[gevatter Lars]

FS vs. SL from my point of view

Handling fighters/flighing around:
The SL fighters are closer to reality.  Sure the FS ships turn if you want them to do so, what makes the quite easier to fly, but to  provide a ship in space with that turning abilitis you have to put a lot of thrusters on it. The result would be ships that are quite bigger than the FS ones (except the bombers). Also the internal structur has to be quite good to handel that moves.
WC:Prophecy solved that prob quite good with its roteteable engines-> Vampire, Panther.
So SL: 1Point for reality FS: 1P for handling

Story:
The FS story is more epic, I realy like it. There where some turningpoints and sometimes even hope.
The SL is the standart good against bad story, nothing realy new.

Way of telling the Story:
FS mostly uses text with voices for the most part of the game, there where some cutscenes (with good quality), but only a few. Also parts of the Story are in the game engine. There where some Characters, but you can realy count them on one hand.
SL has many small movies and also in game scenes. The bigger cutscenes where also in a good quality.
So I like to say at that point they are equal.

Atmosphere:FS has not realy Atmosphere, compared to SL. You just fly one mission after the other and the next and ....
SL has these small "stop" in your quarter, where you can look at the killboard, read the news inform yourself about the latest events and so on. Even a aquarium and a CD-Player was there. And when I go through the ship to the briefing room, seeing people working, or talking... I thing that makes more atmosphere then FS has.
OK in FS you can go to the Techroom and watch some ships, or the backround of other things. Maybe when you wait you can also see people moving in the Mainhall, but that is not so good as the SL part.
Still one game declassifid them all and thats Wing Commander. Damm I loved that game from the first part....

Weapons:
Nothing specail here, they both have there good and bad weapons.
Except for the Torpedos. In SL you can't kill Capships with your fighters guns, you need Bombers with torps. Protecting that flighing targets, sometimes, realy pissed me of. Let me fly that them!

So there are no more points at the moment that are comming to my brain.
This is all my very personal view so don't get to angry about them.

Above that all is naturly Wing Commander, father of the Spacesims. ^___^

[Warlock]

Well you DON"T need huge manuvering thrusters to turn well.

1: Directional thrusters
2: mirco jets 2 per side fore and aft and a pair in front to slow down.

FS was more made on game play than physics,..since we've NEVER been outside of a fairly strong gravitywell (for space that is) to know how effective anything would be.

And the no way a fighter can kill a cap ship part was kinna lame I think. I mean come on...if a full squadron dumps missiles on a big hunk of metal with it's sheilds down it WILL take damage. one crack in the hull and explosive decompression would finish the job for you

[Nico]

yeah, in SL a fighter can't do anything agaisnt' a capship, but, oh, groovy! it doesn't last a minute against some torpedoes! either the fighter weapons are crap, either those damn torpedoes are nuclear ICBMs  
I always hated those torpedo runs in SL, and I can't count the missions where you have to do that

[DTP]

And the no way a fighter can kill a cap ship part was kinna lame I think. I mean come on...if a full squadron dumps missiles on a big hunk of metal with it's sheilds down it WILL take damage. one crack in the hull and explosive decompression would finish the job for you

One Crack in the hull will not make the entire ship decompress. Spaceships of that size, and especially warships would properly have twin hulls, just like modern oil tankers, in order to prevent a ship wide decompression. Hell even Mir had, and the ISS have twin hulls, for protection against heat and micrometeorites.

The outer hull shatters and breaks the meteorite so it loses force and speed. This hull is referred to as the shield of the station, and that is among other reasons why astronauts / cosmonauts, sometimes needs to enter space to carry out repairs.

The 2nd function of the outer hull is to act as a heat deflector. Covering the hull in some form of light deflecting material does this
.
The second hull stops the remains of the meteorite and acts as thermo vent keeping the heat out of the station. The biggest problem in space is actually getting rid of heat, as the station in space acts as a thermo bottle.

Furthermore, the ships would be designed in sections, meaning you can seal sections of where integrity of the hull is dangerous low, and where the outer hull is compromised. Sea Ship designers have used this technique since the days of the titanic.

So even a full volley of an entire squadrons dumb fire missiles would have little effect. Knowing this I thought when given the time in Freespace 1, it was stupid that you could place your fighter somewhere and put a rubber ban on your stick, and destroy a cap ship, As you could only ever possibly destroy a portion of the outer and inner hull at one section of the ship

[mikhael]

And I have to agree on DTP on every point.

[gevatter Lars]

There is a posibility to destroy a Cap ship with a Fighter, but the chance to do that are low. You would have to punch your way through the ship to the reactor core and blow it up.
Problem with that is that the reactor would be the best/most armored place on the ship and mostly the place with the most guns fireing at you. Also would a Cap Captain order his escort to defend that point when he finds out that you try to attack it with your fighters.
So I think it is realistic that you need bombers with there heavy bombs/torpedos to kill a cap.

[Shrike]

It's because of the way SL handles capital ships.  Instead of giving them a whole whack of hitpoints like FS, they all have essentially identical (low!) stats and can only be killed by events - such as torpedo hits.

[Zeronet]

Originally posted by Shrike
It's because of the way SL handles capital ships.  Instead of giving them a whole whack of hitpoints like FS, they all have essentially identical (low!) stats and can only be killed by events - such as torpedo hits.

Thats not a good thing . I remember the demo, chase torpedo over and over again. No mouse support, stuck with a keyboard(didnt have my joystick then).