. It is also very important to realize than when you are leading your target with your guns, you are in lead pursuit.
Pure Pursuit - This is typically what you'll find yourself in when trying for a missile lock. This angle also provides closure, albeit more slowly than Lead Pursuit.
Lag Pursuit - This is an angle a lot of people don't understand. This angle is what you use when you want to slide onto the tail of an opponent without closing. This is VERY important when you are trying to get onto the tail of an aircraft that is turning. You do not want to aim ahead of a turning aircraft or you will be flying INTO their turn allowing them to either make a head-on pass (and hurt you) or turn inside of you and gain the advantage.
Circle Flow
How does all that fit into a fight? Two aircraft attempting to out-turn each other in a flat plane will maneuver in two circles (radius defined by turn rate). This is called the Turn Circle:
You can see where, as the two planes (attacker in red) with similar turn radii, try to turn fight, they will change pursuit angles as their relative positions change. Why is this important?
Following the flow clockwise, notice the next annotation after "Lead Pursuit." Attacker overshoots. An overshoot is when you are going too fast to continue to turn with your opponent and they get the 'inside track.' This is not only a function of absolute speed (air speed) but also of closure rate. Remember what we said about lead pursuit above? It gives the fastest closure rate and is the pursuit angle you WILL be in when you are trying to lead your target with your guns. If a pilot does not take action to mitigate the closure rate, he WILL eventually overshoot his target and fall into Lag Pursuit or worse, will allow his target to turn inside of him.
It is important for a pilot to understand the geometry of this and to anticipate this so that you are not caught unaware. If you know it is going to happen, you can take steps to either mitigate the risk of the overshoot or use it to your advantage. One of the ways to reduce the chance of overshoot is to reduce speed. Another is to switch back and forth between lag pursuit (which drastically reduces the rate of closure) and lead pursuit for gunnery. Use the lag angle to open your distance and briefly switch to lead to unload your weapons. This will buy you a little more time to finish your opponent before you overshoot.
Speed, Thrusters, and Slip Turning:
Alright, building on all of that we can start to talk about more immediate, practical applications of these principles.
I've already mentioned the relationship between speed and turning - the greater your speed, you more poorly you will turn. Turn fights are about gaining the fastest turn rate which usually involves a race to drop speed and thus turn sharper.
Despite a few advertisements to the contrary, there isn't much difference in the turn rates of the ESFs. Roll and Pitch are about the same and seem related to mouse sensitivity with a rate cap (increased sensitivity does not equal increased roll and pitch after a certain point). The only real change comes in Yaw and the only thing that affects Yaw directly is the Dogfighter Airframe. This becomes important in "slip turns" or "out-of-plane maneuvering," and we'll get to that. For now, let's talk about in-plane maneuvering and take a look at a quirk of PS2's game model - vertical thrusters.
Let's imagine that circle above is the turn radius of an aircraft. There are two ways to tighten that circle (and thus out-turn your opponent) - Reduce your speed, or use vertical thrust to swing your back end around faster.
Imagine an aircraft turning along that circle. Now, in your mind, roll the aircraft so that the 'top' points into the center of the circle and 'bottom' points out. The arrow represents the direction you want to fire your vertical thrusters to tighten your turn radius. In this case, the arrow points towards the 'underside' of the aircraft which means we want to use our down-trust (default: ctrl) to "swing" our back end around a bit faster and tighten our turn.
Now, take the same circle and the same plane. Roll the plane the opposite direction so that the undercarriage points to the center. The arrow points 'up,' which means that you want to use your up-thrust (default: space bar) to swing your back end around.
Both of these situations are very important to improving your turn rate. Now, let's build on these two ideas.
Hover Frame and Reverse Thrust Maneuver
Ah the RTM. How I loathe it. It does, however, build directly out of the principle we just discussed. Here's how:
Take the second situation from above, where we are using the space bar thrusters to turn. These thrusters are more powerful than the down-ward thrusters. Using the hover stability airframe makes them even more powerful. This is one of the reasons why hover frames became so popular. At lower speed, high angle of attack (roll) turns, the more powerful thrusters would push the plane around faster than they could normally turn.
When it was discovered that at very low speeds, the aircraft's main thrusters turn downward into VTOL mode and that using the afterburner in this situation produced a LOT of up-thrust, the RTM was born.
The RTM is nothing more than a very low-speed turn with afterburner thrusters. The interesting side effect was that as long as you kept pitching down, you would appear to fly backward.
This is, by far, the most popular aerial maneuver in the game. 4/5 pilots will attempt this in EVERY fight.
Using it: Finding that sweet spot where you're just slow enough to turn your thrusters down without coming to a complete stop is key. The other part of using it is learning to compensate for your funky movement and the movement of your opponent while maintaining an accurate lead. It requires a LOT of practice to get right.
Fighting it: Check out the 0:20-0:23 time frame on the above video. You will see a moment where the reaver is presenting its belly directly at the center of the turn circle. If you were a pursuer, the target would be presenting their belly at you which is the largest possible target cross section for your waiting guns. I call this Lunch Time. Depending on the skill of the pilot and how comfortable they are with this maneuver, they will either hang, like idiots, in the air for you to easily gun them down, or they will panic and roll out of the RTM before getting the real advantage out of it. If you anticipate this maneuver, they will die before completing the maneuver and be left wondering why it didn't work. The key is anticipation. When you see them start to slow down, down the same. Kick in some good ol' down thrust at the same time (compensate for the movement) if you really want to throw them off.
Why do I hate this maneuver so much? Because you are head-on with your target trying to match them blow for blow. Two "ace" pilots will land all their shots on each other making the lowest TTK weapon the winner. Often the difference between winning and losing is a few bullets. Winning isn't about your decision making, your maneuvering, your ability. It's betting everything on the hope that your opponent will miss. This is a TERRIBLE way to fly. Don't count on your opponent missing. Imagine two boxers coming out of the corner, both throwing everything they've got into right hooks that land simultaneously knocking both boxers out. Doesn't do you much good to floor your opponent when you're lying right next to him. For the love of god, if you see a "right hook" coming, do something else.
Dogfighter, Slip Turns, and vertical thrust
The dogfighting airframe is much maligned in the general opinions of the pilots. To their credit, it doesn't do much. There is not much difference in the pitch or roll of the aircraft. Where it makes a difference is in yaw. This is the flat left-right movement of your nose (A and D keys). This doesn't do anything for you in the high angle of attack turns that we talked about with the hover frame and so people aren't sure what to do with it. Increased yaw, however, is very useful when you apply it to a Slip Turn.
Slip Turns are the most basic of out-of-plane maneuvers and involve using the rudder (yaw) to increase how tight an aircraft can turn.
The above image represents the angle of the wings in various states. The center is level flight; the left (vertical) represents a high angle of attack turn (like in the RTM); the right represents a low angle of attack turn (like you would use with a slip turn).
In the instance on the right, you roll your wings slightly, pitch up into the turn as normal and then use your rudder to yaw left. You essentially make a very tight left turn that, in the real world, preserves the air speed that you would normally lose with a high AOT turn. In Planetside what we get is just a nice tight turn that makes use of our increased Yaw.
Now, let's refer back to the circle turn above. You'll notice to make the left turn, the plane rolls left slightly and makes the slip turn. The undercarriage is pointed out, now, instead of in. So we want to use 'down-thrust' instead of 'up-thrust.' That's 'ctrl' instead of 'space.'
This combination, after some practice, will get you a very nice tight turn that can counter a reverse maneuvering pilots' turn. It is also a descending turn, so RTM pilots will usually have their gunnery thrown off if they are used to the target moving in the same direction as they are.
Racer Frame, Speed, and filling a weird niche
Section coming soon...
Target fixation and chasing
Target fixation is the term for that special brand of tunnel vision you get when you focus intently on the target in front of you and ignore everything else. It is one of the more deadly bad habits a pilot can develop. It is frustrating to allow a plane to limp away with just a little health, and so many pilots will chase their target long after it is safe to do so.
In large aerial dogfights with multiple planes on each side, target fixation can be a sure way to get double teamed. Many pilots become fixed on their target and forget to fly evasively. This makes you a prime target and an easy kill. A good rule of thumb is, if you haven't killed your target in 2 magazines, break off and start flying evasively again. Remember - if you can stay on someone's tail, an enemy can stay on your's.
One of the most difficult things you will do is give up the chase. One of the most consistently wise decisions you can make as a pilot is to avoid chasing a target. Following a fleeing opponent back into enemy territory, waiting AA traps, enemy air assets, or the warp gate is extremely risky and will more often than not result in your death. If you tell yourself that his death is worth your's, remember that he's saying the same thing. If you want to beat him, kill him and survive. If that means letting your target go and getting them when they come back, do that. You can't help your squadron or your mud buddies if you're sitting around waiting for your timer to count down.
Situational Awareness and Anticipation
Situational Awareness simply means knowing what is going on around you. Knowing where the bad guys are, where the good guys are, what is under you, where the friendly or enemy AA is, and where your fall back or rally points have been placed, are all things a good pilot must juggle constantly. In the real world pilots are told to put their "heads on a swivel" and never look in one place for very long. In Planetside 2 we are limited by our forward field of vision. We do have a little free-look, but it is limited and can be cumbersome to use. To supplement, we have a mini-map, way points, and IFF indicators. Use all the information available to you to get the best possible picture of the current situation. Always have your mini map zoomed out and check it constantly. Listen for distinctive engine sounds - sometimes you hear your enemy before you see them. Constantly scan your field of vision and communicate with your squadron mates to get the best possible picture of your surroundings. Developing this skill and staying sharp will allow you to stay in the air far longer than you would otherwise which will allow you to improve your other skills in turn.
Anticipation is another skill that comes with time. Being able to guess what your opponent is going to do before they do it can give you a leg up on reacting. Knowing that enemy scythe is going to slow down or try to cork-screw will help you match and counter these maneuvers. Knowing that reaver is going to try to RTM can help you set your gun sights in the right place and put all your damage on them when they are the most vulnerable and the easiest target. This is also the hardest skill to acquire as it comes from seeing these things happen over and over. Everything you see is an opportunity to learn, chances are you'll see it again.
Conclusion:
This is by no means an exhaustive or comprehensive guide to flying in Planetside 2. Much of what you'll need to know you can only learn in the sky. Much of what you've read here, you'll only really learn after the enemy beats these lessons into you. There is no substitute for hands-on experience, but hopefully after reading this guide you'll be able to see the moves of the game a little sooner or at least recognize them when you see them so that you will be able to learn from what you've seen.
Air combat can be very quick. A wrong decision can lead to disaster in mere moments. Most new pilots feel hopelessly outmatched by the so-called "aces" because they are already out maneuvered when the fight (as they see it) starts. Air combat begins well before you acquire a target or press the trigger. Often the fight is won or lost before you ever start to take damage. Air Combat is not a gun fight - Air combat is a chess game. Learning to break down that game, understanding the pieces, and learning to reflexively make the right decisions is the key to winning.
What's "Physics," precious?
Planetside 2 has a "unique" flight model which is a nice way of saying the developers couldn't figure out how to make their game engine simulate flight physics without completely breaking.
Altitude is limited, gravity exists only the loosest sense, and there is no air resistance to speak of. Your aircraft do not "fly" so much as move through some sort of weird 3-dimensional space in a loose approximation of air combat. Because of this, aircraft in Planetside 2 are immune to certain realities of air combat and are thus able to perform some unconventional maneuvers.
Air Combat Maneuvers, or ACM, are a bit different in Planetside 2, but understanding what is possible and what is not is a vital part of learning to fly in this game.
Energy-less fighting and Altitude:
One of the biggest "features" of the flight physics in Planetside 2 is the nearly completely absence of potential energy (PE). In more robust flight models (and the real world) aircraft are able to store large amounts of PE in the form of altitude and air speed. Learning how to conserve PE and knowing when to trade it for maneuvers or when to keep it, is a vital part of learning ACM.
In planetside 2, there is no means of storing PE. There is no way to trade altitude for energy or speed. The developers tried, early on, to implement a system for this, but found reavers doing reverse maneuver dives at 800kph for quick map travel and decided they were not up to the challenge of programming complex flight physics. I don't blame them, mind you, but there it is.
What does this mean for a pilot and ACM?
It means your altitude advantage is nothing but a positioning advantage. While that is somewhat disappointing for pilots used to the extra energy that provides during a fight (energy = life), there IS still some value in flying at high altitudes. Planetside 2 is very much focused on the ground game. Render range for infantry is about 300m or so. Render range for ground vehicles is about 700 meters. This means most aircraft will be operating at an altitude of about 200m - 650m and most will be focused on the ground.
