Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Iranon on August 11, 2008, 04:41:18 pm
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WARNING: Lengthy post, and some dorkery.
For a long time, I was convinced that the SF Dragon was by far the best fighter in the game, with nothing else coming close - it was just that annoyingly hard to kill. On the other hand, I did notice that NTF fighters in general seemed more deadly than Shivans despite using junk like the Prometheus R.
When I started flying Shivan craft, it turned out to be a lot less overwhelming than I had assumed it to be. Yes, a Ulysses pilot fighting a Dragon will despair at the thought of killing a nimble craft like the Dragon that also has excellent shields. However, the Shivan piloting the Dragon will despair just as much at the thought of killing a nimble craft like the Ulysses with their utterly inadequate primaries.
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Anything worth doing is worth analysing to death... to compare 'effective firepower', here is how many seconds Dragons and GTVA dogfighters would last in a shootout with 100% accuracy, assuming the best compatible primaries for the latter
Dragon vs. Ulysses 3.5 to 5.6
Dragon vs. Loki 2.9 to 6.5
Dragon vs. Pegasus 4.8 to 5.5
Dravon vs. Erinyes 1.5 to 8.3
Dragon vs. Serapis 3.5 to 4.2
Dragon vs. Thoth 2.4 to 4.0
Dragon vs. Tauret 2.0 to 8.3
If we're looking just at how long the shields last, the Dragon does much better...
Dragon vs. Ulysses 3.1 to 3.8
Dragon vs. Loki 2.6 to 4.0
Dragon vs. Pegasus 4.1 to 3.3
Dravon vs. Erinyes 1.3 to 5.0
Dragon vs. Serapis 3.1 to 2.2
Dragon vs. Thoth 2.0 to 2.0
Dragon vs. Tauret 1.7 to 5.3
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Having all one's durability in shields is mostly beneficial against enemy fighters, but not without its problems. Anti-Fighter beams are scary to anyone, but GTVA craft generally don't explode without warning. Dragons do.
More relevant in a dogfight, Dragons are woefully underpowered for such generous shield capacitors. As strange as it may sound given the less than greedy primaries, power output is generally a bigger issue than in an Erinyes firing from 8 Kaysers.
The suckitude of Shivan primaries cannot be overstated. A single bank of Subachs or the turret of an Ursa deals more damage than the 5 Heavy Lasers of the Dragon combined (and most humans will use only the 3-gun bank, giving up 10% theoretical firepower for better placement).
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I'm not claiming it's a bad craft, far from it. For someone who can make good use of the sliding and extreme responsiveness, it flies better than anything else with the possible exception of the stealth fighters. It does its job very well when there is no threat of beam fire.
The impression one gets from the main FS2 campaign is a little distorted though. First, the AI never has to deal with overshooting in ultra-manoeverable craft and flies them just fine (thankfully, the NTF doesn't seem to have many Ulysses... and for some reason, the AI sucks in Lokis).
Second, Dragons are so rare most players won't pick a ship to combat them on even terms. If I expect to fight 30 Basilisks and 3 Dragons, I will probably choose something able to take down a Basilisk before 3 of its mates are on my tail. Which, however, will likely not be nimble enough to fight Dragons effectively.
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I think that shivan lasers are weak due to balance. but canonically, they would be stronger (kayser).
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Give the Dragon Kaysers (as Kaysers were derived from Shivan weapons, and god knows who will look at such inferior technology except if it really wasn't inferior), and it'll rape anything smaller than a cruiser with ease. Anything that doesn't have AAA beams won't spontaneously explode your Dragon.
I would NOT like to be chased by three SF Dragons with Kaysers.
Even putting the Heavy Laser's strength equal to a Subach makes it much harder to stay alive.
The craft itself is good, its the Shivan primaries that suck.
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Well... Volition was much better at game design than they were at writing believable fluff (take a look at the Avenger tech entry... no hard limit of ammunition for that). I can, however, accept that Shivan fighter weapons are different enough that research into them would be insightful even if they are vastly inferior. IRL, more sophisticated equipment hasn't always been better.
Saying Shivan craft would be great with proper weapons (and possibly some armour plates bolted on) is of course true. However, wee might as well wonder why a recent development like the Perseus has such an inferior power plant, or why Vasudans apparently have a problem with energy storage (low shield and weapon power capacity). I'm just accepting canon performance as is.
