Show HN: Airmash – Multiplayer Missile Warfare HTML5 Game

I agree that it isn't fair, but that's also just how it goes. I get blamed all the time for poor decisions made by my group, even if I agree that they are poor decisions.

There should be an option for following/friending people, I had fun with a few guys and I'd like to know if they are logged and where they are.

Please forgive the random reply, but it's the closest to a direct message I can get. :)

Suggestion: place powerups in areas of the map that have not seen combat recently.

It seems like almost all the combat is over Europe, and the other areas of the map are almost always completely unpopulated. The most fun fight I had was when one other aircraft and I got into a dogfight near SA/Antarctica. It lasted several minutes, just the two of us. Even so, it only happened because I followed him there, and apparently he was just exploring the map.

So if you were to track combat activity on something like a heat map, you could spawn upgrades and powerups in cold areas of the map. This would encourage players to go hunting for them. As a result, different areas of the map would see combat regularly, and the hotspots would move around.

Also, if you spawned players in away from other players, it would encourage encounters around the map instead of concentrated in one area.

Finally, I use WASD in home-row position, and I'd like to rebind the the shoot and action keys. If you could make this possible, it'd be great.

Thanks for sharing your work. It's a fun game.

This really is an addictive game and the attention to detail is amazing. As a web developer myself, I'm quite familiar with building a typical web application but nothing close to this. If you ever decide to write a piece explaining how you built this at the high level, peeps like myself will find it extremely valuable.

> Your first goal is to never die. Period.

> The second objective is one of cowardice.

Those should be your goals in BTR and perhaps also in FFA (with less punishment so requires more discipline). If you find yourself unable to follow this playstyle I recommend trying out BTR for a while and apply the lessons from adapting your playstyle there on FFA. But FFA is just warming up for CTF/BTR IMO.

The reason why I quoted this is that it is untrue in CTF. Cowardice doesn't yield you the flag in CTF so you need some people on offensive. How many? That depends how good your defensive holds as well as how good you're at intercepting (f.e. I like to switch to Predator when I want to intercept). In CTF, the strategy you mentioned allows for a strong long term solution because defending is much easier than offending. But sometimes you need to sacrifice yourself for the team, or you need to attack (which puts a massive crosshair on you). Getting a lot of kills (and pretty much therefore upgrades) isn't difficult whilst you're not going for the flag. Also, if you're escorting the flag carrier your first goal isn't you not dying; its them carrying the flag to safety. There are some tactics like spraying and stopping the enemy with distractions but that won't stop players who have strategic oversight. At best you're a nuisance to them; that could be your goal.

The Mohawk (helicopter) is great in CTF because of its speed and because it can put pressure on key points, and its a strong contender versus stationary and slow. Strafing required some practice but eventually you will get the hang of it. Its sometimes a bit "YOLO", like for example flying through explosions where I am not entirely sure if its friendly missiles or not. Then I end up with say an upgrade, but I wasn't sure it was safe. I took quite some risks grabbing some upgrades. Defensive upgrade can safe you there. Another thing to remember with Mohawk is that Prowler can be seen on radar and they cannot keep up with you if you don't want them to. If you can strafe and spray and be a bit unpredictable with your movement you can give other players a hard time aiming (although I found many people to be rather terrible with aiming).

> I never was able to fully solo BeatDaddy, as once I lost my upgrades from an unrelated death the Prowler cannot tackle a more upgraded Goliath.

That's because the Prowler isn't that great against a Goliath; it is good to snipe one shot kills.

I found the best recipe in non-CTF for Goliath is to ignore them. The Goliath players are constantly playing "you can't kill me nanana". True, I can't, but you can't kill me either in my Prowler/Mohawk/Predator/Tornado and even Goliath itself. Instead of seeing them as a target you want to kill, see them as something which is out there to lure you to beat them in tennis or (ping) pong where they have an easy time to bounce all your balls back. Yet if you don't play, you can't lose, and meanwhile you can win from all the other players and they (the Goliath players) can't beat you either. If more people would do this, it gets very boring for the Goliath players. That's when you read in chat "I'm at the Canary Islands come and get me". I'm still chuckling on that one. You just know he's bottomfeeding from noobs who go for the "challenge", to grab some upgrades.

That's for FFA. That doesn't work in BTR though. BTR makes for a very boring Goliath matches IMO. In CTF, Goliath is very weak IMO. I don't see the point. Its very slow, it can't easily build up upgrades, and it can't troll/lure. It can sit on a chokepoint but then there's other stronger contenders. Only thing is 2 or 3 of them I couldn't get past when they were defending. Cause I couldn't kill them and they shot me. But that was me soloing on offensive versus 5 people on defensive. Some good Tornado players were also able to kill me. And in the end I did get past.