The following is quoted from another thread speaking of learning to fly choppers. I do not intend to single out ThomasMorgan, just that he is the last poster expressing the opinion of everyone in the thread.
Why? Besides the obvious, no QWERTY keyboard and mousepad in the cockpit, but because of the balance and reactivity you can achieve are much more then your mouse and key-combos can provide. Most of you aren't great at flying with joysticks for who knows what reason, so you say keyboard and mouse is better. Let's rephrase that, to keyboard and mouse is better for novices who want to get in the air fast. You can't really judge both on their pure merits if you can't actually use both.
That said, the hard part of using a joystick, is having the will to learn. It's like driving your first time in a manual car. Let's not compare with automatics yet because choppers require more input then point and steer (not by much in bf2 though lol!).
When you first learned to drive, you probably jumped in and stalled the car several times trying to just go straight. Nevermind gearing down before turns, juicing the throttle in turns and gearing up again. Well most people at this stall point give up and say, this is too hard, I want to drive now. They go out and get an automatic car and dread dealing with manual cars for most of their life. Think keyboard and mouse... You totally loose the thrill of driving a manual car in your life.
If you just spent the few hours to get a grasp of the joystick, you would realize the acrobatics and pin-point precision it grants you OVER that of a mouse and keyboard. The more time you spend on it, the better accustomed you will become, just like playing cs more and more. Soon you can just snap headshots on people with your trusty ak-47.
Yes, you can grow accustomed to your mouse setup, which is probably why most refuse to spend a few hours mastering a joystick. A joystick, however, provides far more agility then your mouse setup though. It is this agility that messes most people up - they grab their joystick and turn even the floating bathtub over in under a minute of flying. You are over-correcting! A joystick is sensitive to all directions of movement, learn when to silk it over a bit, and when to jam it over in dangerous sitations. You would be suprised what mess you can recover from in a joystick, utilizing the collective, then what you can do with a mouse and throttle keys.
Now I agree that you can be a mediocre - good helicopter pilot in BF2 with a mouse and a keyboard, and I have met many, including my friend SirNick., but still you can be much better with a joystick if you spend the time. However, when it comes to other games, where flight models are much more realistic, it begins to take real talent to fly. If you have any inspiration at all, you will learn to use the joystick, because you simply cannot fly well with a keyboard and mouse in any flight oriented games worth a lick o' salt.
The weakness (and strength for novices) of BF2 is that the chopper pilot does not have to do most of the killing (you can try though!) as you have a gunner thats actually useful (BF1 DC trying to get a gunner was like you were a personal taxi for people). BF2 does not require the talent to fly that DC did, and DC was still a very simple flight model! BF2 lets users jump in a chopper and as long as they can keep it up and stable, a gunner aiming with their mouse can rack up kills. The problem is, just because you can move around in the air and rotate your chopper with your mouse, and let your gunner do all the work, does not make you a good pilot.
Yes you can do some of the joystick maneuvers, but they aren't easy, tight radius, nor are they fast, nor can you do them consecutively without getting extreme carpal tunnel after a few hours of play. Most users never fly against jets who a) don't ram b) can shoot down helicopters with no problem, so you think you're great at flying a chopper because you can stay in the air more then a few minutes and rack some kills up. Truth is, if you try that shit with any real pilots around, your more then likely going to be spending more time on deck than in the air. If you want to compete with your archnemesis (jets not the other chopper!) in the air, then you have to have the moves and reaction time to deal with jets who see four floating points.
This speaks nothing of the neccesity of actually being agile and voracious when it comes to shooting down other attack choppers. Far too many people a) can't hit shit with their rockets at any distance other then in their face, and b) rely too much on their gunner for taking that vital TV shot. Your rockets, even though they are getting teh nerf next patch, are powerful enough that they got the nerf in the first place! You can aim very well as the pilot with a joystick. You get an inherent feel for your drift, and your overall flight path. With practice, you can hit infantry bodies with rockets from a distance and hit the enemy attack chopper's body from far away while you are dueling it out in the air. Your gunner may be great, but if you are not just a pilot but an attacker too, your team effort is that much greater.
