A guide to flying (and killing) with the Wasserfall Rocket.

Morat · 09-08-2003, 01:04 PM

Welcome to Morat's guide on flying (and killing) with the Wasserfall guided ground to air missile. In skilled hands this missile can clear the skies of enemy aircraft, but it requires a different flying technique than any other aircraft in the game. I've always advocated practicing flying offline in your own server, and that goes double for the Wasserfall. If there's only one of these on the map then please don't keep a good pilot out while you have a practice. Offline the only people you upset are bots, and bots don't have feelings.

The Basics
First find a Wasserfall bunker. They're the squat buildings with a missile on top

. All you have to do is go in the door and hit use and you get a nice view from the missile. At this point you're controlling it like a tank turret, you can move it around 360 degrees and there's a limited up/down traverse.

Check out your minimap and you'll see that you have a radar sweep which you can use to spot enemy planes. The missile can fly outside this range, so it can be worth firing "blind" towards the enemy base.

When you fire the missile you switch to aircraft controls. I highly recommend that you fly the missile using whatever controls you use for aircraft. I tried it with the mouse but couldn't hit anything as I'm used to a stick for planes.

There are two things you'll notice about the Wasserfall the second you fire it. It's fast, really fast, and there's quite a shake on the camera. You can cover a lot of ground really quickly but it's quite maneouverable, be careful not to hit the ground. The camera shake has a big impact on how you fly the missile and the tactics you need to use, we'll get to that later.

Once the missile is in flight you need to steer it into an enemy aircraft (natch). Your main aim is to collide with the enemy. Colliding the missile with any part of any aircraft is an instant kill. You can also detonate the missile with a right-click. If you can see you're going to miss it might be worth doing this, but I'm not convinced that even near-misses do a lot of damage. If there's already another rocket on the pad then it might be worth getting some damage in then launching the next one, but I'd rather steer round and have another go.

When you're in flight the missile base "reloads" the next missile. Check out the ammo counter in the bottom-right of your screen and you can see when it's ready. Once the missile you're riding is killed then you go back to the missile view at the base. If another has spawned you can launch it immediately, if not you'll have to wait for it.

How to hit the enemy

If it all sounds easy so far, this is where it gets more difficult. Actually hitting an enemy plane with this thing involves learning a new flying technique to overcome the difficulties involved.

The Wasserfall pilot needs to overcome three major hinderances to hit his target:

1) The high speed of the missile leaves little room for correction as you close on your target. If he jinks or you're slightly off you won't be able to correct and you'll fly right by.

2) The camera shake makes it slightly more difficult to tell exactly where you're aiming, especially as you get closer to your target.

3) In a dogfight you need to get behind the enemy to bring your guns to bear, and if you've been chasing your target this is probably the position you're in. But it's a bad position, because you can see the smallest possible target area.

Point 3 is the most important by far. You're trying to steer a fast moving, unstable rocket into a moving target. Your chances of doing this increase massively if the target is large, and become much less if the target is small. When you approach an aircraft directly from behind then you can see the smallest possible surface area of that aircraft. This is most noticeable when trying to hit a flying wing. These aircraft are huge targets, but seen directly from behind they're just about as small a target as you could hope to see, just a long thin piece of metal that's damn hard to hit at high speed.

To get around point 3, you need to approach the enemy from a direction that gives you the biggest possible target to hit. You want him to be the size of a barn in your crosshair as you approach, so even if you're slightly off you're still going to get a kill. I'm going to outline 3 ways of doing this.

To practice this offline I recommend loading an instant battle in Essen, spawning on the Axis side. The bots hold the Allies off excellently so you'll have plenty of practice time, and the allies have an impressive range of aircraft to destroy. There's the C-47 cargo plane, two spitfires and a flying wing. They'll be continually over the Axis base, so you can be assured of having lots to shoot at. The bots don't like being downed much though, so watch for spitfires bombing the Wasserfall base.

The first two approaches are well known standard dogfighting techniques, the third is slightly different so we'll start with the more familiar ones.

Approach 1, the dive.

It doesn't really matter if you're behind your enemy or if they're moving towards or across you, but if you are behind them and they're moving away from you then it reduces your relative speed and gives you more opportunity to hit. If you can maneouvre behind your target this is good.

The first thing you need for this approach is height. Pull up and get as high above them as possible. You have plenty of speed so even if you're chasing a wing they won't get away. Once you're high level out and approach your target. The beauty of this approach is that the enemy can't see you even if they look in the rear view, so that's less likelihood that the enemy will dodge or bale.

