[Jal-18]

And as I stated before, that's exactly what you don't want to do.

It's the differance between learning to fight underwater and learning to fight on land.  Tactics and manuevers that you might be able to pull off in an underwater fight will get you hurt on land, because you're not used to fighting in an enviroment where you suddenly have much more freedom of movement and everything moves faster.

Same thing with space, except multiplied several times over.  A land-locked pilot in a ship designed by land-locked engineers will not survive his first encounter with a race that has take full advantage of the nuances of space combat.  What good is saving a couple million dollars and manhours if the poor chap kicks the bucket anyways?

[StratComm]

Trashman: Yeah, if you're going to start actually demanding percentages then you're taking this way too seriously

Oh, and "Teh Colossus" is an uber-ship, whos only purpose is story-driven.  Not to mention that it doesn't have speakable anti-fighter defenses.

[NGTM-1R]

Originally posted by Jal-18
Same thing with space, except multiplied several times over.  A land-locked pilot in a ship designed by land-locked engineers will not survive his first encounter with a race that has take full advantage of the nuances of space combat.  What good is saving a couple million dollars and manhours if the poor chap kicks the bucket anyways?

If everyone else is doing it the same way, and they seem to be, then that's somewhat moot, yes?

[karajorma]

Originally posted by TrashMan
What makes you so sure that it's 99,5? Who measured it?

Seriously Trashman are you that desperate to win a point that you're reduced to arguing about where I got my percentages from?
 I put the percentage at close to 100% for exactly the same reason that I put the chance at 0% that Dave Baranec had an epileptic fit on his keyboard for 5 hours and later found he'd written Freespace 2.
 Are you seriously telling me you'd need to e-mail DaveB to assign that percentage chance yourself?

Originally posted by TrashMan
and what is teh Colossus?

The colossus is at least twice as big as a battleship. The amount of weapons you can put into a ship before people start saying you're making uber ships is proportional to their size. Your ship is much more powerful for its size than anything I'd put into the game.

[TrashMan]

4.5km is long enough I think to warant serious firepower....

Anyway, terrna Vasudans and Shivans seem to use thruster control to simulate "normal" air combat. And I see nothing wrong with that frankly, as pilots can be very effective and precise.

I played games with newtonian physics, where fighters could zipp at lest 90000mk/h and could strafe and go backwards and stuff - and dogfights were IMPOSSIBLE. You couldn't hit a friggnig starbase at that speed and controling a fighter like that was a challenge even for the AI.

but seriously, you CANNOT tell for sure how effective, expensive or difficult such fighters would be compared to "normal" ones.
You can guess, but that's all you can do for now...

[karajorma]

Originally posted by TrashMan
4.5km is long enough I think to warant serious firepower....

That's slightly bigger than (read twice the size of) the Orion with a pair of cruisers on the side you described earlier.

At that size then yes the weapons you describe are much more reasonable. Well reasonable if you like putting big ships into your campaigns.

[Jal-18]

Hah, the Vasudans and Shivans behave as if they were in an atmosphere because the game engine constrains them to.  Personally, I have no doubt that the Shivans at least would be excellent at fighting in space, and far more effective then Terran pilots.

I've also played Newtonian games, and I figured out very quickly that the key to good manuevering is to use only as much engine power as necessary-and to use an equal amount in the opposite direction to stop.  Once you get used to the enviroment, it's not that much more difficult to pilot a fighter then in a FSy type game.

[DIO]

Originally posted by Jal-18
Hah, the Vasudans and Shivans behave as if they were in an atmosphere because the game engine constrains them to.  Personally, I have no doubt that the Shivans at least would be excellent at fighting in space, and far more effective then Terran pilots.

I've also played Newtonian games, and I figured out very quickly that the key to good manuevering is to use only as much engine power as necessary-and to use an equal amount in the opposite direction to stop.  Once you get used to the enviroment, it's not that much more difficult to pilot a fighter then in a FSy type game.

Acutally, Shivan spacecraft DOES move 3Dimensionally.
Look at the ships.tbl file.
It has a entry for manuevering back and sideways.

[Jal-18]

I question the necessity of quoting a post directly above yours...

They're still restricted by the game engine, and even so, they still manege to destroy your dumbass wingmen, (Even on equal difficulty.)

The amount of differance I'm thinking of between a true-space race and a land-locked one is that of an Ursa trying to hit a Dragon.  There's no contest.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Jal-18
I question the necessity of quoting a post directly above yours...

1) It prevents any misunderstandings over who is being replied to
2) It prevents your post looking strange if someone happens to post while you're still writing your answer.
3) You can show which specific point your answering.

I may question why the entire post was quoted rather than just the actual point that was answered but that's a rather minor consideration

[TrashMan]

Originally posted by Jal-18
The amount of differance I'm thinking of between a true-space race and a land-locked one is that of an Ursa trying to hit a Dragon.  There's no contest.

You're comparing an Interceptor with a Heavy Bomber????

Now I played one game with the most realistics physics I ever seen. ships you accelerate as long as your thrusters worked and you could reach allmost c. It was hilarious when the speed meter begun showing 7 digit values.

Back to the point - if you ever read interviewws with astronaouts, they will tell you that controling a shuttle precisely is insanely difficult, and they don't even go that fast when theyre around space stations and such. Now immagine trying to pull presice manouvres at 200000km/h with laser bolts with your name on it flying all around.

