Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Kestrellius on May 31, 2016, 04:50:30 pm
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This is kind of cheesy and I'm sure it's been done before, but whatever. If you could design a fighter to perfectly fit the playstyle you prefer (well, okay, you pretty much can with a bit of modding, but let's disregard that for now), what would it look like? I mean mostly stats, but if you want to name it or describe the appearance or whatever you can do that as well. Keeping it fairly balanced would be good.
For mine:
A light space superiority fighter. Extremely high maneuverability -- on par with something like the Pegasus or the Loki. In particular, it possesses excellent roll speed. Armor and shields are minimal. It has one medium-to-small (16-Harpoon) secondary bank.
What makes the craft shine is its primary weapons. It has six guns, all part of the same bank, which gives it slightly more firepower than even the Erinyes. The energy capacity is also unparalleled, although the recharge speed is only average. (It's designed for spurts of activity -- you go in, fight for a while, and when you run out of energy, retreat and divert power to your primaries to recharge them.)
It has a thin target profile. Maybe shaped a bit like a cross between the Athena, Ulysses, and Perseus -- a broad, winged shape, swept forward, but with big heavy engines.
(As a side note regarding balance: this might seem somewhat overpowered, but here's the thing -- heavy fighters in FS2 tend to be fairly OP compared to their lighter counterparts. Consider: the Ares has excellent primaries, secondaries, and armor. The only thing it lacks is mobility, whereas a light fighter like the Loki gives up secondary capacity, primary capacity, and survivability for its agility. Admittedly, heavy fighters' lack of speed is something of an issue, which I guess is why the Perseus is so popular despite its unimpressive primaries and sluggish handling (by my standards, anyway). However, combine the lower combined stats with the mission design mostly revolving around taking down wings of heavy bombers, and that's how you end up with heavy fighters being just more effective than anything else. On the topic of my design, though: to think of it another way, this fighter is a Pegasus that gives up its stealth for a set of heavy cannons.)
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It already exists and it's called the Erinyes.
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It already exists and it's called the Erinyes.
BP's UEF Izra'il. All I need.
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SF Dragon. What else could you possibly want?
Also this:As a side note regarding balance: this might seem somewhat overpowered, but here's the thing -- heavy fighters in FS2 tend to be fairly OP compared to their lighter counterparts
Is most definitely not true on all difficulties. As difficulty goes up heavy fighters get ****tier and on insane they're only good for spamming trebs against derpy retail AI. Their lack of manoeuvrability means their primary banks are only good for shooting at bombers or capships and their armor or shields won't save them when you can't get rid of a single fighter on your ass.
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Nice topic! :yes:
I actually created one while ago, but never shown it to the community yet. This is a Vasudan High performance Interceptor I created as one of two advance fighters for the GTVA.
No name for this yet, but here it is:
https://p3d.in/FPdDO
This is a lightweight fighter, with light armor, but a very strong shield and very fast cruising speed with long afterburner duration. Four guns, four missile tubes and high maneuverability. And yes it looks like this one as well which is a Heavy Assault Fighter under the same Advance program.
https://p3d.in/UfpA6
Same basic shape, but the mission profile for each is different
All the best,
Jadehawk
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A stealth fighter with actually working stealth and some missile capacity would be nice...
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Loki on steroids with an additional missile launch pad.
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Jadehawk, I see one major flaw with both of your designs... visibility. It appears that you can only see a narrow space to the front and sides. The pilot would have no upwards or rearwards visibility. Now, many FS ships don't have much in the way of aft visibility, but they generally look like a fighter cockpit, as opposed to a shuttle or cargo-plane cockpit, which these resemble.
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It's called the Athena. You may have heard of it.
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Give me a Valkyrie with maybe a touch more armor and subsystems that don't disintegrate if you look sideways at them, and I'm pretty much set.
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It already exists and it's called the Erinyes.
Everything about the Erinyes feels good. The look, the handling, the gun placement, everything.
I've heard it's not maneuverable enough for higher difficulties, but I don't care!
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Hmmm...I would go with a stealth assault fighter. Something reasonably small and nimble, with agility on par with the Myrmidon. I'm imagining a Pegasus II, with the wingtips clipped off, and extra stuff built into the underside of the fuselage. Oh, and the most important attribute of a stealth ship: IT MUST BE PAINTED BLACK!
Weapons? Yes, I like weapons. That thing welded onto the underside of the Pegasus II? Give it three more primary firepoints, for a grand total of five firepoints in one bank. Yes, it needs to carry Kaysers. Yes, energy management is going to be a problem, but I can aim pretty good. My salvo of Kayser doom won't miss, especially when I have the element of surprise.
