4v4 Ball Guide | PlaneBall

Introduction to 4v4 Ball

Whether you are completely new to PlaneBall or you have played traditional 6v6 and are looking to gain a better understanding of 4v4, this guide is for you. 4v4 plays quite differently than 6v6 although a lot remains the same.

Objective and Overview

The objective of PlaneBall is to get the ball into your opponent’s goal, while preventing your opponent from shooting it into your own. Unfortunately as simple as that sounds a lot of players don’t seem to focus on the objective. Before getting into strategy, you should understand spawning and how the goal area is designed in 4v4. The ball spawns in the middle of the map at the start of the game and the start of overtime/sudden death (currently 4v4 uses sudden death while in 6v6 you play until a team reaches 6 goals). After a goal the ball spawns in front of the team that conceded the goal.

Planes spawn at either the top or bottom corner of the map. Planes spawn at the top corners at the start of the game and after each goal. Otherwise planes spawn opposite of the ball (if ball on bottom half of map, span top and vice versa).

Goals in 6v6 are small and many, if not the majority, of goals are scored by carrying the ball into the goal (“dunking”). 4v4 uses larger goals. To maintain balance with smaller team sizes, the area in front of the goal has special features. Inside the goal circle, a moderate amount of force pushes against planes to make it hard for them to be in the circle. Their heath also drains while inside the circle. It becomes more like real life sports where you have to carefully aim your shot to beat a goalie, generally from outside the circle. With enough momentum you can dunk the ball or at least get closer. However, goals from inside the circle count as 1 point while outside the circle is 2 points (all goals in the original 6v6 ball mode are 1 point).

Most Common Mistakes

The biggest mistake many players make is leaving the goal wide open. This is even more of an issue in 4v4 particularly because the goal is so large and there is less chance a teammate will be there to prevent an open shot. It is not uncommon for new or low rated players to fly directly through the opposing ball carrier. Often they do not kill the ball carrier to the ball carrier passes to a teammate and the result is a wide open goal to shoot at.

So the most important tip you need to take away from this guide is be careful not to leave the goal wide open. Even if you aren’t very skilled yet at defending just staying between an opposing ball carrier and your goal reduces the chance of giving up a goal significantly. Leaving the new open is almost always going to result in giving up a goal, but even if you haven’t mastered defending you will drastically reduce the probability of giving up a goal. It forces the ball carrier into either beating you with a good shot or killing you before or while shooting the ball. And any delay you force before they can shoot allows time for teammates to get back and help you defend.

In addition to not playing defense, a lot of new or low to even mid or higher rated players seem to not want the ball or not think about the ball when attacking. I’m not sure if they do not feel comfortable carrying it or just want to focus on killing, but you need to be aware of the ball at all times. 6v6 is a lot more chaotic and ball possession often changes frequently.

In 4v4 it is primarily the most skilled one or two ball handlers moving the ball. This is somewhat due to a very wide range of skill levels playing together, but even so all players need to contribute more than just kills on offense. Even if you aren’t good at staying alive with the ball, you should be able to identify when the ball carrier needs assistance and move into a position they can pass the ball to you (unless there is no time or it leaves your goal too vulnerable.. shift your focus to getting in position to defend). If you are new you should not rush to grab the ball when it spawns after the opposing team scores. Let the veterans on your plane start with the ball.

What to Do With the Ball

When you do get the ball you are will encounter a few different situations. If your team is mostly dead and the other team has at least a couple defenders, there is little hope of being a hero and scoring on your own in 4v4. Even the best players in 4v4 will have great difficulty scoring solo against 2 competent players unless their health is reduced enough to easily take them out. If you are on your team’s side of the map when getting overwhelmed you generally want to try to clear the ball as far as you can into the opponents side or bring it back into your goal. When you become more skilled, you may try to pass the ball to a respawning teammate. However, until you can do so comfortable you should always just attempt to move the ball as far away from your own goal as possible.

If you bring the ball back towards your own goal, your team can respawn if they died and you may be able to gain the advantage before pushing forward. If you get the ball in the middle of the map or ideally on the opposing side of the map and most opposing players are dead, you generally want to rush the ball towards the goal and attempt to score before the other team can respawn. Respawning takes very little time so you have to be quick, and most of the time they will spawn before you can score. However, with them not in great defending position you may have enough advantage to kill them again before they can set up.

