RTS

For all topics about the playing of Links, such as Swing Types etc.
dko
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Joined: August 19th, 2020, 4:26 am
Location: US West Coat

RTS

Post by dko »

I've been playing this game off and on since the Access days, and have always used the classic swing. I experimented a little with PS and RTS but quickly became frustrated and stuck with Classic.

Since MrT hijacked the forum (and I mean that in only the best way, since he is so interesting to read), I have a renewed interest in RTS. I have again begun playing with it in practice mode and while it still remains frustrating, I do agree with others that have said that it is more like the real thing than the other swing types.

I think the best speed I have achieved on a drive is 106 mph (about 170 kph to you MrT, if you read this), but seem to unfailingly hook everything because I can't seem to keep my swing on plane and almost always go just to the right of the intended path. For swing speed, (1) does it matter if I hesitate at the top of the swing, and (2) do I have to really accelerate the mouse to get a higher speed? For flight path, is there any trick to better control the swing path to either hit more squarely or, say swing from the inside to get a designed fade?

I suspect the answers to my questions are practice, practice, practice, but was wondering if any of you who swear by RTS have any additional insight you might share with me?
Doug
pmgolf
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Location: near Richmond, VA

Re: RTS

Post by pmgolf »

I've been playing RTS since 2007, and I have a bucket-load of tips. I have to run a few errands this morning, but I will come back and lay them out for you when I get back. :smile:

Pete
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MrT
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Re: RTS

Post by MrT »

dko wrote: April 7th, 2022, 8:52 am I've been playing this game off and on since the Access days, and have always used the classic swing. I experimented a little with PS and RTS but quickly became frustrated and stuck with Classic.

Since MrT hijacked the forum (and I mean that in only the best way, since he is so interesting to read), I have a renewed interest in RTS. I have again begun playing with it in practice mode and while it still remains frustrating, I do agree with others that have said that it is more like the real thing than the other swing types.

I think the best speed I have achieved on a drive is 106 mph (about 170 kph to you MrT, if you read this), but seem to unfailingly hook everything because I can't seem to keep my swing on plane and almost always go just to the right of the intended path. For swing speed, (1) does it matter if I hesitate at the top of the swing, and (2) do I have to really accelerate the mouse to get a higher speed? For flight path, is there any trick to better control the swing path to either hit more squarely or, say swing from the inside to get a designed fade?

I suspect the answers to my questions are practice, practice, practice, but was wondering if any of you who swear by RTS have any additional insight you might share with me?
While you wait for pmgolf's wisdom and experience, I will provide my $0.02....

I suppose that there is more than one way to improve.

For me, in using RTS, what has improved my outcomes the most has been to learn to stay relaxed. Any bit of tensing up in my body seems to have consequences on my swing. I have played probably around 500-550 games since I returned to the game about 1 year ago, 16 months ago. My average length is currently 258 meters or about 285 yards (I was born in Europe, but I have been a US citizen for a long time and I can use either the metric or the imperial system). If I look at just my last 150-200 games, my average is 260 meters or 286 yards. % of shots on fairways 85-86%, but I play a lot of tough courses (most of my games are played on the hard ones with narrow fairways, etc. ). And I probably never played a single game without wind after the first week. Being a fanatic for realism, if I play around water, wind is always set to gusty or even more so windy. I am saying this for my driving is actually really good. If the rest of my game came close to my driving, I would probably be annoyed and have quit already.
Longest drive ever 358-359 meters or almost 400 yards (Kapalua, long par 5 downhill) . I am writing this not to brag, there is nothing to brag since driving golf balls is not a standalone sport, but to point out that at the beginning I was a disaster and I kept hooking or slicing like there was no tomorrow. And I stayed bad for about a month. I even created a contraption to slide my arm straight in between two rails. It did not help much! So I realized that my hand/wrist movement had to be smoother and started to hit with less forward movement which, actually, was creating higher speeds? And there I began to get it right. Once I relaxed 100%, I started to hit straight like an arrow, unless an evil wind pushed the shots out of the way, that is.

