[-Norbert-]

Whatever happened to painting pin-up girls as ship logos?

Probably left behind when they stared to think of themselfs as enlightened or at least close to it....
I just hope we don't get to see comic cats and dogs holding bombs on FS2 capitol ships. That might be fitting for a bomber squad, but for a capship? No.

[Dilmah G]

Whatever happened to painting pin-up girls as ship logos?

Suits fighters and bombers more, as was previously stated.

You can be sure as hell a nice pair of titties are going on my aircraft. 

[redsniper]

I'm going to need a cartoon fox holding a grenade and a gun.

[Shivan Hunter]

[General Battuta]

You should be well aware that we've got more substantive things in the pipe than screenshots.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

Well, I've just updated http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/UEF_Lao_Tze with a new ship image. Don't expect anything drastically different, although it should give you viewers a good view of how the Lao Tze looks like in WiH.

[Timerlane]

Looks and description-wise(more on that in a second), the Lao Tze is probably my favorite of the UEF fighters. I noticed the tech description on the FSWiki is different from the BP site. Which is the Lao Tze going to be?

Heavy, poor/moderate handling, yet fast interceptor, or super-handling, but slow-ish, lightly armored heavy fighter?

To me, it looks like it should be the former, with the somewhat podracer-esqely huge engines making for impressive speed, though one could possibly make alternative arguments for some kind of highly-directional thrust vectoring(if there were some kind of flaps or thrusters in each of the three 'lobes' of the engines).

[The E]

The description on the BP site is the correct one. The wiki description has been updated.

[Maverick]

Just looking at the Lao Tze, where's the cockpit on that thing?

[General Battuta]

It's internal, and very very small. Fluff involves oxygenated g-buffering gel and stuff like that.

[-Norbert-]

Hm... interresting.
Is there any place we can read that fluff already, or do we have to wait for the Techroom describtion?

[Colonol Dekker]

Stupid sexy fighter making me wait. Grumble etc.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

Just looking at the Lao Tze, where's the cockpit on that thing?

I think it's that little thin cuboid sticking out of the centre, at the front.

[Timerlane]

One could also perhaps justify it with a horizontal(i.e. 'lying-down') cockpit, which could help with g-tolerance.

It's internal, and very very small. Fluff involves oxygenated g-buffering gel and stuff like that.

So this really is an almost bomber-size(33m, as quoted there) superfighter?

[SpardaSon21]

Yeah, and since the Vasudans and Humans can manipulate gravity fields (artificial gravity onboard vessels, nullification of gravity for escaping gravity wells), wouldn't it have some kind of inertial compensation system on-board too?

[General Battuta]

I'm sure it does. But like all shipboard systems, such things are energy expensive. Pilot comfort may not exactly be top priority when it means a sacrifice in performance.

[SpardaSon21]

The GTA was lobbing 5 gigaton bombs around during the Great War.  I would assume energy for inertial compensation is small change compared to the energy required to power guns capable of competing with missiles equipped with multi-kiloton warheads.

[-Norbert-]

I'm not a science geek, but wouldn't a reversed gravity field inside the cockpit put even more stress on the human body? Gravity interacts with inertia, but doesn't cancel it out, right?

[SpardaSon21]

If you can produce a gravity force with the same strength and opposite direction to the inertia, the two forces *should* cancel out.

[Dr. Pwnguin]

Yeah, that would help to explain Freespace-style physics; such as why your Fighter can cruise to a stop when the engines die.