Vehicle Controls - the keybinds you might not know

[Hakuryu]

Some of the keybinds used by infantry perform other things when you are driving a vehicle. Since I've seen too many Titans plodding around without using 'speed boost', and I've yet to see a tester pull off a power slide, I'll list bind's that you might not know about.

Crouch Keybind

In the Desecrator and Cyclops, using your infantry crouch keybind will put you into Siege Mode. This lowers your profile and is supposed to give a bonus (although I really cant tell the difference).

In the Icarus, hitting crouch will stop you instantly (on the ground) no matter how fast you are going. If you want to fly up on top a small thing way up, fly up and hold crouch as you fall... this will 'stick' you to whatever you land on, instead of trying to manually fall perfectly on a small piece of geometry.

Jump Keybind

In the Cyclops, using the infantry jump keybind will make you 'stomp' down with one leg of the Cyclops, killing anyone underneath you. Good for catching charge layers, or simply to save your cannon for another target.

Lean Keybinds

Using the lean keybinds, you can strafe left to right in the Desecrator.

Sprint Keybind

The sprint keybind works like nitrous, or a speed boost in vehicles. In the Hog it turns on the ramming shield also.

Walk/Engine Thrust Keybind

This one is important. It gives you reverse thrust in flyers to slow down forward speed or to move backwards as you lock onto and destroy something. You should be using this if flying a Tormentor.

In land vehicles, this keybind lets you power slide. Simply go fast, turn a sharp corner, and hold this keybind to power-slide around corners. Tricky to use, but very useful when you get the hang of it. Using power slides, you can also easily do 180 degree turns in relatively short distances.

Freelook

Not really misunderstood, but a very useful tool when piloting vehicles. In flyers you can lock onto things via freelook (ie away from your dead-center crosshair). A good example of using this is in a Tormentor versus a Titan.

Flying straight at a Titan is asking to die, so what you do is fly along the side of the tank, making you a left to right target which is harder to hit, and then freelook while your flying along the side to lock on missiles and kill the Titan without ever putting it into your crosshairs.

[darthmob]

didn't know these thingies - thanks for the info! :)

[FeaRog]

Note that the jump keybind is handbrake in wheeled vehicles! With deft application of the handbrake you can do some very tight cornering.

[Mithikal]

Jump key is also stand up once your in seige mode in the Desecrator and Cyclops.

Seige mode increases your fire rate by quite a considerable amount btw.

[b0rsuk]

May I suggest something ? I suspect Ironsights key has no use in vehicles. So perhaps it could act as Freelook while in vehicles ? I don't want to bind a separate key just for Freelook. My config is already quite crowded, and I have to put communication binds somewhere, too.
I think Freelook on the same key as Ironsights is quite intuitive. In both cases it's about aiming.

[MiiQ]

May I suggest something ? I suspect Ironsights key has no use in vehicles. So perhaps it could act as Freelook while in vehicles ? I don't want to bind a separate key just for Freelook. My config is already quite crowded, and I have to put communication binds somewhere, too.
I think Freelook on the same key as Ironsights is quite intuitive. In both cases it's about aiming.

bind "MOUSE2" "_tophat" "" "vehicle

;)

[Hakuryu]

Note that the jump keybind is handbrake in wheeled vehicles! With deft application of the handbrake you can do some very tight cornering.

Strange, that's how my Walk/Engine Thrust keybind works... jump doesn't seem to do anything in wheeled vehicles.

[mf-]

Gotta love the cvars for scripting in this game.

[murka10]

i just configured my wheel/joystick for their corresponding vehicles. my thrust button on the joystick does always what it was supposed to do, sometimes i just need to move it because it doesn't know that this is an axis that can be moved and well stays there.

[CarbonFire]

Note that the jump keybind is handbrake in wheeled vehicles! With deft application of the handbrake you can do some very tight cornering.
Which is especially useful when doing quick 180° turn Strocket shots in the Tormentor ;) :D

[Tangles]

Also, it's important to remember that the "1" key by default fires a flare from any vehicle if you're getting locked-on by enemy fire. It will fire a flare straight up in the air to give heat-seeking missiles a new target to lock onto instead of the vehicle you're in.

[Zeldor]

But still it is quite hard to win 1:1 fight agaisnt AVT :)

[somvone]

Nice I didn't know some of these.

[Noir]

Nice post, I didn't know about these, should add a bit of depth to the vehicles.

I am having a problem with vehicles though; I can't figure out how to have freelook permanently enabled in all vehicles. I assume it must be possible, a friend I've asked says it is for him, and when I very first played the game before i configured it properly, I remember using the Icarus and controlling it normally (i.e. mouse freelook, without holding any keys).

I've got advanced vehicle controls enabled, and i tried setting ui_drivingCameraFreelook to "1", but that only works in vehicles which don't have a gun.

[Hakuryu]

I am having a problem with vehicles though; I can't figure out how to have freelook permanently enabled in all vehicles. I assume it must be possible, a friend I've asked says it is for him, and when I very first played the game before i configured it properly, I remember using the Icarus and controlling it normally (i.e. mouse freelook, without holding any keys).

I've got advanced vehicle controls enabled, and i tried setting ui_drivingCameraFreelook to "1", but that only works in vehicles which don't have a gun.

You mean like the freelook you get when driving a Husky? Only vehicles without weapons give you freelook all the time.

In vehicles with weapons, you must use the freelook keybind.

Think about it this way - if you always had freelook on in the Titan, your shells would never go where you were looking, but in the direction of your cannon... hence why the view isn't in freelook mode.

[reyalp]

I've got advanced vehicle controls enabled, and i tried setting ui_drivingCameraFreelook to "1", but that only works in vehicles which don't have a gun.
Do you mean that moving the mouse doesn't aim the gun ?

I know several people have encountered this.

[Noir]

Do you mean that moving the mouse doesn't aim the gun ?

I know several people have encountered this.

Yep that's right.

Hakuryu: by freelook I meant moving the mouse moves the crosshair.

When i'm in a vehicle the mouse is completely dead, unless I hold capslock then I can aim. Setting ui_drivingCameraFreelook to "1" gives 'freelook' that in any vehicle where the driver doesn't control a gun, but otherwise still the mouse is dead on the others.

I wouldn't mind if it too much was like that for everyone, makes using the vehicles a little more challenging, although using the Icarus is really clumsy and a pain in the ass. The very first time I played the game though I remember using the Icarus and it worked as it should.

Not sure if it's related or not, but my autoexec doesn't autoexec, I have to exec it manually from the console if I've changed something in it.

[Szakalot]

ok and how are u goint to fly in a tormentor? using "wsad" only?

[murka10]

this is nice question, maybe he has joystick and mouse....

[Bomberhawk]

Useful post! Thankls!

[reyalp]

Yep that's right.

Hakuryu: by freelook I meant moving the mouse moves the crosshair.

When i'm in a vehicle the mouse is completely dead, unless I hold capslock then I can aim. Setting ui_drivingCameraFreelook to "1" gives 'freelook' that in any vehicle where the driver doesn't control a gun, but otherwise still the mouse is dead on the others.

I've seen a number of people with this problem. It seems to be related to something in the config, but I've never seen it tracked down to one specific item. If you delete your etqwconfig.cfg (or better, move it to somewhere else) that will probably fix the problem. It will also lose any other settings you've customized. If that doesn't do it, try moving the autoexec, and the profile.cfg from the sdnet directory.

Once you figured out which file it was, comparing the old and new may provide some insight into the actual problem.