If both teams are at similar strength when in the middle of the map, if you have the ball you are generally going to want to look to pass to one of your strong ball carriers. If the higher rated players on your team died you’ll likely want to try to safely hold it or maybe retreat slightly to allow them to respawn. If at risk, just clear the ball as deep as possible into the opponent’s side. If you are a low rated player your role is primarily to get the ball to your team’s playmakers and not make costly mistakes like leaving the goal wide open. You aren’t expected to carry the team and mostly your teammates will be happy enough as long you aren’t giving away freebie goals and you are getting some kills.

Plane Strategies

Loopy

Loopy is one easiest to use planes to due decent firepower with missiles that change direction to track their target, effective secondary weapons, great turning ability, and good speed. Their weaknesses are low hp and shooting the ball slower than all other planes.

Even as a new player there is never any reason to use Tracker in 4v4. In fact the only time you can somewhat justify using it at all in Altitude is on a wide open map, and even then it usually is not wise. When flying on maps with obstacles, the advanced tracking usually does more harm than good as your missiles will often try to target an enemy plane other than the one you want them to or otherwise quickly turn and crash into something other than an enemy plane.

So if you want to use EMP that leaves Double Fire which has a more powerful but slower tracking attack. In either case you should always use Heavy Armor for your green perk and Turbocharger for your blue perk. Without Heavy Armor it is impossible to stay alive for long as a Loopy. Even with Heavy Armor it doesn’t take much to take you down. Choice of blue perk is less essential (ignoring reverse thrust which you should never use), but you’ll definitely benefit from the faster energy regeneration of Turbocharger more than anything else.

Double Fire is the most commonly used plane in Altitude although it is arguably a little weaker in 4v4 than 6v6. Still, having a plane with EMP or your team or not can significantly affect how the game plays out. Using EMP against defenders is not only easy (defenders have to block the goal), but also very effective. A skilled goalie can make it nearly impossible to score, but it becomes very difficult to block the goal when EMP’d. Finally EMP is often used to reduce the ability for enemy mirandas to hide behind objects and avoid being killed. However, hitting a skilled Miranda with EMP can be challenging so expect to need a lot of practice before finding much success.

Acid Bomb is a similar projective to EMP, but instead of immobilizing, it briefly drains a little bit of health while making any projectiles that hit that plane cause a little more damage. It is better in some ways in 4v4 and worse in one significant way when compared to 6v6. In 6v6 you simply can hit more planes at once doing more damage because you shooting at a higher number of planes. In 6v6 when a player drops out and it becomes 5v5, I often find the effectiveness of Acid Bomb decreases enough that I switch planes until when/if it becomes 6v6 again. In 4v4 you may not do as much damage, but the damage you cause can be much more important.

Acid can be extremely effective on the opening (or sudden death) face off, perhaps even more so than EMP. If you land an acid bomb right where the ball spawns any opposing plane that picks the ball up or gets close will get hit. There is some difficulty though in that if you don’t get to center fast enough a miranda can grab the ball and get out before the acid hits. If you spawn top you should have no problem on most maps, but sometimes you won’t get there fast enough spawning bottom.

Acid is also effective in front of the goal. EMP is probably a bit more powerful, but it is a little harder to hit as it doesn’t stick around a little awhile like Acid. Also while EMP can be effective at the goal solo, Acid really needs some teammates firing into the goal area to result in a lot of damage. It can clear the goal very quickly though with some help.

Finally Acid is arguably even more effective at defending against mirandas than EMP in 4v4. EMP is better but only if you have teammates who are good at flanking or otherwise hunting down mirandas / skilled ball carriers in other planes. Often that isn’t the case though and Acid can cause a lot of trouble for mirandas who can be forced into eating the Acid to stay protected behind an object. Even if you aren’t able to kill them they will be down to only a hit or two by the time they are forced out and will be much easier to take down before they can find an open shot.

Bomber

Like Acid, Bomber won’t be able to do as much damage in 4v4 as in 6v6 due to fewer planes to hit when spamming its primary weapon. However, it is still an effective plane in 4v4 primarily due to having a faster shot compared to lighter planes while still being relatively nimble. Bomber can’t carry the ball as effectively as other planes, but when you get the ball near the opponent’s goal its firepower combined with shot speed can be deadly. Even without the ball you can of course spam the goal area although in practice it isn’t overpowered like you might think. The Bombs red perk is less effective at spamming the goal than in 6v6 simply because planes often spawn at the top corner and you will die quickly.