This is partly why I was so shocked when I joined this bf2s community, and everyone craps on joysticks and has no idea about them. In any of the flight communities they would crap all over these posts saying wtf? Now I guess in a way I'm shitting here too, but I'm trying to promote you guys to learn, so that when there's only one blackhawk, one cobra, one this or that, and your forced to take a ride or wait, the chances are better and better, that the pilot will be good. I've shot down too many pilots to know who is mousing and who is joysticking, and there IS a difference.
This is extremely noticeable in the cobra, and the blackhawk pilots for chopper flight. The Cobra is capable of much bigger paces then anyone puts them through - when I fly that sucker its like flying a J10 with rotors because the flight model has no stress on components or anything, you can just jack that fucker so hard over that you would puke all over the windshield, you can turn tight circles on a dime, you can roll horizontally, vertically, and in the Cobra you can do it FAST. Yet, nobody does this enough, and I will then shoot you into mincemeat with a J10. If chopper pilots would keep the hard maneuvers up and keeping the gunner on target when the time is right, you really are much stronger.
As for the Blackhawk, so many people fly that boat straight and steady, but sadly, you won't win the race, you'll be swimming or dead. Take your pick. Every maneuver you do in a Cobra/Z10/Mec flying tub, you can exectute in the Blackhawk, just at a highercost of altitude, speed, and recovery time. BUT, you can at least avoid getting shot to pieces while you buy your troops that vital 30 seconds to get to land. Blackhawks are 2-12 flying points, which is a friggen bonanza for jets. If all you can do is fly straight, don't fucking fly, I don't want to die with you before I even have a chance! I'm not saying you can win the battle always against great pilots, but you can have a fighting chance, instead of just being a statistic for the other team!
I refer you to the numerous posts in the Feature Posts section on flying choppers and jets in general. In there is the wealth of maneuvers and tactics you need to being learning the basics. Nobody can teach you to be an expert though, you have to put in the hours and have a willing mindset to learn from your opponents. At least you can start down the right path - sticking with the mouse and keyboard only holds you back in the long run. It is effective, but it isn't dominating like a good joystick can be. Also, if you want to be good with a joystick, don't buy a piece of shit, you will regret it when the time comes, and please, get one with a big enough base that you can actually use it without it falling out of your lap/off the keyboard tray/whatever you prefer. Those junk ass joysticks worth 35 bucks US are just that, junk. Invest in a real piece of equipment and you will not be unhappy. It's like buying mice, buy a shitty one and you'll feel the pain, buy a good one, and your control couldn't thank you enough.
Some problems people have with joysticks:
- Calibrate it first: Control Panel -> Game Controllers
- Setup the keys like you see in the following pictures, else when you twist, it may be acting counter-intuitively towards your direction of rotation. This happens A LOT for first time users. It will totally destroy your flying experience. Note you can't twist with the keyboard unless you setup the keys, but then both of your hands are going to be busy and you'll never be able to check behind you and back into cockpit view very easily. This is a BIG handicap, because enemy choppers love to sneak up behind, and you won't be able to figure out what angle that pesky jet is coming in from. Real pilots are always going to return for you, learn to deal with it properly, or get shot down or rammed (by knob pilots).
- Try to under-correct, instead of overcorrecting your movements. Over-correcting only works when you have totally fucked up your flight path and you need to get back to the horizon quick.
- There are situations when backing off the collective is neccesary, and when tweaking it up and down helps A LOT.
- Pulling back on the joystick so that you travel up and backwards, when being pursued by a jet will more then likely yield the jet ramming you. Lots of chopper pilots do this out of panic, yet when someone rams you from behind, do not be suprised - essentially you suprise your pursuer and their veer off time is shortened drastically. I have learned to recognize these pilots so that I can minimize any rams which really hurt your KD ratio in jets
- Turning hard to the side is the best way to loose your pursuing jet if the jet is attacking from behind. I know this from experience as I've been in both shoes. However, just because you avoided the jet once, does not mean they wont be back again and again and again until you die. You have to watch with your rear view and forward cockpit view where they are attacking from, then utilize your landscape and maneuvers to be out of the way of the jets return attack angle. The only way to loose a dedicated pilot is for the jet to loose where you are. Otherwise you are subject to repeated assaults.