When you get above your target dive directly towards them. See how big they look? A flying wing is a massive target approached like this, and even a Spitty presents a pretty big area to aim at. Lead them a little and anticipate the point where you'll collide, you want to have to make the least possible adjustments to your flightpath. It doesn't matter where you hit them so go for the cockpit. If your timing is off you'll hopefully still hit them on the fuselage.

If you miss, pull up immediately. If you're in position you can now go for approach 2, or bug out and pull a quick turn to get back on your target. If you miss and your target is low then you'll probably have a short flight to a big crater. Which is why I recommend approach 2.

Approach 2, the climb.

This is identical to approach 1, but instead of going high you go as low as possible and pull up into your target. The beauty of this approach is that if you miss you can immediately go into a diving approach and have another go. There are several drawbacks though:

1) Most BF pilots fly low, so to get lower you might be dodging trees and other ground obstacles. This is not good at the kind of speeds you'll be flying at.

2) You're susceptible to ground fire. Although you're going fast and are hard to hit, the Wasserfall doesn't seem to be particularly robust. I've had them instantly destroyed by AA blast damage that was aiming at the the aircraft I was after.

3) The pilot is more likely to be able to see your approach than he will be if you're well above him. If he spots you and starts taking avoiding action your job gets much harder.

Approach 3, the cutoff

For anyone who's been dogfighting since the game came out this is going to be the hardest approach to adjust to. Normally when the enemy turns you'd try and maneouvre into position directly behind them, but as we've seen that's where the Wasserfall has the hardest time hitting it's target.

Instead of getting behind a turning enemy (and planes in BF turn a lot because the maps are so small) you need to anticipate the turn and cut it off. Here's a diagram to illustrate it. Here we're looking straight down from high up. The enemy is heading North and making a turn to go South East. We want to fly across this turn and hit them at the point shown.

There's one big advantage, and one big disadvantage to doing this. The disadvantage is that the enemy is moving directly across us so we've got a more difficult target to lead and hit. The advantage far outweighs this though. Because the enemy plane is banking to make the turn, we can approach them from the same altitude but still have a nice big target to hit, just as we do with approach 1 and 2.

If you anticipate where your target is going to turn you can easily get into a good position to intercept their path and have a good chance of hitting.

In closing

Although it may seem impossibly difficult at first, with a little practice the Wasserfall soon becomes a fearsome weapon. It has good range so you can launch blind towards the enemy base, which is a great first strike in Essen where the Wasserfall is at the spawn point.

Whatever you do though, don't spend too long just flying around looking for targets. If you've taken down a few aircraft the enemy will make it a priority to bomb the Wasserfall launch point. It can be better to sit at the launch point watching the radar than getting bombed while you're flying around.

There are going to be some players out there who don't see the value in having a player sitting in the launcher taking pot-shots at planes, but it's exactly the same value you get from having a good dogfighter on the team. The enemy is discouraged from flying against your team, and in '42 the aircraft are powerful weapons. If you can put the enemy off using them, you're half-way to victory.

Good hunting!
Morat.

mr. peabody · 09-08-2003, 10:02 PM

i have a joystick, but i use the mouse for the rocket. i dunno why.
and if you dont see any planes, you can always go to the airfield, where the planes are even easier to hit.
can you kill tanks with these? i could never try, i can never see them until i pass them.

Morat · 09-09-2003, 08:28 AM

I landed one next to the flag nearest the Wasserfall base in Peenemunde and there was a satisfyingly large explosion that took out the Schwimwaggen that was there. I'm not sure how far away from it I landed though. I'll test it out tonight.

It is good for taking out Natters on their launch ramps, but hitting one in the air is another matter.

thunder_or_fd · 09-12-2003, 02:58 AM

2 interesting things i found about the wasserfall while i was playing with the bots today -

1: if you fly into a hangar you bounce around like a ball

2: the rocket kills any vehicle in 1 hit -- i blew up the giant allies tank (T something) in 1 hit every time i hit it dead on .. which wasnt too hard

sithlord · 09-12-2003, 03:50 PM

on the maps where the allies have a dakota. you can kill it before it even leaves the ground. They spawn at the same rate so ya the dakota gets 2-3s to roll down the runway but it still dies. Easy way to rack up kills AND keep the mobile spawn grounded.

raging gamer · 09-12-2003, 10:35 PM

u hve no life

mr. peabody · 09-12-2003, 11:01 PM

oh man! you can kill tanks with it, i think. i rammed into it, right on. its a lot easier if you let the fuel run out, so you just gliding really fast.

and it seems to me the fuel runs out a lot quicker online, than in single player. or maybe it was the map.

