Piloting Tips for WO3, NTSC and PAL
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the Official unofficial piloting guide to WO3 regular edition. please post your tips here. please do not post questions or comments on this thread, but start a separate thread for discussion, otherwise the tips will get so spread out it'll be hard to find them amongst the discussion, whereas finding both the tips and the separate discussion of the one you're interested in will be easy. i hope. ;)
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how to drive LS101-NP62, also known as Prototype 1
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this is a copy of FoxZero's [Jason Hebbert's] recounting of his method for winning the Prototype 1 Challenge from, well.. a long time ago. i didn't realise it had been so long, but only Al Sartwell has been able to touch his times in Vector class, though others have improved their times. his racetime of 2 years ago is an amazing 1:11.94 while his lap record is 34.30. Al has now gotten 34.27 and 1:11.70. close. really close.
here with no edits is the text of Foxzero's explanation of the process he went through to win:
Posted: 07 Apr 2002 17:53
okay, so everybody wants to know how i did my times, and i know you wont believe them till i explain it, so grab your pen and paper kids, and pay attention
first of all you have to understand how i fly, i have ethics for myself that must not be broken. this pretty much applies to all the wipeout series.
1. never use airbrakes. this doesnt mean i dont correct a turn, it just means i do it until its right.
2. never use autopilot. NEVER.
3. never let go of the accelerator. NEVER.
just fyi lance, i did a total of 6 sessions of wipeout, one per day except friday and today, with anywhere between 10 to 60 race restarts per session.
now that you know that, ill explain the times. when i first started on vector the strategy was simply hyperthrust at slow parts. my idea of 'slow part' was anywhere that the controller wasnt shaking from top speed. so i hyperthrusted part of the way up the hill. i went through the pit on both the first and second lap so i could get extra hyperthrust, and i would boost to the finish line on every lap through the pit. i also scraped a lot, because i noticed it was way easier to scrape on purpose and get away with it on vector. i dont do much vector racing. but i sure fooled you guys, cuz i got the 1st place time
of course, then my time was beaten. so i went back at it again. this time i noticed that thrusting off of the second jump caused some wicked speed to be built up before the last turn on the pit, which could be kept up by the blue pad on the left. so i beat my time.
but then i wanted to go faster. so i did some more racing. i noticed that another slow part was just before the second jump, so i beat my time agin by hyperthrusting almost the entire way through there. i think at this point i was at 15:00.
BUT THAT WASNT ENOUGH, i had to go faster. then perhaps accidentally, i got rammed by one of the starting ships and had a eureka moment. so every time i started a race i would get in front of one of the other ships and as they accelerated it would push me forward and shave seconds off of my approach up the hill. this is what gave me the 14:00 time.
once again, that wasnt enough. i had to be the first to get 13:00, damnit! at first i tried ramming into other ships on my way up the hill, but this caused more hyperthrust to be lost ESPECIALY if you ended up flying THROUGH their ship instead of bouncing off of it, which sucked. also the ship weapons were pissing me off, i found if i didnt get a cloak or shield before id dive into the S turns after the first jump i was pretty much f*cked as the Ai seemingly had a big beef with me getting very fast times.
..and thats when i found it. i was trying to get away from the stupid AI at the top of the hill, and i had a hypothesis, so i tried jetting off of the top of the end of the first jump. WOAH.
this caused me to be HURTLED down the S turns at nearly non-negotiable speeds. i did this on both the first and second lap. now, i knew a time of 12:00 was possible, given the calculated total of the best possible times, but i figured there was no chance in hell anyone would have enough hyperthrust to get it, so i said 13:00 was possible. imagine my surprise when the times said 1:11!!!!!!!!! but yes folks. thats how its done.
great effort everyone who participated! hopefully we can race again sometime soon
The modern guide to piloting and swearing, with Dim
*In advance, let me apologise for having to seperate my post, it's nearly 20'000 characters in total and the forum only allows 10'000, so here is the first lot of this project to do my bit for WOZ in 3 parts: General Notes, Ship Choices & Track Guide intro, Terminal Pt.1 & Terminal Pt.2. Also apologies for any typos, too much to proof read :|*
Hi all, hope all is well in the lands of wherever your lands are. Now, After much delegation as to whether or not I should give anything back to the community or just leach off the ever wise super pilots some more, I came to the conclusion that it would be only sporting of me to spill the beans on some piloting techniques, as used by myself in the ever charismatic, dull coloured and minimalist slobberknoker of a leg-humpingly stylish bitchslap that is: Wip3out (PAL)
.01 General Notes
Now when I refer to flying styles you may have heard me speak of my own style as "Heavy", "Heavy Handed", "Brutal" or on occasion "****ing Insane", though in all probability my style's probably not that different to most styles, though many pilots are known to do things such as release the accelerator for cornering, save hyper thrust for special places/occasions and just generally like tracks with slow, flowing corners (Porta Kora) or that are more adapt to nimble, easy to handle ships (Manor Top, P-Mar Project.) The markings of a HEAVY style:
.01 Never release the accelerator!
