Originally posted by Akalabeth Angel
Actually if you compare the Cap Guns to the M-16 Laser I'd say its not really that big of a problem. Go against a Fenris in an Apollo or something without shields with an ML-16 laser for firepower and see how well you fare.
When people say FS1's era sucked, and the fighters were all powerful, the fact is the gameplay in FS1 is vastly different than what we see in the T-V War. Because the main gun, the Avenger, and 60% of the fighters aren't around in the T-V (not to mention SHIELDS).
Hell even with shields, some of the missions are damn hard. Try taking the Valkyrie into that mission with the Taranis. A couple Satis freighters and an Aten are damned dangerous even to the shielded fighter.
Now why ship turrets weren't upgraded to something better (other than flak which causes more fear of damage than damage itself) from FS1 to FS2 is beyond me. I imagine it's for the sake of the player, the same way that Shivan fighter weapons do less damage than the terran ones. [/B]
My comments are more directed towards cap-on-cap action; the only possible advantage the cruisers have over a group of Apollos is that it'll hang in battle longer. I agree to a point vis the TT/M-16, but the ludicrious slowness of the projectiles combined with the slow ROF means an Apollo firelinked has about the SAME output as the Fenris, and that's stupid. Again, specifically because you'd never send in a Fenris, but an equal amount of resources invested in fighters. Also, even with all 8 turrets working, would you feel safe on a Fenris under attack by 8 unshielded Apollos? I wouldn't, even though they've got no bombs, no shields, etc... because I know unless the Apollos fly straight at the Fenris the Fenris will *never* EVER hit them, because of the low velocity of its fire.
I agree with the difficulty of many missions (disabling a Dragon is ridiculous), but I guess I assume the weapons on a lone cruiser should be able to stave off attack from a couple of bombers, which is unlikely. Actually, in SCP the turrets seem to be
better at shooting down bombs; in FS2 Their Finest Hour II, Bastion was doing a great job defending itself, and I don't remember it that way from vanilla, back in the day. Groups of cruisers are indeed effective, even with their FS1 loadouts.
This isn't even getting into the farce with the heavy turret, the poor scaling of weapons with increasing size (since the cruisers actually have the best ratio of size/gun ports), the fact that the AAA demonstrates that [V] changed from 'caps have no credible AAA assets at all' to 'caps pwnzor fighters within 1500m with their lazor b34ms', etc. An FS2-era Fenris with beams-free is a horrible thing to be near, but an FS1-era Fenris is just a joke. And even the developers noticed and changed it.
As an aside, even tho most people seem to think its crap I always had problems attacking Cains/Liliths. Their weapons seemed much better laid out vs frontal or ventral attacks. Actually, you're probably onto something when you point out the difficult missions; the easy cruiser kills usually come from bombers with the ridiculous 8000-point bombs, not from repeated fighter attack, simply because it takes too long. So much of it may be merely subjective given game experience, where the constantly respawning bombers always get the cruiser in the end, however lame that is from a story/mission creation perspective.
