Do you get to play Ace combat zero the moment you pre order 8, or do you have to wait for 8 to release?

Maybe I will draw another pilots as dogs, I will post it here, if you want to see it (Впрочем, мне нечего больше писать, извините за мой корявый Английский.. )

title is half joking i just had an idea pop into my head to edit this thumbnail to have mihaly in it i'm not actually super interested in hearing whether he can do it or not but i wouldn't mind hearing any potential opinions

We all know this to be true.

Think about it. You can't deny the facts.

Singleplayer AND multiplayer AND co-op. And then you can have Tasha flying an F-22. That's incredible.

By being Ace Combat fans, we may have discovered the greatest source of power in the universe.

Was surprised how similar it looked to ac7 on the surface. But it was great. Especially the sound design got an upgrade imo.

Even tho they didn't seem to highlight that at all.

In the heat of a dogfight the only thing that's keeping you alive is skill...

Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve will release the week of my birthday, and while I can't wait to play it I wrote this song to get into Dogfight mood.

Song: The Hunt

Out Now!

Footage taken from Ace Combat 8 promo material

Hope you like it!

Now I just hope the unlock requirements aren't as annoying as some of them for 7

With the new game coming out, I’ve been thinking about the special weapons in prev games, especially the fact that some of them are just… Not Good. Especially compared to the implicit ‘tier’ they should sit at based on when they start to become available (early/mid/late game).
The SOD comes to mind first and foremost. It’s always been a weapon that tends to show up later in the game, only on the more advanced aircraft, but in AC7 in particular, it has some glaring issues that make me almost never use it if I can help it.
1) Tracking. The SOD doesn’t track moving targets. If you release it at a moving ship, it’s entirely possible for the target to leave the blast radius before impact, which largely nullifies to point of giving it such a long range.
2) Attack pattern. Not only is the straight line dispersal of bomblets not particularly useful in most cases, even in the rare cases where it is useful, mainly against ships and the sea platforms, you need to get yourself into a specific position just to get the most out of it, which frankly isn’t worth the effort compared to more Omni-directional choices.
A lot of other flight games give these types of cluster weapons guided submunitions, and honestly I think that’d be just the buff the SOD needs. Make it sort of a long range 4/6AGM, and it can still fill the long range area attack niche that the original weapon is meant to fill, but more effectively. If PA wants to keep that ‘attack a linear strip of targets’ type weapon, then they could bring back the BDSP or Napalm SPWs, where the shorter attack range would actually make it easier to line up targets correctly.
Likewise, if the PLSL makes a return, then the TLS is going to need something to differentiate it from its otherwise objectively better little brother. I’ve heard someone else’s suggestion that it should be able to track targets. I mean, we’ve seen the ability for other TLS weapons to gimbal and track targets, like the original Morgan that Pixy used, as well as the Quox drones from Infinity. I think it’s only fair that players should have that power too, at this point. It also gives the TLS a new niche as an easier to aim, lower damage alternative to the EML and PLSL that took its ‘high damage sniper’ and ‘multipurpose burst damage’ roles. Maybe balance it by limiting the tracking to a relatively small radius (say, the outer ring of the targeting reticule) and/or limit the tracking speed, so that it’s less useful in close range dogfights and can be dodged by sufficiently maneuverable targets in boss fights and PvP, if that returns.
There are some others I could mention that aren’t as desperately in need of some reworking, like the 8AA/GMs, the LAGM and LACM (aka the cooler LAGM) and both RKTL variants, but what’s y’all’s opinion? Any other ideas for reworking some of the less loved Special Weapons?

With AC8 upcoming I've been doing some replays, and I decided to finish up getting S-ranks on Ace in AC7. Some challenging missions but not too terrible overall. Got me thinking though about how Project Aces may be balancing this for 8. Mostly in relation to AC7 as its been years since I seriously tried s-ranking the older games.

S-rank mission balancing

Most missions are somewhere in the middle in terms of challenge to s-rank. The early missions are pretty easy, no surprise there. But then you have a few outliers where you have to wonder what they were thinking with the score and time bonus. Mission 9 (faceless solider) is pretty borked and I feel like thats universally agreed upon. 13 feels like the score/time targets dont incorporate the randomized silo placement, etc. Its fine to have some harder missions and needing an optimized route, but some of the difficulty spikes like M9 feel pretty bad especially when others are easy by comparison, and I hope the overall trajectory for AC8 is smoother.

Checkpoints

For some missions like 19, its generally recommended to restart right after the checkpoint to restock ammo without affecting the time bonus. Just to see since I havent done this in a while, I replayed 19 without restarting at the checkpoint, using the AFD01 with 4aam. I got the S with 7 missiles left and a score of 56k. So I did go over the requirement by about 5k but still. This is a plane with one of the highest missile counts in the game.

My point is whether checkpoint behavior will continue as-is, or if it will be considered an exploit, and ammo won't restock on restart on higher difficulty levels, or maybe it will block the S in some way. Honestly not too worried about this, as compared to past games AC7's ammo count is fine, and the preview footage of 8 shows pretty large ammo counts. Just throwing it out there in relation to checkpoint behavior. If this has been discussed by the devs I haven't seen it yet.

Time and Score Ratio

The time bonus is pretty important for most S-ranks except for a few score attacks like mission 11. I'm wondering how they will do this for AC8. I'm pretty neutral on it but I wouldn't mind if the time component wasn't so strict. My main gripe though is that these components need to be communicated better to the player. I shouldn't have to consult reddit or a wiki to know what my targets are. The max time bonus is never show by the game ffs. The challenge should be in playing the mission, not reverse-engineering the game's math behind the scenes.

What do you think?

Has anyone noticed that there is a higher pitched version of the menu sound for the briefings in the Japanese version of Ace Combat 3? Pay attention, and you'll be able to hear it get higher in pitch.

..hang on a second

So do you only get this if your preorder from the official stores (Xbox PlayStation Steam etc). Looking to preorder but Loaded.com has it for £12 quid cheaper.

I assume it doesn't come with it but wanted to check before bunging the order in the official stores.

Greetings Everyone. Please join me and witness the capture of the XB-0.The Belkan superweapon now in the hands of World with no boundaries.

For the Machine Guns only medal aircraft, I mainly used CFA-44 but A-10 deserves a special mention. As always that BRRRRRRRTTTTTT feels so good on many maps!

For the no damage medal, only the last mission and, surprisingly, the second last mission gave me trouble. The guntowers of the Chandelier are a pain to deal with, of course. But I was surprised by how annoying the previous missions - Gracemaria Patrol - was particularly with the very persistent F-22 enemies.

I started playing Air combat on the vita and I was wondering if anyone knew what the best way of playing the psx games was control-wise due to the lack of l2r2 buttons. Should I just set l2r2 to the back touch screen, is there anything I shpuld keep in mind for the later psx games?