Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War/Game Mechanics and Glitches
From SDA Knowledge Base
Contents
Game Mechanics
Be sure to check out the additional resources page for a general game things like playable aircraft stats and how wingmate commands work. This section will include an explanation of speedrunning strategies with relation to the game mechanics.
Movement
speed
Each aircraft will have a different speed stat, this stat actually effects quite a few things, including the soft and hard speed caps, and the rate at which you accelerate. Obviously a faster craft will be able to accelerate faster, and have a higher speed cap. Slowing down with the air brakes and speeding back up will lose a hefty amount of time when traveling between targets, so the general strategy should be to keep up at max speed for as long as possible without slowing down. Even if this means looping a little bit out of the way in order to keep your speed, it's usually worth it. Unfortunately by moving quickly, you have less time to react and take out targets, so a mistake at max speed is going to be more costly than a slow flying mistake.
mobility
Each aircraft will also have a mobility stat, this effects the rate at which the aircraft can turn. While AC0 is not nearly as extreme as previous AC games, going from an F4 to a SU-37 is pretty jarring. Getting used to how fast each aircraft can turn is an important part of being able to efficiently control the craft.
stability
Each aircraft has a stability stat, this stat effects the minimum speed it can travel at without stalling. Aircraft with high stability stats will be able to slow down to much lower speeds, which can be useful when you need to pump damage into a single slow/unmoving target.
Targets
Save 2 score missions, every other mission in AC0 ends when you finish off all priority targets. Priority targets are USUALLY red, as in, 99% of the time you need to shoot down every one in order to complete the mission. There are a few exceptions in which a specific target will trigger the end of a mission, or the next stage of a mission, without needing to kill all red targets. An example of this is the radar jammers in mission 9, which appear as red, but the mission still ends if you destroy Excalibur without destroying the jammers as well.
