Metalstorm - Fly & dodge combat

✈️ Welcome to Metalstorm, the ultimate team-based multiplayer air combat experience! ✈️

🎮 Dive into a truly free-to-play game. Team up with friends and fight in 5v5 air combat against real players around the world. Collect and upgrade the world’s most advanced and legendary jets to dominate the skies. In Metalstorm, you’ll join forces with players from across the globe in epic, real-time PvP battles - and prove that you are the best ace pilot!

Features:

🧑🏻‍✈️ Fly legendary jets like the F-16 Fighting Falcon, F-35 Lightning II, F-22 Raptor, A-10 Thunderbolt II, Su-57 Felon, F/A-18 Hornet, and MiG-29 Fulcrum.

🎮 Crush your enemies in multiple game modes, from Team Deathmatch and Air Supremacy, to Elimination, and Custom Matches.

⚔️ Fight across desert canyons, frozen icebergs, and volcanic island maps.

🔓 Unlock and upgrade 31 planes across 20 levels.

🛫 Customize your plane to match your fighting style.

⏫ Upgrade your planes with unique and powerful Special Abilities.

🎨 Personalize your jet with spectacular paint jobs and customizable decals.

🏆 Join a Squadron and compete to earn weekly rewards from Squadron events.

Don't miss out on the ultimate fighter jet combat experience - Download Metalstorm now!

Metalstorm Beginner’s Guide: Tips, Tricks & Strategies to Dominate the Skies

BASICS: FLIGHT CHECKS

You won’t stay a nugget for too long. Now raise the throttle gently.

Air combat games take a bit of getting used to, and Metalstorm is no different. Here are some of the basics to get you started so you can understand everything on your screen.

Optimal Maneuver Speed

Splash one, splash one!

On your speed indicator, you should see a little bar highlighted. That’s your Optimal Maneuver Speed indicator, which tells you at what speed your plane turns tightest. It’s usually pretty high up with Heavy Fighters, and fairly low with Attackers and Light Fighters. Be particularly careful if it is located low on the speed bar: You might risk stalling in a dogfight if you airbrake too hard!

Radar Warning Receiver

Enemy radar spike!

You see those orange arrows that appear when an enemy plane looks at you funny? Do you see them turn red when they fire missiles? That’s your Radar Warning Receiver, warning you of enemy missile locks and missile attacks. The ideal position is usually to have your tail faced away from the plane, popping flares once the enemy missile gets close. You can tell a missile’s distance by how fast the warning beeps are going and how squished the missile arrow is.

Radar

New hostile, bearing 350! Range: 12 miles.

A pilot’s best friend, your Radar tells you where enemies and allies are. Enemies can hide from you as long as there is terrain between you and them, but if you have any sort of line of sight of an enemy plane from any direction, even Stealth aircraft for some reason, they will appear on your radar. Use this to know which opponent you are at the best angle to attack, but keep in mind too that you are fighting in a 3-dimensional plane: You may turn around and see nothing even if your radar says they’re right in your face, but that may simply mean they’re above or below you.

Remember also that you can hide from enemy radars using the terrain, though teammates will relay anything they see to your radar and the same happens to you. Use the radar to identify threats, check if allies need help, and figure out where the enemy is and if they’re pointed at you.

Missiles

Missile away, missile away!

Most Guided Missiles use a radar circle to lock on. To lock on to a target with anything other than Beam Rider Missiles, simply get in range of your target then keep them in the targeting circle. Once you lock on, fire a missile! With Radar Guided and Infrared Missiles, you can fire and turn away. With Manual-Guided Missiles, you need to keep the target in the circle until the missile slaps them.

Beam Rider missiles can be fired without a lock and will chase your gun reticule until it hits something or someone. If you’re used to hard simulators, you’ll be surprised at just how short the ranges of these missiles are, which forces players into dogfights. If you play games like Ace Combat and HAWX on the other hand, you’ll feel right at home.

Gun

Corncob, you are Winchester, zero missiles left in reserve!

Once you get in close enough, a gun lead indicator will appear on the enemy plane you’re chasing. Aiming for that allows you to hit the target with your guns, which isn’t too hard as the game has a very forgiving aim-assist system.

As soon as you hold down the Gun button, your plane will try to swing its nose toward the lead reticule, but you still have to adjust a bit to make sure you hit if you’re coming in from a bad angle. You also have to be careful lest the aim-assist smash you into terrain!

Flares

MISSILE ALERT MISSILE ALERT MISSILE ALERT

Apart from mountains, flying really hard, and generally never letting your opponent get a good lock angle at you in the first place, flares are one of your tools for dodging missiles. Unlike real flares, these also work on Radar-Guided and Manual-Guided missiles along with Infrareds, though Beam Riders ignore them completely.

That being said, they’re not a guaranteed dodge: While they confuse a missile, that missile is still traveling in your general direction, so fly out of the way while the flares make the missile wiggle!

GENERAL TIPS

The desired result when encountering enemy aircraft.

