How to fly raptor in standoff sim ?

u4eake

Spaceman
Hi again guys :)

I've read the topic here about the raptor (oh no, not another one complaining about fire arcs ??? No, don't worry :) )
I really like the raptor back in wc1 and I sure was looking forward to fly it, but I can't seem to get it in the sim ? Can't get ferret either for instance, although in the 'ships' section on the website it says I should be able to fly the ferret in the sim.

I can only get epee, crossbow, morningstar, rapier II, sabre, stilletto and gladius.

So is there something I need to do to get other ships ? Download them somewhere maybe ? Couldn't directly find something on the download section of the website.

Thx for any help you might be able to give
 
You need to utilize the 'alswantsmoreships' cheat. Just type that out while at the screen where you select your ship and mission, then hit Z to toggle between the two sets of fighters.
 
Hey! I just LOVE the Standoff! But You really fuc... up the Raptor. There is no way you can hit something with mass drivers!
 
But the GAME is superb anyway... keep up the good work! I hope You make my best Wing Commander fighter (the Raptor) more accurate.. greets! :)
 
They made the Raptor accurate according to the blueprints. The mass drivers can't hit much because they are so far above the centerline of the fighter. They didn't design it that way.
 
Well. The mass drivers worked in wing1 just fine and accurate. I think it`s just a matter of calibrating them properly..
 
It`s like WW2 fighter guns and canons. You have to calibrate them to shoot at desired point ahead of you. In Wing Commader`s time it wolud be possible to calibrate them at target`s range while firing I think.. Hey, I`m just a Cadet, correct me if I`m wrong.. But hey, I played all of the original Wings (including all Special Ops) :)
 
LarkInFlight said:
Well. The mass drivers worked in wing1 just fine and accurate. I think it`s just a matter of calibrating them properly..
No, it really isn't. This subject has already been discussed extensively - please refer to this thread.
 
I was wondering about that thread, though: why is the Raptor kept at 36 meters when the Hornet, Gladius and Sabre are scaled down (and why is the Morningstar lengthened)?
 
Bandit LOAF said:
I was wondering about that thread, though: why is the Raptor kept at 36 meters when the Hornet, Gladius and Sabre are scaled down (and why is the Morningstar lengthened)?
Well, the Sabre isn't scaled down at all - the WCA manual lists the Sabre as being 23.6 metres long, and that's its length in Standoff, too. In regards to the Hornet and the Morningstar... that's a really good question. I can't for the life of me remember any discussions with Eder about this. I really can't think of any reason - in both cases, the difference is just a metre or two, so it's definitely not any kind of gameplay consideration.

And finally, the Gladius... well, here the rescaling is definitely deliberate. Like I mentioned in that other thread, if we were making a WC1-oriented mod, we'd probably bite the bullet and rescale all the fighters, because it would be necessary for gameplay. In the case of Standoff, it definitely wasn't necessary to rescale the Raptor... but the Gladius, which has a much bigger role in the campaign, was a problem.

However, we do have a good canon-related excuse - in the two other cases where an Armada ship appeared in another game, it was sized differently than in Armada. The Arrow in WC3 was bigger than the Armada Arrow, while the Wraith in WCA was smaller than the Armada Arrow. In both cases, the ships appeared to be different variants. We felt that if this works in the case of the Arrow and the Wraith, it's also possible that the Priv variant of the Gladius would be sized differently than in Armada.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
I was wondering about that thread, though: why is the Raptor kept at 36 meters when the Hornet, Gladius and Sabre are scaled down (and why is the Morningstar lengthened)?
Our Hornet isn't really "scaled down" - it just has shorter guns than the WC1 version, where the guns accounted for some of the length.

The Morningstar I had no memory of messing with... so I went and checked it now, and I must have simply gotten inaccurate data from somewhere when doing the object viewer text, because the in-game model is indeed 20 meters (easily verifiable even if you have no editing tools, just put a Morningstar side-by-side with a Sabre in the Sim). I gotta fix the text.

The Gladius is scaled down because Armada sizes are ridiculous (to the point where not even Origin seemed to ever bother respecting them, as Q mentioned). A 36 meter long Gladius would be 72 meters wide, so I made our Gladius 36 meters *wide*.

Needless to say, we couldn't have a 72-meter wide hangar or make the player shoot bullets 72 meters apart from each other in the campaign. So, this one was definitely deliberate.

I don't think this troubles anyone too much, given the amount of contradictory information we know about the Gladius. Can we even say that the crappy light fighter in Privateer and the state of the art torpedo bomber in Armada are the same ship? Sure, they have the same name (Concordias anyone?) and the same look (Scimitar = Banshee? Salthi = Jalthi? Talon = Gratha? Gladius = Raptor?)... but everything else Armada and Privateer have to say on this matter is contradicting.
 
Wouldnt it be possible to find the "correct" size of the WC1 Fighters by compairing the WC1 and the WC2 rapier?
 
No, because the WC1 Rapier and WC2 Raper are different models. It is not uncommon even today for different models of the same plane to have different physical dimensions.

A better comparison would be found by comparing cockpit sizes.
 
Wouldnt it be possible to find the "correct" size of the WC1 Fighters by compairing the WC1 and the WC2 rapier?

Well, obviously there's no way to make the 'correct' length for a fictional spaceship.

