heavy lasers cant hit fighters

[Fireskull]

A capships heavy lasers cant hit a fighter even if their "life" depends on it. The shoots are just too slow and have a low range.

I think we should increase the speed of heavy lasers and give them a better range. Actually, thats the same for all capship weapons, they are usually too slow to be effective as fighter defense.

[blue_paladin42]

Well, those heavy lasers aren't really meant for anti fighter, thats what the flak guns are for. I thinink the heavy lasers are like the description from WC I, for use against other large vessels. The asers DO make a pretty good deterent, cuz if they DO hit a fighter, it really messes em up. So instead fighters dodge like crazy, and hit you less. In the mean time, they also have to contend with your cargo wingman, if you have any. I really think capship fighting is pretty fun, and takes a little more thinking, as they cant dogfight.

[spiritplumber]

blue: this is indeed why i changed the heavy weapons


fire: are you sure we want capships that big? if we do, shouldn't we make their turrets bigger as well? your call, you've researched this more than me.

[Fireskull]

Yea, I am quite sure of their new size, of course different people will have different views.

As I told you on my e-mail, I am not sure about turrets because some of them are meant to be anti-fighter defense. If we have turrets that are the size of the players ship moving around extremely fast, we will lose a bit of realism.

Truthfuly, what I was thinking when I was resizing ships is that some turrets have waaaaay too many weapons mounted in them, what makes capship fire waaay too concentrated on a few spots. If we took those weapons and spread them among more turrets, we would have a much better coverage and I think we wouldnt need to change weapon speed.

When I was testing I actually gave myself a Confederation carrier ( better know as WC2 Concordia ) and checked all of its turret positions and weapons. Some of those turrets have four lasers, two flak cannons and a anti-matter gun. These weapons could be easily spread as five more turrets, what would give capships more flexibility on how many targets to attack, including fighters.

Is there a tutorial about this somewhere? I am a bit clueless about how to position weapons, but since I have went this far already I figure I might just learn it.

Lastly, I really feel what I showed you is the right size for capships, honestly. There is a bit of a shock when you see them yes, because what we used to have before was just waaaaaaay too small. The carriers for the most part, werent even at 1/4 of their actual size. In my opinion we should release the file as it is, of course with some minor corretions ( like those arrows which I didnt fix ) and just gather opinions from the players. We are still at alpha anyway.

[spiritplumber]

I have no problem at all with the sizes -- they look really good, I met a Sheffield in Perry yesterday and actually got to fly into its rear landing bay for once

The only problems are:


* We need to redo the distances in Gemini -- double them at least. Also make bigger planets, right now NC and Perry are bigger than planets!

* Turrets must be big enough to stick out clearly so that the player has a shot at destroying them.

* Anti-fighter turrets are circular ones, "artillery" turets look more like naval guns. We could add some smaller turrets I guess, but then it's impossible to fight a capship -- with the old style big turrets I got my ass kicked in a Broadsword vs. a DRAYMASTER <!>

[Wendy]

I have no problem at all with the sizes -- they look really good, I met a Sheffield in Perry yesterday and actually got to fly into its rear landing bay for once

The only problems are:


* We need to redo the distances in Gemini -- double them at least. Also make bigger planets, right now NC and Perry are bigger than planets!

* Turrets must be big enough to stick out clearly so that the player has a shot at destroying them.

* Anti-fighter turrets are circular ones, "artillery" turets look more like naval guns. We could add some smaller turrets I guess, but then it's impossible to fight a capship -- with the old style big turrets I got my ass kicked in a Broadsword vs. a DRAYMASTER <!>

Planet Size:
There comes an issue with being able to land and size of the object. As I understand it, there is or was a universal distance from the CENTRE of an object, planet or station specifically, that you were able to land in. THe obvious difference being with the ships. Make the planets larger and you need to fly INTO the planet to land. To change it they talked about doing the skin triangle gig and...<SHUDDER> Man all the work that would entail.

