Originally posted by RFBurns
I am in agreement with Napoleon about being in a battle and running out of fuel. Flying on fumes is not something you need to be worried about in heavy battle. Many times in WCIV and WCP I found upon returning from a mission, sometimes my ship would have a drop of afterburner fuel left! And that situation does not help when you return to your carrier only to find 100 bugs swarming about trying to kill your carrier!
Okay, this is YOU. But let's think logically about what a fighter is designed for.
Logically, both you and the enemy have fairly similar tech levels (if you have lower, you're either going to steal the enemies or have its butt whomped). Your fighters are going to be roughly equal. Your pilots are going to roughly equal. Assume your numbers in any given battle are roughly equal. You have only a 50% chance of survival.
In a battle, what are the chances that you will run out of fuel before you are killed normally? You say you ran out of fuel many times. How many kills did you have at the time? 15? 20? More? Turn up the difficulty level until you are averaging one death per kill, then count the number of times you are killed because you run out of fuel. Personally, I think the last time I ran out of fuel was sometime in WC2. We must have different flying styles.
Let's take a full on battle. You send out 10 Dragons. 5 are shot down. 5 make it home.
Alternatively you send out 10 Vampires, 5 are shot down, one runs out of fuel and is shot down. 4 make it home. Which is more economically viable? Of course, the poor sucker who ran out of fuel isn't going to be too happy, but there was a 50-50 chance he was going to die anyway.
Besides, if there seems to be a common problem with running out of fuel, it's far cheaper to simply enlarge the fuel tank then to install m/am drives.
Originally posted by RFBurns
Its a toss up between the two. Question would be, which one would be likely to survive an all out continuous attack. Of course the Dragon will never have to worry about afterburner. Vamps have more missles. The Dragon can cloak. Vamps can run circles around the Dragon. Vamps guns are more powerfull than the Dragons, not saying that you couldnt load up a pair of updated tachyon guns to a Dragon. Both are about the same size. Both can wreak some havoc on an enemy. Hard choice for shure! But if I had to bet on which one would be left after the meyham, Id have to say that the Dragon would prevail. It simply has more defensive capabilities than any other craft. It can hide, it can out-afterburn any other ship, excluding Privateer craft. And it does indeed have some mega-awsome Fission cannons!
It's a pointless argument (This goes for everybody).
The Vampire is a Space Superiority Fighter. It is the best. It is faster, more manouvreable and better armed then the Dragon and comes at a fraction of the cost. In a straight up fight, the Dragon will be dead long before the Vamp runs out of burner fuel.
That's not to say the Dragon is a bad ship. It's a solid fighter, but that's not its strength. It can cloak, is jump capable and has unlimited range (as long as the pilot can stand it and it doesn't need to rearm). But its purpose is not to be a Space Superiority fighter. It seems to be custom built as a spy or assassin's tool. It can strike anything, anywhere, any time. If it wants to kill a fighter, it will do what Seether did in the opening WC4 movie - cloak, get on its tail, uncloak and unload those Fission guns up its arse. If it is outnumbered or outgunned it will cloak, fire up those unlimited burners and get the hell out. The Vampire will win a straight up fight, but there will never be a straight up fight with a Dragon.
The shear cost of a Dragon means that it will never be used as a main fleet fighter. In fact, it will probably never be placed in a situation where it is likely to be lost. Two different fighters, two very different purposes. Each excels in the area it was designed for.
Just had a thought. I wonder what the maintenance/safety aspect of a matter/antimatter engine is. Perhaps not something you want your techs messing around with, or a damaged one landing on your nice shiny flight deck.
[Edited by AzraeL on 01-30-2001 at 18:57]