New fighter concept

Lynx

Spaceman
Tis is the reworked and textured version of the model that I first posted in Iceblades thread about new ship concepts.

It's a heavy fighter from the pre WC1/WC1 time period:

Stats:
2x Heavy neutron cannons
2x Neutron cannons
2x1 DF, 2x1HS 1xIR

Max Velocity: 380 kps
Afterburner Velocity: 1130 kps

Front Shield: 8.5 cm
Rear Shield: 7.5 cm
Front/Rear Armor: 9.5 cm
Right/Left Armor: 4 cm

I still have to figure out its history, that it doesn't contradict WC canon and stuff. So, What do you think?
 

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Wow, where did you learn to make textures like that? :)
Anyway, I really like the design, but I think it's more suited to the role of a medium fighter... of course, it's your choice.

Even for a heavy fighter, 4 neutron guns is too much, though, considering this is the WC1 period we're talking about. It doesn't look as tough as the Raptor, so I wouldn't give it anything more powerful than 2 lasers and 2 neutrons... maybe 2 lasers and 2 mass drivers.

Great looks, though :cool:
 
Hmmm,

The Raptor was still around back in 2639, so as far as heavy fighters are concerned, anything later then that is contradictory.

But there is the Wildcat fighter that Geoff Tolwyn and Vince Richards flew in the Action Station novels. I think it had lasers, mass drivers, and up to six missiles. It was Confed's top of the line fighter, but was showing its age.
 
Eder said:
Wow, where did you learn to make textures like that? :)
Anyway, I really like the design, but I think it's more suited to the role of a medium fighter... of course, it's your choice.

Even for a heavy fighter, 4 neutron guns is too much, though, considering this is the WC1 period we're talking about. It doesn't look as tough as the Raptor, so I wouldn't give it anything more powerful than 2 lasers and 2 neutrons... maybe 2 lasers and 2 mass drivers.

Great looks, though :cool:

Wow, praise from YOU! Now thats worth something... :D

Anyway, aren't Neutron guns medium damage weapons only? They do 30 cm damage or something. Maybe the heavy neutrons are too powerful thoug there arent any stats around, they're just mentioned in the novels. Maybe the laser Massdriver combo is the best.

It isn't the Wildcat :p
Not to contradict canon, it could be explained that not too much of the were produced, due to high costs or something. But I want it to be in service till the end of the kilrathi war. It could probably be a new design that came into production only a few years after the beginning of the war, and coexisted with the Raptor, but in lesser numbers

BTW I can't find a name for it; all the cool ones are already
used...help? :)

And another pic of the ship in action:
 

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Lynx said:
Not to contradict canon, it could be explained that not too much of the were produced, due to high costs or something. But I want it to be in service till the end of the kilrathi war. It could probably be a new design that came into production only a few years after the beginning of the war, and coexisted with the Raptor, but in lesser numbers

nice model. I look forward to the final version of it :D

no offense, but: are you sure that a rust bucket like this would stay in service till the end of the Kilrathi war? This is crazy. Example: Raptors were good fighters, but they were replaced by never Sabres and those by Thunderbolts.
 
Lynx said:
It isn't the Wildcat :p
Not to contradict canon, it could be explained that not too much of the were produced, due to high costs or something. But I want it to be in service till the end of the kilrathi war. It could probably be a new design that came into production only a few years after the beginning of the war, and coexisted with the Raptor, but in lesser numbers.
Stuff like this can probably happen, I guess... but I don't think the high costs would be a good reason, since the war was still raging at the time this ship was introduced (contrary to, say, the Morningstar, which was introduced only 1 year or so before the end of the war)... I mean, this ship can't be that expensive compared to other ships which we know Confed invested on (Morningstar, Wraith), because those are much more ambitious designs.

I think giving the ship one big weakness would be better... thus making it a semi-failed design, which could've stopped being produced after only a short while, but remained in service until the last few units were destroyed...

Of course, you would have to assign this ship only to places where nothing too big is expected to happen: this would explain why, despite the ship's shortcomings, it wasn't replaced by better, newer designs. I mean, while the front line squads in WWII were getting brand new P-51s, some poor recruits somewhere on the african theater were probably flying P-40-somethings which we have never even heard of because they were flawed and only a few entered service... but they could still have stuck around until the end of the war, since there was no need to assign better planes to that particular place.

Lynx said:
BTW I can't find a name for it; all the cool ones are already
used...help? :)
I'll think of something and come up with some suggestions later.
 
Nice looking design... if I was doing an early-war mod, I'd definitely want to borrow it ;).

I do agree with Eder, though, that it looks more like a medium fighter than a heavy. So, I'd suggest calling it the Corsair - this was the fighter that was supposed to enter production just before the war. However, production was delayed due to political disputes regarding the location of the factory that would be making Corsairs. Presumably, the attack on McAuliffe would have cleared this dispute away, but it would still have been several months before the factory was ready, and then several more months before the fighter entered service. So, you're looking at late 2635/early 2636.

There is, however, a certain problem with making it a medium fighter - you have the perhaps not-so-desirable task of making it inferior to the Scimitar :). I would suggest making it like an early Rapier - that is, slightly more manoeuvrable and marginally faster (your 380 works fine) than the Scim, but with inferior armour, and virtually no shields. The lack of shields, BTW, would be a consequence of the time period - according to the WCP Guide, during the early years of the war, defensive technology on fighters was minimal. This means that the early-war fighters that we are familiar with, like the Scimitar and the Raptor, probably got their shields upgraded in the late '40s, and originally had almost none.