Turrets...
If you look at the capital ships of today, AND yesterday, they all have some sort of turrets. the R2-D2 20mm chain gun can take out missiles, aircraft and small vessels. There are two to four on a destroyer class vessel. Two at the bow, one per side, and two astern, again, one per side.

Then we have literal machine gun turrets of yesteryear. AND today. There are stancheons that accept single and twin fifties. In aircraft, look at the B-17 and B-29. The B-1, B-2 and other bombers have guns and missiles, but they don't carry much payload. The strato-lifters don't carry much armament at all, but the C-130 DOES and has guns to defend itself.

Now look back at the capital ships. I look at the Drayman as a small to medium sized freighter. THey used to have one or two 3" or 5" guns and several machine guns. Depending on WHO owned the ship, it might have as many as EIGHT machine gun emplacements, as well as a bow and an aft gun. More like a howitzer than an actual gun turret. Small deck guns in the 40, 60 or 80 mm flavour were common down the sides of the better armed freighters.

Capital ships in the 210 to 378 foot class, USCG ships that are being decommissioned as we speak, only had the one, single tube bow gun in an enclosed turret. 3" on the 210 and 5" on the 378. THen there were the .50" calibre machine guns. Two to six on a side.

Then you have the river patrol boats from Semi-Rigid Hull Inflatables around 17' to 23' in length, rigid hulled 32, 36, 38, 51, 53 and 82 footers not to mention the PT boats of WWII at 77 to 81'.

All had at least a .50" Cal. Though 20 to 50 millimetre guns chain are becoming popular today. Imagine a 17 to 23' SRHI with a 50mm Chain gun. 25.4 mm = 1 inch. a 1.75" gun? that fires a depleted uranium shell faster than a .50" Cal? On something that tiny? YEOWCH! ANd they are in use today.

W.

[Fireskull]

Before I came up with the topic to change capship scales I did a bit of experimentation with planets. I found out that if you increase their size 10x they will get reaaaaaally big and you still can land on them.

Planets are next, no worries folks.

[spiritplumber]

cool -- while you are at it, also 2x the distances in scripted systems you change planet sizes for. This pretty much aligns them with autogen systems, thus solving our problems elegantly

let us know which systems you're doing so that other people can do others...

also, re heavy guns -- try getting shot by a heavy plasma cannon (the Venture's main guns) in a Demon. You're dead in three shots. This said, if you can't dodge a HPC in a Demon you deserved it

[Fireskull]

Those plasma cannons were meant to hit other capships spirit.

Anti-fighter guns must do just enough damage, they dont need to destroy fighters with a single hit. What they need to do is -hit-, so they must be fast and low damage. High damage and slow just doesnt works.

[spiritplumber]

which is why now we have three "tiers" of turrets as opposed to two we need to sprinkle some antifighter turrets on the capships... i wish there was a way to do so visually.

Alternatively, we can have the big turrets shoot either small fast bolts or big slow bolts depending on who they're shooting at.

[blue_paladin42]

Hmmm, big capships aren't designed to fight fighters. Even fast tracking turrets only do so much. Thats why cappys have fighter escort. Anti-fighter defense is really more of a deterent than anything else. Thats why when you are on a strike mission, its important to destroy the escortys FIRST. Then its a simple matter of dodging flak and turret fire, and launching a torpedoe. If cappys can fight off fighters solo, then the game becomes unbalanced.

[spiritplumber]

Depends -- I get the idea that the Paradigm was more or less designed to go against fighters, for one. In general you're right tho...


and I would say that flak cannons as they are now mostly work. ^^;

[Hyena]

Then we have literal machine gun turrets of yesteryear. AND today. There are stancheons that accept single and twin fifties. In aircraft, look at the B-17 and B-29. The B-1, B-2 and other bombers have guns and missiles, but they don't carry much payload. The strato-lifters don't carry much armament at all, but the C-130 DOES and has guns to defend itself.

Problems with that statement:

B-1 Lancer and B-2 Spirit have NO guns whatsoever. They dont even have support for podded guns in their fire-control systems (although, in theory, a B-2 could shoot podded guns with the bomb-racks lowered). Also, the B-1, B-2, and B-52 can carry a few times the weight of an ENTIRE B-17 as payload.

