-------------------- __ __ __ __ /\ \ __/\ \ /\ \ /\ \ \ \ \/\ \ \ \ __ _ __\ \ \___ __ __ __ __\ \ \/'\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ /'__`\ /\`'__\ \ _ `\ /'__`\ /\ \/\ \/\ \\ \ , < \ \ \_/ \_\ \/\ \L\.\_\ \ \/ \ \ \ \ \/\ \L\.\_\ \ \_/ \_/ \\ \ \\`\ \ `\___x___/\ \__/.\_\\ \_\ \ \_\ \_\ \__/.\_\\ \___x___/' \ \_\ \_\ '\/__//__/ \/__/\/_/ \/_/ \/_/\/_/\/__/\/_/ \/__//__/ \/_/\/_/ Normal Flight Strategy Guide by Params7 v 0.6 -------------------- Introduction : I'm a long time, avid player of Warhawk. I know it might be a little too late to be writing a WARHAWK faq at this time, but even today I see plenty of new people trying this game, the blue ROOKIE servers are always full. The game still enjoys a very healthy population old and new players. I see people asking for tips and tricks to flying in the game at least once a week on the message boards, and so I decided to write this FAQ which I'm pretty sure, will help a lot of people! ----- Contents : (to navigate to any particular section, press CTRL+F and copy/paste the section title in it, click Find Next or Next (depending on your browser) 1. Who is this FAQ for? 2. Lets Begin! 3. Terms 4. Controls 5. Weapons 6. Style of Flight within Normal Flight 7. DOGFIGHT : A2A Combat - In-Depth Strategy, Tips, Details. 8. Ending notes ----- 1. Who is this FAQ for? : There are TWO ways to fly the planes in the game. Both are a lot different from each other. These two modes are : Normal Flight and PRO Flight. Normal Flight is also called Arcade flight by some players. Newcomers to the game are adviced to check out both the flight modes thoroughly and pick the one they feel most comfortable in to practice further. Keep in mind that Normal flight is enabled by default, so to try out PRO flight, you will need to activate that flight mode in the settings option. This FAQ is for players who have decided to fly in Normal mode, and for long time players struggling with the flight mode. I will try to keep this FAQ simple and easy to understand. Warhawk is a simple game to begin with, and that's what makes it so difficult! There is not a single piece of dialogue and storyline in the game, as soon as you boot it up you're put in a server selection screen where all you do is join and start playing. ----- 2. Lets Begin! : Whether you are a beginner who just bought the game 2 hours ago or have been playing for 2 years since launch and struggling with flying, start here. Trust me, its best to start at the basics again to get a better hold of basic techniques and maneuvers and weapons knowledge and go from there. I've seen people with over 50 hours in the game who have absolutely no clue how to operate the Lightning Gun pickup. So..start here. ---- 3. Terms : ** Short Forms and Their Meanings ** LG : Lightning Gun MG : Machine Gun A2A : Air 2 Air A2G : Air 2 Ground ----- 4. Controls : ** There are further two modes within Normal Flight, called HOVER MODE and FLIGHT MODE. The Controls for both these modes are in this section. These two modes are explained in another section. ** HOVER MODE Triangle : Switch to FLIGHT MODE O : No Use X : No Use Square : Mount/Dismount plane Square (Hold) : Change Position within the plane to Co-Pilot's seat and vice-versa (when the position is empty) R1 : MG L1 : Fire Selected Weapon Direction Pad : Select picked up weapons R2 : No Use Select : MAP Start : Scorecard FLIGHT MODE : Triangle : Switch to HOVER MODE O : No Use X : No Use Square : No use Square (Hold) : Change Position within the plane to Co-Pilot's seat and vice-versa (when the position is empty) R1 : MG L1 : Fire Selected Weapon R2 : Faster flight speed Double Tap R2 : Boost Speed L2 : Brakes/Slower Speed R2 + L2 : Powerslide Direction Pad : Select picked up weapons Select : MAP Start : Scorecard ---- 5. Weapons : ** All the weapons you can pick up in the plane and their descriptions with tips /strategies ** Lightning Gun : It is the Light Blue-White electric pickup you see in some very special places. Easily one of the most useful weapons. There are two ways to fire this weapon. Hold down L1 with this weapon equipped with full ammo (10 charges), and you will begin to charge this weapon. A status bar will appear around the reticle, when it fills up, your CHARGED LG is ready for fire, releasing L1 will fire. If you throw it on ground, it will create an electric storm and if aimed directly at a ground unit or a plane, will take a good chunk of its life away on contact. The electric storm will explode all the landmines in the area it touches, enemy or friendly. It also creates a shield from TOW missiles. To fire Uncharged LG, just tap L1 as fast as you possibly can. There is no limit to the tapping speed here, since there is no cooldown. Homing Missile : The yellow colored missile pickup. You get 3 with every pickup and that is the most you can carry at once. They take out nearly 80% of the health. Follow it up with uncharged LG or several swarm lockons with persistent MG fire to finish your opponent off. Swarm Missiles : The Green colored missiles you see everywhere. They take out approx 15% of health on