Show HN: Airmash – Multiplayer Missile Warfare HTML5 Game

> I don't doubt that there are junior web developers who don't know much better.

I just think it's very... puritanical the way that people bemoan the state of websites as a personal failing of web developers as a profession rather than the a result of what kind of deliverables their employers care about and are willing to pay for.

Prowler is not very good against Goliath because the Goliath can deflect, and its deflect ability unstealths the Prowler. Only a Goliath who has bad reflexes and goes in a straight line gets hosed. And one rocket doesn't kill the Goliath. And as soon as they know Prowler is on them, they're on their toes.

Even in a FFA game a Goliath is easy to take, but only once they unloaded their energy bar or took a few hits. Other players can help with that, consciously or not. And if the Goliath has a large bounty on their head, it is in their interest to help. FFA isn't literally FFA all the time. Sometimes interests align. The bounty system aids that, and its fun. K/D ratio is the real, publicly hidden score.

As a player you should avoid being near the spawn points. You learn where they are after a while. Planes always spawn facing north.

Reason I bring this up is to back up this point with a caveat: a skilled Prowler pilot is able to solo take down a Goliath only if the Prowler is faster (with upgrades).

On the EU server, the meta was missile spam fest over Europe. So I took the stealth ship to the North Atlantic and Arctic Ocean. There, the playstyle of the Prowler is one of patience.

Your first goal is to never die. Period. This is how I was able to be consistently top 4, and off-and-on #1 on the server depending on the other players's fluctuations.

The second objective is one of cowardice. You are paper thin. One hit will decloak you and worse, you are so low health that a single helicopter missile will finish you off. This means the playstyle is to find a handful of jet pilots that are dogfighting. Be close enough to them you can zip in, but far enough away you are still on the outskirts. This means you have to learn to be incredibly agile dodging missiles and learn how to read dogfights, which takes practice. It also means no one else gets to see your skills doing this, and therefore will assume you are a shitty pilot.

The third rule is one of ruthlessness. As soon as one of the dogfighters is damaged, swoop in on top of them and fire right before you pass over them. This takes timing so you don't run into other missiles (rule #1). The reason for this is because you do have 1 shot before you have to flee and re-stealth. But the other reason is for the surprise factor and hiding amongst the explosion (if you hit your target). It buys you precious milliseconds to re-stealth.

With this playstyle I rarely died, and went after the top dogfighters over Africa: k, jj, test, qjp (?). After a couple of pickoffs and being told to fly a real plane, I sat near the top of the score board regardless of fluctuations.

That is, until BeatDaddy came along. A Goliath pilot of great skill, he took out most challengers. However, as a Prowler I was able to almost solo him until jj out of the blue took my kill. So I killed JJ. :)

The strategy is simple. Only shoot the Goliath from the sides or back (avoiding the big missile) and only when in range of the AoE effect. Why? You want to force the Goliath pilot to waste their energy spamming the AoE. You have time on your side, you can hit them once every 10 seconds or so and still whittle them down because of the slow Regen.

But beware, big missile is 1 hit kill!

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.