The last bomber we had that could use a self-defense gun was the B-52. It was armed with 4 radar-directed .50cal M2's in the tail, but that has since been removed, and the space used for a drouge chute.

As for the C-130. The only C-130's to mount guns were the AC-130 gunships, and some MC-130's pretending to be AC-130's. These are side-mounted guns, fired on a ground target as the plane circles a target.

Just a few corrections

[spiritplumber]

Point made on turrets (besides, when was the last time you saw an air to air battle? the sixties?) and guns in general...


however, it's pretty obvious that Wing Commander is more or less WW2 in space... so we might want to mostly look at the airplanes and ships of that era.

[Fireskull]

Hmmm, big capships aren't designed to fight fighters. Even fast tracking turrets only do so much. Thats why cappys have fighter escort. Anti-fighter defense is really more of a deterent than anything else. Thats why when you are on a strike mission, its important to destroy the escortys FIRST. Then its a simple matter of dodging flak and turret fire, and launching a torpedoe. If cappys can fight off fighters solo, then the game becomes unbalanced.

I disagree with you completely.

The only reason capships need fighter scort is because fighters carry weapons with a higher range of fire than capships do, and thus can damage the capship badly while it cant defend itself.

There inst a balance between capships and fighters at all. With the exception of corvettes and other small capships, all capships just really really kick the ass of all fighters available, unless if they run away. The only reason fighters are used in a larger scale, besides their torpedo carrying ability, is because of power projection, its much quicker to send a squad of fighters than wait for slow lumbering capships to make their way in.

The only other way fighters could defeat capships is to outnumber its gunfire so the capship in question cant defend itself against so many fighters. But that would be much more expensive in material and human loss than just overpowering the said capship with more capships.

In a earlier post, I also remember you said capships used only flak cannons to attack fighters, that is a wrong statement too. At wc3 and wc4 capships have no flak cannon whatsoever, and use lasers and tachyon cannons to shoot fighters. This is specially true about paradigms ( even if they werent seen at wc3 ) which is a destroyer designed with the purpose to scort other capships against fighter attacks.

The difference between a gilgamesh ( a anti-capship capship ) and a paradigm ( a anti-fighter capship ) is in their weapons loadout. While a gilgamesh has more bigger and slow guns, a Paradigm has light and quick guns. Neither design is better or worse, a Gilgamesh wouldnt have enough quick guns to target fighters properly, while a Paradigm wouldnt have enough big guns to really damage the thick armor of other capships.

Plus, WC is just fiction. They use a different logic than we do.. I just follow along with what was, and how it was, used in previous games.

edit: from the wc3 manual.

Laser Turret

Capital ships are especially vulnerable to concentrated attacks by incoming fighters. For this reason, laser turret guns were mounted to provide point-defense for particular capital ships surfaces. This weapon can both engage light fighters and destroy incoming missiles. The capital-ship version of the laser can hit a fighter with twice the normal damage ( two regular lasers are mounted on each turret ) and the quick refire rate is more than twice that of regular lasers.

Stats, so we can compare:

Fighte laser:

Penetration 18 range 5000 energy 10 nJ refire .25 sec

cap ship laser

Penetration 25 range 4000 energy 15nJ refire delay .2 sec

[Wendy]

Problems with that statement:
<SNIP!>
Just a few corrections

;-p


Point well taken,

W.

[blue_paladin42]

At wc3 and wc4 capships have no flak cannon whatsoever, and use lasers and tachyon cannons to shoot fighters. This is specially true about paradigms ( even if they werent seen at wc3 ) which is a destroyer designed with the purpose to scort other capships against fighter attacks.

