prisoners, capships, and fighters should be saved

RyanCole, how often have you played Wing Commander? it doesn't take that long to recharge guns, and do you really think I would hold still long enough for you to shoot out my shields, switch to your paintball gun, then shoot me enough times from a very very close range so the paint doesn't freeze?
 
Why get into guns range? Just blast him with some newer model ImRecs or FF's. Or for that matter, just lure him into range of an AMG or Flak Cannon...

LOAF: is this Joshua with a new name?
 
There's only one way this discussion is going to get solved. Looks like we gotta get Origins or whoever to make a new WC game with all the stuff we've talked about. I also would like to see some alternative armor types be available in the game. One could be crystal armor -- that armor would be used to diffract energy shots (energy shots would do half damage, missiles & ballistics would do double damage), the other armor would be diamond armor -- it would reduce missile & ballistic damage by half but energy weapon damage would be doubled.
 
Ryan isn't as funny as Joshua. George Washington, however, has made him a sergeant in the second superpolymer painball platoon.
 
Oy vey lad, your talking about some of the special Level 3 Armor from BattleTech. His halved energy damage armor is Glazed or Laser Reflective, and his "diamond hard" armor is just Blazer armor.

Also, for note, the missiles in Wing Commander are not like LRM's, which do only 1 point damage per hit. The Wing Commander type missiles are more like Phoenix missiles on F-14 Tomcats, one shot and boom, they are dead.

Ballistic weapons arebasically mass drivers, firing inert depleted uranium type rounds, which rely on kinetic impact and not explosive tipped warheads. (I think)

Joshua would not be proud. And neither would the Chisholm's Raiders.
 
No, I'm not referring to those armors from BattleTech. If you want to use BattleTech as an example, it would be like taking standard BattleTech armor and only using the aligned crystal armor portion of the standard armor for crystal armor and only using the diamond armor portion of the standard armor for diamond armor. Reflec armor in BTech simply reflects the away; it does not diffract it like crystals do. Reactive armor simply uses the tiny explosives mounted in the armor to detonate missiles when they impact so they don't totally impact on the unit -- reactive armor is not a stronger version of diamond armor.
 
And why would you only use one part of the multiple layered protection available?

For detonating missiles before exploding on actual armor, we have shields.

As for stripping away part of my armor to protect against another type threat, that is pure foolishness.

Yes, you will stop more missile explosions. But the moment they begin firing a particle cannon, laser, or the like, you are up the proverbial creek sans paddle.
 
Sometimes shields get battered down to 0. I'd like the (crystal) to reduce the energy attacks by half. As for missiles, I'll just evade them. Or if there's a shortage on crystal armor and there's plenty of diamond armor, I suppose I could use my shields to fend off energy attacks and use my diamond armor in case missiles get me.
 
RyanCole said:
Sometimes shields get battered down to 0. I'd like the (crystal) to reduce the energy attacks by half. As for missiles, I'll just evade them. Or if there's a shortage on crystal armor and there's plenty of diamond armor, I suppose I could use my shields to fend off energy attacks and use my diamond armor in case missiles get me.

Laddie, missiles are always faster and turn harder than you do - and whether or not your shields get battered down to nothing by them is not going to help you. The crystal you're talking about would work against LASER weaponry (Photon Cannons and Lasers), but wouldn't do all that much against Particle Cannons, Plasma Guns,
Tachyon Guns, Ion Cannons, Meson Blasters, or Neutron Guns which either irradiate you with wavelengths most crystals can't work with, or else cause small nuclear explosions inside the target.

Stormfire Guns and Mass Drivers depend on physical projectiles, so that crystal'll do NOTHING against them, and indeed may be more vulnerable to damage due to the structures being more inherently fragile. Ditto damage from missiles, which can't always be evaded (try evading a dumbfire shot into your belly from 100m away - it's hit you before your reflexes could even begin to kick in).

I'd rather stick with better shields, standard (and fairly light, in terms of mass) armor, and the ability to maneuver like a demon.
 
Is Ryan serious about the paint gun?

All this capturing ships nonsense was cool in the days of sailships. Anything with IFFs and sensors would get thorn to shreds really quick, especially if this technique was used too often.

Well, maybe Ryan aims to be stupider and fooler than joshua.
 
What is it with everyone in the world thinking diamond is some kind of magical substance that's invincible to everything?
 
Diamond's real structural strength is actually about seven hundred megapascals, which equals about 7,000 atmospheres. If you had a diamond bar with a cross-sectional area of one square centimeter and pulled it lengthwise, it would break under a force of seventy kilonewtons. In other words, such a bar could support a weight of seven tons on Earth's surface.

While this does make diamond stronger than any other naturally occuring substance found on Earth, diamond is only MECHANICALLY the strongest. A diamond will still melt at a lower temperature than substances such as tungsten.
 
Ijuin said:
Diamond's real structural strength is actually about seven hundred megapascals, which equals about 7,000 atmospheres. If you had a diamond bar with a cross-sectional area of one square centimeter and pulled it lengthwise, it would break under a force of seventy kilonewtons. In other words, such a bar could support a weight of seven tons on Earth's surface.

While this does make diamond stronger than any other naturally occuring substance found on Earth, diamond is only MECHANICALLY the strongest. A diamond will still melt at a lower temperature than substances such as tungsten.

Isn't diamond also more fragile than a metal would be, at least when it comes to sudden impacts? The crystalline structures in the diamond would be more likely to fracture than those in metla? It's not very resillient, merely strong. In this case, it'd be rather useless as armor, given that it'd have to withstand impacts and explosions, along with energy blasts designed to create small nuclear explosions within the material.

Great for space elevators, but poor armor.
 
Not to mention (as has been mentioned about the crystal armor) it would have no effect on tachyon, neutron, meson, amg, particle, or ion cannons. And besides, if you have an armor type, there will always be work done on a counter for said armor. For crystal and diamond armor, I can just picture a sonic cannon being produced that would shatter you armor and leave you floating in space without a hull. Defensive technologies are always trying to outpace offensive technology...but they are usually only 1-step away from each other and even then, they do not stay separated for long.
 
Ein-7919 said:
Not to mention (as has been mentioned about the crystal armor) it would have no effect on tachyon, neutron, meson, amg, particle, or ion cannons. And besides, if you have an armor type, there will always be work done on a counter for said armor. For crystal and diamond armor, I can just picture a sonic cannon being produced that would shatter you armor and leave you floating in space without a hull. Defensive technologies are always trying to outpace offensive technology...but they are usually only 1-step away from each other and even then, they do not stay separated for long.

I was the one who mentioned the particles not working on crystals, but even I wouldn't try a SONIC cannon in space. :D Maybe a missile that would attach itself to a target and cause it to shatter via resonance effects would be possible, though.

And Wing Commander's a good example of offensive tech trumping defense - from the phase shields giving capships the advantage, to torpedoes doing the same for fighters in Action Stations, followed by shield-penetrating guns of WC1, then back to WC2's 'phase shields are invulnerable' bit, then WC3's 'some guns can get through phase shields' to WC4's 'many guns can get through phase shields but don't do nearly the damage a torp could', ending with WCP's 'guns can get through phase shields, but to do enough damage to hull a ship, you need torps or really BIG guns'.
 
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