Just completed all missions.
Have to say, you did a great job.
Nice variety of content, everything a fan likes, canyon run, big ground battle, giant furball, tunnel.
Surprised there was no Duel with Ace
Thrust managment is interesting idea, though something needing to get used to for my arcade brain.
Loadout menu is amazing, presets, ability to combine SPW in proportions you like, very handy.
Few nitpicks, number base stats is not good idea, maybe it's only me but having to remembet 6 two-digit numbers to compare them to other plane is a bit too hard, sliders(can't find right word) that gets bigger of smaller is much more easy to read and compare.
Maybe some balance tweeks would be nice, Super Hornet feels too OP, jack of all traits, there is no point if taking any other plane.
Gun could be a bit more powerfull or atleast have minimal autoaim, it feels like you have to hit exact pixel and then hold trigger for 3-4 seconds to get kill. Wouldn't say its as bad as AC7, but still some room for improment
If possible to have Cirle of Hit Area for Ground Bomb instead of just PS2 marker in the middle.
And weapon selection in gameplay i feel is made better in PW, where you can chose it on D-pad, rather than scroll throuh them one by one like, because you don't just switch missiles and SPW like in AC, where one button is okm you have to scroll between 3 or 4 options, and there d-pad would be more handy. Or atleast write what curently selected somewhere in the middle of the screen, because look for small box in the bottom can be a bit hard
But overall it's very good even in current state, good couple hours of fun for AC/PW fan
Hi there, thanks for playing and giving such detailed feedback! I'll go through your ideas below:
- Number stats: I agree it's probably not ideal, they are quite arbitrary and aren't specifically calibrated to aircraft performance. I will see how I can improve this UI in the future, though I can't guarantee I can make it work.
- Balance tweaks: The next iteration of ASE will have some balance considerations built in regarding how many weapons you are able to take and the amount of ammo available. Multirole aircraft will be able to take a greater variety of weapons, but less ammunition overall.
- The gun has just received an aiming rework to make it much more accurate. Hopefully this makes it easier to use. I think the damage tuning is about where I want it, but if you want more, some aircraft will have gunpods which fire together with the internal gun, so you can deal several times the damage!
- Bomb markers probably will remain 2D for now, I would like a bit more realism to the HUD and it would be annoying to program...
- The D-Pad in ASE is reserved for selecting and calling in allied support. There are only two missions with this in the current demo, but in the full release it will be a much more prominent feature. I will also limit non-multirole aircraft to 3 weapons overall (multiroles get 4), so it should not be too much of a hassle switching weapons. I'll see what I can do on the HUD end though.