Thats certainly true enough. Except I think the paradigm was supposed to be a corvette. I think it was smaller in the original privateer, but thats neither here nor there. Your right about it being for anti fighter defense. So lets assume this: a capship like a corvette, or certain destroyers with the purpose of destroying fighters, are going to have better anti fighter defense. The paradigm does its job by simply shooting a LOT of shots at you, and hoping they hit. Destroyers meant for fighting capships wont have as good anti fighter defense(:cough: RALARI! :cough:)

Also, the description of laser turrets changed a little over time. In the original game they were considered heavy weapons that could bring down anything in space. It seemed to me that that is saying that they are meant for cap ship slugfests. (remember, this was before phase shields, so no one needed something like a antimatter gun) The laser shots were always slow and easy to dodge, unlike the flak guns. However, since in WCII no laser turrets were used at all, and in WCIII and IV, they were anti fighter, I concede your point.

I think it still stands that the warships designed for anti-capship duty shouldn't have as powerful fighter defense, and instead should rely on escorts more. Im talking like cruisers, heavy destroyers, and battleships, and carriers. I concede that corvettes, light destroyers, and frigates should be better at fighter fragging.

[spiritplumber]

agreed with... that means we need to put some antifighter turrets on the caernaven, venture, and maybe ralari?

[blue_paladin42]

Not Ralari. Or at least, not a lot on the ralari. Im pretty sure it was designed to fight other capships. I mean, look at those guns the schematics from the claw marks manual didn't show a lot of turrets on it either.

[Fireskull]

I dont mean to start an argument or anything here, these are just my views ok?

Thing is, I disagree with you again.

A corvettes primary role is scouting. They are usually equiped with the best radars available, which cant fit into fighers, for this. The difference between this and what light fighters do, is that light fighters do defensive scouting, meant to find any threats that are near a carrier or startbase. Corvettes, on another hand, even go into enemy territory.

Yes, paradigms were smaller in the original privateer... but -everything- was smaller in the original privateer. The general gameplay drifted away from capship combat, and they scaled things down for playablity reasons, nothing wrong with that.

What made a paradigm a destroyer, while a Kamekh is a corvette, then?

Speed and weapons loadout.

A paradigm is a destroyer, used only at insys security, as anti-fighter defense. Kamekhs are small kilrathi capships, which are best used at scout roles or, defense against light fighter attacks. So they take sort of on a scort role too.

Corvettes are pretty much useless against bombers and such though, unless if they have some good light fighters with them.

However, some capital ships do well in both fields, they can destroy other capships while defending themselves against fighters. A example of this is confeds newest Destroyer, the Sheffield class. It was designed to do both jobs. Its a master of none, but that doesnt means its an apprentice at both, its good at both. Kilrathi heavy destroyers from WC3, i dont remember the actual name for that, but they too were good for both fighting other ships and defending themselves against starfighters.

About lasers: Ship descriptions call them heavy cap ship lasers. however, as far as I remember,in game they worked exactly like flak does, at WC2 we have actual flak yes.

At wc2 we have flak for anti-fighter defense for capships, and anti-matter guns for capshp attacks -and- anti-bomber defense. Anti-matter cannons were effective against bombers because if the bomber moved to dodge the shoot, he would lose its torpedo lock. This changed at Wc3 of course, where suposedly there is much better technology for torpedoes.

Cruisers, heavy destroyers, battleships and such dont necessarily have to restrain themselves to a single role. Confederation class carriers, as a example,can handle both fighters and other capital ships exceptionally well. They have lots of lasers, lots of anti-matter cannons. Are they tough? Yes. Thats the reason they are called super carriers. They have become exceptionally rare to see after BoE though.

Another ship thats extremely versatile is the caernaven. It cant be a anti-fighter ship or a anti-capship at once, but its whole design is modular, so it s weapons can be changed to fit those duties when needed.

None of this is set on stone either, no matter how much we see in WC games. At WC3 they had corvettes being used to hunt down and kill the TCS Victory. Even if they had weak armor, and not even half the guns of the Victory, the Kilrathi equipped their corvettes with anticapship missiles, that had cloaking devices to top, and so they put the Victory on the run. There was a mission were you had to shoot those missiles down before they hit the Victory.

About Ralaris, if I remember it right, they really couldnt hold their own against fighters. They were very vulnerable to them and that was the main reason they were later replaced.