One more thing - what do you think is better? To have atmospheric fighters and space fighters separate or one multi-purpose fighter that can fly both in and out of atmosphere.

Now, if the same flight control works in both areas, its more easy to train pilots. Otherwise, pilots would have to know two different flying and control technuiques.

I honestly thing that a space fighter that simulates normal aircraf movement in space (+ add strafe..that's easy and not confusing, since you wouldn't be using it in atmosphere anyway..) would be more efficient than a "move everywhere" fighter.

It would prolly be more cost effective, you could train more pilots and build more of them.

[DIO]

First of all, concept of "space combat" itself doesn't look too reallistic to me at all.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by TrashMan
One more thing - what do you think is better? To have atmospheric fighters and space fighters separate or one multi-purpose fighter that can fly both in and out of atmosphere.

You just go from one silly disprovable assertion to another don't you

The fact that you're crap at I-war doesn't mean that newtonian style fighters don't work. It just means that you would never be good enough to fly one  A fighter designed to shoot down enemy craft while travelling at several thousand km/s is going to find an FS2 style ship a sitting duck.

[TrashMan]

I never played I-War....and I excelled at every space-sim or shooter I ever tried.

And if you manage to hit ANYTHING while cruising at 200000km/h I'll personalyl give you a gold medal.

DIO is prolly right at one thing - there will be no dogfighting in the future (not with missiles with uber-range). But then again, if we ever discover subspace, such missiles might become useless.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by TrashMan

And if you manage to hit ANYTHING while cruising at 200000km/h I'll personalyl give you a gold medal.

That depends on the speed of what you're attacking..........

(NB: being able to get up to that velocity would be very useful as an escape method, though)

[Ghostavo]

If you manage to have fighters travelling that fast in a combat situation, chances are it's not piloted by a human. (too many G's)

[Jal-18]

You're comparing an Interceptor with a Heavy Bomber????

No. I'm saying that that's about the amount of differance your method of training would produce in fighting styles.  The land pilot would behave absolutely sloth-like compared to the space pilot.

Back to the point - if you ever read interviewws with astronaouts, they will tell you that controling a shuttle precisely is insanely difficult, and they don't even go that fast when theyre around space stations and such. Now immagine trying to pull presice manouvres at 200000km/h with laser bolts with your name on it flying all around.

As noted, anything flying around that fast is definately not human.

They don't go that fast relative to what?  You're aware that the speed necessary to stay in orbit alone is around 5 mps?

One more thing - what do you think is better? To have atmospheric fighters and space fighters separate or one multi-purpose fighter that can fly both in and out of atmosphere.

(To me at least) the obvious answer is two seperate fighters.  You don't seem to understand that fighting in an atmosphere and fighting in the vacuum of space are completely differant, and require differant craft and differant training.  Too much SF these days would have you believe that an F-15 could fight just as effectively in space as in the air.

Now, if the same flight control works in both areas, its more easy to train pilots. Otherwise, pilots would have to know two different flying and control technuiques.

Oh bugger for the pilots.  If they want to survive, they'll learn both.

I honestly thing that a space fighter that simulates normal aircraf movement in space (+ add strafe..that's easy and not confusing, since you wouldn't be using it in atmosphere anyway..) would be more efficient than a "move everywhere" fighter.

It would prolly be more cost effective, you could train more pilots and build more of them.

Reread the rest of my arguement.

(And as far as I know, making new pilots has always been cheap and unskilled labor... )

[StratComm]

Actually pilots, and especially good ones, are extremely hard to come by in a wartime situation.  You can create the craft easily enough, but replacing the men and their training takes much longer.  Not necessarily more resources, granted, but you can't just manufacture a good pilot, it takes experience and a lot of it.

Oh, and the space station/space shuttle bit probably assumes slow speeds relative to one another.  Even if both are traveling at 100,000kph, their relative velocities would probably be pretty small once they are in proximity to one another.

[DIO]

You must every piece of knowledge and imagination to make up something that would make Freespace reallistic.
It doesn't matter if the thing you made up isn't reallistic, you only need to "THINK" its reallistic.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by StratComm
Actually pilots, and especially good ones, are extremely hard to come by in a wartime situation.  You can create the craft easily enough, but replacing the men and their training takes much longer.  Not necessarily more resources, granted, but you can't just manufacture a good pilot, it takes experience and a lot of it.  

Which makes it even more stupid to put air combat trained pilots in space. All you'd succeed in doing is wasting your pilots when they got blown up by pilots trained in how to fight in space.

Originally posted by StratComm
Oh, and the space station/space shuttle bit probably assumes slow speeds relative to one another.  Even if both are traveling at 100,000kph, their relative velocities would probably be pretty small once they are in proximity to one another.

That is during a docking manouver. You don't ever do a docking manouver at combat speed if you can help it. To much chance of something going wrong.

Originally posted by TrashMan
And if you manage to hit ANYTHING while cruising at 200000km/h I'll personalyl give you a gold medal.

1) Given that your number is several times higher than the speed of light I think it's a rather silly point to make in the first place
2) I never said that a ship had to be travelling at relativistic speeds to beat FS2 craft. Travelling at a meer 1km/s would be enough to severely outclass anything in FS2 ad.