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I'm just accepting canon performance as is.
the thing is about video game canon, is that they never intended you to see the tables. the "canon" is not really what the tables say, it's what the story implies.
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Keep in mind that fighting Shivan vessels also depends on what difficulty you're playing on. Easy difficulty allows you to take multiple Shivan salvos with ease, whereas Insane difficulty will have Shivan weaponry rip you to shreds unless you break and evade in time.
Another variable to consider is how many gun mounts Shivan fighters have. Some, like Dragon, have only a few but others like the Nephilim have seven, making a head-to-head run with it rather like performing dentistry on a shark: difficult, dangerous, and on the whole, utterly pointless. And the Nephilim's standard loadout only equips Shivan LIGHT lasers as primaries.
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Eh, wouldn't it make more sense to compare the Dragon to FS1 craft? How many times does the player actually fight dragons in FS2? I'm sure there's a mission here or there but I can't think of any.
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The most immediate example I can think of is when the player is tasked to protect the GTC Trinity inside the nebula during the first block of nebula missions. On higher difficulties they kick my ass, but then again Herc IIs were never very maneuverable.
Quote from the Freespace Wiki Veteran Comments Section on the Dragon:
Hell in space. A wing of them show up in the last mission of the main FS2 campaign. If you're flying an Ares, you're screwed.
In summary: really freaking hard to kill in either FS1 or FS2.
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You can survive in and Ares if you have wingmen and there aren't 10 Maras on you as well...
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Or if you stick near the Lemnos.
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In summary: really freaking hard to kill in either FS1 or FS2.
I don't think they're that difficult to kill in FS2. Especially when you get Tornadoes. Which can hit pretty consistently. Of course it depends on what fighter you're flying too. But in general no fighter really gave me any worry in FS2, there was never a case of "oh crap, not those again" . . . though perhaps the Tauvri gets that distinction. Because its always packing Piranhas and those things are unfriendly.
Dragons are harder to kill in FS1 because the homing ability of pretty much every missile is complete crap, with the exception of the Hornet. So you have to rely on primaries. The ability to kill fighters in FS2 increased 3 or 4 fold in my opinion. It's very much a game of mass combat versus hordes of fighters whereas combat in FS1 is more small scale.
Try fighting the NTF. Easy kills right for the most part? In their crap Hercs and their crap Zeus bombers. Then go back to FS1 and try fighting the HoL. In FS1 I fear the HoL much more than the Shivans because they have a level playing field when it comes to primaries and in many cases they eat me alive. Who cares about a Shivan dragon with its 5 Heavy Lasers when there's a HoL Thoth on your tail with Prometheus Canons. Sure the Dragon's harder to hit, but when he hits back it doesn't hurt that much. A Thoth is very manoeuvrable and can eat any fighter in a matter of seconds if its got the right guns. Was playing through it on hard but I'm stuck on the Altair mission where you have to blow past the PVD whatever it is . . . . where you have to play in some crap Ursa.
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I'm really impressed with your case study here, and even more so at your shootout analysis in particular. I knew from the wiki the strange tid-bits about the Dragon but I'd never really thought much about the implications or applications.
On another note, I strongly agree with whoever it was who said something about how being chased by a few Dragons with Kaysers would seriously suck. For a while i actually changed the tables in just this way for a mission I made starring Dragon. I really hated how in FS the Dragon inspired more of an "Aw, shucks. This is gonna be a pain in my arse" rather than a very panicked "****sticks! Complete all other objectives and jump the hell outta there!". Personally I think the latter would have been a very powerful tool in certain situations where the Shivans crash the party in earnest at the very end of the mission. This sort of happens in Their Finest Hour, but the Dragons are usually quite a ways away by the time I help my idiot fleet finish with taking care of the Rakshasa and the Sathanas jumps in.
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I always thought that the shivan weakness was the fire rate of the primaries. If they started shooting their red **** as fast as a subach, it would be complete terror.
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Shivan parimaries are probably nerfed so that the game wouldn't be impossible to complete. If you were to make Shivan weapons as deadly as the Descent: FreeSpace trailer may imply, there is very little chance of you completing the main campaign for FreeSpace 2.
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Some good points all around.
@ Akalabeth Angel: Yes, in FS1 the Thoth was definitely the fighter to make you go arghgetitoffithurtsithurtskillit! Seeing it neutered (Prometheus R on such a potentially deadly ship!) makes me want to cry.