This affords high-altitude aircraft a great advantage - surprise. Attacking a target that is not aware of you is the easiest way to ensure a kill. The more damage you can do to an enemy before they are able to act in their own defense, the easier it will be to kill them.
Be aware, however, that the altitude affords you no other advantages you would normally expect. Your maximum speed is capped and will not increase appreciably with a dive. Your enemy can point themselves directly up and climb from a dead stop with little trouble. Once you've given up the element of surprise, you are more or less on equal footing (with regards to energy) as your target. Make the most of it, and only trade it for a clear gain.
A brief word on gunnery
I'm going to end up using the word "lead" a lot as we go on. It is important to understand what a "lead" is. Projectiles have travel time. This doesn't mean much when you shoot at a stationary target, but when your target is moving things change. Trying to hit a moving target is difficult. If you aim at where the target is when you pull the trigger, because of projectile travel time, your target will have moved by the time the projectile arrives. That means that if you want to hit a moving target you have to aim at where the target will be when the projectile arrives. This means that your point of aim will be out in front of the direction of travel for your target. This is called a "lead." Remember that word.
Turn Fighting
This is what flying in Planetside 2 is all about. One way or another, just about every fight turns into a turn fight. Turn fighting is about one thing - geometry. Ha, not what you thought I was going to say, was it? Stay with me here.
Before we get right into it, let's talk about some underlying principles that are important to understand. First up, Pursuit Angles. There are three Pursuit angles in ACM:
Lead - Lead pursuit is what you use when you want to close with your target. You point your nose ahead of the nose of the enemy. This can be called an "intercept course" and will naturally close the distance between you and your target as you converge on the same point. This is an extremely important idea to comprehend - when two aircraft are pointed in the same place the distance between them will diminish until they are occupying the same airspace (collision). When you and your wingman are firing at the same enemy, you will naturally move closer together and WILL collide eventually. It is also very important to realize than when you are leading your target with your guns, you are in lead pursuit.
Pure Pursuit - This is typically what you'll find yourself in when trying for a missile lock. This angle also provides closure, albeit more slowly than Lead Pursuit.
Lag Pursuit - This is an angle a lot of people don't understand. This angle is what you use when you want to slide onto the tail of an opponent without closing. This is VERY important when you are trying to get onto the tail of an aircraft that is turning. You do not want to aim ahead of a turning aircraft or you will be flying INTO their turn allowing them to either make a head-on pass (and hurt you) or turn inside of you and gain the advantage.
Circle Flow
How does all that fit into a fight? Two aircraft attempting to out-turn each other in a flat plane will maneuver in two circles (radius defined by turn rate). This is called the Turn Circle:
You can see where, as the two planes (attacker in red) with similar turn radii, try to turn fight, they will change pursuit angles as their relative positions change. Why is this important?
Following the flow clockwise, notice the next annotation after "Lead Pursuit." Attacker overshoots. An overshoot is when you are going too fast to continue to turn with your opponent and they get the 'inside track.' This is not only a function of absolute speed (air speed) but also of closure rate. Remember what we said about lead pursuit above? It gives the fastest closure rate and is the pursuit angle you WILL be in when you are trying to lead your target with your guns. If a pilot does not take action to mitigate the closure rate, he WILL eventually overshoot his target and fall into Lag Pursuit or worse, will allow his target to turn inside of him.
It is important for a pilot to understand the geometry of this and to anticipate this so that you are not caught unaware. If you know it is going to happen, you can take steps to either mitigate the risk of the overshoot or use it to your advantage. One of the ways to reduce the chance of overshoot is to reduce speed. Another is to switch back and forth between lag pursuit (which drastically reduces the rate of closure) and lead pursuit for gunnery. Use the lag angle to open your distance and briefly switch to lead to unload your weapons. This will buy you a little more time to finish your opponent before you overshoot.
Speed, Thrusters, and Slip Turning:
Alright, building on all of that we can start to talk about more immediate, practical applications of these principles.
I've already mentioned the relationship between speed and turning - the greater your speed, you more poorly you will turn. Turn fights are about gaining the fastest turn rate which usually involves a race to drop speed and thus turn sharper.