I am currently transitioning to Champ level, i.e. no red-bar. But I have used that mode in practice to train. When I look at the red bar, often I am too worried about where to stop and concentrate less on the shot. Without red bar it is all about the shot. I often hit with closed eyes and can feel the loading in my hand. I am still not there with short shots, but with long shots I can hit with closed eyes. I relax, go to a happy place, and let go. When I play with woods usually, even in Pro mode, I do not look at the red bar and do on my own.

Fading/etc ... You can play a bit with the position of the golf ball and the club faces. But that takes forever in RTS and it is not as evident as in Classic Swing. I am saying one thing and maybe it is just my imagination: the last 3-4 months, I think of fading the ball and it happens. I got to a point that I move the mouse only so slightly that I can actually slice or hook the shot on purpose by amounts that are good to go around trees or to avoid the wind pushing my shots into the woods, etc. Links never ceases to amaze me. This game must have come from another planet.

Type of mouse. I tried probably 5 different mice (big, small, gaming, ergonomic, you name it, I have them laying around) and it did not make much of a difference. However, if the mouse does not track well, then you have an issue. It happened to me once and there was a little amount of lint in the bottom which I collected somehow. I was hitting horribly and it felt bizarre. So I checked. Once I cleaned the bottom of the mouse, everything went back to normal. I am back to use my everyday mouse and not planning to buy any fancy one. Also be careful of the batteries.. A couple of times the batteries were on their last bits of juice and the mouse was not operating properly.

Water. There is no denying that water or the OBs hazards are the nasty ones. Going over the water is not usually an issue, stopping the ball close to the pin is. In particular if you, like me, use Mc/Mc as your slowest setup. If the pin is 5-10 yards from the water (difficult pin positions, 90% of the times just put the cups around the perimeter of the greens), I have not found the recipe for success. If the cup is in the middle, I am better. I need to play pretending that there is no water, just fairway. The moment I get caught thinking of water, my body tenses up and the shots lose 10-15 mph. I play that trick and I am good. "There is no water, it is just an illusion!".

Woods/irons. I am much better with woods in this game than with irons (in real life it is the opposite). What helped improving my game was to start using W5 a lot. I got rid of I1 (hardly ever used) and I2. That helped me a lot. Irons I go through phases, even now that I have accumulated experience: one week they fly like kites, another week the speed is so low that I need to almost up two clubs. Never managed to understand why. So, I learned to do a lot with W5. I also almost gave up on chips. With Mc/Mc or higher and some of the nastiest greens, balls never stop or stop too soon. I found that LW in flop mode is my savior on the golf course. High trajectories produce lesser horizontal speeds on landing. Chips I do use, but only if the greens are of the flattish kind. Very volatile though. One game I might sink 3 chips and then go 1 week without one single one going in. Not sure if it is my swing or just I cannot read the greens. Same outcome though.

Surprisingly perhaps, I still play in Classic Swing mode with a different player. The two modes do not harm each other. But they do not even help each other either. So there is no real benefit. I just find RTS much more rewarding feeling-wise. As soon as I switched to Mc/Mc or higher, it really felt like on the real courses: swearing, cursing, wishing bouts of diarrhea on the "enemies" (I assume you can guess who they might be), jumping from my chair for a shot went into the cup, etc. . The good news is that, again, while after switching to Mc/Mc I felt like powerless and thought I was never going to master it, now it feels even sort of slow 85-90% of the time.

