Flak Turrets VS Bomber?

Lazy Panda

Spaceman
So, while I'm having my wait for the next episode, I made a little experiment. In the final mission, I picked Sabre and shot the Lionheart till it got mad and fired back. Time to abuse the single torpedo. Turrets are pretty heavy around that thing but if you go for the bridge from the topside, only 1 or 2 turrets gun for you. Easy, the Sabre had afterburners and could roll pretty quickly, it went down once the torp locked. Next test, the engine. No problem if you get close up either, 'cuz there aren't any turrets when you're directly before the engines. BOOM! So, the Sabre was indeed a formidable capship killer, but I noticed several things about turrets and some question how the Crossbow bomber, lacking afterburners, will do.

1. Those turrets can sustain quite a bit of damage, it would be easier to nuke the Bridge and engines outright, except for one or two which guard the bridge.
2. The flak turrets are either kinda weak or very strong. If you just thrust in the capship like WC2, one hit punched out my Sabre's shields. So, the Crossbow has about 5 times more shields in Standoff, that means they'll be down after 5 flak hits. But if you just roll, they are likely to miss or to graze you for little damage. In WC2, the flaks only tickled a Broadsword (same shields as Crossbow, IIRC) until it got as close as 5000m. In Standoff, they're even dangerous at 11000m. Shouldn't they be less effective at longer range.
3. The wingmen are kind of dumb at taking them out. In the pirate base assault, about 4 ships (mostly Stilettos) were lost to turret fire. Will there be any more de-fang missions (I hope not)? Will wingmen actually USE the dumbfires they'll get in the episode to take out turrets accurately?
 
Lazy Panda said:
1. Those turrets can sustain quite a bit of damage, it would be easier to nuke the Bridge and engines outright, except for one or two which guard the bridge.
Indeed. In WC2 the turrets were indestructible, so consider our turrets which are merely heavily armored a little gift from me because I was in a good mood. :p
Lazy Panda said:
2. The flak turrets are either kinda weak or very strong. If you just thrust in the capship like WC2, one hit punched out my Sabre's shields. So, the Crossbow has about 5 times more shields in Standoff, that means they'll be down after 5 flak hits. But if you just roll, they are likely to miss or to graze you for little damage. In WC2, the flaks only tickled a Broadsword (same shields as Crossbow, IIRC) until it got as close as 5000m. In Standoff, they're even dangerous at 11000m. Shouldn't they be less effective at longer range.
Why? Just like any other gun, they have a range and a damage. They do the same damage if you're at 11000m or 10m, but they miss more at 11000m (And you can avoid them a lot more easily in Standoff than in WC2, anyway)... I don't see why there should be anything else to it.
Lazy Panda said:
Will there be any more de-fang missions (I hope not)?
Just one in Episode 5, I believe, where you have to make sure the marines land on the Hakagas safely. Of course, if all your wingmen die there too, I'll just call it an accurate representation of the battle in question.
 
Thanks for the accurate reply, Eder. I'm pleased how it all is being.

Oh, and about the wingmen, what determines whether they die or eject? In the prolouge, nobody dies (till I accidently missiled Longshot, or non-accidently missiled my love-to-hate Macho). Is there a probability? Or a factor of "over"damage?

Please enlighten an unknowning follower.
 
There should be a way to tell the wingmen to leave the turrets alone completely and concentrate only on fighters. It would be better for the life expectancy of all involved.
 
Lazy Panda said:
Thanks for the accurate reply, Eder.
That's what I'm here for. :p

Lazy Panda said:
Oh, and about the wingmen, what determines whether they die or eject?
There is a probability that someone might eject, but I believe we don't know for certain wheter it is a random pick or a function of one of the pilot's AI attributes. It's gotta be either of those, though.

However, we can also mark certain pilots as unkillable, which makes them eject 100% of the time. We can also script someone to not eject at some point if we want him to die, like what they did with Dallas in WCP, but it's easier to just let the generic pilots die or eject as they wish. :p

McGruff said:
There should be a way to tell the wingmen to leave the turrets alone completely and concentrate only on fighters. It would be better for the life expectancy of all involved.
Yeah, we'd love to make all sorts of neat hacks to improve the AI like we've done with the rest of the game. More tactical options and just plain better dogfighting abilities would definitely be nice, but all the AI functions seem to be hardcoded, and there has been zero research in the area.
 
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