Best Dogfight.....Heavy fighter or Light Fighter?

[Ron]

Hello guys 🙂🖐️. After drooling over the videos I found on YouTube, yesterday I finally bought WC Prohecy on the GoG site. In a few days, as soon as my lord at work gives me some vacation, I will start playing it.

I love these fighters, the thing that made me fall in love with them is their absurdly high combat speed......damn, in the videos the speedometer reads 300-500-1000 kilometers per second during a fight..........I LOVE THIS 🤩.
It is the first SciFi verse with such high combat capabilities, not even in Star Wars or Stargate have I ever seen similar speeds.......I fell in love 🤗

Coming to the point of the topic, I saw that there are different types of fighters, so I was wondering between a heavy fighter and a light fighter, in combat who would win?

In pure dogfighting the light fighter should have an advantage for greater mobility and evasion, but a heavy fighter has stronger armor and shields that allow it to tank more enemy shots, and it also has more powerful weapons. So I ask you who are more experienced in the game............

............in a dogfight between a heavy fighter and a light fighter, on average who has a better chance of winning?

Thanks a lot guys.😉

 

[Bandit LOAF]

I think it depends on the pilot... I personally have a much easier time taking on heavy ships in a light one because I can dance around them and get in hits when I can. But if you've got someone who handles a heavy fighter great then they can take out a light one with a couple solid hits!

 

[Star Rider]

Light Fighter vs Heavy fighter
WC1 Era

Hornet vs Jalthi:

The Hornet will win if it can go full afterburner and Shelton Slide around the Jalthi and get behind it and hit it with a Dart and volley of Laser Cannons.

Jalthi on the other will win if the Hornet plot tries to pull a frontal attack and will have a chance to hit the Hornet with its 6 Laser cannons "First Volley takes out your shields and the second one goes through your cockpit and hits the reactor"

Raptor vs Salthi:

The Raptor has the advantage in this fight with its heavier firepower and the fact that the Raptor can turn in all directions and the Salthi can only turn to the left. The only chance the Salthi has against a Raptor is superior numbers




WC2 Era:

Ferret vs the Jalkehi:

The Ferret has the advantage of speed, maneuverability, and rate of fire. All the Ferret needs to do to win is attack from the sides or above and below out of the arc of the forward guns and turret.

Jalkehi could pull out a win by using its missiles to push the Ferret and keep it from lining for an attack run. Jalkehi could also adopt the sit and spin tactic and drop speed to zero and keep spinning to keep its forward guns lined up on the Ferret.

Epee vs the Jalkehi:

Epee has to use its superior speed and maneuverability to stay out of the Jalkehi gun sights. Its Armor is thin and a couple of Particle Cannon shots are enough to cause critical damage to the Epee. If the Jalkehi can hit the Epee it can kill it easily.

 

[Ron]

Thanks so much, I guess the pilot definitely counts for a lot.

Looking at the raw stats on wcnews sheets, I was impressed by the Vampire.
Its shield and armor are on par with a heavy fighter like the excalibur. Only the Devastator, from what I've seen, has superior armor. But based on that I think the Vampire's much superior Y/P/R, combined with its heavy fighter-level armor, makes it the best I've seen so far.

I don't know about all the other light fighters, is the Vampire an extreme case of superior maneuverability/armor, or are the other light fighters similar?
I've only looked at the Panther and Wasp, but they don't even come close to the Vampire in armor and maneuverability

I think it depends on the pilot... I personally have a much easier time taking on heavy ships in a light one because I can dance around them and get in hits when I can. But if you've got someone who handles a heavy fighter great then they can take out a light one with a couple solid hits!

@Star Rider Thanks a lot, so each fighter has a weak point or a maneuver that can be lethal. I like this aspect of Wing Commander. Having maneuvers recommended against specific opponents makes the game more technical and less random, as it happens in many other games.

What I wanted to know was if in a 1vs1 between a heavy fighter and a light fighter, the light fighter has an advantage because of its superior mobility/speed/acceleration, or if instead the armor and firepower of a heavy fighter give it an advantage.

I understand that it depends on the pilot and the maneuvers that are used, but with equal pilots who would win?

 

[Bandit LOAF]

In terms of pure stats, the Vampire is near the top of the heap! It's the 'reward' fighter that you're assigned at the very end of the latest game in the series, so there's certainly a case to be made that it's the 'best' one.

You mentioned the Devastator–one thing that's important to think about is that most ships are made for a particular role and that they're all designed to operate together. A Vampire, which is a space superiority fighter, would run rings around a Devastator, which is a torpedo bomber. But the Devastator's job isn't dogfighting, it's attacking heavy capital ships. And that's something it does a lot better than the Vampire! The Wasp is a short range interceptor which means it's designed entirely for boosting out to defend ships and installations from attacking bombers. Another thing to keep in mind is that the main games take place over the course of about thirty years, so it's hard to usefully compare the stats of, say, a Rapier from Wing Commander I (2654) with the Vampire from Wing Commander Prophecy (2681).

The Panther is a good one to compare to the Vampire straight as they're both space superiority fighters, Wing Commander's equivalent of something like the F-35, from the same era. The Vampire has an edge in most numbers but they're extremely close and in the grand tradition of Hurricane vs. Spitfire it'll come down mostly to the pilot's personal reference (one has better pitch, one has better yaw!). And then depending on how you're thinking about this there's large lore components that can figure in: for instance, the Panther is cheaper and exists in greater numbers while the Vampire is more expensive and limited to the most elite units… and the Panther can operate from smaller airfields versus the Vampire that needs a fleet carrier.

 

[Ron]

In terms of pure stats, the Vampire is near the top of the heap! It's the 'reward' fighter that you're assigned at the very end of the latest game in the series, so there's certainly a case to be made that it's the 'best' one.

You mentioned the Devastator–one thing that's important to think about is that most ships are made for a particular role and that they're all designed to operate together. A Vampire, which is a space superiority fighter, would run rings around a Devastator, which is a torpedo bomber. But the Devastator's job isn't dogfighting, it's attacking heavy capital ships. And that's something it does a lot better than the Vampire! The Wasp is a short range interceptor which means it's designed entirely for boosting out to defend ships and installations from attacking bombers. Another thing to keep in mind is that the main games take place over the course of about thirty years, so it's hard to usefully compare the stats of, say, a Rapier from Wing Commander I (2654) with the Vampire from Wing Commander Prophecy (2681).

The Panther is a good one to compare to the Vampire straight as they're both space superiority fighters, Wing Commander's equivalent of something like the F-35, from the same era. The Vampire has an edge in most numbers but they're extremely close and in the grand tradition of Hurricane vs. Spitfire it'll come down mostly to the pilot's personal reference (one has better pitch, one has better yaw!). And then depending on how you're thinking about this there's large lore components that can figure in: for instance, the Panther is cheaper and exists in greater numbers while the Vampire is more expensive and limited to the most elite units… and the Panther can operate from smaller airfields versus the Vampire that needs a fleet carrier.

Why is the vampire almost at the top of the list? From the cards I've seen on wcnews it is the one with the highest Y/P/R stats, combined with enormous acceleration and speed values. Only the panther accelerates stronger (but is slower), in speed I think it is abundantly surpassed by the Wasp (which however has much lower Y/P/R values). In Dogfight I think that among those I've seen on wcnews the vampire is the best.

However, as you rightly observed, the Panther is very close to it.
More importantly, it has a much higher pitch value, combined with a monstrous acceleration of 2200 kps2.

To take advantage of its high stats, the Vampire must turn and accelerate, which means that it must first roll to the side and then pitch up to make a tight turn. These are two maneuvers to perform. The Panther instead must only pitch up or pitch down and accelerate using its monstrous acceleration.

..... basically if it performs evasive maneuvers by climbing or diving, it will be much faster than the Vampire to evade incoming missiles and attacks, both in terms of speed of travel and in the material time necessary to perform the maneuver, because it simply has to climb and accelerate, not roll to the side, climb and then accelerate.

For this reason I would like an opinion from someone who has used both, because mine is a reasoning made on the data, but basically only those who have tried them can give me their real and genuine impressions.

Thanks again for the advice, I appreciate it a lot

 

[MadMac_5]

From what I remember, in-universe there was a dramatic shift in Confed defence doctrine after the Kilrathi War and Border Worlds conflict. Rather than being do-anything ships with tough but heavy durasteel armor, the next generation of ships were built for more specialized roles and used advanced composite armor that was lighter and allowed ships to be faster and/or more heavily loaded out. The Tigershark from Prophecy is the closest to an all-purpose fighter, and it performs much like a Rapier did in Wing Commander II; capable of doing most things aside from heavy bombing, but not excelling in any particular role.

