Destroying the Vesuvius's turrets in WCIV

So the weapon is fixed? That sounds very hard to aim considering it's a supercarrier. Agile or not, it shouldn't maneuver too agressivly while there's ships taking off and landing.

It's a good thing they didn't fire the main batteries on the Intprepid. Did they?
 
I think I took a PTC to the flank once. I wasn't really sure if it was the PTC or not . . I know I heard it fire, and died a second later, and I was in the 'cross-fire' area. I assume it was the PTC.
 
The concordia actually uses the PTC in WC2, against a Fralthra, I never actually tried to fight in between the two ships. I am not a big a fan of friendly fire.
 
The Concordia uses the PTC whenever it's in a capship fight. The blast looks like a big Patricle Cannon shot.
 
spiketv.jpg
 
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I remember seeing the PTC in WC2 in terror as it proceeded to plow into my fighter and blow the poor thing to scrap.

The spikey things: I originally thought they were fixed weapon mounts myself, but when I last saw the cutscene, it seems to me that the Vesuvius is actually firing the side-mounted turrets, which I believe mount twin tachyon guns. I may have to look at it again. I'd be happy to be wrong about this.

To clarify the spikey thing issues: it's those two extended booms on the prow. They're similar to the ones on the Concordia, Victory, or Lexington, but they're longer and don't have flat tops. They're not a cutscene thing; they're a major feature of the ship models, which are pretty hard to miss unless you don't know what the hell we're talking about. You can see them on the WCSO Helens or the WC4 Vesuvius models.

Vesuvius turn rate: I think we were talking about how the Vesuvius seems to be able to spin around wildly in the game (probably an engine bug). I think this tends to happen when the Vesuvius and the Helens get too close... at least I recall the two carriers spinning wildly around each other.

However, I also measured the turn rate when Tolwyn orders a "full 180". Assuming that time passed anywhere near real time (a guess which seemed reasonable to me, considering all the extra time cutting back and forth between the bridges of the Intrepid and the Vesuvius), the "full 180" took significantly less time than would be expected from published turn rate figures, and the turn animation is also appreciable faster. Still, it's not completely persuasive, since we can't be sure of the actual elapsed time.

Supplementary note: I think in at least one mission, the Lexington begins to execute a turn shortly after you're popped into the cockpit. If you don't move fast enough, the sides of the carrier run into you and you explode. Fun.
 
However, I also measured the turn rate when Tolwyn orders a "full 180". Assuming that time passed anywhere near real time (a guess which seemed reasonable to me, considering all the extra time cutting back and forth between the bridges of the Intrepid and the Vesuvius), the "full 180" took significantly less time than would be expected from published turn rate figures, and the turn animation is also appreciable faster. Still, it's not completely persuasive, since we can't be sure of the actual elapsed time.
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IIRC, if you measure from the time the ship starts turning, through the cut scene of Blair&co reacting, back to the cut scene of the turn finishing you get something like 28 seconds... which is pretty close to the 6 dps acknowledged rate.
 
Bah, great. Now I'm going to have to get out a ruler and do the trig to figure out what the exact answer is...

P.S. Didn't realize the other thread was dead. I'll be more careful next time.
 
GeeBot said:
Bah, great. Now I'm going to have to get out a ruler and do the trig to figure out what the exact answer is...
Click to expand...

Why would you need triginometry to divide?
 
To figure out the angles involved. Although I think I have one clip that shows the Vesuvius turning at a ridiculously high rate... which would save me the time of having to analyze ratios of the dimensions of the ship, perform perspective correction, and analyze rotations in 3D dimensions, which would kinda suck. Don't have time to go into it right now, but I'll probably have something to put up later tomorrow.
 
You're incredibly funny, as you're trying way too hard with the rather handy information we have... It's a matter of dividing one number by another.

Of course, if we all cared, we could all just look at the Vesuvius class in Secret Ops, which actually bothered to give the ship rotation statistics in the engine, and you'll find that it's 6/6/6
 
But does any source say that the main batteries can't track or is this just a factual assumption?
 