Missiles? I only need a few dozen tempests and two trebs.
Now let's talk about afterburners. Just like the weapons, this thing needs an afterburner system that can operate at very high output for a very short period of time. I don't care if it runs for a few seconds and takes over a minute to recharge. Conceptually, 50-60% of the ship's mass and volume should be dedicated to flying at ludicrous speed for a few seconds.
Shields? Armor? What are those? This is a stealth ship. If the enemy sees me, I'm doing it wrong. Hell, if it means I can have 250 m/s afterburners, skip the shield emitters altogether.
Alternatively, turn the default glowy blue bits red, and let's say it was recovered from some top-secret NTF/Shivan joint project by SOC? Perhaps the GTT Sunder's infinitely secret cargo? ;7
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Something like the Athena in terms of handling, profile, and secondary capacity with five or six guns, split 4/1 or 4/2 to mount utility weapons in the second bank. Give me that and I'd be set.
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Fighter: GTF Keres. :)
For bomber, I'd have to think about it a little more.
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I've already met my perfect fighter and bomber. The GTF Ezechiel and GTB Rhea. I love them so much I'm making a mod where they have special powers to save the galaxy.
</shameless plug>
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Terran Mara with Seraphim's shields and armor and Ares' missile capacity. What else could you want?
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Terran Mara with Seraphim's shields and armor and Ares' missile capacity. What else could you want?
Uh, the Terran Mara already has greater missile capacity than the Ares.
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Does it? I've never really checked... Well, Fenris' missile capacity then.
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Does it? I've never really checked... Well, Fenris' missile capacity then.
If we're going that direction, give me a fighter with a quick-pulse Lucy Beam (FSPort version) and the Lucy invincibility shields. You could throw in the dragon's engines/afterburners if you want, but I don't need to go anywhere fast.
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Blue Planet had a Dreamscape training mission where you were armed with a BFRed. :cool:
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Ever tried putting flak guns on a fighter? It's hilarious. You just rip through everything. I guess the fire rate is high enough that the fact that flak sucks against shields just doesn't matter.
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Ever tried putting flak guns on a fighter? It's hilarious. You just rip through everything. I guess the fire rate is high enough that the fact that flak sucks against shields just doesn't matter.
Ever tried playing against a flak-equipped warship with an AI profile that disables the fire rate penalty? Flak doesn't suck against shields; it's just that retail doesn't let it fire fast enough to be a major threat.
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Ever tried playing against a flak-equipped warship with an AI profile that disables the fire rate penalty?
Just turning the game's difficulty up to insane should get the fire rate close enough to its table value to notice that, yeah, flak are flippin' deadly. They'll kill you faster than a AAA beam if you aren't careful.
Anyway, my ideal fighter would be a serapis with actual armor and tighter gunpoints.
My ideal bomber would be the Nahema with GTVA-standard secondary capacity.
Special mention goes to the Athena for being naturaly awesome.
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Flak is a bit different because even insane doesn't disable the random refire delay on the retail AI profile. For most weapons this means they fire near as makes no difference tabled rates, but flak has such a high firerate that even a 0.15s random delay effectively halves its firerate. At full tabled firerate a single standard flak turret will do 200 shield and 200 hull DPS. For comparison, the kayser does "only" 100 shield and 112 hull DPS, even a Maxim does only 177 hull DPS. So an Aeolus with 6 standard flaks becomes extremely deadly.
Mind you, even effectively halving that insane DPS doesn't make it not deadly, just not quite as ridiculous.
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Yeah; since flak has a shockwave direct hits do double the damage you mentioned, 400dps for armour & shields. Ouch.
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Well, yeah, but direct hits don't happen that often, unless you're fighting a warship. In which case standard flak does 6.25 the DPS of an SGreen and about half that of the BGreen. Yes, the Aeolus has close to the effective anti-warship firepower of an Orion's broadside of 3 BGreens, just without any finishing power since flak doesn't have the "huge" flag.
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Blue Planet had a Dreamscape training mission where you were armed with a BFRed. :cool:
*boots up FSO*
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Incidentally: I meant your favorite craft, whether fighter or bomber, rather than specifically your ideal fighter and ideal bomber. Not that it matters in the slightest; I just...don't like people being unaware of things, I guess? Same reason why people leave comments on years-old Youtube videos correcting people, I suppose.
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I like to go fast. Manoeuvrability doesn't matter so much to me if I can slam on the afterburner and exit a sticky situation at 250 m/sec. So my ideal would be something with crazy engines and afterburner top speed, banks that can take at least a handful of trebs for sniping and a bank of furies for close-up work, one bank for Kaysers, one for SDGs. Strong shields, hull doesn't matter so much.
That's me happy I think. :)