Northstar

I assume this will be addressed in the full game documentation, but I'm curious. I've never bought cards (seems like a waste of XP in the demo, to me), but how exactly does it work? When you buy cards, are they in addition to your starting hand, or do they replace some of your starting cards? And is there any maximum to the number of cards you can buy for a particular game (besides available XP)? And are they lost at the end of the game whether you use them or not? Thanks.

Actually, there is nothing stopping you (or at least me ) from switching back and forth between the game board and the lobby during play. As long as you don't let the timer run out, you should be fine.

This brings up an interesting question. Most skills are leader or wingman specific, so would be lost when they switch. Then there is "Natural Pilot", which is the same for both, so I assume they would be kept after the switch. What about "Extra Engergy". Both Leaders and Wingmen have it, but the effects are different for each. Does a Leader with "Extra Energy" who is switched to the wingman position gain the Wingman version, or does he retain the now useless Leader version?

I don't know if this has been brought up before, but I feel it is very important to add the ability for the game creater to manually assign the various players to the two teams. Especially if squadrons take off (pun intended ), and with the posibility of 2 vs. 2 tournaments, it will be necessary to be able to choose teams, rather than it being random. This would also help play balance when there are large differences in experiance (allowing a 10 & 12 to play against another 10 & 12, rather than the computer randomly assigning the two 12s vs. the two 10s). However, it would still probably be nice to have the option of random teams, for pick-up games where players don't know each other well.

I have experienced negligeable in game connection problems, but my $.02, for what its worth. As long a a 'bot takes over for a player after a connection loss, I don't see that there is any real advantage for pulling the plug on a bad game. The player will still have to face the consequences. Maybe the experiance point and kill penalties mentioned above could be added as an additional disincentive, but I don't see it as necessary. If a player disconnects right after having an IMS:D played against him with no defense, the bot takes over and gets shot down. No change, no additional penalties needed.

You're close, but not quite right. The first number on an IMS/OotS is the number of bursts required to use it. I believe most if not all of the demo aircraft have one burst when neutral, two when advantaged, and four when tailing (none have any bursts when disadvantaged or tailed). This can be modified by the Marksman skill, and some of the other aircraft are different. So basically, you can play as many IMS/OotS cards as you have bursts. An uncontested Maneuver will normally give you two bursts (assuming you went from Neutral to Advantaged) and would allow you to play an IMS/OotS 2:X or two 1:X. Playing Maneuvers, Half Loops, and Vertical Rolls against a wingman also gives you more bursts to use, although there is no change in the onscreen graphics in that case. You can see how many burst you have available in the pilot display: its the last line, IIRC. The Wingmen get a fresh hand of cards (generally two, unless modified by skills or damage) each time they have the change to attack or are attacked. So basically, there is no reason to hold back with Wingmen: any cards left in their hands at the end of the attack sequence are discarded.

On the last turn of the battle, the last player to go has absolutely no reason not to burn every reaction card in his hand to try to make his attacks strike home. His opponent won't have another chance to attack, so there is no point in trying to save reaction cards for the defense. I'm not sure how much of an advantage this actually is, but there is certainly a difference in how you play when you know you are going last. I don't know if there is really a good way of fixing this. Unless you make games indefinitely long -- which I think would be a bad idea -- eventually you would hit a known "last turn". However, even if you made the game end randomly on, say, turn 5, 6, or 7. Only on the occasions when you actually made it to 7 would you know it was the last turn. So at least 2/3 of the time you would have to consider the posibility of a counter attack, and play accordingly

Any chance of changing the start sequence so that the dogfight preview actually stays up long enough to read it? When the reaction time is set to green, there is usually adequate time to go back and check it out, but that is not always the case at Vetran, and definitely not at Ace! It might also be helpful to have a way of checking pilot skills on the game board. Maybe a right click on the pilot or plane to bring up a list of skills or bought cards?

Thanks, bartbert, that makes sense. The only problem I see is that in the case of the tournament, my only choice was to either fly pilots of a nationality I didn't particularly want to use, or to delete a couple of experianced pilots to make room for the tournament pilots. I imagine that in the future there will be a number of different tournaments with different pilot rules, but in a case like this, it would be nice to have the ability to create extra pilots. Maybe just a temporary increase in the number of pilots to 8 for the duration of the tournament. Afterwards, the player would have to decide which four to keep. It's not a big deal one way or the other, but I did find in slightly annoying at the time.

I'm just curious if the limit of four pilots per nationality will be in the full game, or if it is just part of the demo. Thanks in advance.

Strangely enough, it seems to have correct itself. Tonight, I was able to play two campaign missions, and two online battles. Only one time did I get the directplay error, and I just exited the game, and restarted! Man, I love computers sometimes!

I downloaded the demo last week, and have been messing around with local games without any difficulties (except for a little sluggishness on startup). Yesterday, I tried to play a campaign, but when I went to start a campaign game, I got a "Directplay error". The game seemed to start and the background came up, but no plane graphics appeared, and it just sat there. I have a Windows 2000 system with DirectX 9.0c installed, and as I said, local games run with no problem. Any help would be appreciated. :confused: