[General Battuta]

To me concussion missiles and proton torps were always anti-capital weapons, too slow to hit a fast moving starfighter.

Watched the movies lately? 



Going with an extremely conservative estimate of 1 km/sec for easy math, those torpedoes executed a 72,000 G turn.  If they have trouble with starfighters, it's not because they're slow. 

Didn't read the thread, did you?

[Renegade Paladin]

No, but now I have, and it doesn't make a difference.  Nothing in the thread changes that essential fact.  Further postings follow. 

Heh they literally established that as canon? I remember thinking WTF? when i read it in the Tales of the Bounty Hunters but never thought they would make it official

You read it, didn't you?     Anything published is canon according to Lucasfilm policy; makes getting a cohesive timeline out of it a real headache because they keep letting hacks like Anderson and Hambly write for the franchise. 

In ANH the Proton Torpedoes were able to perform a turn calculated at 72000 gs to enter the Death Star exhaust port - I would say they could definitely chase down fighters.

That's the kind of thing I'm talking about, just because it happens in a scene in a movie in which it needed to happen doesn't mean that people should jump to a load of conclusions based on it.

Actually, that's exactly what it means, because analysis can't take literary necessity into account.  The torpedoes did it, therefore the torpedoes can do it.  Suspension of disbelief has to come into play, or the entire analysis is worthless; once you introduce author intent and story fiat into the picture, there's no dividing line;  you can always just declare something as author fiat if you don't want to deal with it, which means there's no standard. 

Also, Luke's proton torps could make that umpteen thousand G turn because he was controlling them with the force.  They probably would have missed in a normal situation.

No he wasn't, and no they wouldn't.  No one in the Rebel command structure knew Luke was Force-sensitive; they wouldn't have made a plan that relied on Jedi powers to work.  Also, nothing indicates he was controlling the torpedoes; the Force simply cued him on the right moment to fire.  If he was telekinetically controlling the torpedoes, why did he have trouble moving a lightsaber in the next movie?   

Anyway, there are already established reasons why warheads aren't thrown around at starfighters in the movies.  Namely, TIE fighters attack in huge swarms, and there are only so many warheads in a magazine.   

[CountBuggula]

I still claim optical illusion.

Or, we can get more detailed.  To quote from StarDestroyer.net, we can either treat the movies as a Literary work or as a Suspension of Disbelief.  If it's literary, it treats the films and TV shows as a mere "depiction", or "dramatic re-enactment" of a world which exists only in the author's mind.  If we're going on a Suspension of Disbelief, we pretends that the fictional universe is real, which means that the films and TV shows are considered documentary footage and books are treated as if they were real stories, historical records, official spec sheets, etc.

I tend to treat issues like this using the former, which means that what we see in the films is subjective data. We concern ourselves only with what we believe the author's intent to be. Films and TV shows are considered a mere "visual representation" of the "real" fictional universe in question, which is assumed to exist only in the creator's head (or maybe it does exist somewhere else, but we don't have access to direct footage so we recreate scenes the best we can).

So in this case, the scene we see with the proton torpedoes executing an insanely impossible turn is in the movie because it looks cool, not because we're intended to actually believe that proton torpedoes can turn like that normally.

Or if you still insist on the latter, more literal approach, there's always the optical illusion.  I like that one.


Incidentally, this is why I firmly believe that what we've established as the maximum speed for X-Wings based on timing them move down the length of a Star Destroyer is far beneath what they're actually capable of, but am willing to accept it due to limitations of the game engine, and as a limitation of the cinematic that were used to create the scene.

[Renegade Paladin]

Someone tried to establish the maximum speed for an X-wing based on timing it moving down a Star Destroyer?     That establishes a lower limit, not an upper; there's nothing that says they can't move faster. 

[EtherShock]

We already had this discussion in the Y-wing thread. The speeds clocked essentially apply to combat only, for lack of a better explanation. All ships are capable of a cruising speed like real fighters.

How about this explanation for projectiles?

Tracking fighters requires advanced electronics, which only concussion missiles are typically equipped with. Without this hardware, torpedoes just can't track maneuverable craft well, but it's not exclusive to missiles, so some are actually capable.

[Narvi]

My god, we've seen missiles track down fighters in the prequels. Remember the planetary ring fight in Attack of the Clones? The one where the missile managed to maneuver through the ring system like it was on steroids? This is not an argument we really need.

They're really maneuverable, but they can also be tricked by countermeasures. Easy. Exactly how maneuverable they need to be or how trickable they will be depends on how fun it is. This game isn't going to be a simulation, otherwise we'd have really fast fighters with only the speed of light in the way.

[chief1983]

I'm tempted to lock this for several reasons:

I'm tired of seeing this argument and ones like it keep cropping up, especially derailing other threads.  This one is just getting old as everything that probably could be said, has been said.  There's no need to discuss it any more until we actually release something for testing, then you can comment away.
We don't like the prequels.  For the most part they're not going to be used as much of a reference.  OT definitely trumps them, and there's virtually no ship to ship missile use.
Paladin, you really think an X-Wing wouldn't be going full out in combat?  True, it technically is a minimum, but I can't imagine you can squeeze much more out than he was at the time, plus, even at that minimum we're pushing the limits of the engine and gameplay anyway so we can't really go any faster.  The point was to show that MGLT are only a fraction of FS m/s units.  We never actually said it was a maximum speed, but it should serve as a baseline for the gameplay hopefully.
Some comments are starting to border on attacks and not constructive discussion.

[Flipside]

Yup, like I was saying about the arguments on SpaceBattles.Net, it turns into a contest to see who's race is 'baddest', when it really should be about what techniques and ideas would work best for FoTG as a combat game based on Star Wars.

Whilst 'feeling real' is important, the first importance should be making the game enjoyable and challenging both for single and multi-play, that may mean going your own way and annoying overtly die-hard fans for not 'staying true to canon'. Considering even George Lucas cannot keep to canon for more than a few years running before tacking bits on, I personally don't see this as a problem.

[Renegade Paladin]

My god, we've seen missiles track down fighters in the prequels. Remember the planetary ring fight in Attack of the Clones? The one where the missile managed to maneuver through the ring system like it was on steroids? This is not an argument we really need.

They're really maneuverable, but they can also be tricked by countermeasures. Easy. Exactly how maneuverable they need to be or how trickable they will be depends on how fun it is. This game isn't going to be a simulation, otherwise we'd have really fast fighters with only the speed of light in the way.

Of course.  It's a game; compromises for game mechanics are to be expected, and that's not a problem.  Trying to justify what you're doing for the game based on the canon, whether we're talking about warheads or fighter velocity, when the canon doesn't support the game mechanics is intellectually dishonest and there's no need for it; just call it game mechanics and be done. 

As for there being little ship to ship missile use in the OT, remember:  The Rebels canonically had limited supplies of warheads, and in the only two space battles we see in the OT they were saving them for an important objective, namely the Death Stars.  Meanwhile, on the other side, TIE/ln models didn't carry warhead launchers.  It seems to me that an optimum solution would be to simply limit warhead numbers in the campaign, severely limit the warhead payload as compared to baseline Freespace (between six and twelve missiles as opposed to north of fifty), and have effective countermeasures.  I don't think this is the huge problem it's being made out to be. 

[brandx0]

I think this thread needs to be over, it's really not serving any constructive purpose anymore.