Despite a few advertisements to the contrary, there isn't much difference in the turn rates of the ESFs. Roll and Pitch are about the same and seem related to mouse sensitivity with a rate cap (increased sensitivity does not equal increased roll and pitch after a certain point). The only real change comes in Yaw and the only thing that affects Yaw directly is the Dogfighter Airframe. This becomes important in "slip turns" or "out-of-plane maneuvering," and we'll get to that. For now, let's talk about in-plane maneuvering and take a look at a quirk of PS2's game model - vertical thrusters.
Let's imagine that circle above is the turn radius of an aircraft. There are two ways to tighten that circle (and thus out-turn your opponent) - Reduce your speed, or use vertical thrust to swing your back end around faster.
Imagine an aircraft turning along that circle. Now, in your mind, roll the aircraft so that the 'top' points into the center of the circle and 'bottom' points out. The arrow represents the direction you want to fire your vertical thrusters to tighten your turn radius. In this case, the arrow points towards the 'underside' of the aircraft which means we want to use our down-trust (default: ctrl) to "swing" our back end around a bit faster and tighten our turn.
Now, take the same circle and the same plane. Roll the plane the opposite direction so that the undercarriage points to the center. The arrow points 'up,' which means that you want to use your up-thrust (default: space bar) to swing your back end around.
Both of these situations are very important to improving your turn rate. Now, let's build on these two ideas.
Hover Frame and Reverse Thrust Maneuver
Ah the RTM. How I loathe it. It does, however, build directly out of the principle we just discussed. Here's how:
Take the second situation from above, where we are using the space bar thrusters to turn. These thrusters are more powerful than the down-ward thrusters. Using the hover stability airframe makes them even more powerful. This is one of the reasons why hover frames became so popular. At lower speed, high angle of attack (roll) turns, the more powerful thrusters would push the plane around faster than they could normally turn.
When it was discovered that at very low speeds, the aircraft's main thrusters turn downward into VTOL mode and that using the afterburner in this situation produced a LOT of up-thrust, the RTM was born.
The RTM is nothing more than a very low-speed turn with afterburner thrusters. The interesting side effect was that as long as you kept pitching down, you would appear to fly backward.
This is, by far, the most popular aerial maneuver in the game. 4/5 pilots will attempt this in EVERY fight.
Using it: Finding that sweet spot where you're just slow enough to turn your thrusters down without coming to a complete stop is key. The other part of using it is learning to compensate for your funky movement and the movement of your opponent while maintaining an accurate lead. It requires a LOT of practice to get right.
Fighting it: Check out the 0:20-0:23 time frame on the above video. You will see a moment where the reaver is presenting its belly directly at the center of the turn circle. If you were a pursuer, the target would be presenting their belly at you which is the largest possible target cross section for your waiting guns. I call this Lunch Time. Depending on the skill of the pilot and how comfortable they are with this maneuver, they will either hang, like idiots, in the air for you to easily gun them down, or they will panic and roll out of the RTM before getting the real advantage out of it. If you anticipate this maneuver, they will die before completing the maneuver and be left wondering why it didn't work. The key is anticipation. When you see them start to slow down, down the same. Kick in some good ol' down thrust at the same time (compensate for the movement) if you really want to throw them off.
Why do I hate this maneuver so much? Because you are head-on with your target trying to match them blow for blow. Two "ace" pilots will land all their shots on each other making the lowest TTK weapon the winner. Often the difference between winning and losing is a few bullets. Winning isn't about your decision making, your maneuvering, your ability. It's betting everything on the hope that your opponent will miss. This is a TERRIBLE way to fly. Don't count on your opponent missing. Imagine two boxers coming out of the corner, both throwing everything they've got into right hooks that land simultaneously knocking both boxers out. Doesn't do you much good to floor your opponent when you're lying right next to him. For the love of god, if you see a "right hook" coming, do something else.
Dogfighter, Slip Turns, and vertical thrust
The dogfighting airframe is much maligned in the general opinions of the pilots. To their credit, it doesn't do much. There is not much difference in the pitch or roll of the aircraft. Where it makes a difference is in yaw. This is the flat left-right movement of your nose (A and D keys). This doesn't do anything for you in the high angle of attack turns that we talked about with the hover frame and so people aren't sure what to do with it. Increased yaw, however, is very useful when you apply it to a Slip Turn.
