TACTICS

How to fly covers the controls: bank and pull, boost, the hard turn, the two missiles, flares and decoupling. This page is about what to do with them when there is one other aircraft and only one of you is going home. Classic air combat teaching carries over, but not all of it, because JET3D's flight model has its own rules. The numbers below are measured from the game's own physics at about 1,000 metres, where most fights happen.

The numbers the fight runs on

Three facts in that table run the whole page, and two of them are not what a real jet would do.

• Turn rate does not depend on speed once you are above about 260 km/h. A LANCE turns at 53 degrees a second at 290 km/h and at 480 km/h alike. What changes is the size of the circle: at cruise a LANCE's turn is about 145 metres in radius, at 290 km/h about 85. Faster means a wider circle, not a slower turn.
• An ordinary pull is nearly free. A LANCE can hold a full-rate level turn through a complete circle and come out within a few km/h of where it started. Gravity and the hard turn are what cost you energy, not ordinary turning.
• The hard turn costs about 35 km/h every second at fighting speed, and then stops charging as you approach roughly 270 km/h. Below that it is cheap, and it is also where your circle is smallest.

Under about 260 km/h the controls go soft, and under about 215 km/h the wing can no longer lift your flight path upward. That is the nearest thing JET3D has to a stall.

Offensive, defensive, neutral

You are offensive when you are behind the other aircraft and can bring your nose to bear before it can bring its own. Defensive is the mirror. Neutral is everything in between, usually two aircraft passing each other or turning on opposite sides of a circle. Most fights are lost by a pilot who was offensive, burned the hard turn chasing a shot that was not there yet, and arrived slow.

Lead, pure and lag pursuit

Your rounds leave at 780 m/s on top of your own speed. Against a target 500 metres away that is a little over half a second of flight, and in that time a LANCE turning at full rate moves its heading 30 degrees and travels about 70 metres. A target you can shoot is one your nose is ahead of.

• Lead pursuit puts the nose ahead of the target. It is the only geometry the guns work from, and the lead circle tells you exactly how far ahead. It closes the range quickly, which is how overshoots happen.
• Pure pursuit puts the nose on the target. It is not a gun solution against anything turning, but it is enough for a HOUND lock: the target only has to sit inside a 12 degree cone for a little over a second, at up to 2.6 km.
• Lag pursuit puts the nose behind the target, so you fly outside its circle. You give up the shot for a moment and keep your distance and your speed. It is what you do when you are closing too fast, and it is how you stay behind somebody without sliding past them.

Worked example: 600 metres behind a turning LANCE

You are in a LANCE too, both at cruise, and it breaks into a hard level turn. Same aircraft, same rate: you will never gain angle by out-turning it. What you have is distance, and your circle can cut across the inside of its own.

Pull to pure pursuit first, with no hard turn. You will lock it in about a second; fire the HOUND. A turning target is the easiest HOUND kill there is (see below). If it flares, it cannot flare again for seven seconds and your next HOUND is ready in three and a half, so fire that one too. Keep cutting the corner. Inside 500 metres, tap Shift for a second to drag the nose into lead, put the crosshair in the circle and fire in bursts. Five hits from behind kill. Let go of the hard turn as soon as the ring lights up. It has already cost you 35 km/h, and you want that speed back before anybody else arrives.

There is no corner speed: one circle, two circles

In a real jet there is one speed where the turn is fastest. Here the rate is flat above 260 km/h, so the trade is simpler: faster is a bigger circle at the same rate, slower is a smaller one. That decides what kind of turning fight you want.

Two-circle fight: you pass and turn in opposite directions, so each of you flies your own circle. Whoever comes round first wins, which makes it a turn-rate fight. The table decides it, plus whoever spends the hard turn better. A SABRE wins this against anything. A MAUL or a BOLT should not take it.

One-circle fight: you both turn the same way, nose to tail on a single circle. Now the tighter circle wins, and tightness comes from being slow. Holding the hard turn here bleeds you down towards 270 km/h, where it stops costing anything and your radius is a fraction of what it was. This is how a heavy aircraft can stay alive against a light one for a while. It is also a fight two slow aircraft have at the bottom of the sky, and the third aircraft that arrives with speed wins it.

Overshoots and scissors

An overshoot is the attacker sliding past the defender's tail, usually because it came in faster on a wider circle, and then the roles swap. Closing too fast as the attacker, go to lag and climb a little (a high yo-yo) rather than pulling harder.