Fragmeister · 09-14-2003, 07:37 PM

its a bug. t doesnt really go out faster, but the fire and noise and fuel bare are all gone.

i am very good with the wasserfall. i cannot seem to hit goblins but i love killing those C-47's. you can kill so many ppl at one time, too! fun fun... i have never really tried to kill a tank with it before, because i only have used it at (umm... the one with the ocean inbetween and the higgins boats) and tanks are not really the threat.

grim reaper · 09-14-2003, 07:42 PM

nice guide, this should be stickyed.

thunder_or_fd · 09-15-2003, 01:19 AM

I think it does really run out faster - because the jetpack you only get like 3 taps of space before it runs out (although it recharges really quick) meaning u cant get maximum distance like you can with the bots
The natter runs out real fast too

sithlord · 09-15-2003, 09:31 PM

Played Essen this weekend. If you just chillin in the missle room wait for someone to say Enemy Armor Spotted! Launch that bad boy an bam. NEGATIVE! no armor no more. All 10mins of the game I did this. Of course the planecampers on the other team never did so much as fire a MG at me.

NavalLord · 09-16-2003, 04:11 AM

i cant kill the flying wings with this thing, it just bounces right off the wing! does this happen to anyone else? it is really annoying because i hit it dead on everytime and it bounces off!

Darth Chippy · 10-25-2003, 01:45 AM

...but how do you fly it? in the manual it says u steer with your mouse, but that just seems to spin it around. do u steer it with your keyboard? whenever i try i die before i find out

Fragmeister · 10-29-2003, 07:46 PM

use your keyboard!!!!

the mouse is needed to aim before launch, but when you fly, use the keayboard!