Slip Turns are the most basic of out-of-plane maneuvers and involve using the rudder (yaw) to increase how tight an aircraft can turn.
The above image represents the angle of the wings in various states. The center is level flight; the left (vertical) represents a high angle of attack turn (like in the RTM); the right represents a low angle of attack turn (like you would use with a slip turn).
In the instance on the right, you roll your wings slightly, pitch up into the turn as normal and then use your rudder to yaw left. You essentially make a very tight left turn that, in the real world, preserves the air speed that you would normally lose with a high AOT turn. In Planetside what we get is just a nice tight turn that makes use of our increased Yaw.
Now, let's refer back to the circle turn above. You'll notice to make the left turn, the plane rolls left slightly and makes the slip turn. The undercarriage is pointed out, now, instead of in. So we want to use 'down-thrust' instead of 'up-thrust.' That's 'ctrl' instead of 'space.'
This combination, after some practice, will get you a very nice tight turn that can counter a reverse maneuvering pilots' turn. It is also a descending turn, so RTM pilots will usually have their gunnery thrown off if they are used to the target moving in the same direction as they are.
Racer Frame, Speed, and filling a weird niche
Section coming soon...
Target fixation and chasing
Target fixation is the term for that special brand of tunnel vision you get when you focus intently on the target in front of you and ignore everything else. It is one of the more deadly bad habits a pilot can develop. It is frustrating to allow a plane to limp away with just a little health, and so many pilots will chase their target long after it is safe to do so.
In large aerial dogfights with multiple planes on each side, target fixation can be a sure way to get double teamed. Many pilots become fixed on their target and forget to fly evasively. This makes you a prime target and an easy kill. A good rule of thumb is, if you haven't killed your target in 2 magazines, break off and start flying evasively again. Remember - if you can stay on someone's tail, an enemy can stay on your's.
One of the most difficult things you will do is give up the chase. One of the most consistently wise decisions you can make as a pilot is to avoid chasing a target. Following a fleeing opponent back into enemy territory, waiting AA traps, enemy air assets, or the warp gate is extremely risky and will more often than not result in your death. If you tell yourself that his death is worth your's, remember that he's saying the same thing. If you want to beat him, kill him and survive. If that means letting your target go and getting them when they come back, do that. You can't help your squadron or your mud buddies if you're sitting around waiting for your timer to count down.
Situational Awareness and Anticipation
Situational Awareness simply means knowing what is going on around you. Knowing where the bad guys are, where the good guys are, what is under you, where the friendly or enemy AA is, and where your fall back or rally points have been placed, are all things a good pilot must juggle constantly. In the real world pilots are told to put their "heads on a swivel" and never look in one place for very long. In Planetside 2 we are limited by our forward field of vision. We do have a little free-look, but it is limited and can be cumbersome to use. To supplement, we have a mini-map, way points, and IFF indicators. Use all the information available to you to get the best possible picture of the current situation. Always have your mini map zoomed out and check it constantly. Listen for distinctive engine sounds - sometimes you hear your enemy before you see them. Constantly scan your field of vision and communicate with your squadron mates to get the best possible picture of your surroundings. Developing this skill and staying sharp will allow you to stay in the air far longer than you would otherwise which will allow you to improve your other skills in turn.
Anticipation is another skill that comes with time. Being able to guess what your opponent is going to do before they do it can give you a leg up on reacting. Knowing that enemy scythe is going to slow down or try to cork-screw will help you match and counter these maneuvers. Knowing that reaver is going to try to RTM can help you set your gun sights in the right place and put all your damage on them when they are the most vulnerable and the easiest target. This is also the hardest skill to acquire as it comes from seeing these things happen over and over. Everything you see is an opportunity to learn, chances are you'll see it again.
Conclusion:
This is by no means an exhaustive or comprehensive guide to flying in Planetside 2. Much of what you'll need to know you can only learn in the sky. Much of what you've read here, you'll only really learn after the enemy beats these lessons into you. There is no substitute for hands-on experience, but hopefully after reading this guide you'll be able to see the moves of the game a little sooner or at least recognize them when you see them so that you will be able to learn from what you've seen.