Flyable fighters

Starkey

Starkey

Avenging Rooster
According to Standoff´s site, there will be 5 flyable fighters in the main campaign: Stilletto (light), Rapier (medium), Gladius (fighter-bomber), Sabre (heavy) and Crossbow (bomber).

I don´t know much about the game´s story, but, since now we will have 38 missions in the Prologue + Main Campaign, that means that each fighter will fly around 7-8 missions. To avoid too much repetition and to make good use of all cool models made, wouldn´t you (Eder, Quarto) consider adding another fighter to the *roster*? Either a light fighter (Ferret, not Epee) or a heavy one (Morningstar or even the Raptor) would fit great in the list above. What do you think?
 
The Broadsword will be flyable in the simulator. For the game, IMHO, I think two bombers is too much, specially if you consider that the Gladius and the Sabre can also carry torpedoes.
 
No Broadsword, no. No Raptor either. Both are too big to fit inside the CVE's hangar, so they are definitely simulator-only ships. Ships which we could include are the Epee, Ferret, Hornet, and Morningstar... but all of those create a problem either with the gameplay or with the story.

Obviously, the Morningstar is too hot to be assigned to the Firekka - we're already pushing it with the Crossbow, really. The Ferret and Hornet are both slightly inferior to the Stiletto, and it's hard enough keeping Stiletto wingmen alive right now (Am I right, Quarto? Pierre? ;)). As for the Epee, it doesn't have anything particularly appealing that the Stiletto doesn't have as well... I'd rather use the same ship for 7 missions than use two similar ships for no reason other than just to use them.

In the novels it always feels like most pilots fly the same ships over and over instead of changing ships every mission, that's sort of like what I'm going for here. This is the reason I've chosen only one or two ships to fulfill each role. Even wingmen in Standoff will rarely change ships. If you fly with someone in a Stiletto, and for the next mission you're gonna be in a Rapier, your former wingman will still be flying Stilettos. You're the WC, so only you and your best friends get to pick ships :p

It's worth noting that the player ship distribution in the game is hardly uniform, though. You'll fly the Rapier much more than you'll fly the Crossbow and Gladius, for example.

Oh, and BTW, Starkey, the Gladius will always carry torpedoes in Standoff, and the Sabre will do most of the time too... so we already have about 2,8 bombers, but like I said, half of the game is taking down capships :p
 
The story is probably all set by now, but I had the idea of a mission where you rescue a Clydesdale convoy ferrying Morningstars to a big capship, but the capship was just destroyed and the convoy is being chased by the Kilrathi.

So ole Bradshaw would kill the pursuing cats and escort the convoy back to the Firekka, where the Captain would put the fighters to good use. :D

OTOH, I always liked staying with one same fighter for a while, as long as the ordinance varies a little once in a while. It also seems more reasonable on a short-resources time.
 
Starkey said:
The story is probably all set by now, but I had the idea of a mission where you rescue a Clydesdale convoy ferrying Morningstars to a big capship, but the capship was just destroyed and the convoy is being chased by the Kilrathi.

So ole Bradshaw would kill the pursuing cats and escort the convoy back to the Firekka, where the Captain would put the fighters to good use. :D
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Well, we're doing something similar with the Crossbows :p
 
Starkey said:
I don´t know much about the game´s story, but, since now we will have 38 missions in the Prologue + Main Campaign, that means that each fighter will fly around 7-8 missions.
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There really won't be very much repetition at all. IIRC, 38 is the planned total number of missions - winning and losing. No WC game has ever had that many missions on one path :p. So, you're actually looking at a much smaller number of missions per fighter.

As for the Epee and Ferret... we've never seen any CVEs carrying Epees. There's no reason why not, of course, but these Epees would have to replace the Rapiers. Similarly, while Ferrets are used on the Tarawa, here they would have to replace the Stiletto - no way they'd waste space for two types of patrol fighters on one CVE. Technically, we have too many types of fighters already... I can't offhand remember Eder's explanation for the presence of five types of fighters onboard the Firekka, but keep in mind that normally, a CVE would have only three squadrons, each flying one type of ship (in the Tarawa's case, Ferrets, Rapiers and Sabres).
 
Have all 38 missions been 'planned' yet, or is that simply an estimated amount of missions with what you have in mind?
 
Tempest said:
Have all 38 missions been 'planned' yet, or is that simply an estimated amount of missions with what you have in mind?
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They've all been planned to some extent. The least planned ones, 16 missions IIRC, only have a name and a list of objectives so far (no per-navpoint details), but I'm working on this every day. We need a perfect list of everything that will happen in the main campaign before we can release the Prologue.

Quarto said:
I can't offhand remember Eder's explanation for the presence of five types of fighters onboard the Firekka, but keep in mind that normally, a CVE would have only three squadrons, each flying one type of ship (in the Tarawa's case, Ferrets, Rapiers and Sabres).
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The explanation is that we only have 3.5 squadrons at a time :p The sum of all ships onboard the Firekka never surpasses 45 ships or so...

You start off with an incomplete Gladii squadron, then you get more Gladii. Then by the time you get the Sabres, you've hopefully lost 6 ships already (if you haven't, some ships are taken off the carrier). Then when you get the 6 Crossbows, you lose 6 Gladii, unless you have already lost them in missions. That means there are only 4 types of ships onboard the Firekka at any given time (Stilettos, Rapiers, Sabres, and either Gladii or Crossbows).
 
Wow... can the BW really afford replacing fighters complements so quickly? They must have elves in the back somewhere...
 
<smacks self>

Getting mixed up with UE. :eek:

I still think that would be quite a high fighter turnover rate.
 
Under normal circunstances, yes, that'd be a high rate, possibly even for a full fledged Fleet Carrier. However, you have to consider that a lot of Confed's fighter-carrying capships aren't operational at the time.

I'm assuming that Confed would rather reassign the fighters from all the mothballed capships to the few CVEs, cruisers, or whatever ships which are operational than leave them gathering dust inside a hangar somewhere... It may take weeks to reactivate a carrier's power plant, but I doubt it takes that long to pack a dozen fighters inside a Clydesdale and ship them someplace where they'll be put to good use.
 
Wait, your story-line is set during the time of the false Kilrathi armistice, right? I suppose that makes a bit of sense, then.
 
Yeah, it starts during the false truce - for its duration, you get to fly only Gladii and Stilettos off a Gilgamesh-class destroyer (the Lionheart) because everything else is being disarmed thanks to bureocracy.

Once the truce is called off, you are assigned to the only carrier which remained operational in Gemini sector during peacetime (the Firekka) which gets all kinds of nifty ships now (Sabres, Crossbows) because there aren't that many better carriers online to place these nifty ships on.
 
I had to say it. the story information says that the Firreka is supporting the Concordia so woudn't it seem that you would meet Blair on one of the missions?
 
The Firekka might be assigned to support the Concordia depending on the player's performance, but we probably won't include any Blair cameos due to not being able to afford Mark Hamill's voice acting :p

Blair was shot down during the BoT campaign anyway, so it seems like another good excuse not to include him.
 
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