Earth Faerie Aces is one of the really cool games on Neopets. It is sort of a combination of the classic Asteroids and Lunar Lander arcade games. You get to pilot your little ship around various masonry, pick up food pellets with your tractor beam, feed them to flowers, and redock to score points. The higher the level the more they place the masonry in difficult places.
The first step is learning to move your ship around. Gravity always drags you down, so most of the time you are going to be mostly thrusting up, just to keep in place. The best thing I’ve found is to concentrate mainly on either moving vertically or moving horizontally. Vertical is easy; you have to be pointing up anyway. So you just either thrust a bit more or a bit less. For horizontal it is best to cock the ship one or two notches to the side and let it gently slide you to one side as you maintain your vertical position.
It is important in moving not to build up too much momentum. Faerie physics are not like real physics. Horizontal momentum seems to build up dramatically more than you would expect. After a couple of thrusts it is best to right your ship vertically and maintain vertical position while your horizontal velocity dampens down. You usually have more than enough fuel so don’t worry about taking your time.
The next lesson in Faerie physics is moving with the food pellet. I don’t know if it is supposed to be a Mexican jumping bean or flubber, but it certainly doesn’t move like a dead weight! Any drastic movement is amplified by it and it will easily fling you into a “tailspin” when the pellet drags you left, right and then usually into the nearest wall. I never tilt the ship by more than two notches when carrying one, and I never give more than two thrusts before righting myself and letting the motion dampen down.
But even the best ace will get out of control. There are times when you think you have been gentle and it just keeps going. The best thing to do is relax, point the ship straight up, and just concentrate on maintaining a steady vertical position. Usually the pellet only flings you left and right. So if you can keep your altitude vertically, it will eventually dampen down, and bring you out of the spin. You can reassess where you are, and take off from there.
There is some more mystical physics involved in both picking up and dropping off the food pellet.
When you pick it up you are suddenly imparted with a downward velocity. Note, even if you pick it up at an angle it still (usually) pulls you straight down. This is useful in later levels where they place the pellet right above some masonry. If you pick it up in the usual manner, you go crashing down into the masonry. The trick is to hover just to one side of it, extend your tractor beam as far as possible, quickly stop thrusting and flip the ship 90 degrees onto its side. The tractor beam will stick straight out flat now, as you fall it will hit the pellet and pick it up. Now you are careening downwards, but with the pellet. You have both your falling velocity, the downward drag of the pellet, and the further freefall as you madly try to turn the ship back 90 degrees to vertical and level off. It isn’t quite as madcap as it seems. Just keep all your thrusting vertical to keep from going into a spin. The last trick to picking up a pellet is that you don’t have to user the t! ractor beam. If the center of your ship hits it, you grab it. This is essential when they annoyingly place it just _under_ masonry.
Dropping the pellet has nearly as many pitfalls. Just as picking it up drags you down, dropping it off shoots you upwards. If you aren’t careful, especially if you are conducting a controlled descent to the flower, you can go flying into masonry they so conveniently place overhead. But what first seems like a pain is actually kind of useful. On the levels where things are tight, if you get to where you are just hovering about one brick over the flower you can just go into freefall. The velocity you build up falling that distance is almost completely cancelled out by the lift you get from dropping the pellet. So if you execute the maneuver right, the pellet pops into the flower and you end up just hovering right there. A true Faerie Ace! The final top for dropping is that it also seems to cancel out any horizontal motion. If you get into one of those freakish out of control spins near a flower, concentrate on just the vertical, get the rhythm of the horizontal sways, and try! to get it so you are the right altitude so the pellet whacks the flower. You don’t have to drop it in the top; hitting it from the sides (or underneath) is just as good. If you are lucky the flower swallows it, your spin sputters out, and you can go back and land the ship.
Lastly landing is a feat that should not be ignored. There is nothing more frustrating that going through all that work to get a pellet, drop it and get back, only to flub it on the landing pad and lose it all. Keep well above it to start with. Adjust your horizontal position by just canting the ship one notch left or right. When you’ve got your horizontal, gently, gently drop it. Keep your cool, keep steady, and kiss that pad as gently as possible.
So, that’s my advice! Earth Faerie Aces isn’t the quickest way to earn Neopoints. If you want mindless profit, go play Kiko matches. But it is one of the more fun games. So practice the above, learn your skills and ace those pellets! – Jo_Grant