Fachoda-Complex

Lesson 1: Take off

At the beginning of the game you start parked on your home base (unless you started the game in kill’em all mode which should not require you to take off nor land). There are 4 camps fighting each other in the game, and each camp have several bases at disposal. Other bots of your side may be assigned to the same home base and you should take care not to hurt them or both will explode (did you knew planes were like nitroglycerin flasks?)

By pressing one time the `+` your plane will start to move gently froward. Use brakes to slow down if you need to (`B` key). By moving the mouse cursor right and left you should be able to point your nose toward the zebras at the end of the runway. Once there, brake and align the plane with the runway.

Deploy the flaps with the `F` key, focus on the instrument panel (insert key) to check that the corresponding led is on. Then, keep `+` pressed until full throttle.

The plane will quickly gain speed. You must now to something quite unnatural: you must push the mouse cursor toward the top of the window to lower the plane nose, in order to level the plane horizontally and top the wings lift.

Quickly after that, you should feel a last bounce and start a smooth ascension. Take extra care not to perform any abrupt maneuver that could make your plane lost it’s speed or lift while you are still close to the ground.

Here is a quick video showing a quick take off with a Dewoitine:

Lesson 2: The instrument panel

You won’t be able to control the plane without looking regularly at the instrument panel, so you’d better get familiar quickly. The most important instruments are located on the upper row and give information regarding your speed, which is the most important parameter, and comes in two variant : the linear speed, aka the speed of the airflow along the plane, and the vertical speed, which gives the speed of the ground relative to the plane.

Even while fighting other planes you should always consider the ground as your worst opponent!

The following video explain what most of the flight instruments does: