Secret Ops Fighters

J

Jason_Ryock

Vice Admiral
So...does the Cereberus just carry two to four differant variations of the Vampire fighter (and every other fighter for that matter) or are they just customizable? Can you, for example, swap the weapons loadout (Guns mostly, but hardpoints to a lesser extent, there are a few examples of the Vampire carring Lancer Torps in SO) frequently and easily, or are there just many differant variations of the same fighter that are all differant?
 
Just thought I'd add that the fighters on the Cerberus were supposed to be experimental, testing new weapons, which could account for their switching out so much.

If that were really the case I would have expected the weapons to not work all the time.

I was going to edit this onto the original post but I can only do that for 120 minutes.
 
Missile loadouts can be changed depending on mission... you don't need a separate version of a fighter to sometimes mount a torpedo, you just swap out the type of rack.

I don't recall the guns ever actually changing in SO.

As for the concept of prototype weapons -- whatever we use in combat has already been thoroughly tested in laboratories and such... SO is the 'trial by fire' to see if it's actually effective in real life. Think the 'Y' version of an aircraft rather than the 'X.
 
Guns

Sometimes you fly the Vampire and it has one kind of gun, sometimes you fly it and it has others. I never understood why.

I get the bit about trial by fire, but the weapons loadouts and guns seem to change so rapidly it confuses me.

In WC4 (I'm going by the novelization here, though I own and have played the game too) after Blair's very first mission (Convey gets wiped out) he is discussing what ship could have made the raid and he mentions that it had to be a fighter carrying a torpedo, because no other ship would be able to run at the same speed.
 
Jason_Ryock said:
Sometimes you fly the Vampire and it has one kind of gun, sometimes you fly it and it has others. I never understood why.
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I... don't believe they change during SO...

In WC4 (I'm going by the novelization here, though I own and have played the game too) after Blair's very first mission (Convey gets wiped out) he is discussing what ship could have made the raid and he mentions that it had to be a fighter carrying a torpedo, because no other ship would be able to run at the same speed.
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Not exactly sure what point you're trying to make...
 
First, I swear there are at least two variants on the Vampire in Secret Ops. I spent the last day beating the game again to make sure. Second, based on what Blair said, Fighters didn't have the ability to carry torpedoes because of their hard points, and if they did they wouldn't be able to manuver, but in SecOps you carry lancer torps on a Vampire with no problems.
 
There are two variants of the Vampire in Secret Ops... The Vampire and the Black Vampire (S variant)... I don't believe you actually fly the non-S variant in the game, though...

Blair talking about not having a torpedo on a fighter is more of a general rule of thumb than anything (really easy to note, as he happens to believe he's following a fighter with a torpedo at the time...) The Excalibur, Sabre, Morningstar and.... evidently, the Epee... are all fighters that can carry one or more torpedo, off the top of my head.
 
Jason_Ryock said:
Second, based on what Blair said, Fighters didn't have the ability to carry torpedoes because of their hard points, and if they did they wouldn't be able to manuver, but in SecOps you carry lancer torps on a Vampire with no problems.
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A fighter can carry any weapon it's capable of carrying. So, if the Vampire carries torpedoes, you can be pretty sure it can carry a torpedo :).

As for Blair's comments in the WC4 novel, Blair's point wasn't that a fighter could only carry one torpedo. Rather, his point was that the raid couldn't have been carried out by a bomber, because a bomber would have been slower - and therefore, the raid must have been carried out by a torpedo-carrying fighter. So, if anything, Blair's comments prove the opposite of what you're arguing.
 
TC said:
general rule of thumb than anything (really easy to note, as he happens to believe he's following a fighter with a torpedo at the time...) The Excalibur, Sabre, Morningstar and.... evidently, the Epee... are all fighters that can carry one or more torpedo, off the top of my head.
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The comment Blair made was that while some fighters are able to carry torpedoes, the mass of such a heavy weapon would often make a ship sluggish or less maneuverable than it would otherwise be. This is why he was confused by the Dragons - a Hellcat COULD be modified to carry a torp, the way a Thunderbolt would, but it'd have been far more sluggish and definitely slower than the Dragon was, unless it was on afterburners the whole way.
 
There's a special mount that'll load a Torpedo onto a Hellcat (or an Arrow or an Excalibur)... there's a CCG card of it.
 
I like what Quarto said, it was a very good line of thought.

I took Blair's comments to mean that fighters couldn't carry torpedoes, but what he really meant was that in this case the raid hadn't been conducted by a bomber.

Any thoughts on why we haven't seen more heavy raiding (with torpedoes) using the light fighters? I know I would rather have a fighter when cleaning up after a capship strike then those sluggish bombers.

The Devestator in paticular...It's like Blair says in WC4 "Stick over, pause, THEN the move." but it's worse I always seem to overcorrect, it just seems to me that using fighters with torpedo mounts is better...
 
Because there's a tradeoff -- equipping a fighter with a torpedo is going to make it maneuver like a bomber with a torpedo... it's not an instant solution, otherwise they'd design bombers better in the first place. :) Mounting a torpedo on a Hellcat is going to get you a slower, less maneuverable Hellcat... that doesn't have the added armor and shields of a Longbow.
 
Perhaps (you're probably still suffering some from the mount itself)... but you're still faced with the prospect of performing a torpedo run without the armor and shields of a bomber.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
Perhaps (you're probably still suffering some from the mount itself)... but you're still faced with the prospect of performing a torpedo run without the armor and shields of a bomber.
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Everyone close your eyes and think Epee *shudder*

C-ya
 
Iceblade said:
Hey UE guys! Explain that. How can the Epee be so fast with that Torp?
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Think back to every strike mission you've ever been on. Does your craft handle differently (speed change, manuverability, etc) after you release a torpedo? No it doesn't. I believe the novels speak of the feeling the torpedo falling away from the craft, but no discernable difference in flight. So lets operate under the assumption that torpedoes make absolutely no difference in the handling of the craft (which is kindof reasonable as the mass of a torp compared to the mass of the craft is probably pretty small). This now leaves the only thing effecting speed and manueverability to be the original design. The Epee was designed to carry a torpedo, so were the later versions of the Sabre, Vampire, Panthers, etc. Therefore the speed of the Epee will be the same, torp or not.
Now go back to the WC4 novelization. Blair figured the strike craft was a modified medium fighter because the speed was too high to be a bomber, therefore Blair must know that the torpedo does not effect the speed of the medium fighter since a Hellcat is capable of over 400kps without effort (this is what the bandit was travelling at if I remember correctly). Therefore, even if the Epee wasn't designed to carry a torpedo, it would still handle just the way it had if it was modified to do so.
Now, why don't more fighters carry torpedoes? Well as stated before the the later model Sabre was an attempt at this. We may have done well in this craft in WC2, but look at the End Run bomber pilots. Those but the most experienced didn't survive very long. This goes back to LOAF's point, bombers with light shields and armor do not last long. So, since a strike missions purpose is to deliver a LARGE payload (fighters could not carry more than a few torps) and get the pilots home safetly, heavily armed and armored (slow) bombers seem to be the most logical way to do it. Though, in their defense, the bomber loadouts of the Prophecy craft were pretty effective against smaller targets :)

C-ya
 
Bandit LOAF said:
I would think that the torpedo-carrying version of the Epee would be significantly handicapped.
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I thought we actually go on a mission in WC2 or the add-ons with an Epee carrying a torp?
Anyway, I'm not so sure. In space, an objects mass is everything. A sabre displaces 22 metric tons and can carry 7 torpedoes without it affecting its control, speed, etc. An epee displaces 13 metric tons and can carry one torpedo. Lets go off the deep end and say a torpedo weighs 5 metric tons. This mass ratio with to without a torpedo becomes 2.6 with the Sabre and 1.4 with the Epee (this ratio has the Sabre far out in front of the Epee for just about any mass of torpedo). Assuming this and that both craft were designed to operate with a normal payload, the Sabre would be much more severely hampered by the 7 torpedos then an Epee would with 1, but there is no loss in control, speed, etc.

C-ya
 
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