Fighter/Bomber In-Service Dates Visualized (February 29, 2024)

Ah, there it is. The good ol' "Arrow"... who would have thought that?
And I thought the Arrow had been decommissioned at the latest since the Vampire was taken into service. :D
 
At least three versions of the Arrow flew into the 28th Century!

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render_arrow_eclipse.jpg


render_arrow_guardian.jpg
 
Hehe, yes I always forget Wing Commander Arena, because I haven't played it.
Thanks for the pictures!!

The only ship looking a bit similar to an Arrow is the first scout version picture. The other ones ... well... are sort of "fat" and ugly. :eek:
After all, everyone has different tastes, so no offense.
 
Yeah, that's kind of by design. Each ship in Arena has a base model like the Arrow Scout above which is the pure fighter. The medium and heavier variants of each craft are that ship - plus a ton of custom armor and weapons grafted on, which reflects the desperate and creative times on the frontier post Nephilim war.
 
Yeah, I'm not usually a fan of the whole 'better ship is the same ship with more nonsense glued on it' thing sci-fi sometimes does, but Arena made it pretty clear these were the Wing Commander equivalent of random third world militias putting a 30mm turret on their Honda Civic. If anything they looked too good for what they were supposed to be.
 
Dyret said:
Yeah, I'm not usually a fan of the whole 'better ship is the same ship with more nonsense glued on it' thing sci-fi sometimes does, but Arena made it pretty clear these were the Wing Commander equivalent of random third world militias putting a 30mm turret on their Honda Civic. If anything they looked too good for what they were supposed to be.
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The way the game is designed, the heavier ships weren't necessarily the best. I played a ton with the Darket Dragonfly, which was arguably one of the lightest armored ships in the game. But you could literally fly circles around every other ship and outrun missiles, so as long as you could avoid getting hit by bursting your afterburners you could take on ships that on paper outclassed it by a long shot.
 
Same as WC2. No one likes the Epee, but I still think it and the Ferret are some of the best ships in the game if you stay on your toes. Especially if you disregard the purposely broken ships like the Wraith and Morningstar.
 
Dyret said:
Same as WC2. No one likes the Epee, but I still think it and the Ferret are some of the best ships in the game if you stay on your toes. Especially if you disregard the purposely broken ships like the Wraith and Morningstar.
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Ferret has nearly double the armor of an Epee, and is about 20KPS faster so it was more forgiving in a dogfight if you took a hit. Epee has stronger guns with the Particle Cannons and carries a Pair of Darts and Javelins by default which allowed you to hit a target further out.

Epee also according to the specs has better acceleration and better maneuverability at 10 Degree's per second to the Ferrets 8 Degrees per second.
 
Ferret a a nice little ship as long as you don't throw it into a huge fight. Epee is scrap except its one torpedo. Its really pretty much a downgrade. But then I am that guy that would take the Hornet over the centaurian mud pig every day... ;-)
 
Yeah, the armour definitely lets the Epee down. The AI loves its cheap face missile shots too much for any player ship to get away with having that little armour.

Edit: On the subject of WC2 ships, does anyone know when they added auto-attacking turrets to Academy? The GOG-version has them, but the one I played as a kid didn't, which made the Broadsword a bit clunky to say the least.
 
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Dyret said:
Edit: On the subject of WC2 ships, does anyone know when they added auto-attacking turrets to Academy? The GOG-version has them, but the one I played as a kid didn't, which made the Broadsword a bit clunky to say the least.
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I'm not aware of any changes that GOG has made to Academy.
 
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