[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Woolie Wool

That ship is a death trap.

Only if you can;t handle a bit of seat-of-the-pants flying .

[Taristin]

Yeah, the Valk is a damn sight better than that horrible Apollo they stick you in in the beginning of the war...

[TopAce]

The Valkyrie is the best fighter in the FreeSpace universe. It is even better than the Perseus.

[Flaser]

Don't downgrade the Apollo - it's the most balanced fighter of its era. Yes, the Valkyre is better suited for inteceptor roles, and the Herc I - which is vastly superior to the Herc II since the later lacks the punch of the original - is a better offense fighter....

Still there are a couple of ocassion where you need to do both - and that's the place for the Apollo.

As for the Erynes - that's the deadliest assault ship ever created. There's one problem: you need 3 arms to fly it.
This is the only fighter where a true multitasking pilot will have an edge - you have to constatnly shift power from 1 system to another, and that's not just the ETS, but diverting power from shields to guns and vice versa. - if you can't handle it, you'll never take advantage of the ship's immense power.

The only way to take down such a pilot in an Erynes is to outmanouver him - but's that not as easy as it sounds, since although the Erynes is not that agile as the Perseus, with a generous use of Afterburners its darn fast.

[Lightspeed]

The Erinyes can literally slaughter everything (without dying) with the lethal combo. If used properly, that is.

Then again, you can dodge with a Perseus to degrees that you're (almost) invulnerable.

Against AI, however, you dont need neither speed, nor agility.

[Singh]

in a multiplayer game a while back, I remember taking a Seth (or Thoth, not sure. Only remember it was in that game with the old fighters only) and having a blast taking out everyone else in Ulysses

Think Karajoma played that one game with me though, so hge could prolly confirm :/

The Erynies is good if you know how to fly it.......unfortunately, I suck in multiplayer to the point that I die quickly...havent had a chance to try the Perseus though......

damnit!! Where is multiplayer??????!!!!!!

[Cabbie]

I love the Perseus myself but an Erinyes with double Keysers and tempest will turn any fighter/bomber into space dust in seconds. With all the system juggling and piloting Erinyes is really a ship for skilled pilots. So I agree its one of the best ships around  (I only wished that they designed it to look better - the ship looks like a bunch of legos stacked together)

[Tiara]

It totally depends on the role the fighter/bomber has to fulfill.  

- Dogfighter: 100% Agility.
- Scout: 100% Speed
- Interceptor: 70% speed, 30% agility. It needs to be faster then the average fighter/bomber to intercept but needs enough agility to put up a decent fight.
- Light Assault: 80% Agility, 20% speed. They need to be able to manoeuvre quite quickly but also need some speed for a succesfull assault.
- Heavy assault: 90% agility, 10% speed. HA fighters are basically heavy dogfighters with a touch of added speed to make succesfull assault runs.

- Escort bomber: 50% speed, 50% agility. Needs speed to keep up with fighters/capital ships and still have the agility to fight against fighters. They mainly perform anti-fighter roles with light missiles.
- Light bomber: 70% speed, 30% agility. Usually deployed against lighter more manouvrable cap ships. Carry light to medium payload.
- All-round bomber: 80% speed, 20% Agility. Basically a multipurpose bomber. Carrying medium payloads it can run in and drop it while avoiding fighters and flak to a degree.
- Heavy bomber: 90% speed, 10% agility. Speed to get in fast, agility to not get shot down instantly before dropping the payload by flak cannons. Carry heavy payloads.
- Long range bombers: 100% speed. Obviously for long range bombing raids. Medium payload. Getin and get out before anyone sees you.

-------

At least, thats how I see it. (This is not based on FS cuz the engine is ****ed when it comes to this subject)

[TopAce]

Originally posted by Flaser
...The only way to take down such a pilot in an Erynes is to outmanouver him - but's that not as easy as it sounds, since although the Erynes is not that agile as the Perseus, with a generous use of Afterburners its darn fast.

The Erinyes is like a well-armed space snail.

[Arculis]

Originally posted by TopAce
The Erinyes is like a well-armed space snail.

Don't you mean Ares, the flying potato?

Personally, I like having the speed, because if all else fails I can run away from the battle, and I'm also usually the guy who has to like, fly 10km away and disable a destroyer before it gets within range or something.

That's why I designed those Epimetheus interceptors. Against heavy fighters (when flown by intelligent pilots) they can zoom within range, do some damage, and be out of range before the heavy fighter can target them.

But for the AI, they're a major pain with agility. Ulysses is just as hard to hit as it is to aim. I can't stand time based missions when I'm up against Ulysses'. They dodge your guns, and they're impossible to get a decent lock on.

