New ship.

Quarto said:
Eder tells me he lost two Raptors in the single Dorkathi test mission I made for him to take those screenshots.
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Yes, Spoons and whatshisname are pansys.

Actually, I think the Raptor is just too old to walk around unescorted. The five Sarthas gave my wingmen a lot of trouble before they could even make a move for the Dorkathi (then when they did, they were history). I suppose they'd do better if they had the Dorkathi coded as their priority target, while someone else took care of the Sarthas... and I suppose Sabres could do the job unescorted.
 
Well, actually yeah, I'm pretty sure Quarto gave him some of the best AI stats, indeed. It's really the Raptors that suck (sorry Raptor lovers, it's true. :p)
 
First off, being old has a few implications: the shields and armor don't quite match up to the ship's maneuverability anymore (this is probably the biggest reason why it sucks) and also, the AB fuel tank is kinda small compared to our other ships.

Second, there's the problem which presumably was around since forever, but just wasn't simulated in WC1: when you have a 36m long ship with guns on the wingtips, those guns are bound to miss half of the time. :p

HCl made us a gun convergence patch, so the Raptor's mass drivers will actually converge at a certain range... but if you're too close, or if the target's too small, you might as well switch to neutron guns and take advantage of the extra energy, because at least one of those mass driver bolts will fly right past your target. The problem is the AI isn't smart enough to use any of these tactics. That makes the Raptor a particularly bad dogfighter when flown by AI pilots. As a bomber, the AI does a decent job... but the Raptor isn't the best bomber around either, since the torpedo payload is too small.

Overall, I'd say the Raptor is comparable to the Gladius. In the era of phase-shielded capships, they both get caught in kind of a transition between "outdated heavy fighter" and "light bomber", which makes them below average at both roles.
 
Wow...you're telling me that the most powerful ship from WC1 is basically canon fodder in Standoff? Wow. wowser. Whoa. Didn't see that coming. Come on, in WC1 the gun firing arc was never a problem...all 4 weapons would typically hit...even on a Salthi. You're going to change from that to where the mass driver canons miss the majority of the time? That's just not right. I don't know about anyone else but I can count the number of times I used the Raptor without Full guns on one hand...I'm brokenhearted.
 
Well, Standoff takes place almost 15 years after WC1. Besides, circa WC1 the Raptor wasn´t exactly *new*. The most powerful fighter in the beginning of WWII (the FW-190) was cannon fodder 15 years later. It´s not the same thing, but you get the idea.

Besides, like Eder said, WC1 never simulated the ships sizes correctly, so in Standoff you have a *real-sized* 36m beast named Raptor, with guns on the wingtips. They will converge at some point, just not at close range. That´s the best solution, I think. There´s no point in having an early 2650s Raptor being a match for a late 2660s Sabre or Jalkehi.
 
Maj.Striker said:
Wow...you're telling me that the most powerful ship from WC1 is basically canon fodder in Standoff?
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Well... They're good for 2 torpedo runs each, when there's an escort. :p

Maj.Striker said:
Come on, in WC1 the gun firing arc was never a problem...all 4 weapons would typically hit...even on a Salthi. You're going to change from that to where the mass driver canons miss the majority of the time?
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Well, I don't really have a choice - we're not working with sprites anymore. Origin told us the ship is 36 m long, and drew guns on its wingtips... I made my model 36 m long and placed guns on the wingtips. I'm not changing anything. Maybe they should've put more thought into it back in 1990. :p

Anyway, we've even hacked converging guns into the engine so the ship wouldn't suck as much. And if Origin didn't put converging guns even on the Bearcat (which not only is a more modern fighter than the Raptor in-universe, but is also part of a game whose engine was probably natively capable of having converging guns, since it had auto-tracking guns), even though it had the exact same problem, I think we've already gone too far to save the Raptor from sucking.
 
Eder said:
Well, actually yeah, I'm pretty sure Quarto gave him some of the best AI stats, indeed. It's really the Raptors that suck (sorry Raptor lovers, it's true. :p)
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Uh... well... Spoons' AI isn't that great, really :p. IIRC, his gunnery in particular leaves something to be desired (or maybe flying - one of the two, anyway). As the character profile on the website says, Spoons is generally considered an unreliable thrillseeker...
 
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