contact. Unlike Homing missiles, with Swarms you can lockon upto eight swarm missiles at once on your target. You can carry 15 at a time, and get 5 from every pickup. Lots of pickups on every map. Chaff : White colored pickup. Used break off any number of missiles locked on your plane. You can carry 2 at a time. Get 2 with every pickup. Always good to have one around - Especially useful to counter missiles fired at you from a very close distance, or if you're feeling lazy. Stealth : Another yellow colored pickup. This is also a rare pickup like LG, and it makes your plane almost completely invisible, not totally (keep that in mind). It does make your plane completely disappear from the radar though. The plane also starts to output a unique sound which can be heard by nearby enemies as you approach them. Airmines : Love them and hate them. They are the pink colored pickups. You get two with every pickup, and can caqrry 3 at a time. Keep in mind, you can only plant 3 airmines at a time, planting more will make your already planted airmines disappear from existence one by one. T.O.W : Get a kill with it once and you'll get hooked on it like crack. The rarest pickup in this game. Pink in color. When you fire, your plane will go into Hover mode and you will enter the eyes of the missile. You have no control or visual of your plane anymore until the missile explodes, so it's completely vulnerable to any attack. When controlling the TOW, you can speed up, slow down or explode before running out on fuel. When you see your target through the cam, crash into them or explode near them to get the kill. Unless you are the HERO in the HERO game mode, you will die if the TOW explodes anywhere near you and will take all the people that are close to you to another respawn. It makes a great weapon to get multiple kills on ground with. Keep in mind, firing the TOW into Lightning Gun storms is a suicide, always. Cluster Bomb : Another green colored pickup, also rare. Its main purpose is A2G destruction, but some talented aces out there get A2A kills with it sometimes on their lucky days. Firing this will release a cluster of small bombs and will do big damage to everything caught in between. Your height from the ground and speed is taken into equation as to how the bomb will drop and explode in a cluster. The pattern in which the cluster is dropped determines the damage done on the target/s. ----- 6. Style of Flight within Normal Flight - HOVER Mode and FLIGHT Mode : ** HOVER MODE ** When you get in a Warhawk (or Nemesis, they are the same even though they have different designs), it will go into Hover Mode by default. Hover mode is like flying a Helicopter. The plane is really slow in this mode. You can rotate it in any direction but you can't spin, loop or dodge any missiles locked on to your plane in this mode. You can rise and drop, go forward and backwards - Like a Helicopter. You naturally get high aiming precision in this mode since the plane is slow/stationary and you can target better. Hover Mode instantly stops your plane. This is very useful in the middle of a heated air-combat to stop your plane from colliding with mountains or airmines. You will have to go into Hover mode to get most of the ground kills as well. Switch to Hover mode instantly if you see a target on the ground, and fire away when you have the reticle on your target. You cannot lockon Tanks, Jeeps and foot soldiers, but its not required really. All you need to do is point the reticle on them and fire away with swarms and MG. ** FLIGHT MODE ** In this mode, you do the real flying and dogfighting. Tap R2 to go at a faster speed. Double tap R2 to go in Boost speed (only for a certain amount of time). You can now perform loops, rolls, spins etc which are used mainly for shaking off missiles and making quick turns. To get acquainted with these spins, the in-game flight tutorial is a must do. Now that we know the basics... ----- 7. DOGFIGHT : A2A Combat - In-Depth Strategy, Tips, Details. 1) Intro : Only way you are going to learn flying is by flying, a lot. Ground game may be more fun, but to be a real force for your team, you need to learn to fly, even if it's just to give backup the main pilots. EXPECT to go 2 kills to 30 deaths for the first 10-20 hours in regular ranked servers. If not ranked servers, unranked white servers fun to get practice in, but they are not as challenging though recommended for newcomers to the game. For starters, your aim is to first establish a good control of the plane. To not rely on Chaff solely to break missiles locks, to loop and roll - constantly - at will, knowing what you're doing, where you're going, your position on the map and how near you are to a weapon spawn. To polish your skills to get on the enemy's tail, getting instant numerous lockons with swarms or a homing lockon at the same time, and then double tapping R2 to boost and getting as close as you can to release the missiles before he maneuvers out of your screen and gets on your tail. PRESSING SELECT time and again to see the positions of all enemy plains on the radar will have to be made into a