@ the points about primaries: Shivan technological capabilities are hard to pin down... yes their fighters are conspiciously undergunned, in stark contrast to their capital ships (let's not mention one certain cruiser class...). Still, there are so many iffy aspects of the game. I I can accept that Avengers lack ammo limits and that a Leviathan has a whopping top speed of 36km/h, I can definitely swallow that Shivan light cannons are inferior even though they are reportedly sophisticated enoug that research into them gives Terran R&D new ideas.
'Dragons give me the most trouble, so I'd be better off in one myself' is a fallacy. I for one prefer to fight Terran craft, but I also prefer to pilot Terran craft.
Typical campaign situations do NOT give a fair account of the Dragon, because you are vastly outnumbered. Fighting Dragons when outnumbered is a pain mostly because it's time consuming; before you got one into the red zone several enemy ships are taking free shots at you and you might have to break off the dogfight. Very annoying.
Ironically, if a Dragon (with Shivan primaries) was flyable in the campaign, most players would dismiss it as a useless pile of junk. The same problem - can't kill anything before being swarmed - would increase several times over. And while you start with a generous amount of shields, you don't have the power to keep them up in an extended fight. Moreover, forget protecting anything with so little stopping power; escort missions would be doomed to failure and the opponents would pick off your wingmates one by one where they couldn't before.
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@ the points about primaries: Shivan technological capabilities are hard to pin down... yes their fighters are conspiciously undergunned, in stark contrast to their capital ships (let's not mention one certain cruiser class...). Still, there are so many iffy aspects of the game. I I can accept that Avengers lack ammo limits and that a Leviathan has a whopping top speed of 36km/h, I can definitely swallow that Shivan light cannons are inferior even though they are reportedly sophisticated enoug that research into them gives Terran R&D new ideas.
The only reason Shivan Primaries are underpowered is because of game balance reasons, nothing else.
And game balance is everything.
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@ the points about primaries: Shivan technological capabilities are hard to pin down... yes their fighters are conspiciously undergunned, in stark contrast to their capital ships (let's not mention one certain cruiser class...). Still, there are so many iffy aspects of the game. I I can accept that Avengers lack ammo limits and that a Leviathan has a whopping top speed of 36km/h, I can definitely swallow that Shivan light cannons are inferior even though they are reportedly sophisticated enoug that research into them gives Terran R&D new ideas.
The only reason Shivan Primaries are underpowered is because of game balance reasons, nothing else.
And game balance is everything.
True that. It would be extremely hard to keep the player motivated if the Shivans just kept making pistol whip of everything so that most of the time all the player could do was to try and stay alive until the mission ended.
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Moreover, forget protecting anything with so little stopping power; escort missions would be doomed to failure and the opponents would pick off your wingmates one by one where they couldn't before.
The Dragon has 5 laser banks, giving them Terran weapons would give it some substantial firepower.
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Dragons are easier to kill in FS2 because the player can rely on secondaries like the Tornado and primaries like the Kayser. In addition, the Tempest is much better than the older Fury.
Game balance is everything and FS2's stats shouldn't be changed at all but I'd like to see better Shivan weapons in mods. Inferno features multiple primaries and secondaries and I hope to see more Shivan related campaigns with mods to weapons.tbl.
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Just thought I'd mention that the Interceptor and the Harpoon are essentially the same missile. Their homing characteristics are identical. The only difference between the two is that the Interceptor does more damage than the Harpoon.
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Just thought I'd mention that the Interceptor and the Harpoon are essentially the same missile. Their homing characteristics are identical. The only difference between the two is that the Interceptor does more damage than the Harpoon.
But the homing capabilities overall in FS2 are far greater than in FS1.
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Just thought I'd mention that the Interceptor and the Harpoon are essentially the same missile. Their homing characteristics are identical. The only difference between the two is that the Interceptor does more damage than the Harpoon.
It also takes up half the space if I'm not mistaken.
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The Interceptor takes almost as long as the Hornet to lock on and takes up much more space than the Harpoon
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It does take up more space, but should take the same time as the Harpoon to lock on.
Snail is right though. If you're comparing the FSPort to FS2 then the Interceptor becomes more deadly than in fs1. However the Freespace 1 engine was not as advanced as Freespace 2.