Flight Academy: More Defense

Recruits,

With the basics, offense and first defense guidelines out of the way, today it's time to delve a little deeper into the theory of aerial combat. Since defense is such an important aspect of it, we want to present you with a couple more insights on how to keep your pilot alive during your stints in the sky. Use the following techniques to escape seemingly hopeless situations or to turn the whole situation around with a vicious counter-attack when you're ‘on the ropes'.

Defense - Continued

Drop 'em like flies! - Don't underestimate your tail gun efficiency! Most of the Heavy Fighters and Attack Aircraft in the game have a rear gunner who's able to shoot high calibre bullets at your pursuers. In fact, when put to good use, these tail guns can be so effective that they should be regarded not only as defense mechanisms, but also as powerful offensive weapons.  Although you have no way to control them directly (an auto-aim function takes care of that), what you should be doing is positioning yourself properly to give your tail gunners the best line of fire on your pursuers. (Remember our point "Go low or go home!" from our offensive guidelines).

In most cases, if your plane is equipped with a rear gun, your armor will be much stronger than your opponent's. This means that you should be able to sustain a prolonged attack from a Fighter and don't need to panic if a couple of bullets get through to you. In these cases, keeping your attacker on your six should end up hurting the pilot chasing you more than it will yourself, likely causing the enemy to drop the pursuit altogether.

If you're the attacker who's pursuing a plane with a tail gun, try not to get too close (stay over 150m) and make sure that you always keep below your target or in a group of pursuers so that you can't take focused fire. If you're the target yourself, fly as low as you can to the ground, lure your pursuer closer to you, and let your tail gunner take care of the rest. You'll be amazed at how effective this tactic can be! Experienced pilots use this technique a lot to score takedowns themselves, by first playing the role of a helpless bomber in the middle of nowhere, and then turning into offensive powerhouses once they get a pursuer on their tail.

However, don't rely on your tail gun as an ultimate saviour in all situations! When chased by multiple foes, your rear gun won't do you much good. Your tail gun reaches its maximal potential in 1-on-1 situations.  

Clouds can be a good thing! - Don't forget about cover that you can gain from the clouds! The same way they cloak you when you try to drop in on an enemy unexpectedly, can be used to disappear in a "sea of white" in order to shake your pursuer.

The opposing pilot's viewing range significantly decreases when flying in clouds. Even if the distance between you and the enemy is minimal, simply flying into a couple of clouds may sometimes be enough to vanish from your enemy's radar. This technique is effective for most planes, but is especially good against quicker opponents that can't stay behind you for a very long time due to their high velocity.  Try this tactic when you're already at pretty high altitude and you can see your enemy turning to boom and zoom past you again.

On maps where the clouds are hanging very low, such as ‘Asian Border', playing with the cover they provide pretty much essential. Instead of gaining altitude on these maps at the beginning of the match, flying low under the clouds is a viable option. Being close to the ground and yet under the cover of the clouds means you can stay ‘under the radar', which can be very helpful for your ground attack bombing runs as well as surprise attacks from below.

Reach for the skies! - If you're the last one on your map and you need to hide from a pack of enemies trying to find you, go for altitude and stay there! Your opponent's first instinct will be to search for you at exactly the altitude they're already on. If they happen to come off a fight against your team mates, chances are that all other planes are on pretty low altitude. Due to the nature of dog fights, players have the tendency to use the terrain a lot (see next point), which makes them descend towards ground level when fighting each other. You can use this fact to your advantage when you desperately need to hide (to make the time run out for a supremacy win, for example) or when you simply try to survive.

Our advice for these situations is to go up in a spiral on the same spot! Even if your enemies spot you, they will have a tough time targeting you with their nose up. Using the spiral, you keep hiding in the same spot of the map, so if you're lucky and they miss you first time around, they're not likely to come back to a point which they've already checked. The spiral movement upwards will guarantee that they will have difficulties getting an angle on you if they're already at your position. From below, there will be no way they can hold up their nose long enough to do serious damage on you. Also, should they decide to intercept you, they'll have to either go the long route and ascend from afar in a straight line, or do exactly the same spiral as you, which also shields you from their attacks.

Use the terrain! - World of Warplanes is a game about flying in the sky, but that does not mean that you have to forget about what the ground has to offer. In fact, you'll notice pretty quickly that the different shapes of the terrain are not just a fancy way of keeping our level designers occupied, but that they hold great importance to the way you should play on a particular map. While it's true that there are some fights that happen at high altitude (mostly on higher tier planes from Tier VIII upwards), most of the time you'll find your opponents going low for cover when you start pursuing them. If you think about it, that's very logical. The first thing most defending players try to do is to gain speed and get away from their chaser. How do you gain speed the fastest? You go into a dive! What do you get closer to when you do a dive? The ground, of course!

However, it's not only speed that defenders are looking for when they go as low as they can. Planes with tail gunners will try to get a better shooting angle, while the more nimble aircraft will go low to  out-manoeuvre their pursuers. If you find yourself being attacked, you should immediately scan your surroundings for the closest hills, bridges, high towers, AA-fields or other elements of terrain around. No matter what you go for, whether a deep canyon or high mountain, terrain is always a great thing to play with when on defense.

Try a series of stunt-like manoeuvres, where you almost "scratch the surface" of the ground, circling around hills, flying underneath bridges and other kinds of equally crazy moves. The goal of this is to get your pursuer to be more pre-occupied with flying than with targeting you. Maybe your opponent is a novice playing the map for the first time, or a simulation aficionado who plays with a joystick and is more susceptible to making errors on manoeuvres that require top-notch precision while cutting corners at high speed. In short: The more your enemy is busy just staying on your tail without crashing into the ground, the better chances you have to escape. If you become really adept, you may even want to use this daredevil tactic to score takedowns. Every plane that you cause to crash while following you gets credited to your kill list.

Call upon your team mates! - The last point we want to suggest to you in terms of defensive strategies is to have others do the dirty work for you. You should never forget that World of Warplanes is a team-based flight game. Although every player flies on their own, it is still by playing as part of a team that you'll be most effective. In some cases, the only way for you to shake an attacker is if another team mate helps you out and gives your pursuer some heat. Sometimes just a couple of bullets flying past can be enough to send a previously relentless aggressor off course and running for cover.

Don't hesitate to call upon your team mates if you're in a dangerous situation and urgently need somebody to help you. More often than not, people tend to get so involved in their own private 1-on-1 duels that they forget what's happening around them. You need to break that bubble by actively informing your team mates of your troubles so that they can help you. Use the quick message commands (default keys are F2-F8 on the keyboard with F7 being the command for "Clear my Tail!") to let people know. There's no shame in requesting a little help. In fact, teamwork actually is the key to consistent success, as we'll show you in the next issue of our flight academy.

As you've seen, defense plays a major role in the game, which is why we went into such depths on this issue. Obviously there is much more that you can do to defend yourself against incoming attacker, but this first selection of guidelines should keep you alive long enough to discover other defensive strategies on your own.

That's it for now, Recruits. You're dismissed.

Get Airborne!