Posted: Tue Aug 16, 2005 6:47 pm
Yes, there is a way to play where in general you will not get the 3 plane squadrons.destructor wrote:Gstrain:
I watched your inp and I saw that one plane appear at one time (only one plane). When I play, I often have 3 planes at one time.
How do you do it? Where is secret? 3 planes are harder to kill than one.
Here is the secret:
Avoid getting 3 plane squadrons as much as possible since they are by far the most dangerous things in the game. To do this, don't kill everything else on the screen when they are about to appear (you can judge their possible appearance from the sound and the order in which things appear. They appear after the second group of ground targets in a cycle leaves the screen). I don't think you can get a squadron if you have a live blimp on the screen, so don't kill the blimp and in general you'll only get one plane. Also don't shoot all of the last set of ground targets, because sometimes you won't get a blimp, and instead you'll get the squadron immediately.
Of course, if several people can play for an hour, this technique may score lower than sometimes getting 3 plane squadrons.
Squadrons also make it very easy to die a few times in a row. When you die for any reason, everything leaves the screen, so it is possible that the first thing you get on your new man is another squadron (sometimes up to 4 in a row).
Some other tips:
1) Tap the fire constantly, don't hold it, unless you are strafing or shooting directly at something, and then fire only as long as you need to. Letting your guns overheat is very dangerous. At higher scores (e.g. >50K) your guns overheat more quickly.
2) Keep dodging almost all the time. Off screen stuff can shoot you. In general nothing is a very good shot and you can dodge almost everything except sometimes point blank shots from planes.
3) Don't let the planes get behind you. The FAQ says how you can dodge them if they get behind you, but in truth I think you have to get lucky too. Always go for the planes as early as possible and ignore everything else when they are onscreen. Once you get past 80K the planes charge you really fast and if you are moving the wrong direction (away from them), and you don't shoot them as soon as they appear, it is very difficult to shoot them in time.
4) To kill the blimps, it is easiest to aim a little to the side of them and slowly drift to the right/left while firing constantly.
5) You can shoot through the mountains, but they can shoot you through them as well.