09-08-2003, 01:04 PM	#1 (permalink)
Morat Master Warrant Officer Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Diving towards your pos with my finger on the bomb release... Posts: 1,188	A guide to flying (and killing) with the Wasserfall Rocket. Welcome to Morat's guide on flying (and killing) with the Wasserfall guided ground to air missile. In skilled hands this missile can clear the skies of enemy aircraft, but it requires a different flying technique than any other aircraft in the game. I've always advocated practicing flying offline in your own server, and that goes double for the Wasserfall. If there's only one of these on the map then please don't keep a good pilot out while you have a practice. Offline the only people you upset are bots, and bots don't have feelings. The Basics First find a Wasserfall bunker. They're the squat buildings with a missile on top . All you have to do is go in the door and hit use and you get a nice view from the missile. At this point you're controlling it like a tank turret, you can move it around 360 degrees and there's a limited up/down traverse. Check out your minimap and you'll see that you have a radar sweep which you can use to spot enemy planes. The missile can fly outside this range, so it can be worth firing "blind" towards the enemy base. When you fire the missile you switch to aircraft controls. I highly recommend that you fly the missile using whatever controls you use for aircraft. I tried it with the mouse but couldn't hit anything as I'm used to a stick for planes. There are two things you'll notice about the Wasserfall the second you fire it. It's fast, really fast, and there's quite a shake on the camera. You can cover a lot of ground really quickly but it's quite maneouverable, be careful not to hit the ground. The camera shake has a big impact on how you fly the missile and the tactics you need to use, we'll get to that later. Once the missile is in flight you need to steer it into an enemy aircraft (natch). Your main aim is to collide with the enemy. Colliding the missile with any part of any aircraft is an instant kill. You can also detonate the missile with a right-click. If you can see you're going to miss it might be worth doing this, but I'm not convinced that even near-misses do a lot of damage. If there's already another rocket on the pad then it might be worth getting some damage in then launching the next one, but I'd rather steer round and have another go. When you're in flight the missile base "reloads" the next missile. Check out the ammo counter in the bottom-right of your screen and you can see when it's ready. Once the missile you're riding is killed then you go back to the missile view at the base. If another has spawned you can launch it immediately, if not you'll have to wait for it. How to hit the enemy If it all sounds easy so far, this is where it gets more difficult. Actually hitting an enemy plane with this thing involves learning a new flying technique to overcome the difficulties involved. The Wasserfall pilot needs to overcome three major hinderances to hit his target: 1) The high speed of the missile leaves little room for correction as you close on your target. If he jinks or you're slightly off you won't be able to correct and you'll fly right by. 2) The camera shake makes it slightly more difficult to tell exactly where you're aiming, especially as you get closer to your target. 3) In a dogfight you need to get behind the enemy to bring your guns to bear, and if you've been chasing your target this is probably the position you're in. But it's a bad position, because you can see the smallest possible target area. Point 3 is the most important by far. You're trying to steer a fast moving, unstable rocket into a moving target. Your chances of doing this increase massively if the target is large, and become much less if the target is small. When you approach an aircraft directly from behind then you can see the smallest possible surface area of that aircraft. This is most noticeable when trying to hit a flying wing. These aircraft are huge targets, but seen directly from behind they're just about as small a target as you could hope to see, just a long thin piece of metal that's damn hard to hit at high speed. To get around point 3, you need to approach the enemy from a direction that gives you the biggest possible target to hit. You want him to be the size of a barn in your crosshair as you approach, so even if you're slightly off you're still going to get a kill. I'm going to outline 3 ways of doing this. To practice this offline I recommend loading an instant battle in Essen, spawning on the Axis side. The bots hold the Allies off excellently so you'll have plenty of practice time, and the allies have an impressive range of aircraft to destroy. There's the C-47 cargo plane, two spitfires and a flying wing. They'll be continually over the Axis base, so you can be assured of having lots to shoot at. The bots don't like being downed much though, so watch for spitfires bombing the Wasserfall base. The first two approaches are well known standard dogfighting techniques, the third is slightly different so we'll start with the more familiar ones. Approach 1, the dive. It doesn't really matter if you're behind your enemy or if they're moving towards or across you, but if you are behind them and they're moving away from you then it reduces your relative speed and gives you more opportunity to hit. If you can maneouvre behind your target this is good. The first thing you need for this approach is height. Pull up and get as high above them as possible. You have plenty of speed so even if you're chasing a wing they won't get away. Once you're high level out and approach your target. The beauty of this approach is that the enemy can't see you even if they look in the rear view, so that's less likelihood that the enemy will dodge or bale. When you get above your target dive directly towards them. See how big they look? A flying wing is a massive target approached like this, and even a Spitty presents a pretty big area to aim at. Lead them a little and anticipate the point where you'll collide, you want to have to make the least possible adjustments to your flightpath. It doesn't matter where you hit them so go for the cockpit. If your timing is off you'll hopefully still hit them on the fuselage. If you miss, pull up immediately. If you're in position you can now go for approach 2, or bug out and pull a quick turn to get back on your target. If you miss and your target is low then you'll probably have a short flight to a big crater. Which is why I recommend approach 2. Approach 2, the climb. This is identical to approach 1, but instead of going high you go as low as possible and pull up into your target. The beauty of this approach is that if you miss you can immediately go into a diving approach and have another go. There are several drawbacks though: 1) Most BF pilots fly low, so to get lower you might be dodging trees and other ground obstacles. This is not good at the kind of speeds you'll be flying at. 2) You're susceptible to ground fire. Although you're going fast and are hard to hit, the Wasserfall doesn't seem to be particularly robust. I've had them instantly destroyed by AA blast damage that was aiming at the the aircraft I was after. 3) The pilot is more likely to be able to see your approach than he will be if you're well above him. If he spots you and starts taking avoiding action your job gets much harder. Approach 3, the cutoff For anyone who's been dogfighting since the game came out this is going to be the hardest approach to adjust to. Normally when the enemy turns you'd try and maneouvre into position directly behind them, but as we've seen that's where the Wasserfall has the hardest time hitting it's target. Instead of getting behind a turning enemy (and planes in BF turn a lot because the maps are so small) you need to anticipate the turn and cut it off. Here's a diagram to illustrate it. Here we're looking straight down from high up. The enemy is heading North and making a turn to go South East. We want to fly across this turn and hit them at the point shown. There's one big advantage, and one big disadvantage to doing this. The disadvantage is that the enemy is moving directly across us so we've got a more difficult target to lead and hit. The advantage far outweighs this though. Because the enemy plane is banking to make the turn, we can approach them from the same altitude but still have a nice big target to hit, just as we do with approach 1 and 2. If you anticipate where your target is going to turn you can easily get into a good position to intercept their path and have a good chance of hitting. In closing Although it may seem impossibly difficult at first, with a little practice the Wasserfall soon becomes a fearsome weapon. It has good range so you can launch blind towards the enemy base, which is a great first strike in Essen where the Wasserfall is at the spawn point. Whatever you do though, don't spend too long just flying around looking for targets. If you've taken down a few aircraft the enemy will make it a priority to bomb the Wasserfall launch point. It can be better to sit at the launch point watching the radar than getting bombed while you're flying around. There are going to be some players out there who don't see the value in having a player sitting in the launcher taking pot-shots at planes, but it's exactly the same value you get from having a good dogfighter on the team. The enemy is discouraged from flying against your team, and in '42 the aircraft are powerful weapons. If you can put the enemy off using them, you're half-way to victory. Good hunting! Morat. __________________ Desktop wallpapers by Morat at caedes

