TEAM BATTLE

TEAM BATTLE is the mode QUICK PLAY drops you into, and the only mode RANKED uses. It is a different game from a one-on-one fight. The best single pilot in the sky still loses if the other five are flying alone. This page covers the rules exactly, then what they reward. For the one-on-one basics underneath all of it, read tactics first.

The rules, exactly

The scoring line is the one that matters. Points are not kills. They are losses, however they happen. Flying into a hill hands the other side a point exactly as a gun kill does, and so does drifting out of the ring with smoke trailing. A team that never dies cheaply is a team that is hard to beat, even if it does not shoot well.

Experience follows the same logic. Every match is worth 60 for turning up, 100 per kill, 40 per assist, 150 for the win and 100 for top of the board. Two assists are worth most of a kill, and the win is worth more than either.

Spawns, and the first thirty seconds

At the start each side takes a 120 degree arc of a ring 1,600 metres from the centre and 900 metres up, half a circle away from the other side. Everyone faces about 72 degrees in from the ring and turns the same way, so the two teams arrive in the middle at roughly the same time. Bots will not launch a missile for the first six seconds of any life, and nobody's guns reach across the map. Use the opening to form up, not to race.

Respawns go back on your own side's bearing, three-quarters of the way out to the current ring edge, at up to 900 metres, at about 430 km/h, nose pointing at the centre. Once the ring has stopped closing, that is under a kilometre from the middle: you are back in the fight in seconds, alone, from a predictable direction. A pair that keeps dying one at a time feeds the enemy a stream of single aircraft. Rejoin a team mate before you commit, rather than diving straight back into the scrum.

Roles by aircraft

A balanced six has no fixed composition, but it has at least one aircraft that can win a turning fight and at least one that can reach a fight across the map quickly. Six BOLTs cannot protect each other once somebody is on a tail. Six MAULs arrive late everywhere. See the aircraft for full numbers.

Pairs: lead and wingman

The basic unit is two aircraft, not six. The lead attacks. The wingman watches the lead's tail and takes whatever the lead cannot. A wingman a few hundred metres back and off to one side can see everything closing on the lead, and can reach it within the time it takes the attacker to set up a shot. Flying in close formation is worse than useless. You present one target, you block each other's shots, and one SPEAR stream can walk through both of you.

Swap roles freely. Whoever has the better position on the target is the lead for that pass, and the other one covers. The ten-second assist window means the cover pilot is paid for a hit that drove the target into the lead's guns.

Bracketing

Two aircraft attack one target from opposite sides. Whichever way it turns, it turns towards one of you. Against a person this is the cleanest kill in team play, because any defence against one attacker is a gift to the other. Split before you are in range, about a kilometre out, so the target cannot see both of you on one side of its screen.

Drag and bag

One pilot, the dragger, lets an enemy chase them. The other, the bagger, comes in behind the chaser while it is busy. Against bots this works for a precise reason. A bot's target is the nearest enemy inside its awareness, and it only starts its defensive corkscrew when that target is behind it, inside its defence range and rear cone (table below). If the dragger stays closer to the bot than you are, the bot does not consider you its problem at all. Hold your attack from just outside the dragger's distance. The moment you close inside it, you become the target, and the corkscrew starts if you are on its tail.

The dragger's job is to stay alive, not to win. Corkscrew early, keep the chaser behind you rather than shaking it, and do not run out of the ring. Against a person the trap is the same, but people look behind them, so the bagger should arrive from below or from the side rather than straight up the chaser's exhaust.

Missiles as a team

A flare covers one pilot for seven seconds and lasts three and a half. Two HOUNDs from two pilots, a few seconds apart and from different directions, are therefore far deadlier than two from one. The first draws the flare and the second arrives while the rack is still on cooldown. Bots pull their flares about two seconds before impact, so the timing is predictable. One caution: a flare takes any HOUND that passes within 140 metres of it while it is nearer than you. Two missiles flying side by side, such as a LANCE's salvo, can both be taken by the same flare. Spread them out in time.