Now we’re done with the basics, here are some general tips about flight and combat. Keeping these in mind lets you not end up like the other guy in the image pictured.

Ace Combat Player? Ditch Standard Turning and Invert Your Up Direction For Extra Control

G-forces? HAHAHAHAHA

Standard Turning allows your plane to turn left and right if you move the stick left and right. This is easy, and understandable, and greatly limits your ability to control your maneuvers! You can change the controls in the Settings menu. Changing it to Advanced makes it so you have to manually roll your plane and then pull the stick to turn, much like a real aircraft.

While this takes some getting used to if you’ve never played air combat games like Ace Combat before, it quickly becomes second nature and this allows you to pull tighter banking turns, use soft rudder-only turns since you also get a rudder slider, and pull stunts like Barrel Rolls, Immelmann Turns and other such maneuvers more easily than if you’d stuck to the normal controls.

Dogfighting vs Boom and Zoom vs BVR Sniping

Combat at all ranges and speeds.

Whether you enter a turning battle up close, that is called a dogfight, and hit-and-run attacks from above usually form a lot of boom and zoom tactics. Lastly, BVR stands for Beyond Visual Range, ie slapping people halfway across several post codes with a long-range missile.

What you decide to do depends on both your opponent and the plane you fly: Light Fighters tend to be great turn-fighters and close-range zoomers but suffer against BVR attacks thanks to their poor HP and lack of Radar-Guided Missiles, so they usually have to fly low and tight. Medium fighters are balanced in all aspects and are masters of none, and thus can be used in most roles as long as you fight with a wrinkly brain.

Heavy Fighters are excellent zoomers and can seriously threaten enemies who use BVR attacks thanks to their mix of high speed and HP, so while they can fight at most altitudes, turnfighting is their weakness and they excel in threatening Interceptors.

Interceptors primarily rely on BVR attacks and die horribly when Attackers and Light Fighters get within range of them, and usually have to stay high up to avoid dogfights against Attackers and Light Fighters and make the most of their long range.

Attackers are powerful close-range dogfighters who are typically incapable of zooming and booming and can usually take a long-range missile or two long enough to hide, with their weakness being the nigh-total inability to pick fights on their own terms, so unless it’s a Su-34 they have to take targets of opportunity and support friendlies nearby while flying fairly low.

Speed is Life

Fly fast!

That being said, speed is highly important as it lets you dictate the tempo of a fight. While slower planes like the A-6 and A-10 can turn tighter and are quite dangerous in a close-in battle, faster planes like the MiG-31 can simply run away and either fight someone else or safely toss long-range missiles at them.

Fast planes will always have the initiative against slower planes since the faster plane gets to pick and choose its prey while the slower one is forced to put up with whatever goes after it. And if the pilot makes a bad choice, that same speed can let them change that choice and make a better one, provided their plane hasn’t been splashed yet. Speed is also the reason you never bring an A-6 and A-10 to Air Superiority mode: You need speed to capture control points!

High Altitude is Life Insurance

Fly high!

At the start of battle, unless you’re using Light Fighters or Attackers, getting some altitude at the start of a fight is important as most Medium Fighters, Heavy Fighters, and Interceptors not only have access to longer-range missiles, it also allows you to trade that altitude for speed once you need it so you can chase down foes you think you can take, and use the built-up flight speed to run away from anything you think you can’t take.

The layout of most maps makes this a tad harder to do than in real life though, as most maps involve very deep canyons or some form of indoor flight. Those canyons are the domain of Light Fighters and Attackers, which excel in turnfighting and close brawls. Of course, even as a Light Fighter, you can still use the extra altitude to swoop down on unsuspecting enemies who think you’re too scared of their F-111s to fly high.

Low Altitude Is A Shield

Fly smart!

As for you Light Fighters and Attackers, you really do NOT want to get in an F-111’s sight line lest you get slammed by Radar-Guided Missiles. Going at high altitude means you have no terrain to hide in, and Attackers are typically too slow and Light Fighters too squishy to survive an AIM-54 Phoenix to the face.

Take your MiG-21 down to the canyons to hide from those F-111s and their long-range missiles, and force such long-ranged planes to the missile reload pickups (or for the ones that still have guns and infrareds like MiG-31s, to a turn-fight!) so you can smack them with an infrared missile or unguided rockets.

Even later Light Fighters with Manual-Guided Missiles like the F-16 have a rough time flying high since a single long-range missile can cripple its wet tissue paper airframe and usually lose out in games of long-range missile chicken.

Help Teammates

All of those guys are looking at your buddy… and not you!

If you see a teammate being attacked, come to their aid! Not only will you be doing your buddy a favor, and racking up Savior bonuses, but you’re also in for a much easier fight: If your opponent’s eyes are glued to a target, that means they’re not looking at you, so you can swing in unseen and blow them up with less danger to yourself compared to attacking someone who is still looking for a scrap.

If several of them are coming after a single teammate, all the more you should jump in, since your buddy needs help even more badly! This is also a reminder for you to keep one eye on your radar when chasing someone, lest the entire enemy team chase YOU for being greedy!