09-09-2003, 08:28 AM	#3 (permalink)
Morat Master Warrant Officer Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Diving towards your pos with my finger on the bomb release... Posts: 1,188	I landed one next to the flag nearest the Wasserfall base in Peenemunde and there was a satisfyingly large explosion that took out the Schwimwaggen that was there. I'm not sure how far away from it I landed though. I'll test it out tonight. It is good for taking out Natters on their launch ramps, but hitting one in the air is another matter. __________________ Desktop wallpapers by Morat at caedes

09-12-2003, 02:58 AM	#4 (permalink)
thunder_or_fd Master Sergeant Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Florida Posts: 525	2 interesting things i found about the wasserfall while i was playing with the bots today - 1: if you fly into a hangar you bounce around like a ball 2: the rocket kills any vehicle in 1 hit -- i blew up the giant allies tank (T something) in 1 hit every time i hit it dead on .. which wasnt too hard __________________

09-12-2003, 10:35 PM	#6 (permalink)
raging gamer Master Sergeant Join Date: May 2003 Location: At my desk in Texas Posts: 510	u hve no life __________________ Thanks a TON yettix for this kick a$s Siggy ! \"Stupid raging gamer\"- abyss after he was shot down lol

09-14-2003, 07:37 PM	#8 (permalink)
Fragmeister Sergeant Major Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Hawaii Posts: 632	its a bug. t doesnt really go out faster, but the fire and noise and fuel bare are all gone. i am very good with the wasserfall. i cannot seem to hit goblins but i love killing those C-47's. you can kill so many ppl at one time, too! fun fun... i have never really tried to kill a tank with it before, because i only have used it at (umm... the one with the ocean inbetween and the higgins boats) and tanks are not really the threat. __________________ \"wakka wakka wakka.\" Surrender now and win the Free Hat!

09-08-2003, 10:02 PM	#2 (permalink)
mr. peabody Warrant Officer First Class Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: usa Posts: 874	i have a joystick, but i use the mouse for the rocket. i dunno why. and if you dont see any planes, you can always go to the airfield, where the planes are even easier to hit. can you kill tanks with these? i could never try, i can never see them until i pass them.

09-12-2003, 03:50 PM	#5 (permalink)
sithlord Private 1st Class Join Date: Dec 2002 Posts: 125	on the maps where the allies have a dakota. you can kill it before it even leaves the ground. They spawn at the same rate so ya the dakota gets 2-3s to roll down the runway but it still dies. Easy way to rack up kills AND keep the mobile spawn grounded.

09-12-2003, 11:01 PM	#7 (permalink)
mr. peabody Warrant Officer First Class Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: usa Posts: 874	oh man! you can kill tanks with it, i think. i rammed into it, right on. its a lot easier if you let the fuel run out, so you just gliding really fast. and it seems to me the fuel runs out a lot quicker online, than in single player. or maybe it was the map.

09-14-2003, 07:42 PM	#9 (permalink)
grim reaper Forum Moderator Brigadier General Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: England Posts: 7,256	nice guide, this should be stickyed.

09-15-2003, 01:19 AM	#10 (permalink)
thunder_or_fd Master Sergeant Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Florida Posts: 525	I think it does really run out faster - because the jetpack you only get like 3 taps of space before it runs out (although it recharges really quick) meaning u cant get maximum distance like you can with the bots The natter runs out real fast too __________________

09-15-2003, 09:31 PM	#11 (permalink)
sithlord Private 1st Class Join Date: Dec 2002 Posts: 125	Played Essen this weekend. If you just chillin in the missle room wait for someone to say Enemy Armor Spotted! Launch that bad boy an bam. NEGATIVE! no armor no more. All 10mins of the game I did this. Of course the planecampers on the other team never did so much as fire a MG at me.

09-16-2003, 04:11 AM	#12 (permalink)
NavalLord Forum Moderator Brigadier General Join Date: May 2003 Posts: 6,149	i cant kill the flying wings with this thing, it just bounces right off the wing! does this happen to anyone else? it is really annoying because i hit it dead on everytime and it bounces off! __________________

10-25-2003, 01:45 AM	#13 (permalink)
Darth Chippy Private Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 72	...but how do you fly it? in the manual it says u steer with your mouse, but that just seems to spin it around. do u steer it with your keyboard? whenever i try i die before i find out __________________ Darth Chippy Veni, Vini, Vici I came, I saw, I conquered. ~ Julius Caesar

10-29-2003, 07:46 PM	#14 (permalink)
Fragmeister Sergeant Major Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Hawaii Posts: 632	use your keyboard!!!! the mouse is needed to aim before launch, but when you fly, use the keayboard! __________________ \"wakka wakka wakka.\" Surrender now and win the Free Hat!