What does separate me from scoring -10, -15 regularly?. Putting! It is not that I am missing much, the problem is that I have become a specialist in missing the hole by a few inches. In golf, unlike track, you cannot say "I got second on the 100meters but I still run in 9:90! ". In golf either the ball goes in or it does not. Sad, but what can we do? What kills me on putting? Slanted greens, in RTS I plan a certain trajectory but then over-correct it on release. In Classic swing I cannot do that, at least. In RTS, I can see my arrow completely out of alignment after a putt on slanted greens. It is the only part of the game where I have not made any worthwhile improvement and for which I have not a single word of advice. Needless to say, perhaps: when moving from standard to challenging settings, the aspect of the game that requires the most re-learning is putting because with fast greens even a small pitch can take the ball on a journey completely off the path to the hole if not accounted properly and balls will not stop easy once they get going.
Last edited by MrT on April 8th, 2022, 4:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Jimbo
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Re: RTS

Post by Jimbo »

Is that 2 cents Canadian or American?
dko
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Re: RTS

Post by dko »

What a great reply, MrT, and thank you very much! Not only informative, but as usual entertaining.

I also look forward to Pete's answer.

BTW, I did get a few drives out around 280 but they were a bit wind-aided (I always use breezy conditions). Many more were of the 130-yard duck hook variety.

I also typically only play the tougher courses with penalty rough, and even using the classic swing only hit the fairway less than 60% of the time. Hitting "the six" has never been my strong point, so I choose to try draws and fades to compensate. Your 85% success rate is amazing to me.
Doug
pmgolf
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Re: RTS

Post by pmgolf »

My wife and I chose today to go get our new iPhones (the $500 iPhone 13). Need I say more about how it went? We spent the day trying to switch from our i7's to the i13's. They don't switch them for you anymore, apparently. Now, at just past 6:30, we got them both working. It would be hard to describe just how frustrating it was!

Fade and Draw with RTS:

Clickers have Fade and Draw available to them but RTSers are supposed to make some magical mouse movement that I find impossible. This fixes it.

A. Select your favorite golfer and go into an 18 hole round at any course.

B. In the game screen bottom's MENU, click on "Shot Options", inside that, select "Swing Options". Change the swing type to "click".

C. Go to the Shot "Setup". (Right click on the swing icon - choose "Setup")

D. IMPORTANT: Uncheck the "This shot only" check mark box.

E. Choose a Driver to start with.

1. Select "Fade" and take note of where the "Swing Plane", "Club Face" and "Trajectory" sliders have moved to.

2. Choose "Flop" and reset the sliders to the "Fade" selections. (Also adjust Trajectory to 2 clicks down for Driver and 4 clicks down for all others)

3. Select "Draw" and take note of where the "Swing Plane", "Club Face" and "Trajectory" sliders have moved to.

4. Choose "Punch" and reset the sliders to the "Draw" selections. (Also adjust Trajectory to 2 clicks down for Driver and 4 clicks down for all others)

5. Change to the next club.

6. Repeat steps 1 thru 5 for all your clubs.

F. Click the "Shot Setup" OK button.

G. Once back in the game, change the swing type to "RTS". (Game screen bottom menu, "Shot Options", "Swing Options")

If it worked, "Flop" is now your Fade setting, and "Punch" is now your Draw setting. If it didn't work, the "This Shot Only" box was probably NOT unchecked. (It makes the change permanent)

Tips:
To pass settings to your other named players, "Clone" the one you set up to a new golfer. The settings will pass along.

High trajectories create more fade and lower trajectories create a more violent draw. The Driver has the most violent Fade and Draw. To aim the Driver, pick a spot 250 yards out and fade away right from or draw away left from that spot.

Wind can greatly affect the amount of Fade and Draw.

"Sweet spot" ball-club contact will produce the best amount of Fade/Draw.

"<<" is the direction of the wind. "Fade"<< (fade against the wind) reduces the amount of Fade movement. And >>"Draw" reduces the amount of Draw movement.

The 2i and 3i work a lot better when hitting a Fade or Draw. They can be a bit uncontrollable for just a straight shot.

TRAJECTORY should be 2 clicks down from the top for Driver and 4 clicks down for other woods and irons.