habit. This is discussed next. 2) SELECT button is your BIGGEST AID. Pressing Select brings up the full Map. In the map, you can always see the locations of all enemy planes in the air, at all times. You will NEED this map to always check if anybody is coming straight at you, and from which direction. To check if anybody is already behind you, to maneuver and get on enemy's tail. Press Select time and again, and again and again, it's your radar. The mini- radar on the top right isn't that big of a help for air combat compared to the full map. Some pilots fly with this map on all the time (as you can still see the visuals behind as it is slightly fainted) but I wouldn't recommend this as it affects the ability to spot airmines. But you will use this screen after every kill, when flying far from the action and using it to guide your direction of attack, after shaking off missiles to follow the enemy if he's retreating, and then again randomly. 3) POWERSLIDING (L2+R2) : Gives you the extra edge in Normal Flight. Allows you to perform Sharper turns, Drift/Strafe, makes spinning faster and more crazier than before which allows you to shake off missiles MUCH better. One should try to incooperate powersliding once they get a good hang of flying without it. 4) a) Shaking off missile locks : Ignore the chaff for now, we're going to talk about shaking missiles off the good old way. When a missile is locked on, you will instantly receive an alarm on screen. Under the "Missile Locked ON" alarm on-screen, you'll see a red square dot or a number of those dots. Those represent the number of missiles locked onto your plane. Its mostly always a good strategy to BOOST (double tap R2) when you hear a missile lock. The plane will gain significant speed in this boost speed, allowing you to go nearly twice as fast as a homing missile, and a little faster than swarm missiles. THIS gives you the advantage to prepare for and perform spins/chaff. However, you'll have to be REALLY quick to use this effectiveness of boost speed. You'll have to be quick to transition into spins right after going boost speed. Boost does not last long at all, and while you're boosting you're still vulnerable to MG and LG fire. Use the boost to gain some distance for a split-second to a second, then use the right analog stick to perform spins to shake off the missile/s. Remember the Loops and Rolls in the in-game tutorial (You shouldn't be in this part of the FAQ if you still don't know what I'm talking about)? Perform both, at the same time, one after the other - And you will shake off the missiles racing to your tail if you do it in time. Also..try not to keep spinning uselessly after you've shaken off missiles.. it pisses off some Pro-Flight pilots! b) The right way to Spin out of your Opponent's TV screen : **This strategy works wonders if the enemy is close on your tail** You need to be highly unpredictable. What you are trying to do, when you spin to break off missiles, is you are making it difficult for both the missiles and the pilot on your trail to TRACK you. To SEE you to the point he presses SELECT on his controller to spot where you are but he still cannot see you for real on screen because you are at a totally different ALTITUDE!! Its like leaving your opponent looking for you back on the 55th floor, while you are on the 5th floor ordering room service. When you spin, you should to focus on changing your altitude dramatically. You'll still shake off missiles when you spin without focusing much on shifting your altitude level...but because you are still visible on your opponents screen, he has already locked on missiles ready to blast while you're shaking off the old missiles he fired some seconds ago. You will need to make use of both the analog sticks to perform such Altitude spin maneuvers. Use the Left Analog stick to guide the plane's direction, use the right analog stick to pull off spins (loops and rolls) and to guide the plane to lose or gain altitude with loops. You will be using both the sticks simultaneously to achieve such maneuvers. Then use the fact that you are now in the enemy's blind spot to make your next calculated move. While he cannot see you, you may not be able to see him either, so push select, try and get on his tail to attack him or retreat fast to the area dominated by your team planes or health. 5) Attacking - Swarm and Homing missiles : Homing missiles are only best used when fired from close range, or really close range! You only get to lock one at a time unlike swarms. You fire it from a distance and there's a very high chance any pilot worth his salt will shake it off easily. Homing missiles take off 75% or so of the health, so if it connects, it does big damage. Select Homing Missiles, Get a lock on, Boost, Get close enough, Fire. Immediately follow it up with multiple swarm missiles lockons or uncharged lightning gun. AND keep your MG firing all the time while you are doing all this. You have unlimited MG ammo and it has its own dedicated fire button - R1. It will stop firing when it overheats, but it cools down fast. Swarm Missiles are best used to keep