One would think, from the placement, that the designers intended to follow in the footsteps of Concordia and embed the weapons inside the hull.

The minus side is that the weapons have a really bad tracking rate (unless there are more we don't see).

The plus side is that the weapons aren't as suseptible to hits as are turrets. Also, what if these weapons are like scaled down PTC's that don't blow up or something?

The WC4 novel mentions how Vesuvius took out a frigate with one shot of the main battery.
 
TC said:
You're incredibly funny, as you're trying way too hard with the rather handy information we have... It's a matter of dividing one number by another.

Of course, if we all cared, we could all just look at the Vesuvius class in Secret Ops, which actually bothered to give the ship rotation statistics in the engine, and you'll find that it's 6/6/6
Click to expand...

I haven't had time to reply until now; I didn't want to come back until I had at least done some of the initial analysis of the imagery, and to perform a few rough estimates. Here's what I've managed to observe so far.

The clip in question is called 3330A on the WC4 DVD, side B. The helmsman begins executing the "full 180" at approximately frame 1187 (before that, the helm control isn't even nudged). The final frame of the sequence is 2031. At 29.97 fps, this is about 28.2 seconds, so the turn rate would seem to be 6.4 degree/second. No big controversy there.

However, the helmsman is still pulling the helm control all the way until approximately frame 1320 (we then cut to an exterior shot, and are unable to see if he pulls it even further). Until then, the Vesuvius is not executing its turn at the maximum rate. In any event, this is a full 4.4 seconds later. With this figure, the turn is actually completed in 23.7 seconds, and the turn rate rises to about 7.6 dps. Somewhat alarming, but still in the ball park. Recall, however, that the beginning and end of the turn are somewhat slower than the middle, executed at the maximum rate, so this is actually a conservative estimate.

Further complicating matters is that we don't know how fast time actually passes, as we don't know how much the various clips overlap (the scene cuts back and forth between exterior shots and the Intrepid and Vesuvius bridges). Thus the only reliable numbers can be derived from watching a single continuous sequence, and using the one where the Vesuvius turns fastest. As far as I can tell, this sequence occurs between frames 1321 and frames 1400. This sequence follows immediately after the helmsman has pulled the control device as far to the left as we ever see.

Here are frames 1321 and 1400:
1321.jpg
1400.jpg

(there are 5MB/day transfer limits on these two URLs combined, so they may not work later in the day, depending on thread traffic)

The time between these frames is a mere 2.64 seconds. At a strict 6 dps turn rate, the Vesuvius should be able to turn 16 degrees to port in that time. Taking into account possible rounding errors, a 7 dps turn rate would result in about an 18.5 degree turn.

What I have not resolved (and why this is not a simple matter of mere division, and why I need to use trigonometry and to carefully analyze the scene) is what the actual size of the turn is. Somewhat complicating the analysis is that the background starfield moves slightly, implying motion on the part of the Intrepid (although Blair tells the helmswoman at the start of the scene to keep a straight and steady course). However, just to hazard a guess, it would seem like the turn is appreciably more than 16 degrees (which is only 18%, or roughly 1/5th, of a right angle).

I think we might be able to reconcile the fact that the Vesuvius seems to turn faster than the known figures by calling the 6/6/6 dps rate the "standard" tactical rate. It could probably be pushed higher in an emergency, and we do see the actors lean into the turn during the full 180, something that would probably be avoided during regular manuevers. One reason I think this would be a better interpretation of engine figures is because ships in the engine should be performing routine maneuvers, and any extreme manuevers should otherwise be scripted. I didn't check if the Secret Ops turn rates conform to what TC reported.
 
Did the people who made the movie cutscence even know/care about the 6 d/s turn rate at all?

At any event, you can't be sure about the time because it might be cut or extended for dramatic purposes, as you said yourself.
 
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