Success in Complex Engagements
by Zazen

from This Thread on the Aces High Bulletin Board

Successfully negotiating a complex engagement is pure joy for me. It is what 'floats my boat'. The process itself is half instinct and half systematic pre-meditation.

There are a few key components:

1) Patience - On each shot and when picking your prey.

2) Discretion - Know when to cut n' run and when to go balls to the wall.

3) Flexibility - Take in everything, targets of opportunity abound, adapt to your surroundings and the evolving combat situation.

4) SA - The more you can keep track of while engaged the better, friendly and enemy. Have a general idea of relative E states of as many cons as you can, predict and visualize their probable locations and vectors while not actually looking at them, really good SA is almost like clairvoyant ESP in this regard.

5) Gunnery - Hit hard and fast, killing quickly is a factor of gunnery, bad gunnery means slow kills. If you kill slowly you're going to get saddled, cherry picked and gang-banged no matter how good of a pilot your are.

I see a lot of mistakes repeated over and over that cause otherwise skilled players fail to be successful in complex engagements, here are some of them:

1) Blow all of their E/options on the first con they come across.

2) Over-commit to one enemy, a furball is full of targets, don't put all of your eggs in one basket, your goal is to kill as many as you can and live...

3) Falling for what I call the 'suck-drag', the 'suck-drag' can be the horizontal or vertical version. In either version you are allowing the enemy to pull you to friends and/or blow too much E. Remember the runner actually has the initiative over the chaser, he is determining when/if/how/where you will be forced to fight.

4) Poor gunnery is death assured for the furballer, in a complex engagement if you cannot kill quickly you're going to get saddled, cherry picked and gang banged ALOT.

There are a few routines and practices that will guarantee some success:

1) Before Engaging always have an exit strategy and save the E to execute it if need be.

2) Don't get 'married' to one con, stay flexible and take out targets of opportunity as the chances arise even if it means letting a fish off the hook.

3) After blowing some E for a kill don't flush the rest down the toilet in an un-educated frenzy. Re-gain some of the lost E if you are under no immediate threat, re-assess the situation and the ebb n' flow of the battle, get your SA back up then re-engage on your terms.

4) If you are in an E fighter give preference to enemy faster than you. If in a TnB plane give preference to enemy that can out-turn you while your E state is still high. This will enhance your survivability in your local fight area.

5) Be aware of friendlies around you, have some knowledge of what they tend to do. Just because they have a friendly icon doesn't mean they can be counted on to do the most predictable/desirable thing. For example, some players are always heavy and will never engage until they get their ord to target. Some players blow all of their E at the drop of a hat to swirl around on the deck in a death spiral with 5 enemy until they inevitably get shot down. Some friends are great for pulling enemy out of the pack vertically (roping) or horizontally (dragging). Knowing all of this will help you survive and cull the herd of enemy planes at minimal risk.