.02 Sharp 90°+ corners: Aim for just outside the apex on approach, brake hard in the direction to turn, to throw the back out for just a split second's worth of breaking, then hammer it and thrash the hyperthrust!
.03 Thrust hard off all jumps, regardless of the difficulty of landing/turning as a result.
.04 At all costs, keep the nose off the ground! This style's all about massive straight line speed and minimum time cornering and accelerating, bottoming out is highly detremental 95% of the time (5% because it can, on occasion be used as a useful cornering aid (mentioned later.))
.05 For some more technical corners (e.g. the Mega Mall Descending Helix & the Terminal Ascending Helix) it would be a wise idea to learn of the weighting of your ship in relation to your controller setup as this style often involves heading towards the corner at the most extreme outside and turning sharply in to get your nose into the inside of the corner to assist in throwing the tail out at 70°+ in a hurry (so you don't have to break before getting to the start of the corner, it's all about maintaining top speed & minimum braking again!)
There are other things such as slightly heavy handed pitching, but where I use this in race, it will be mentioned in a corresponding track guide (if and when such a thing exists.)
.02 Ship Choices
As you may expect, such an attention to maximum speed and acceleration with little regard for turning leaves little need for nimble and light craft, as a result my choices are biased towards the big boys of the league:
Qirex Quantax Design Model (6?) (A.K.A. Mighty Q, Brick Bullet, Purple Brick, That Fat Ass Russian Brick & The 8/12 Wee!)
Great stats for this style with 4+4 for speed and accel respectively, the upshot of such balances motor stats being that this ship has both the massive top end speed to hit the corners flying and the awe inspiring get up and go you need to hit the next one similarly, in this respect of stop/start speed thrills the Icaras can't hold a torch as the method of H-Thrusting away is limited to energy, after that's all gone, the Puce Dragster just cruises compared to the Mighty Q.
Icaras Sun God XVI (A.K.A. Puce Dragster & The 5/8 Wee!)
Extreme stat-age (Stats at extremes) with 5+2 for speed and accel respectively, the upshot of such an unbalanced equation being that this ship gets around its acceleration troubles by using all out skin lashing, testicle smushing speed on those funny "not bent bits" between corners; when it gets going, in the right surroundings, you'd be hard pushed to Quake-ify this Mo-Fo, the deciding factor that gives it the little it needs to outdo the Qirex's marginally inferior top speed and 9 times out of 10 puts it on the next tier up to the Qirex, sadly this is the only way in which the Icaras is on top as it even suffers from poor shield energy to leave it treading on thin ice in any situation in which it's shield may take a beating as no energy means no H-Thrust!
.03 Track Guides
LAB - Left Air Brake
RAB - Right Air Brake
HT - Hyper Thrust
PF - Pitch Forwards
PB - Pitch Back
SP - Stop Pitching
TP - Turbo Pad(s)
As you may know if you've recently gunned for a top 3 spot in Phantom class TT, I don't race every single W3O track and of the ones I do, one in particular is rarely and the other is not very often. The tracks I race are:
.01 Porta Kora (Not Very Often) - It's easy, requires but half a brain to negotiate half decently and makes for a good track to open a session with. Easy going and finger invigoratingly right hand biased, Neggy slipping out to the hand anyone?
.02 Mega Mall - Absolutely amazing track, one of my favourites of all in WipEout's vivid history; oodles of speed through the earlier sections, some fantastic rhythm later on and a massive straight for the H-Thrustingly challenged (Bash it! Bash it!!!) One hell of a bum rush.
.03 Hi-Fumii (Rarely) - A very difficult one for a heavy style, the first corner on the first lap being particularly agravating on a regular basis, but the atmosphere and constant "on your toes" approach to a track design used here I find difficult to resist and the deceptive corner in the thinned out tunnel section is one of those "Just... one more... try... gotta... get it... right! *rubs eyes and takes the opportunity to breath*"
.04 Terminal - My favourite track, too much to say for this passage, more in the later passages.
*▼Pronunciation keys wur did as best as possible▼*