Anyone good with dumbfires?

The most important principle in rocket design is KISS - if your missile has as few complex moving parts as possible, it's that much less likely to break down. For every extra thruster you add to your missile, it's that much more likely to break down.

(As an example - the Russian moon rocket required something like 20 engines to fire off simultaneously... and it never worked right because they could never get them to work right all the time.)
 
I think the Saturn V had eleven engines.

(I looked up the Russian rocket - the N1 had forty-three engines... including thirty in a single stage.)
 
Yes, but more maneuverable missiles=more kills. I always assumed that the WC missiles had something like that to begin with, otherwise they wouldn't be as maneuverable as they are.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
The most important principle in rocket design is KISS . . .
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Another point to make (may have already been made) is that, for simplicity sake, the missiles that one would use in space would also need to be useful in atmosphere. Wouldn't be real hard to imagine a flight of Hellcats tasked to go to fly to a planet, do some support work, then return back to the carrier. You carry 3 blocky space missiles and 3 aerodynamic (but not space capable) atmospheric. You are on your way to your target and are jumped by a wing of fighters, you use all your space capable missiles and all you have left are ones that don't work in space. You die, mission probably fails. Say you make it to the planet and get into a scuffle. You use all your atmospheric missiles and all your left with are blocky space missiles that aren't worth a damn planetside. You die and the mission probably fails.
The resaoning for keeping missiles aerodynamic and space capable at the same time is pretty sound if you ask me ;).

C-ya
 
Yes, but more maneuverable missiles=more kills.
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What you fail to take into consideration is that added maneuverability will probably mean lower speed. While the inverse is true for fighters in most WC games, you must take into consideration that a missile would need to slow down to keep from sliding past a target while trying to follow a last-ditch juking maneuver. While increased turning would supposedly make last-ditch escapes more difficult, the slower missile speed required to prevent "skidding" (see: Shelton Slide) would make the missile easier to outrun, or give the pilot more time to release extra countermeasures. Or, shoot down the missile.

And, as LOAF said, you'd run into too many missiles with misfiring parts, which would ultimately lead to pilot casualties.

No, the best missile is the one fired from a good position in the first place, where only limited amounts of maneuvering are required to intersect a target.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
I think the Saturn V had eleven engines.

(I looked up the Russian rocket - the N1 had forty-three engines... including thirty in a single stage.)
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The first stage had 5 engines. That's what got it off the ground and going good. The second stage also had 5, to get it into orbit and build speed. The third stage had one, to leave Earth orbit and blast to the moon. The Command Module had one engine, to leave moon orbit, and to slow down for re-entry. The LEM had two engines, one to land, and one to take off. So the whole thing had 14 sitting on the pad. But the most it ever had running at one time was 5. ;)
 
re: wingtip thrusters, it would be redundant in space and relatively useless in Earth since most of the same thing can be done with simple exhaust ports. I dont think that blocky space missiles would be useless in atmosphere though... there are plenty of blocky missiles in use by various air forces and they seem to fly well enough.
 
The Command Module had one engine, to leave moon orbit, and to slow down for re-entry. The LEM had two engines, one to land, and one to take off. So the whole thing had 14 sitting on the pad. But the most it ever had running at one time was 5.
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The last three were payload, though - a factory fresh Saturn V didn't include the Command Module or the LEM (heck, several missions didn't have LEMs).
 
Reviving dead threads, as you know, is highly frowned upon. And, yes, this thread had gone weeks without being posted in, so it was dead.
 
i'm pretty good with them to, but they only work at close range. or you have to predict where the fighter is going. using them on a cap ship is easy, realy on those baracudas after you shoot the shields away and a dumbfire does the rest :)
 
Apologies, I wasn't sure when to qualify a thread as dead. 3 weeks didn't seem that long to me, especially considering the intervening holidays. I had meant to reply earlier, but, meh.
 
You're certainly welcome to reply to 2-3 week old threads. It's the guys who seem to show up every once in a while and reply to a whole page of threads from 2000 that are the problem.

(Re: Skylab. I was just reading about it the other night - apparently the original concept was for it to be launched "wet" on a Saturn 1B... with the actual laboratory doubling as a fully fueled rocket stage that would be configured into a lab by astronauts once it reached orbit. When Apollo 20 was canelled, the project got the free Saturn V and everyone breathed a sigh of relief...)
 
Ahh, the dumbfire. I'm alright with them ... better used on capships than fighters, though (rocket pods notwithstanding ;)

The REAL reason WCP fighters can carry so many missiles is that, as opposed to mounting the missiles directly to the fuselage, they put them all in wired-up Bags of Holding ...

They give you 3.5M missiles because you'll face more bad guys at one jump point than in the entire final series of the earlier games (Proxima and Kilrah notwithstanding) ... it isn't real, but it's somewhat more "fair" ...
 
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