The 'Rapier II' switch is as good as anything, in that it's true that Wing Commander II features 'reasonable' lengths for its fighters, and they both share the Rapier II. On the other hand, we do see variation in lengths -- the Arrow in Armada is 18 meters versus the Arrow in Wing Commander III/IV's 20 meters. The five meter difference between the F-44A Rapier II and the F-44G Rapier II doesn't seem outlandish in this context; furthermore, the fact that both lengths are printed in the Kilrathi Saga manual lends credence to the fact that the Wing Commander II ships are just plain shorter.

I don't like the 'cockpit' idea, because it reeks of SpaceBattles -- there's far too much leeway to claim that ones 'mathematical' analysis of characters standing next to cockpits supports any given theory of length.

Well, the Sabre isn't scaled down at all - the WCA manual lists the Sabre as being 23.6 metres long, and that's its length in Standoff, too.

I'm not sure why I said Sabre -- it's certainly the right length (that is to say, there's no alternate length in some other source that I might have be referring to, the mistake was mine).

However, we do have a good canon-related excuse - in the two other cases where an Armada ship appeared in another game, it was sized differently than in Armada. The Arrow in WC3 was bigger than the Armada Arrow, while the Wraith in WCA was smaller than the Armada Arrow. In both cases, the ships appeared to be different variants. We felt that if this works in the case of the Arrow and the Wraith, it's also possible that the Priv variant of the Gladius would be sized differently than in Armada.

There's a third instance, too: the Armada Jrathek (35 meters) versus the Academy Jrathek (20m).

On the other hand, there's also one "same" -- the Armada Dralthi (28m) is the same length as the Wing Commander I Dralthi. That suggests to me that in terms of scale Armada is making a conscious effort to follow the 'giant' Wing Commander I fighters rather than the reasonable Wing Commander II fighters.

(This and anything I post is just trivia, mind you. I think you made the right choices with regards to Standoff. I just like talking about the how and why of lengths.)

I don't think this troubles anyone too much, given the amount of contradictory information we know about the Gladius. Can we even say that the crappy light fighter in Privateer and the state of the art torpedo bomber in Armada are the same ship? Sure, they have the same name (Concordias anyone?) and the same look (Scimitar = Banshee? Salthi = Jalthi? Talon = Gratha? Gladius = Raptor?)... but everything else Armada and Privateer have to say on this matter is contradicting.

I believe we can say that they're the same fighter -- the same model given different names by different development teams and used in different eras, perhaps (I have to wonder if the 36 meter length comes from Super Wing Commander in the first place -- it seems odd that the Gladius has the same length as the Raptor with whom it shares a 3D model)... but you'd have a lot of trouble convincing me that the same ship with the same name, the same design, in the same era and in games developed by the same team are supposed to be different, especially given the wide variation in ship classifications sometimes seen in Wing Commander.

Moreover, in the specific case of the Gladius, I think the missiles are a dead giveaway -- the Privateer Gladius' eight Proton Torpedoes transition into the Armada version's eight Darts. I think that has to be intentional and not some happy accident.

(On the other hand, however pointless I've always enjoyed the *idea* of giant multi-seater Gladii deep in my brain, however little sense it makes... my particular fantasy of future Wing Commander missions has always been to see World War II style strategic bombing in space, with your fighter charged with escorting large planet-based B-24 analogues.)
 
I believe we can say that they're the same fighter -- the same model given different names by different development teams and used in different eras

The problem is that Armada shouldn't technically be considered Canon, because it takes place nowhere in the actual Wc universe.
 
Fatcat said:
The problem is that Armada shouldn't technically be considered Canon, because it takes place nowhere in the actual Wc universe.
Heh, what?


Bandit LOAF said:
I don't like the 'cockpit' idea, because it reeks of SpaceBattles -- there's far too much leeway to claim that ones 'mathematical' analysis of characters standing next to cockpits supports any given theory of length.
Yep. The results of such comparisons are generally pretty dodgy, even in games where ship size seems perfectly reasonable.

On the other hand, there's also one "same" -- the Armada Dralthi (28m) is the same length as the Wing Commander I Dralthi. That suggests to me that in terms of scale Armada is making a conscious effort to follow the 'giant' Wing Commander I fighters rather than the reasonable Wing Commander II fighters.
Yeah, it does seem that way. I suppose, in a way, it's nice that they at least tried to be consistent (i.e., rescaling the Wraith and the Jrathek)... but I can't help thinking it would have been better had they tried being consistent in the other direction, reducing the size of the Dralthi ;).

Moreover, in the specific case of the Gladius, I think the missiles are a dead giveaway -- the Privateer Gladius' eight Proton Torpedoes transition into the Armada version's eight Darts. I think that has to be intentional and not some happy accident.
That's certainly true, but there's more differences than similarities in terms of stats - the speed, the gun loadout, the armour, and so on.

(on a sidenote, it makes me wonder why our Gladius is so woefully under-missiled compared to both the Priv and the Armada versions - those additional dumbfires sure would make life a lot easier sometimes)

(On the other hand, however pointless I've always enjoyed the *idea* of giant multi-seater Gladii deep in my brain, however little sense it makes... my particular fantasy of future Wing Commander missions has always been to see World War II style strategic bombing in space, with your fighter charged with escorting large planet-based B-24 analogues.)
Yeah, that kind of mission would be pretty cool... but wouldn't ships like the Broadsword be much more natural candidates for it? :)
 
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