- Flying super high in choppers makes it harder for jets to hit you, but when they do pursue you that high, flight models seem to get a bit whacky and rams happen really really easily up that high. Lower down rams really only happen intentionally, or if someone attacks at a bad angle/pilot pulls some funky shit in same direction the jet was planning to veer off.
Note that I don't know much about the collective; I've always treated it like a throttle and that has worked for me, as opposed to angles of the rotor blades. I know there is some chopper buffs on this forum, so I speak from flight experience, not from technical experience
Miscellaneous:
Videos thread:
http://forums.bf2s.com/viewtopic.php?id=5957
Videos Direct:
http://hosted.filefront.com/CanadaZenmaster
Flying thread:
http://forums.bf2s.com/viewtopic.php?id=5321
Your Resident Joystick Promoter,
Zen.
PS please read that Flying Thread, specifically the portion where VoodooChild mentions joy2key, where you will be able to spot enemy targets as the chopper pilot easily from your joystick, making your gunner alert of what is going on. This is super handy when you see an enemy chopper and you need to line up your rockets on them anyway, so your crosshair can issue the spotted command without fucking up your flight path. I plug my own thread so that more people will learn to fly all aspects of BF2, because this is the straw that breaks the horses back. Great pilots in choppers and jets = massacred enemy team. You can't win the game by just jets or just choppers, but if you have both, you really can't loose even if your ground team is semi-incompetent.
PPS see all of you I know now on Wake 24/7 for some more point bonaza's!
I'll bite! In my opinion, and that of every helicopter manufactured today states that joysticks are better control devices.ThomasMorgan wrote:
like a few people have already said, keyboard and mouse is better than joysticking for choppers. i have a joystick, but i only use it for jets, never choppers.
just go into a single player game and practice. that way, when you fuck up (and you will) it doesnt mean anything.
Why? Besides the obvious, no QWERTY keyboard and mousepad in the cockpit, but because of the balance and reactivity you can achieve are much more then your mouse and key-combos can provide. Most of you aren't great at flying with joysticks for who knows what reason, so you say keyboard and mouse is better. Let's rephrase that, to keyboard and mouse is better for novices who want to get in the air fast. You can't really judge both on their pure merits if you can't actually use both.
That said, the hard part of using a joystick, is having the will to learn. It's like driving your first time in a manual car. Let's not compare with automatics yet because choppers require more input then point and steer (not by much in bf2 though lol!).
When you first learned to drive, you probably jumped in and stalled the car several times trying to just go straight. Nevermind gearing down before turns, juicing the throttle in turns and gearing up again. Well most people at this stall point give up and say, this is too hard, I want to drive now. They go out and get an automatic car and dread dealing with manual cars for most of their life. Think keyboard and mouse... You totally loose the thrill of driving a manual car in your life.
If you just spent the few hours to get a grasp of the joystick, you would realize the acrobatics and pin-point precision it grants you OVER that of a mouse and keyboard. The more time you spend on it, the better accustomed you will become, just like playing cs more and more. Soon you can just snap headshots on people with your trusty ak-47.
Yes, you can grow accustomed to your mouse setup, which is probably why most refuse to spend a few hours mastering a joystick. A joystick, however, provides far more agility then your mouse setup though. It is this agility that messes most people up - they grab their joystick and turn even the floating bathtub over in under a minute of flying. You are over-correcting! A joystick is sensitive to all directions of movement, learn when to silk it over a bit, and when to jam it over in dangerous sitations. You would be suprised what mess you can recover from in a joystick, utilizing the collective, then what you can do with a mouse and throttle keys.
