Before I lay down the smack, I'm going to give a few points to all the non-hackers in the Astroids Corps. I'm not a "saucer hunter", I blast astroids. These are little things that help me, you may find them useful, they may get you killed faster. Things that get you killed: Large Astroids You'll be tempted to shoot one big astroid and then pick off all it's smaller pieces before moving on to another big one. Large rocks take up a lot of space and make it impossible to move. Even with the screen completely full of smaller faster moving rocks, it just take a little move to get out of the way. Small Saucer I consider myself lucky every time one of these things comes out and I don't die. This is another reason to blast all the big rocks right off the start. Every rock flying around is another chance that little bastard is going to get crushed into dust, especially in later levels where he comes out early. He can track you, if you have a straight non-moving shot at him, he's got a shot too and is going to kill you. The only success I have is by getting on the opposite side of the screen and wrapping my shot across or if the screen is empty I thrust at full speed toward the top of the screen and then shoot at him while I skid. Slow Astroids Chase down and kill those super slow rocks asap. They will keep you hanging around the end of a level until the little saucer comes out and kills you. General stuff.... Don't panic if there is a lot of rocks on the screen, your ship is pretty sleek, learn to tell the difference between rocks that are going to be close to you and rocks that are going to hit you. Don't get crazy with the thrust button. It's fine to be moving, in fact I prefer to be coasting slowly all the time. If things are getting tight and you need to move, usually thrusting a little straight forward will do. Your already probably pounding on the fire button so directly ahead of you is usually clear. It's a lot easier to tell if you have incoming rocks about to hit you when you're not having to re-evaluate every second because you're moving all over. You can have 4 shots on the screen at one time. When you're shootng at far away rocks or saucers get in the habit of three shot bursts. It sucks to take a rock in the windshield because your cannon won't fire. Your first ship is never your best so don't give up if you lose your first ship at 7,000 points. I usually score most of my points on a single ship and it's never the first one. Hard facts of life... The small saucer is going to screw you. Repeat after me.... "the small saucer is going to screw me".. You're going to get hosed on your respawns. Some days the big saucer is piloted by the spirit of Carlos Hathcock. If you don't know who that is, you should go read his book. Basically I'm saying the large saucer sometimes displays amazing sharp shooting skill. Go practice and keep your eyes open for my upcoming x-mas challenge.
Thanks for the tips. A bit friendly for a smack talk forum though, don't you think? Can I give out infractions for being too nice?
Well I wanted to get second place closer than 300,000 points away before I start smacking people down!