In Prophecy, the fighters are as such:

Piranha = light recon/patrol fighter, fast and nimble
Tigershark = all-purpose fighter, high endurance, flexible missile payload
Wasp = dedicated interceptor, designed to shred waves of bombers and heavy fighters (hence the particle cannon/tachyon combo), very limited endurance
Panther = space superiority fighter, excellent dogfighting ability, semi-limited endurance, can take down almost any other fighter in short order
Shrike = medium bomber, reasonably fast, can take down anything from heavy fighters to capital ships, requires fighter cover
Vampire = elite space superiority fighter, can take down anything aside from a capital ship, heavy gun and missile load, extremely expensive, restricted to elite units
Devastator = dedicated heavy bomber, designed to only destroy capital ships, absolutely requires fighter escort, super-heavy armor and loadout

There's no real equivalent to the Vampire in previous WC games, except for the Excalibur when compared to other ships of its timeframe, and that was meant as a last-ditch super-fighter to hold off the Kilrathi long enough to end the war with Behemoth/Temblor Bomb. Even the carrier group philosophy was different in Prophecy, since the Midway was meant to operate pretty much autonomously; its heavy shields were supposed to allow for it to rely on its massive fighter complement for all offensive capability, which turned out to be a bit of a mistake since the ship was retrofitted with the heavy plasma cannon during the campaign.

 

[Ron]

From what I remember, in-universe there was a dramatic shift in Confed defence doctrine after the Kilrathi War and Border Worlds conflict. Rather than being do-anything ships with tough but heavy durasteel armor, the next generation of ships were built for more specialized roles and used advanced composite armor that was lighter and allowed ships to be faster and/or more heavily loaded out. The Tigershark from Prophecy is the closest to an all-purpose fighter, and it performs much like a Rapier did in Wing Commander II; capable of doing most things aside from heavy bombing, but not excelling in any particular role.

In Prophecy, the fighters are as such:

Piranha = light recon/patrol fighter, fast and nimble
Tigershark = all-purpose fighter, high endurance, flexible missile payload
Wasp = dedicated interceptor, designed to shred waves of bombers and heavy fighters (hence the particle cannon/tachyon combo), very limited endurance
Panther = space superiority fighter, excellent dogfighting ability, semi-limited endurance, can take down almost any other fighter in short order
Shrike = medium bomber, reasonably fast, can take down anything from heavy fighters to capital ships, requires fighter cover
Vampire = elite space superiority fighter, can take down anything aside from a capital ship, heavy gun and missile load, extremely expensive, restricted to elite units
Devastator = dedicated heavy bomber, designed to only destroy capital ships, absolutely requires fighter escort, super-heavy armor and loadout

There's no real equivalent to the Vampire in previous WC games, except for the Excalibur when compared to other ships of its timeframe, and that was meant as a last-ditch super-fighter to hold off the Kilrathi long enough to end the war with Behemoth/Temblor Bomb. Even the carrier group philosophy was different in Prophecy, since the Midway was meant to operate pretty much autonomously; its heavy shields were supposed to allow for it to rely on its massive fighter complement for all offensive capability, which turned out to be a bit of a mistake since the ship was retrofitted with the heavy plasma cannon during the campaign.

thank you very much, you were very clear, now I understand better the order of effectiveness in dogfight of the various fighters

 

[Dondragmer]

What I wanted to know was if in a 1vs1 between a heavy fighter and a light fighter, the light fighter has an advantage because of its superior mobility/speed/acceleration, or if instead the armor and firepower of a heavy fighter give it an advantage.

In a few narrowly defined cases, a light fighter would win. But of the Wing Commander series are programmed so that this won't happen. They are games, and they are meant to be fun. To make them fun, the "Artificial Intelligence" is quite lacking on the intelligence side. There are two volumes of books titled Through the Moongate: The story of Richard Garriott, Origin Systems Inc. and Ultima. The author generously let this site host a bonus chapter about Wing Commander 2, and I recommend reading it.

From Siobhan Beeman, quoted in that chapter:

“I think there was a desire among almost everybody at Origin to make the AI ‘better,’ which is to say ‘more capable of evaluating the situation and choosing a tactically sound maneuver.’ However, I know that such an effort would have been fruitless–not only did we not have the spare CPU cycles nor the expertise to make ‘smart’ AI, a ‘smart’ system wouldn't even be desirable. We knew exactly how to make an unbeatable AI: pick a point about five ship lengths behind the player, and fly to that spot as directly and single-mindedly as possible. This AI existed for testing purposes, but was too boring to use in the game, even for a ‘hard’ boss fight. That’s the smartest AI possible, and doesn’t take complicated algorithms at all. Any effort to create a ‘smart’ AI would either be flawed, or would succeed and arrive at that same unbeatable AI through a more time-consuming and expensive coding path. The role of the AI in computer games is to make the player feel accomplished, and I think the WC1 AI did that very well. AI programming should focus on making the AI do interesting things that look smart, to make the player feel smart. So I’d like to believe that people generally said ‘let’s improve the AI,’ and I at the time said ‘nah, that's not how this works’ and we spent our efforts making the AI look flashier and more fun.”

