Why am I still in an Arrow, and an awful mission

I generally am absolutely loving this game. It reminds me of the old glory days of playing this back when I was a young teenager. Overall, I think it's great. But a few things are really killing me.

I've been playing for - hell, I don't know how long at this point. But it feels like a long time. I still cannot access ship selection and at this point, I'm flying my umpteenth mission in freaking Arrow. Not only is the arrow the most obnoxious ship to pilot with a keyboard due to it's tiny laser-pointer like guns, but these missions seem to not really care that you're in an arrow, and send you out to shoot at capships for hours (because sure, sending out 4 arrows and 2 bombers to take out a flight of fighters, a heavy carrier and a base makes a lot of sense). Is there an end to the Arrow piloting in sight? Please tell me there's more to this game than just flying an Arrow - I'd rather fly the Hellcat! Anything!

And finally, what's with this mission that asks you to lean on your afterburner while you watch a friendly carrier die (sure, fine, that's dramatic), only to then ask you to hunt down skipper missiles with NO AFTERBURNERS. I can't be the only one who finds that crazy. What's the deal here?

Now that I've gone through the mission once, and I know that it's scripted to have the friendly carrier die, yeah, I'll just lean off the AB the next time through to save some juice. But missions shouldn't be designed where you must fail the first time to figure out "the trick."

activate mouse control reduce the deadzone and dial back the difficulty there is no shame in this you will find the arrow much easier to fly now. and learn to savor these moments there must be opposition in all things so the games tough parts will make the awesome parts even more awesome by comparison

You never get to select your ship. You're a lowly grunt pilot so you fly what your squadron flies. Once you get bumped up in rank you can start adjusting your missile loadouts, though.

When you afterburn press ALT-G for glide. That saves fuel.

Thanks for playing. You might want to destroy weapons subsystems in M17 (as you've been told to, by the way) to wrap up the mission quickly.

Jesus, I jumped for joy when I finally was able to get rid of that lousy Hellcat. 😉 But yeah, remember that the Arrow and Excalibur are the only ships that can use glide (ALT-G), which shuts down your engine while travelling at the same speed.

Hang in there, things really pick up soon.

As others have suggested, engage your afterburners and hit ALT-G, this allows you to glide towards your target at afterburner speed without using the fuel. As for the Skipper missiles, I suggest hanging back by the cap ship you need to protect and shooting them down with IR missiles. One missile per Skipper should do it. The rest of my wing managed to blow up the enemy ship by the time I took down three Skippers. Changing the difficulty in the options menu for that one mission might also help.

Thanks for the comments guys.

Glide: That's a brilliant way to conserve fuel. I remember the Sheldon Slide from the old games and tried it by hitting capslock (I think that's what it used to be?) and when it didn't work, I didn't bother to look it up in the manual/key bindings. My mistake.

Interesting how the simulated mechanics of that works, though - full AB thrust, kill engines with the slides, and you maintain max velocity. Full AB thrust but leave engines on, and you slow down? An obvious sacrifice of realism for great gameplay, and surely theres no other way to do it, just hadn't realized it before.

I'll dial back the difficulty too - I've felt it's not overly difficult so far, just a few mission design points that seemed to bug me. Or maybe I'm just wishing I had my Microsoft Sidewinder Pro still.

mormon_boy: Also, lets take a minute to appreciate the irony that on the very last mission in an Arrow, I take to the forums to complain about being in an Arrow. That's the Game Gods at work right there.

thats the spirit 😁 don't forget mouse control i beat the campaign with it EDIT: advice for the future conserve your imrec missiles you will need them if you find your self "alone" ever

all i can say is i love to play this.. game ^_^ keep it up _____________________________________ combat knife lover

Not trying to be rude, but it's pretty impressive that you got that far on the Arrow missions without using the Glide feature. I'm constantly using it in the Arrow and Excalibur, especially against anything with turrets.

Also, a lot of people mention that in the WC universe only select ships have the ability to fly the way ships really would fly in space. A few games back in the day of space sims actually tried to have realistic physics and it wasn't pretty. The one that stands out in my memory most is Microsoft's Allegiance. An analog throttle was pretty much a must for this game so you could go zero throttle quickly to glide then go full throttle for a few seconds to change directions. You constantly had to balance your speed with how fast you wanted to change directions. This wasn't too hard for just flying around in space or near cap ships and bases, but eventually someone in another fighter would start shooting at you. The ensuing dogfight consisted of little more than head on passes one after another because actual flight maneuvering was so difficult. On top of that if you only had the simple throttle on your joystick, you had to move your hand to the joystick base buttons or back to the keyboard for targeting, afterburn, communication (no headsets back then), etc. It got very frustrating very fast.

Realistic physics is fun for 5 minutes due to the novelty of the different physics, but once you try to actually accomplish something you hit an incredibly steep learning curve that for a lot of people, myself included, makes the game too much work, not enough fun. Atmospheric physics with select ships having gliding ability as a maneuverability benefit is much better for playability and game enjoyment.

horizon wrote:When you afterburn press ALT-G for glide. That saves fuel.

I couldn't stand ALT-G to glide... sometimes I hit TAB and ALT together by accident, minimizing the game. I changed the glide key to CAPSLOCK, that's its default key in WC III and IV.

btw OP don't worry, you'll get to fly other ships besides the Arrow. Hellcat, Thunderbolt, Longbow, and Excalibur. Also a Sabre. Not sure if there's others, the missions I'm at now put you in the Excalibur. Too bad it can't cloak like in WC III tho.

But only the Arrow and Excalibur can glide.

*edit* ^^ lol I actually wasn't aware that there was a glide capability in this game, until someone on this forum told me.

I also had the problem with the ALT-G combi. I prefered to put it glide on one of the joysticks buttons.