As the defender, a decouple forces it: 0.8 seconds held sheds roughly 90 km/h, faster than any chaser can. Use it when they are close and committed, not at 800 metres, where it only makes you a slower target.

If neither of you overshoots cleanly you get a scissors: both reversing turns, each trying to fall in behind the other. Roll rate and low speed win scissors. Measured at cruise, the SABRE rolls at about 107 degrees a second, the NEEDLE about 98, the LANCE 90, the BOLT 88, the ANVIL 81 and the MAUL 76. Every reversal is a roll, so the gap adds up over several.

The head-on merge

Two aircraft meeting nose to nose close at around 950 km/h, so you have about two seconds of gun range. From the front, close to half the rounds that land go into the cockpit, which takes two hits; from behind almost none do, and you need all five. And a collision with an enemy kills you both.

Bots never fire a missile into your face. A human will, and a SPEAR down the line between two closing aircraft needs no lead at all. If someone opposite is pointing straight at you, offset before you get there: put them a few degrees off your nose so you pass side by side, not through each other.

Decide your turn before the pass: two circles if you out-rate them, one circle if you do not.

Using the vertical

Straight up costs about 35 km/h every second; straight down gives it back. Height is stored speed, and the pilot above a fight chooses when to join it. Two limits: the ceiling falls as the ring closes, and under about 215 km/h a loop becomes a fall. Start vertical moves fast and finish them nose-down.

Defending against guns

The bots taught this one, by measurement. A steady break turn towards the attacker, the textbook answer, was the worst defence tried. A steady turn is exactly what a lead predictor tracks best, and that includes your opponent's lead circle. Random jinks and reversals were little better. What worked was a corkscrew, holding roll and pull together so the lift points somewhere new every moment. An ace defending that way lasted a median of about 21 seconds against an ace attacker, against five or six for a late reaction.

Start it early, before they are in range, and keep it going. A decouple when they are close makes you a different shape to lead.

Against the HOUND

A HOUND launches at the shooter's speed plus about 200 km/h and does not get much faster. That makes it a slow missile, and it gives some answers that are not in the guide. These are the game's own missile and flight code, run against a LANCE:

The lessons. From behind, speed beats it and turning feeds it. A turn lets the missile cut across your circle. Boost and fly straight. If you need a flare, it must be within 140 metres of the missile and nearer to it than you are, and it burns for three and a half seconds. Pull it inside about two seconds to impact, as the bots do; only inside 20 metres is it too late. Facing the missile only works inside 900 metres. Holding Shift while decoupled roughly doubles how far the nose swings in the 0.8 seconds you get, but from dead astern only a SABRE gets nearly all the way round. Use it on missiles coming from the side.

When you are the one firing, reverse every row. Fire at a target that is turning, or slow, or coming towards you. And boost before you launch: the missile keeps your speed, and a HOUND fired at boost speed reaches a fleeing target 900 metres away in six seconds instead of never.

Against the SPEAR

A SPEAR covers a kilometre in about 1.6 seconds and two in about 2.7, flies dead straight, and kills anything within roughly twenty metres of its path. Nothing warns you about it. The only defence is not to stay where the shooter's nose is pointing. Move across their line rather than along it, and change your turn whenever the nose comes on. Bots only rocket from behind or abeam, inside 600 to 1,000 metres. A person can do it from anywhere.

Disengaging

Leave a fight while you still have the speed to leave it. Unload, meaning stop pulling, then boost and point the nose a little down. A full tank lifts a LANCE from about 480 km/h to roughly 850 in three seconds. Only a BOLT can follow that at the same pace, and a HOUND from behind cannot. The cloud band, about 450 metres under the ceiling, hides you from markers and locks while it lasts. A kill refills the boost tank, so the pilot who just won a fight is the one best placed to leave it.

Worked example: a SABRE at 400 metres, and you are in a MAUL

It out-turns you by eighteen degrees a second, so do not turn with it. Corkscrew now, before it is in gun range, and flare if the missile tone sounds. When its nose is off you, boost, dive and extend: in a straight line the MAUL is faster and peaks higher on boost. Come back from above with a full tank and give it a head-on pass against three SPEARs, not a turning fight.

For fighting alongside other people, see team battle. For the aircraft themselves, see the aircraft and weapons.

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