So, in most Wing Commander games, you will never have a light fighter just keep turning tighter than your heavy fighter and whittle away at shields and then armour until you're destroyed. They could do it, but it wouldn't be fun. A possible exception is Armada. That really does have opponents who just keep turning forever. The usual outcome is an endless turning stalemate until I get careless or get bored. I've never tried it flying heavy vs light, but I suspect the Armada AI doesn't know that it should slow the light fighter to around the speed of its opponent. Or you could set up a human multiplayer game.

Two other conditions for this to work:

• The light fighter needs to approach without eating too many shots from the heavy. (The WC1 Raptor can destroy a Salthi in a single volley, and several of the WC2 equivalents can land even more devastating hits.)
• If the heavy fighter has a turret, it's a very different question. The AI is generally oblivious to the need to evade turrets, so even harder to test.

But overall, the main series of WC1 to WC5 do their best to avoid you experiencing the scenario you ask about.

If you're interested in how the enemies in the early games fly, I also recommend the "making of" section of the Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide.

 

[Ron]

In a few narrowly defined cases, a light fighter would win. But of the Wing Commander series are programmed so that this won't happen. They are games, and they are meant to be fun. To make them fun, the "Artificial Intelligence" is quite lacking on the intelligence side. There are two volumes of books titled Through the Moongate: The story of Richard Garriott, Origin Systems Inc. and Ultima. The author generously let this site host a bonus chapter about Wing Commander 2, and I recommend reading it.

From Siobhan Beeman, quoted in that chapter:

So, in most Wing Commander games, you will never have a light fighter just keep turning tighter than your heavy fighter and whittle away at shields and then armour until you're destroyed. They could do it, but it wouldn't be fun. A possible exception is Armada. That really does have opponents who just keep turning forever. The usual outcome is an endless turning stalemate until I get careless or get bored. I've never tried it flying heavy vs light, but I suspect the Armada AI doesn't know that it should slow the light fighter to around the speed of its opponent. Or you could set up a human multiplayer game.

Two other conditions for this to work:

• The light fighter needs to approach without eating too many shots from the heavy. (The WC1 Raptor can destroy a Salthi in a single volley, and several of the WC2 equivalents can land even more devastating hits.)
• If the heavy fighter has a turret, it's a very different question. The AI is generally oblivious to the need to evade turrets, so even harder to test.

But overall, the main series of WC1 to WC5 do their best to avoid you experiencing the scenario you ask about.

If you're interested in how the enemies in the early games fly, I also recommend the "making of" section of the Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide.

Thank you very much. In addition to the practical behavior in game I was also considering the realistic point of view. Leaving aside the game, and considering how they would behave realistically, I was considering the turrets. (I'm asking because I'm getting passionate about the story, not just the game, so much so that I'd like to buy some novels, so I'm also interested in realistic behavior)

In practice I have seen that some heavy fighters have defense turrets, some even in the rear. Should a turret be able to hinder a fighter like the Vampire? I do not know the accuracy of the turrets in game, but if they are effective, this could practically cancel the advantage of a light fighter, and given the superior armor then a heavy fighter would paradoxically be more effective

 

[MadMac_5]

In practice I have seen that some heavy fighters have defense turrets, some even in the rear. Should a turret be able to hinder a fighter like the Vampire? I do not know the accuracy of the turrets in game, but if they are effective, this could practically cancel the advantage of a light fighter, and given the superior armor then a heavy fighter would paradoxically be more effective

Again, the Vampire isn't really a traditional "heavy fighter." It's more of a space superiority fighter, and it can turn fast enough to not need a turret in the first place. I imagine that adding bigger, heavier features to it like turrets would compromise the characteristics that make it a fast, agile, lethal predator.

From a gameplay and lore perspective, the reason we have turrets at all is to make it so that flying in a straight line for a torpedo run is a bit more survivable. They were introduced in Wing Commander II on the Broadsword and Sabre (3 on the Broadsword, 1 on the Sabre) explicitly to prevent the AI from chewing up players while they waited a long time for a torpedo lock. They were then put on all subsequent bombers and fighters that carry torpedoes, with the exception of the Morningstar from Wing Commander II Secret Ops 2 since that ship was already pretty maneuverable and had thicker shields than the Sabre to increase its survivability. The ships that had turrets in the main series games were:

Wing Commander II/ Secret Ops: Broadsword (heavy bomber), Sabre (heavy fighter with occasional torpedo load), Crossbow (heavy bomber)
Wing Commander III: Thunderbolt (heavy fighter) and Longbow (heavy bomber)
Wing Commander IV: Longbow (heavy bomber), Vindicator (medium fighter that has torpedoes for... reasons), and Avenger (slightly more maneuverable heavy bomber)
Prophecy: Shrike (medium bomber), Devastator (heavy bomber)