I dont remember seeing ventures in any anti-capship roles. So there wouldnt be any point in having many anticapship weapons on them, perhaps a torpedoe or two since they are fast enough to target those. We should keep those two front plasma, but the turrets should be all laser turrets.

I have never been shoot by a missle coming from a capital ship... but at every single website I go I see some missile carrying capships being mentioned.

Two of my points I want to make clear:

*Many medium capital ships, and almost all heavier capital ships, can defend themselves against fighters. The real problem arises when bombers come into play, because of the large amount of missiles and torpedoes they carry.

*A single light fighter wouldnt be able to destroy even a corvette that is properly equipped with anti-fighter defense, unless if
such fighter has a ace pilot and lots, lots of missiles ( arrows come to mind )


And I still think we should increase the speed and range of heavy lasers

[blue_paladin42]

Well, I admittedly get a lot of my capship logic(not knowledge) from games such as Homeworld, which was geared towards capships AND fighter combat. I am applying some of that logic here, along with my own observations of the WC games. Corvettes are the multipurpose ships. Capable of fighting fighters, and capships (such as the victory). Agreed tjhat they aren't much use against bombers though. Its not that they cant hit them so much as they can't kill them fast enough. And it doesn't take many torpedoes(1) to kill a corvette. FYI, the Venture was armed with lasers and mass drivers, as well as a large missle complement. I got the impression that it really wasn't meant for capital ship combat, like you said. But I don't think you should keep the plasma guns, because that kinda conflicts with canon. Make em a little smaller too. (They were described in secret missions as confeds "new 8 man fighter")

As for capital ships. I don't really remember the heavy destroyer being very effective vs. fighters. Sure it had lots of guns, but it was so big it had some very exploitable blind spots, that fighters and even bombers could expoit, because it couldn't hardly move. This is somewhat unlike the light destroyer(those are their names too, they didn't get cool names like in the previous games) Cruisers were alo armed to the teeth, but had major bindspots. Frigates and light destroyers, and corvettes, as I said before, and as I think we agree on, are support ships. But bigger ships, They CAN fight fighters, but they just aren't that good at it. For example, the midway from WC prophecy, minus its fighters . After all, if those ships could take out fighters with ease, then fighters would be mostly useless. Even considering cost, it would be cheaper to build a few anti-everything cappys, than billions of small fighters, most of which will blow up. Space combat is a big game of paper rock scissors. Fighters are paper, corvettes and oher support capital ships are scissors, and heavy capital ships are rock.

[Fireskull]

Yea, thats just about right. Most of our disagreements comes from different views than gaming experience. I believe the only reason fighters exist in WC is because they have manners to attack capships without getting damage themselves. This has been my personal experience with WC3 and 4, after the torpedoes and missiles are gone, its hell to damage a large capital ship.

My most clear memories of heavy destroyers comes from WC3 too. There was a mission were you had to take on a kilrathi heavie with two thunderbolts. I remember loading up my thunderbolts with dumbfire missiles ( they were the ones with the biggest dmg at wc3 ) and a torpedo. I dont know about my wingman, but I had launched my torpedo and all my DFs and the destroyer wanst destroyed. It had so many guns that strafing runs were near impossible because I either a) couldnt do enough damage or b) the destroyer got past my fighter shields.

To kill it I had to exploit a blind splot. I got very very very near its engine, where it couldnt shoot me. As much as I loved to use that blind spot, lets use a bit of logic here: If you get extremely close to a engine that is bigger than your ship, what keeps your starfighter protected from whatever large amount of particles that engine drops as waste in space?

At WC2 it was just about impossible to do any damage -at all- against capital ships without torpedoes. Not because they had large firepower, but because they had phase shields that were invulnerable against normal blasters and missiles, and even so, you needed at least two bombers for each capital ship because of the extremely tight tracking cone of the torpedo and the anti-matter guns ( aka two shoots and you are a goner ) capships used as bomber defense

As a side note, the Sheffield doesnt has any blind spots anymore in WCU, I tested it a few days ago. The waterloo, -does-, but as of now its capable of maneuvering so that blind spot is not exploitable. Though, I guess we will have to lower the manuerability of capships a bit.