[Blaise Russel]

On second thought, speed is the best, but only when taken to extremes. See, if a hostile gets behind you, you can just hit your burners and shoot off at 200m/s out into the distance and away from his fire. Easy.

'Course, you have problems if he can also go at 200m/s... so you get a better fighter that goes at 250m/s, then 300m/s, then 350m/s, then 400m/s...

Eventually, however, somebody's going to hit 660m/s and travel back in time to 1985, so perhaps that's not such a cool idea after all.

[Knight Templar]

Wouldn't want to fall inlove with your mother, now would you?

[Blaise Russel]

[Silent Warrior]

I prefer a reasonable agility - Ulysses at max stick-sensitivity is a couple of magnitudes too jiggly for me. Myrmidon/Herc II were A-OK, though. Inferno... was utter hell... Until I reduced sensitivity to, like, three dots or something with a dead-zone at 3-5 dots. Hehe!

[TrashMan]

Well...FS2 had a issue with speed and manuverability.

Difference in speed between fighters and bommbers(and the top speed in all cases) were rather small...
A state-of-the art fighter flies only 100kph????

Apart from that, manuverability was overdone. Bombers had the manuverability of figters and fighters were so damn manuverable that it was a real challenge to fly them...

I prefer speed...you can run away from slower opponents and from flak, while your shield re-charges... Even a middle class bomber had decent enough manuverability in FS series, wich made them actually pretty effective. I played FS1 with the Athena and kicked ass on the highest dfficulty.
For FS2 the Perseus and Ares were my choices, alltough I prefer the Ares (FIREPOWER...FIREWPOWER!!!!!!).

[pyro-manic]

Erm, this is an evil question - I like both, but too much of either is a pain in the arse. The Ulysses, Pegasus and Horus are hideous - my ideal fighter would be a Herc2 that was as fast as the Perseus. I'd also prefer it to have another gun mount, but that's a different debate.

I'll have to say speed, because I'd rather have excess speed than excessive agility.

[Arculis]

Originally posted by TrashMan
Well...FS2 had a issue with speed and manuverability.

A state-of-the art fighter flies only 100kph????

Not 100kph, 100m/s... That's  360kph.

But yeah, they are pathetically slow, especially considering this is space.

(Getting some numbers from google:)
MiG-21F: 2175kph, 604m/s, so around 600 top speed in Freespace (at 42640 ft).
F-14 Tomcat: 2517kph, 699m/s, around 700 top speed in Freespace (using afterburners I assume).
F-15 Eagle: 3060kph, 850m/s, around 850 top speed in Freespace.
F-16 Falcon: 2448kph, 680m/s, around 680 top speed in Freespace.
F/A-18 Hornet: 1912 kph, 531m/s, around 530 top speed in Freespace.
F-22 Raptor: 2203kph, 612m/s, around 610 top speed in Freespace.
A10 Thunderbolt 2: 675kph, 187m/s, around 190 top speed in Freespace.
F-117 Stealth: 1224kph+, 340m/s, around 340 top speed in Freespace.
B52 Stratofortress: 1046kph, 290m/s, around 290 top speed in Freespace.
AH-64 Apache Helicopter: 296 kph, 82m/s, around 80 top speed in Freespace.
B-1B Lancer: 1530kph,  425m/s, around 425 top speed in Freespace.
SR-71 Blackbird: 4039kph, 1122m/s, around 1100 top speed in Freespace.
Porche 356: 185kph, 51m/s, around 50 top speed in Freespace.
Space Shuttle: 28296kph, 7860m/s, around 8000 top speed in Freespace (in orbit).

But then everything would be impossible to hit with anything except really fast missiles. (Not to mention the game would start thinking you're trying to abandon the battlefield if you go to far at that speed.) Although you could make it interesting by drastically decreasing the amount of agility that fighters have.

Okay, so its off topic. Big deal...

[TrashMan]

The numbers on the Eagle are wrong....It's slower than the F-16 as far as I recall.
And the F-14 can reach 2517kph without afterburner...it's an interceptor and still among the 10 fastest fighters in the world..
Other numbers seem o.k.

I have a fixation on the military, so I have books on warship, jets, tanks and stuff...and I look at new info all the time....


And it's completely the opposite - if you increase the speed in FS2, that you should reduce manuverability to acheve smoother turns...I tried it... Doubled the speed of everything. It was a real challenge to fight against a Astaroth. When I reduced the Manuverability it all seemed to fit in place...

[HotSnoJ]

The F-14 is awesome.

@TrashMan:
Do you still have those tables? I'd like to try that out when/if I can play fs2 again.

[TrashMan]

Not anymore.

But the changes are easy to make... Double the speed of fighter and decrease the manuverability by 50% (at least I think it was 50%)...