______ Swing Plane: ________________ Club Face settings:
Fade: -2 for woods and -3 for irons // +2 for woods and +3 for irons
Draw: +2 for woods and +3 for Irons // -2 for woods and -3 for irons
Irons: Reduce settings to -2 or +2 to reduce severity of Fade/Draw

This should make the game much more enjoyable for RTSers.

Pete (more tomorrow)
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MrT
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Re: RTS

Post by MrT »

Jimbo wrote: April 7th, 2022, 9:12 pm Is that 2 cents Canadian or American?
Very little in any case. Cannot buy anything with that. :dunno:
dko
Posts: 138
Joined: August 19th, 2020, 4:26 am
Location: US West Coat

Re: RTS

Post by dko »

I thought I posted a response to Pete's post, but don't see it. I'll try again.

Pete, you've certainly done a lot of research/testing! I'm going to try your suggestions and see where it goes from there.

Thanks very much.
Doug
pmgolf
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Re: RTS

Post by pmgolf »

I recommend using a wired mouse. I use a Logitech B100, but the M100 works just as well (~$7 at Amazon). Better response than the wireless ones.

Go into the game and start your round. Click to start your swing and then place a 3" piece of scotch tape over the red swing bar. Using a soft-tip marker pen (fine point if possible), place a mark in the middle of the tape over the red swing bar, then a mark in the middle of the area between that middle and the end and a mark between the middle and the beginning. Another mark in the middle of the resulting areas until you've got a grid of dots that looks good to you. Now when you practice pitching, chipping and putting at "The Complex", note how far the ball flies and then finishes rolling when you swing goes to each of those dots. Also practice hitting shots with one click of elevation - 2 clicks up, 3 clicks up, etc. Also 2 clicks down from normal, 4 clicks, down, etc. I use the LW for most of my short game play. I don't use the SW at all. (I don't carry it)

Practice lag putting. You can get yourself in real trouble trying to sink every putt until you understand how hard to hit the putt and how much break to play. The first step for putting is getting used to the distances. Practice on flat greens, like the ones in "The Complex", which is also a good place for practicing chipping and pitching.

I use the LW for chipping. The key to it is examining the shot. Full elevation (with 90%-ish power) gives you a carry of about 56 feet, with a total distance including rollout of 23 yards with F Fc conditions. You need to pay attention to the landing area. If there is any uphill slope there, the ball will stop more quickly - downhill and it will roll out more. Hard conditions give you slightly more distance - soft conditions less.

My favorite setting for the LW chip is 4 clicks of elevation. Nice balance of distance with limited rollout. 90%+ power (I rarely use full power - I back off of it a bit), F Fc conditions, gives you 22 yards of carry and total rollout of 29 yards. Same qualifiers for the landing area.

Standard loft chip, F Fc conditions, rarely used at full power - too unpredictable. 32 yds, rollout to 40 yds. But at 50% power: 26 to 33 feet carry, 47 to 57 feet with rollout.

Chip tip: PW chip, standard loft. Not for faster conditions, but great for M Fc or slower. Needs to be practiced, but great for shortish (~20 ft) chips that are pretty flat. 8' carry, 25ish' with rollout. Aim at the pin! (If you have a pin that's several feet uphill of you (like 20" to 30" elevated) and 20 to 30 feet away, medium to slower conditions, this shot flies low, scoots up the hill and stops. Try it.)

Pete
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Danny D
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Re: RTS

Post by Danny D »

For what it's worth, the old ball mouses with a serial port plug were the best thing for RTS and Powerstroke. I was a powerstroker for quite a few years, but when the mouses switched over to USB, It completely killed my powerstoke game. The mouses became erratic and completely uncontrollable when using USB ports. I think the problem was mostly software/driver related. Now none of my computers have serial ports, so I gave up on PS. Back then my average scores with Pro PS was 12 to 15 under par. I was shooting 6 to 8 under using champ PS. I loved PS, but had to give it up. :sad:

Dan
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