In my opinion all the red perks are about equally effective in 4v4 though, and I don’t think is important to go too in depth about bomber specific strategies. Give bomber a try and if you are really effective at killing with it may be a good fit for you. But chances are Loopy or Explodet are a better fit for the typical inexperienced player.

Explodet

Explodets, often called whales due to size, are generally your team’s primary defense. Being large they are hard to shoot past and missiles are quite good at disrupting an attack. Their missiles don’t do all that much damage, but they have good range and a lot faster than Loopy missiles. If you have really good aim you can typically hit planes quite far away without much trouble. Newer players for the most part though should just focus on the planes right outside the goal area though in addition to acting as a goalie while more experienced killers take down ball carriers. It will take awhile to master long range defense and some players may never achieve aim accurate enough.

Offensively, Explodet missiles are one of the most effective weapons to clear out any goalies. While missiles don’t that much direct damage, they can be used to push defenders out of the way to open up a shot or better yet back into the goal or wall to kill them.

Mines can slow down attackers either chasing you or completely block off routes near your goal if well placed. An underused ability of mines is the ability to boost your plane at high speeds by exploding your mine underneath you. This ability results in Explodet having one of the highest skill ceilings among planes. This is primarily effective when using remote mines, but it can still be done without them. However, very few players have ever mastered this skill. You probably won’t as well, but it is certainly worth practicing. You may not be able to pull it off regularly, but even the occasional boost can move your plane into a great position to attack or defend and catch the other team off guard.

Biplane

Biplanes are well rounded but take more skill (or at least good aim) to use effectively. They have good hp, can turn decently well if using flexible wings (which I’d recommend always using for biplane), have a strong enough shot although not as strong as explodet or bomber, and have powerful weapons.

I would argue that Dogfighter/Recoilless is one of the less useful planes in 4v4 although several players still use it. In 6v6 it is much easier for dogfighter/recoiless biplanes to wreck havoc on the opposing explodets. In 4v4 if you stray too far ahead your goal is too vulnerable. It isn’t necessarily a bad choice as the most skilled players can still do quite well with it. However, Heavy Cannon allows you to snipe your opponents while remaining between them and your team’s goal. In particular it can take down opposing ball carriers from a good distance and is one of the most effective ways to stop a skilled miranda. It does require the ability to “read” the miranda player as you have to shoot where you expect the miranda to be more so than where they currently are. Some mirandas are fairly easy to read while others are very unpredictable and can be hard to snipe.

Miranda

If you are inexperienced enough to need this guide, you are likely not ready to use Miranda competitively. There is minimum rating in Ranked you must have to even be allowed to use Miranda, although the primary purpose of this restriction is to prevent teams from having too many Mirandas.

However, Miranda isn’t a bad option for a mid-range player to learn. Just be prepared to switch to another plane if you have a high rated Miranda on your team. If you have higher rated players who primarily achieved their rating from killing ability and/or ball handing but not necessarily scoring, a mid-range Miranda is often very useful. If your use of Miranda leads to your team getting out killed you may need to switch to a plane you can kill with more effectively though.

One of the best benefits of using Miranda is that the ability to warp forward into the opposing goal area to shoot or grab a ball. Warping allows you to get deeper into the goal area without getting blasted by turrets than any of the other plane types.

Time Anchor can be incredibly good at playing goalie. It can move around a much wider area around the goal while avoid fire while using TA to immediately warp back and make a save. Combined with the potential for unmatched ball carrying/scoring ability, a great TA can be incredibly difficult to beat.

Trickster is similarly effective in 4v4, although its primary strength is the ability to continuously reverse direction behind objects to avoid fire. TA is much harder to hit right around the goal since it is more open. In open space Trickster is relatively simple to take down as it can’t move as quickly or as unpredictable as Time Anchor.

Very few ladder players should attempt to use Laser. I’m one of the only 4v4 players that uses it in rare circumstances and usually only do so when facing a team of at least two good Explodets. Laser is primarily effective against Explodets and Bombers, but it is often very difficult to use successfully again lighter planes. While occasionally it does work well for me, most of the time I end up switching back to something else.

Team Composition

Team composition is a little more flexible in 4v4 than 6v6. In 6v6 there are some almost universally agreed upon rules on what makes the best team comp. In 4v4 any reasonable team comp can be effective if used skillfully. I’d argue an ideal comp would have at least one explodet and one miranda but even that isn’t always necessary. 3 explodets (ideally with a good miranda) has proven to be extremely effective. It is very difficult to score against 3 explodets, but due to a lack of explodet players teams in ranked matches usually have one, two, or sometimes no explodets.