Secret Ops ships that don't shoot well on full guns. A bug?

-danr-

Vice Admiral
Ever tried switching to Excalibur or Thunderbolt for Secret Ops missions? I've been playing with them a lot lately, and I was hoping to compare notes with anybody else who has noticed a distinct firing problem on both these models.

Where only one gun is selected (i.e. the Tachyon on the Excalibur) the refire rate is tolerable, you lose out on the extra punch of full guns and you do miss it.

On full guns however, it seems you can fire a single volley, then have to wait a few seconds before doing it again - even if you have sufficient gun power left, it just seems to freeze the ability to fire, takes an age to shoot a Devil Ray down.

All of the flyable campaign ships seem to be ok. The Thunderbolt and the Excalibur however are not. No use in full guns at all. The Unknown Enemy Bearcat I imported has exactly the same problem too.

This is going to annoy me because
when the Cerberus makes a rendezvous with the Foehammer, all of their pilots are going to use full guns flying the 'Bolt and Excal. I'm going to notice their lack of shooting. It's going to p*ss me off :)

So, is this just my version, or anyone else noticed the same?

This version is the standalone that comes from the standoff website, with the enhanced starscape.
 
It just has to do with some type of multiplier in the game engine for guns. Meaning it takes longer for (4) of the same type of gun (Tachyon) to fire. Or with any gun for that matter in the game engine I think the Tachyons are at a refire delay of .45...But if you had (4) Chain Ions with a refire delay of like .120 or whatever they will fire faster when set to full guns. It's just that refire delay that makes it seem THAT much longer.
 
Also, I doubt the Thunderbolt and Excalibur were refined and play-tested for balancing because... well, they're not player ships. It's fantastic that Origin brought back these older ships for nostalgia's sake, but they weren't intended for the player to use.
 
I had a feeling refire would have something to do with it, I'm hoping one of UE team will come in here and let me know how they tweaked this for the finished Bearcat.

It's fantastic that Origin brought back these older ships for nostalgia's sake, but they weren't intended for the player to use.

Yeah, this also crossed my mind - and they're meant to be a little dated by the time Secret Ops comes around, hence they don't make for brilliant fighters - rather just make up the numbers in battle. Some fun with wcpedit.exe will soon fix this :D

I've brought the Thunderbolt across to Standoff before, and with a few tweaks it could be a good replacement for the Gladius (and a 2669 WC3 ship to boot) - trouble is, the one out of the box from Origin is...well, a bit rubbish :) I feel the Vaktoth kinda lost its edge in Prophecy too.
 
From memory, I think the Thunderbolt is one of the newer ships (in terms of in-universe age) introduced in WC3, so I don't think it makes much sense to have it in Standoff unless you're just playing around with it for fun.
 
I'm pretty sure I read that the Thunderbolt features in WCA in 2654 - but if you don't count Academy as game canon, you could also note that the T-Bolt seen in WC3 is the Thunderbolt VII which might imply six predecessors. Whether or not the anonymous forerunners to the machine we know look anything like the same is another matter though.

Also, this quote from "Heart Of The Tiger" - the WC3 novelization by William R. Fortschen

He was glad to see the Thunderbolts listed in the inventory.
When the wing went into combat, Blair planned to be flying with Gold
Squadron in the cockpit of one of those steady and reliable old fighters.
 
Academy TV is definitely canonical. I recall the Longbow, Hellcat and Arrow in the show, but not the Thunderbolt, though I'm willing to concede I could be wrong.

The VII designator isn't particularly relevant to our discussion here - it just means there were six other different fighters named Thunderbolt before the one we see in WC3.

The novel quote does seem to imply that the Thunderbolt has been around, although I think there are some murky areas with regards to deriving age information of ships in the novels in contrast to the games.
 
Strange, when I played UE, I noticed the Bearcat had TERRIBLE TERRIBLE refire rate... especially compared to the bearcat in WCIV!
 
This topic brings me back to a question I ask some times ago - but I did not get a response.

Just wondering: did the T-Bolt in WCP SO have a rear turret? Is it that "long range laser thingie" as used by the Dev/Shrike or something different?
 
Deacon - I just looked at the shipfiles, it seems the Thunderbolt, Shrike and Devastator are all equipped with the same weapon, listed by WCPedit as 'turreted laser'.
 
I'm pretty sure I read that the Thunderbolt features in WCA in 2654 - but if you don't count Academy as game canon, you could also note that the T-Bolt seen in WC3 is the Thunderbolt VII which might imply six predecessors. Whether or not the anonymous forerunners to the machine we know look anything like the same is another matter though.

Actually, the Thunderbolt is the one Wing Commander III Confederation fighter that doesn't appear on Wing Commander Academy (well, the Excalibur too, of course).

The 'VII' implies that it's the 7th (unrelated) fighter to have the name Thunderbolt, not the 7th model of a particular design. In the 'real world' the Thunderbolt was a World War II fighter plane (the P-47) and the Thunderbolt II is the A-10 ground attack aircraft.

We don't really know how old it is beyond the quote you already found (Colonel Hart in the Authorized Combat Guide claims to have flown them before, but he doesn't say when).
 
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