No one may have more than four of their own missiles in the air, and a HOUND can fly for 42 seconds. A pilot who empties a rack of HOUNDs at long range can find the launch refused while they are still flying. The HUD says 4 IN AIR when that is the reason. In a team, keep a HOUND back for the moment a team mate needs a chaser removed.

Target priority

• Whatever is on a team mate's tail. Saving a life is a point not given away, and the chaser is busy and predictable.
• The smoking one. Heavy smoke means one hit from dead. A badly damaged bot turns away and flies straight from its target for eight seconds, which is a straight-line shot for anyone else.
• The slow one. An aircraft that has just spent its hard turn or its decouple cannot run. Engines glow orange at cruise and blue-white on boost, so a jet that has just burned its tank blue is about to be slow for a while.
• Not the one leading you away. A single enemy running away from the fight is usually trying to split your pair. Let the BOLT have it.

Bots also spread themselves. With nobody close, a bot hunts the enemy with the lowest score of distance multiplied by how many bots are already hunting it, with a slight preference for humans. They do not all pile on one person, and if you are alone you will be found.

Talking

The ping wheel sends six fixed calls without taking your hands off the controls: ATTACKING, NEED HELP, ENEMY HERE, DEFENDING, ON MY WAY and NICE ONE. Hold the ping key, point with the mouse or the arrow keys, and let go. Enter opens typed chat, 120 characters at most and six messages every ten seconds, pings included. Both go to the whole room, so the other side reads your calls too. Keep it to things that are no use to them. NEED HELP is fine; typing your plan is not.

How the bots fight and defend

Bots fly the same aircraft and carry the same magazines you do, and they are drawn from four tiers. As of 1 November, the better the tier, the earlier it notices you and the longer it defends.

Read the table as a gap to work in. Your guns are most effective inside about 520 metres. A ROOKIE does not start defending until you are at 400, but an ACE starts at 800, so you will always be shooting at an ace that is already corkscrewing. Short bursts as it rolls through your sight beat a held trigger. An attack from further round than the rear cone, from the side, does not trigger the corkscrew at all.

On offence, bots open fire inside 1.1 km. They never fire a missile at an aircraft facing them, never launch a HOUND from closer than 700 metres, and only rocket from 600 metres (rookie) up to 1,000 (ace). Out of flares with a HOUND inside 900 metres, a bot will turn to face it. Bots also use the hard turn when their nose is well off you and they have the speed for it. A bot that suddenly stops turning is usually low on speed. See how it works for more on the AI.

Playing the ring as a team

In TEAM BATTLE the ring stops closing at three minutes, so the last half of a match is fought inside a fixed circle 2.5 km across, under a 1,300 metre ceiling. Outside it you take enough damage to die in about seven seconds. Every such death is a point for the other side.

Two things follow. First, the edge is a wall you can pin people against. A pair driving one enemy outwards leaves it the choice of turning back into two guns or staying out and dying. Either way it scores. Second, the cloud band survives the hold. With the ceiling at 1,300 metres the band sits at about 570 to 850 metres. Inside it you are off the markers and minimap and nobody can lock you. A damaged pilot who ducks in to wait out a respawning enemy is hard to find, and a pair can use it to arrive unannounced. You are blind inside it too, so come out together.

Worked example: 35 to 33, ninety seconds left

You are ahead. You do not need kills; you need the other side not to score. Pair up, and stay inside the ring and above the towers. Take only fights where you have two aircraft against one. Any of your team who is smoking should leave the fight before the last hit, not after. The losing side has to come to you, and a team that has to attack is a team that flies into brackets. Being ahead on the clock wins the match just as reaching 40 does.

RANKED is TEAM BATTLE with a rating on it, open from level 30. The rules above are the same. See game modes for the others.

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