[Flipside]

Kind of disappointing really, they really were something special at the time, a ship that was incredibly assymetrical, and yet probably one of the most deadly production-line bombers created to date (The payload was, iirc, the same as a T/B, but with shields from hell) in the Star Wars universe.

The Y-Wing always struck me as the 'Volkswagon' of the Rebel fleet, it didn't excel at anything in particular, not fast, not manouverable, good, but not brilliant payload etc, but it just kept on ticking, jack of all trades, master of none.

[brandx0]

Yeah, that's pretty much exactly it

[chief1983]

The Y-Wing is the Herc of the Rebel Fleet!

[TopAce]

If I were to find the FS equivalent of the Y-wing, I would say the GTB Medusa. For two words: Medium bomber.

[Flipside]

One thing I do remember about the X-Wing games was that the Y-Wing was far better for Tie Hunting than the X-Wing because of those forward cannon, you could snap-shoot T/F's far easier in a Y-Wing in my experience.

[brandx0]

Which we'll do everything in our power to avoid.  The X-Wing is a better dogfighter than the Y-Wing, so we'll do our best to make sure of that

[FUBAR-BDHR]

If I remember correctly; and were talking a lot of time and a lot of beers since then, the X-Wing and Y-Wing could both shoot down a T/F just as easy.  The only difference was accuracy.  If  you were flying a Y-Wing you had to be accurate in your shots.  If you linked your guns in the X-Wing and used accuracy instead of trying the scatter shot you might hit something plan then it was just as easy. 

[Flipside]

The X-Wing was good against a squadron of ties, purely because you could fire wildly into them and be pretty sure of destroying at least one and damaging a couple of others with the 4 cannons, but for those precision shots, the Y-Wing was actually a superior fighter in my experience of playing X-Wing, but it could get swarmed under by larger numbers of fighters.

I also agree that it shouldn't be that way, the Y-Wing/Z95 formed the bulk of the rebel starfighter fleet from what I recall, the T/F would have been designed to deal with the Y-Wing almost as much as the X-Wing was designed to deal with the Tie Fighter.

Edit: Come to think of it, I only took my X-wing off of linked fire on extremely rare occasions.

2nd Edit: Kind of odd, now I think about it, that the two hardest jobs in the original X-Wing series were clearing minefields and disabling shuttles.

[LordMelvin]

...
I also agree that it shouldn't be that way, the Y-Wing/Z95 formed the bulk of the rebel starfighter fleet from what I recall, the T/F would have been designed to deal with the Y-Wing almost as much as the X-Wing was designed to deal with the Tie Fighter.

Edit: Come to think of it, I only took my X-wing off of linked fire on extremely rare occasions.

2nd Edit: Kind of odd, now I think about it, that the two hardest jobs in the original X-Wing series were clearing minefields and disabling shuttles.

That's why I'm glad that FotG is trying for the movie experience... more 'realism' in my fiction, please!

[brandx0]

Hehe, trust me, we've spent many hours analyzing movie footage with a fine toothed comb, that's always been our first source.

[Snail]

Will shields be bubbles like in FS or will they be surface shields?

[brandx0]

Bubbles most likely, when you see shields in the movies they generally appear as bubbles, although we won't be doing the shield absorb-type effect from Freespace.  It'll be much more like the invisible wall sort of explosion with a quick flash

[Herra Tohtori]

Bubbles most likely, when you see shields in the movies they generally appear as bubbles, although we won't be doing the shield absorb-type effect from Freespace.  It'll be much more like the invisible wall sort of explosion with a quick flash

Do the original trilogy movies even show shield effects in any way? I do know the Episode I (brrr) did show a Naboo starfighter having kinda "form-fitting" shields, not surface shields but not bubble shields either. Capital ship shields might be different in this regard... in fact it would be kinda cool if shots fired from within the shield would directly affect hull, while shots from the outside would be intercepted by the shield; that way you could actually justify the usage of snub fighters and bombers against cap ships, as opposed to just pounding them by cap ship turret fire... Does FSOpen engine support that kind of behaviour? Can ships pass through shield meshes in the first place? If not, then how about a scripted shield - when shield is active, shots fired from within certain distance will affect hull directly, while shots from the outside will weaken the shields or pass through depending on the yield of the shot (it would seem logical that an X-Wing hit by an ISD turbolaser battery would suffer some hull damage despite having shields on) and the state of the shields?

If the original trilogy shows bubble shields, the semi-surface shielding shown in Naboo starfighter should obviously be disregarded though.

[brandx0]

Once again, to direct you to that video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGMvadAFqLQ

at about 4:27.

[aRaven]

Once again, to direct you to that video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGMvadAFqLQ

at about 4:27.

What about 4.27?

[Herra Tohtori]

I see a lot of rapid bright flashes, kinda like someone taking pictures of a white wall in a fog, but it doesn't really answer the question about the shape of the shield mesh. Obviously they aren't quite surface shields, but how far from the ship the shield is projected isn't really very clear from that video. Thus I would still say that the shield forming around Anakin's Naboo starfighter in Ep.I is the most accurate source for shield mesh mechanics as far as fighters go... cap ships probably have a bit looser and bigger shields though.

Good source for effect design though, if it will look like that I'd say it doesn't really matter exactly how the shields are shaped.

[chief1983]

One thing that was divulged recently, is that there is a fixed distance that shields can extend from the hull, with no consideration for the size of the ship.  For our fighters, that's not an issue as they are smaller than any FS ships.  But on capital ships, this is going to become a real problem.  We don't want to use surface shields for lack of any proper impact effect, but any shield mesh will have to be skintight the larger the ship gets, in fact that alone may break it, since I'm not sure if a shield mesh can be concave.  Either way, the mesh will become incredibly inefficient as its poly count must grow to fit over the ship.  This is something I would almost consider a bug, and am considering mantising soon, as it was just recently brought to my attention.

[Flipside]

Well, I do know that surface shield impact-effects are definitely on the agenda at some point, possibly using shaders etc, personally, I'd say that would be a better direction to go than trying to create shield meshes for capships, but, obviously, there's not much you can do in that direction until you know what is needed.

[colecampbell666]

I assume that a lot of features will require coding to allow for proper/realistic implementation.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Is the Y-Wing really a bomber though? Or is it just another fighter with bombing capabilities? Both the X-Wing and the Y-Wing carry torpedoes as standard. Remember at the end of TESB we see Y-Wings on patrol around the Rebel fleet. Would the Imperials have T/Bs in patrol around Star Destroyers? Would the GTA have Medusa's as standard patrol?? It seems to me to just be another type of fighter, possibly older and less common?

The only reason the Y-Wing was good for taking out T/Fs in the original games is because the gunpoints are close together. Not only that but the X-Wing's wingspan is greater than than that of the T/F so it was possible to line up a T/F in the crosshairs and completely miss it. I wouldn't necessarily say that the Y-Wing was a better dogfighter though.