the enemy on his toes. It is easy to dodge them, but they travel at a faster speed than the homing missile. It does little damage on contact, that is why most of the time it is best to lockon and fire as many swarms as you can. 1 Swarm missile is easy to dodge...8 swarm missiles - Not so. These missiles travel in high speed, so chances are the enemy will get hit by at least a swarm or two while he dodges out the rest of them if he's good. 6) Uncharged Lightning Gun is the greatest weapon in the game : Its power and speed is unreal. Moreso, you cannot "Shakeoff" uncharged LG. Only way to stop getting hit by it is by getting distant from the enemy or by spinning out of his screen (discussed above). Each uncharged LG strike only takes bites off 1/10 of the health. Given you have 10 strikes with every pickup, you have the power to finish off a plane with it alone. The speed at which you fire is only limited by how fast *YOU* tap L1. Think you can tap L1 10 times in a second? You can't, but if you could you would finish that full health, fresh and loaded enemy plane in a second. If you are really fast with it and use MG fire at the same time, you can take down a full health plane realistically in 2-3 seconds. He can fire chaff, it does nothing to stop uncharged LG and MG fire. He can spin as much as he can but as long as you have him on your screen in close distance enough for uncharged LG and MG to strike him continuously. A great combo to use with LG is Homing Missiles (and constant MG fire, but that's a given with every kind of attack). Homing missiles take down most of the health - instantly follow it up with just 2-4 LG strikes to get the kill. Extremely fast way to get rid of an opponent. 7) Backwards Flight It is a maneuver with which you are able to see behind you and get lockons. An extremely useful maneuver, with most of the Normal flight pilots using it all the time. It is used to attack the opponent behind you, as you spin, turn the camera looking behind - Attack with swarm lockons/LG. To put it in other words : Its a simple manipulation of your camera. You do a loop and at the same time make the camera look behind you, get a lock on or more. Then release when you want to (immediately or after 2-3 loops), or attack with LG as you get closer by. Extremely useful maneuver, and pretty much a requirement in a 1v1 face off. The name comes from how the plane looks on the map. When you perform backwards flight - you don't fly backwards, you just look back while flying forward or downwards/upwards (like driving a car forward and only looking at the Rearview mirror) - however on the map, it shows your plane flying backwards literally (as if the plane is in reverse mode). So keep this in mind, if you see the back of a plane facing you, heading towards you...he is watching you on his camera... Start practicing this maneuver when you've got considerable flight time experience under your belt. It is a tricky one to pull off, but it will become a habbit once you pull it off and you will only understand its full uses when you have gained knowledge and experience of all other aspects of flying. It'll help to see videos of this maneuver. Plenty on youtube under the keywords " Backwards Flight Warhawk " (without Quotes) - Videos from Alexius92 are specially worth studying! P.S. : Some Pro-Flight pilots and even some Normal Pilots (rarely though) say it is a glitch. It really isn't, and even if it is - it doesn't matter, since its not getting patched. Ever. And every great Normal Flight ace uses it all the time. ---- 8. Ending notes : With this section I conclude this FAQ. Flying in Warhawk is all about learning as much as you can from experience. Watching how others fly, trying to replicate their moves, the weapons and strategy they use. Watching videos on the internet also helps to show how they pull these moves off. Everybdy knows how to shoot guns in FPS's, but flying a plane in Warhawk is something that will be a totally new concept to a lot of people, and that is why people who are good to extremely brilliant are well known in the entire community...you don't see this happening with FPS's. There's a large demand for aces out there in all the top major clans. In Warhawk, the team with the players most efficient with the Warhawk always win. Please let me know any spelling/grammar errors, and any other factual errors on param_s51@yahoo.com or psn : Params7 Any other aces out there, that have any other tips/strategy they would like to to contribute, Please let me know! You will full credits for it. If needed another whole new section will be created for these tips/strategy contributions. Thanks to : Gamefaqs.com, Community at : Gamefaqs/Gamespot Boards. I originally set off to write a full fledged Warhawk faq, received a lot of encouragement from the boards but never got it completed for some reason. Glad I got this done. My clan - B.T. Incognito/Lightbox for making this amazing masterpiece - the best online multimodel TPS/Aerial Combat hybrid. Can't wait for part 2! Hurry up DJ dammit! This FAQ is also hosted at : www.supercheats.com www.neoseeker.com end.