Now I agree that you can be a mediocre - good helicopter pilot in BF2 with a mouse and a keyboard, and I have met many, including my friend SirNick., but still you can be much better with a joystick if you spend the time. However, when it comes to other games, where flight models are much more realistic, it begins to take real talent to fly. If you have any inspiration at all, you will learn to use the joystick, because you simply cannot fly well with a keyboard and mouse in any flight oriented games worth a lick o' salt.
The weakness (and strength for novices) of BF2 is that the chopper pilot does not have to do most of the killing (you can try though!) as you have a gunner thats actually useful (BF1 DC trying to get a gunner was like you were a personal taxi for people). BF2 does not require the talent to fly that DC did, and DC was still a very simple flight model! BF2 lets users jump in a chopper and as long as they can keep it up and stable, a gunner aiming with their mouse can rack up kills. The problem is, just because you can move around in the air and rotate your chopper with your mouse, and let your gunner do all the work, does not make you a good pilot.
Yes you can do some of the joystick maneuvers, but they aren't easy, tight radius, nor are they fast, nor can you do them consecutively without getting extreme carpal tunnel after a few hours of play. Most users never fly against jets who a) don't ram b) can shoot down helicopters with no problem, so you think you're great at flying a chopper because you can stay in the air more then a few minutes and rack some kills up. Truth is, if you try that shit with any real pilots around, your more then likely going to be spending more time on deck than in the air. If you want to compete with your archnemesis (jets not the other chopper!) in the air, then you have to have the moves and reaction time to deal with jets who see four floating points.
This speaks nothing of the neccesity of actually being agile and voracious when it comes to shooting down other attack choppers. Far too many people a) can't hit shit with their rockets at any distance other then in their face, and b) rely too much on their gunner for taking that vital TV shot. Your rockets, even though they are getting teh nerf next patch, are powerful enough that they got the nerf in the first place! You can aim very well as the pilot with a joystick. You get an inherent feel for your drift, and your overall flight path. With practice, you can hit infantry bodies with rockets from a distance and hit the enemy attack chopper's body from far away while you are dueling it out in the air. Your gunner may be great, but if you are not just a pilot but an attacker too, your team effort is that much greater.
This is partly why I was so shocked when I joined this bf2s community, and everyone craps on joysticks and has no idea about them. In any of the flight communities they would crap all over these posts saying wtf? Now I guess in a way I'm shitting here too, but I'm trying to promote you guys to learn, so that when there's only one blackhawk, one cobra, one this or that, and your forced to take a ride or wait, the chances are better and better, that the pilot will be good. I've shot down too many pilots to know who is mousing and who is joysticking, and there IS a difference.
This is extremely noticeable in the cobra, and the blackhawk pilots for chopper flight. The Cobra is capable of much bigger paces then anyone puts them through - when I fly that sucker its like flying a J10 with rotors because the flight model has no stress on components or anything, you can just jack that fucker so hard over that you would puke all over the windshield, you can turn tight circles on a dime, you can roll horizontally, vertically, and in the Cobra you can do it FAST. Yet, nobody does this enough, and I will then shoot you into mincemeat with a J10. If chopper pilots would keep the hard maneuvers up and keeping the gunner on target when the time is right, you really are much stronger.
As for the Blackhawk, so many people fly that boat straight and steady, but sadly, you won't win the race, you'll be swimming or dead. Take your pick. Every maneuver you do in a Cobra/Z10/Mec flying tub, you can exectute in the Blackhawk, just at a highercost of altitude, speed, and recovery time. BUT, you can at least avoid getting shot to pieces while you buy your troops that vital 30 seconds to get to land. Blackhawks are 2-12 flying points, which is a friggen bonanza for jets. If all you can do is fly straight, don't fucking fly, I don't want to die with you before I even have a chance! I'm not saying you can win the battle always against great pilots, but you can have a fighting chance, instead of just being a statistic for the other team!
I refer you to the numerous posts in the Feature Posts section on flying choppers and jets in general. In there is the wealth of maneuvers and tactics you need to being learning the basics. Nobody can teach you to be an expert though, you have to put in the hours and have a willing mindset to learn from your opponents. At least you can start down the right path - sticking with the mouse and keyboard only holds you back in the long run. It is effective, but it isn't dominating like a good joystick can be. Also, if you want to be good with a joystick, don't buy a piece of shit, you will regret it when the time comes, and please, get one with a big enough base that you can actually use it without it falling out of your lap/off the keyboard tray/whatever you prefer. Those junk ass joysticks worth 35 bucks US are just that, junk. Invest in a real piece of equipment and you will not be unhappy. It's like buying mice, buy a shitty one and you'll feel the pain, buy a good one, and your control couldn't thank you enough.
Some problems people have with joysticks:
- Calibrate it first: Control Panel -> Game Controllers
- Setup the keys like you see in the following pictures, else when you twist, it may be acting counter-intuitively towards your direction of rotation. This happens A LOT for first time users. It will totally destroy your flying experience. Note you can't twist with the keyboard unless you setup the keys, but then both of your hands are going to be busy and you'll never be able to check behind you and back into cockpit view very easily. This is a BIG handicap, because enemy choppers love to sneak up behind, and you won't be able to figure out what angle that pesky jet is coming in from. Real pilots are always going to return for you, learn to deal with it properly, or get shot down or rammed (by knob pilots).
- Try to under-correct, instead of overcorrecting your movements. Over-correcting only works when you have totally fucked up your flight path and you need to get back to the horizon quick.
- There are situations when backing off the collective is neccesary, and when tweaking it up and down helps A LOT.
- Pulling back on the joystick so that you travel up and backwards, when being pursued by a jet will more then likely yield the jet ramming you. Lots of chopper pilots do this out of panic, yet when someone rams you from behind, do not be suprised - essentially you suprise your pursuer and their veer off time is shortened drastically. I have learned to recognize these pilots so that I can minimize any rams which really hurt your KD ratio in jets
- Turning hard to the side is the best way to loose your pursuing jet if the jet is attacking from behind. I know this from experience as I've been in both shoes. However, just because you avoided the jet once, does not mean they wont be back again and again and again until you die. You have to watch with your rear view and forward cockpit view where they are attacking from, then utilize your landscape and maneuvers to be out of the way of the jets return attack angle. The only way to loose a dedicated pilot is for the jet to loose where you are. Otherwise you are subject to repeated assaults.
- Flying super high in choppers makes it harder for jets to hit you, but when they do pursue you that high, flight models seem to get a bit whacky and rams happen really really easily up that high. Lower down rams really only happen intentionally, or if someone attacks at a bad angle/pilot pulls some funky shit in same direction the jet was planning to veer off.
Note that I don't know much about the collective; I've always treated it like a throttle and that has worked for me, as opposed to angles of the rotor blades. I know there is some chopper buffs on this forum, so I speak from flight experience, not from technical experience
Miscellaneous:
Videos thread:
http://forums.bf2s.com/viewtopic.php?id=5957
Videos Direct:
http://hosted.filefront.com/CanadaZenmaster
Flying thread:
http://forums.bf2s.com/viewtopic.php?id=5321
Your Resident Joystick Promoter,
Zen.
PS please read that Flying Thread, specifically the portion where VoodooChild mentions joy2key, where you will be able to spot enemy targets as the chopper pilot easily from your joystick, making your gunner alert of what is going on. This is super handy when you see an enemy chopper and you need to line up your rockets on them anyway, so your crosshair can issue the spotted command without fucking up your flight path. I plug my own thread so that more people will learn to fly all aspects of BF2, because this is the straw that breaks the horses back. Great pilots in choppers and jets = massacred enemy team. You can't win the game by just jets or just choppers, but if you have both, you really can't loose even if your ground team is semi-incompetent.
PPS see all of you I know now on Wake 24/7 for some more point bonaza's!
Last edited by [CANADA]_Zenmaster (2006-01-19 16:27:44)