Ventures are smaller than draymans right now, I will do some research on its weapons .

There is only -one- thing I can really say I disagree with you, and this is were your views are, obviously, crashing.

After all, if those ships could take out fighters with ease, then
fighters would be mostly useless

Let me just give a good explanation of the manner I think.

For me, there are different reasons than that why fighters are used. Firstly, I say capships can and DO take out fighters very very easily. The only problem is getting the fighter within range of the capship guns.

This said, I conclude the following:

*Light and medium fighters are useless against medium and heavy capships.

*Light capships can be taken out by medium and light fighters as long as those are using missiles to at least take out the capships shields first.

For me, first there were the bombers. Their advantage against capships was in their torpedoes and that anti-fighter weaponry was less effective against them. So, bombers can destroy, or heavily damage, capital ships with torpedoes and missiles, and then go ahead to finish it off with their heavy guns. Even so, without missiles and torpedoes, bombers would be much, and I mean much, weaker.

So capships could defend themselves against bombers, the whole fighter class was created. Light, medium, heavy fighters.

This thinking, as I want to point out, inst flawless though Cause in WC1 basically all capships were very vulnerable to fighter attack. However, thats different in all other games, were you dont really see rapiers or hellcats engaging carriers.

[spiritplumber]

I get the idea that, post WC1 (and enforcedly so in WC2, more flexible afterward) the rock paper scissors is


fighters > bombers > capships > fighters


in general, regardless of capship type. This is mostly because in WC games you had one capship which is to be protected and the others which are softer or tougher targets, and that's it -- also, if you notice in most WC games (even prophecy!) capships basically fly straight in a preprogrammed course, this is what allowed players to exploit blind spots.

This said I'm all for reducing capship maneuverability for anything bigger than a venture.

[Fireskull]

Yup, less maneurability, thats about right. The way waterloos can maneuver now is really unnatural . Buut, we really should increase speed for lasers ^_^

And replace those neutron guns with heavy lasers and tachyon cannons too.

[Wendy]

There was this whole strategy thing during WWII.

You made a co-ordinated attack against an aircraft carrier in three waves.

Fighters handled the escorts and air cover. Being more manoeuvreable, they also distracted the gunners on board the ships.

Dive Bombers.

They had to come in on a direct vector fom up high and could NOT evade until they had released their bombs. Usually one, two, or four bombs depending on the payload. Four or two wing mounted or one HUGE belly mounted bomb.

Torpedo squadrons.
These guys were the biggest sitting ducks of all. They came in on the wave tops on LONG STRAIGHT torpedo runs, unable to dodge and avoid until they dropped their single torpedos well inside gun range of the ship.

All the craft had some sort of wing guns, but usually not much and more often than not, they were nowhere near as manoeuvreable as their fighter escorts or teh combat air cover from the carrier they were attacking.

The fighters went in to draw fire and fighter cover, then in concert the torpedo planes and dive bombers went in, hoping to SPLIT the ship's anti-aircraft fire between the three groups, the fighter swarm that was all over, the bombers up high, and the torpedos down low.

Capital ships of the carrier class, by virtue of their armour, were not able to be sunk by the machine guns on the fighters alone.

Destroyers and cruisers COULD be sunk with repeated machine gun strafing.

Battleships had a better chance against the fighters, the fighters had to get through the decks to the enginerooms to hole the boillers to sink those bad boys. I don't think it was ever accomplished until wing mounted rockets and missiles.

Today, with missile loads, the swarm theory has all but been abandoned. IN THEORY, a single fighter of today can take out an aircraft carrier with a single wing mounted missile.

If we liken things to WWII, you need a concerted effort to take out the capital ships.

Bombs, Missiles and Torps. THen, assuming you put enough holes in the hull with the big stuff, you sink it with strafing runs. Don't forget the defensive fighter swarms....

W.