Finally, the question of guns. Well, if it's 2635, there's really only one option - the photon gun, which the KSaga manual describes as the most popular gun of that period, next to the laser. It's a pretty interesting weapon, too - double the range of the mass driver, but a higher refire delay, lower damage potential, and twice the energy usage. So, if this fighter had four such guns (although I would suggest removing two guns altogether), it would have good long-range damage potential (12.8cm at 4,500 metres), but could only fire off two or three volleys before its capacitators were drained.
 
the ship looks great, it looks like a cross between a raptor(wc1) and a rapier(wc2). i love how it is long and flat' the mark of a truly good fighter.

beautiful :cool:
 
Quarto said:
Nice looking design... if I was doing an early-war mod, I'd definitely want to borrow it ;).

Thanks! :)

Quarto said:
I do agree with Eder, though, that it looks more like a medium fighter than a heavy.

Your probably right. I measured the fighter size from the cockpit. The fighter would be 24-26m long. For a WC2 fighter, that would be friggin' huge. But for a WC1 medium fighter, it suits just fine.

Quarto said:
There is, however, a certain problem with making it a medium fighter - you have the perhaps not-so-desirable task of making it inferior to the Scimitar.

This is something I would very much like to avoid.:p There could be much other explanations why it wasn't as common as tthe Scim. After all, it MUST be better in some aspects than the Scim; it's nearly half a century or so younger than this oldtimer, but I'll rework the stats when I have all the infos that I need. But I like the idea of my ship beeing a bit faster and more maneuverable than the Scim while beeing not as good protected as the scim in terms of shields and/or armor. And with the upgrades of the protection system, it could be still around for a longer time. Maybe it went into production in 2635/2636 as a replacement for the obsolete Wildcats, but had some flaws, which explains that they didn't retire the Scim then


Quarto said:
Finally, the question of guns. .

I looked into the pre WC1 timeline, and if I didn't miss someting, the options would be plasma guns, meson blasters, massdrivers, lasers and photon cannons.(however, I don't have Action Stations or the KS manual so I may be wrong)

A possible gun armament could be 2xMesons/2xLasers. That would give it more punch than the Scim, but this could be compensated with less armor and shields.

Man, discussing pre WC1 technology and stuff is my 2nd favourite thing in the world. :D
 
Lynx said:
After all, it MUST be better in some aspects than the Scim; it's nearly half a century or so younger than this oldtimer
Is it the Scim really older, though? I know the Confed Handbook talks about the 'earlier CF-105 Scimitar', but if that was the same as the WC1 Scim, that would be rather remarkable... how could it take Confed over a hundred years (from 2536 to 2655) to upgrade its medium fighter squadrons to a new design? I mean, if the CF-117 Rapier took this long to get to the frontlines then really... how old is the Scim? It must be from the 2300s or something... :p

I looked into the pre WC1 timeline, and if I didn't miss someting, the options would be plasma guns, meson blasters, massdrivers, lasers and photon cannons.(however, I don't have Action Stations or the KS manual so I may be wrong)
Oh yeah, the photon is the only option in a rhetorical sense ;). I'd really like to see a Confed fighter using photons, because we keep hearing about them being so popular, but there's only like two Confed fighters that use 'em.
 
Quarto said:
...it would have good long-range damage potential (12.8cm at 4,500 metres), but could only fire off two or three volleys before its capacitators were drained.

Photon guns normally do 32cm of damage, I think. Is this maybe some kind of lighter version used early in the war which you are talking about?

Viper61 said:
...I always liked the edged weapon naming convention prevalent in WC2. Cutlass? Katana? Bayonett

Cutlass sounds good, actually. I'll consider it. :)
 
Lynx said:
Photon guns normally do 32cm of damage, I think. Is this maybe some kind of lighter version used early in the war which you are talking about?
According to the KSaga manual, gun penetration is measured in millimetres, so 32 actually means 3.2 centimetres. I know the CIC database has the photon listed as doing 32 cm, but I don't know if that's just a mistake on their part or if they have a reason.

That having been said, there are several versions of the photon gun... the Academy version does 6 cm of damage at 3200 metres range and using just slightly less energy than a WC2 neutron. On the other hand, the Armada version does 3.7 cm of damage at 4200 metres, and the Kilrathi version of the same gun in Armada does 4 cm of damage.
 
Update

I have imported the model to the Freespace engine.
Here are some screenies:
 

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nice, nice... this ship could be in service of the BW... their newly build fighter :D

what do you think if we add it to our project? :D

I look forward to your new textures *hint* :p


Greetings Tolwyn
 
Great!:D I'll send it to you when I'm done with the Sabre textures. I'd always a pre WC1 campaign in the back of my head. Perhaps when WCS is finished...But I still have to figure out the final stats and stuff.

BTW what do you think of my custom Milky Way background? I always thought that the standard FS2 Nebulas are the ugliest crap in the world, so I created this.
 
hey, it looks nice too... send it over to me! :D

so, what do you think about adding this fighter?

Be advised that the new alpha has been uploaded
 
Sure I want it addded. :D

BTW the problem with my Milky way is it consists of 20+ seperate background pics(one pic alone would never allow such detail due to this &/$§&damn size limit for texture size). Would this have an impact on the performance of slower PC's?

BTW I did this to get rid of the eerie "Freespace-feeling" The game has in my oppinion a much different feeling when we don't use the standard effects for sunglare and stuff that shipped with the game.
 
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