Banshee pilot ejection 101, courtesy of the Bad Cyborg research labs!

(6:40) Level 10 ('The Maw') on Easy. Seeing a Banshee pilot fall out of his machine is nothing new; I've shown plenty of examples in my Banshee battling movies for level 2. But now for the first time I have a way of causing ejection. Check out the story here, which includes some fun with the ejected pilot. I'm using the same save as in BCM170; I've just tag-snatched a Banshee and got a checkpoint. This ejection business is also covered in my new article about fun with a snatched Banshee.

Released February 25th 2016, gameplay recorded February 18th-24th 2016 except for level 2 footage from 2015.

00:02 (Idea for ejection) The movie intially takes a documentary approach, describing how this stuff came about; namely from seeing Banshees scrape walls in level 2, causing pilot ejection. The Banshee battling clips shown here were left over from working on BCM157, which featured three other ejections.

00:43 (Early failure) To start with, I was basically doing low circling such as shown in this continuation of the movie's opening clip. I didn't save any of the original failure footage though, so what you see here is actually just a recreation of the sort of thing I did. I kept at it for quite a while over multiple plays (the ripple transition is meant to signify the passing of a lot of time), but the pilot seemed to cope fine, so things weren't looking too promising.

01:20 (First success) Eventually I tried wilder flying, hoping to pressure him into trouble; and finally it worked! While leading him around in some angled circling with the circle's high point at the wall, he popped out and I subsequently had a bit of fun with him. He dives clear of my first two plasmas, and my third ends up redundant because I get impatient with his plasma fire and rocket him instead.

02:00 (Skim and head downwards) It looked like the thing to do was to be heading downwards after skimming, so that's what I focused on. This example was my fourth ejection, and happened on the opposite half of the ship, compared to the rest of the movie's footage. In those early times I was randomly using both halves, but I soon settled on just using the 'first' half - mainly because the background scenery is nicer, with the pretty planet.

02:19 (Best of all, skim and dive) Exploring further, I found that the best way seemed to be to skim and dive. That made things a lot easier, and often I was getting him out with less than a minute's work at the wall. This example is actually a very early one - my third ejection. I end up launching him with a tag and a rocket, which results in some nice blood spatter across the wall. My second rocket misses, but it was close!

02:43 (Herding him off) Herding the pilot off an edge of the ship is an obvious idea for entertainment. This example includes quite a novel ejection. After popping out, he gets a few nudges from the Banshee and it's a while before he eventually hits the ground - after which I blast the Banshee to make sure it's out of the way. My herding technique is fairly efficient, and as we get near the edge, I try to get him a certain distance away from it for his final leap. He mustn't be too near the edge or he'll jump away from it. I was also making an effort to try and get him to hit the bridge. I torment him with a few plasma pips on the way down - 'cause I'm a bad cyborg.

03:37 (Yikes! Tagged) He enjoys throwing grenades, and here you see my Banshee getting tagged. However, the blast ends up killing him, and then I launch his body up the wall, creating a nice trail of blood.

04:02 (Wrong pilot ejected) When skimming the wall there's a danger you might fall out yourself! Happily it seems rare, but here's the second time it happened to me. I narrowly avoid getting scythed down; had to jump over a Banshee leg quick. Then when it comes skimming around, I blast it with a rocket.

04:16 (Combat on foot) There's nothing terribly special about this clip but it was a nice bit of close action on foot. I dodge a swipe and tag him, getting a nice death scream.

04:33 (Snuffing failure) Eventually I had a thought. Is it possible for me to snuff plasmas like I've seen enemy pilots do? In my early tries such as this one, I soon found out that he throws rather high on the Banshee. Too high for me to be able to get it into the ground. Incidentally, this ejection was unusual, because the pilot came out even though I didn't fly down much after skimming. Indeed, that wasn't a dive I did; looks like I was just working up to my next one. I've seen other ejections like this, where the pilot didn't seem to be under much pressure, but they're rare.

04:54 (Snuffing success) I tried briefly raising the nose when he was throwing, so the grenade would hopefully stick lower. Seems to work! This clip shows my first ever ground snuffing.

05:23 (Snuffing using the wall) Before managing to do a ground snuff, I found that I could use the wall, which seems more convenient. This clip shows two such snuffings.

05:52 (Big send-off) I wanted a spectacular end to the movie, so here's what I came up with. This ejection came very soon after reaching the wall so I decided to include the lead-in footage too, showing how quickly you can get him out. After ejection, I dismount and tag him low while dodging a swipe, then I blast him against the wall with a rocket (which almost kills me too, but never mind). My plasma sets off his loose ones which send him flying into the distance, leaving a very nice blood trail!

Closing remarks I checked into this ejection idea in the course of making my previous movie BCM170 (rooftop fun), and established that ejection was possible. Three of the clips here are from that time - namely the first three which show ejections - but the rest of the level 10 footage was obtained after I finished BCM170. I refrained from including anything about pilot ejection in that movie, because I soon realized it would be better to leave it for a dedicated movie. Indeed, there's probably more pilot fun to come, so watch out!

As you may've noticed, I mostly alternated my clips between flying clockwise and anticlockwise. That makes things feel more varied, and hopefully it'll also mean you get less dizzy watching! As usual with my movies, I've also made an effort to maintain the beat of the music across clip transitions.

This new dose of fun prompted me to make a separate new article to cover all the fun you can have with a snatched Banshee. Previously I was covering such fun at the end of my original article on snatching, but a separate page was definitely a good idea.

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