Shrike Gripes

Kevin Caccamo

Kevin Caccamo

Rear Admiral
I just played the fourth sim mission in WCP with a Shrike. I must say... I hated every second of it, and it was quite a challenge to stay alive in that thing. Here's a few reasons why I hate the Shrike so much:

1. Poor firepower
2. Poor shields
3. Very slow
4. Poor armor

But personally... I'd gripe more about flying Kilrathi fighters, since they can die really quickly.
 
Kevin Caccamo said:
I just played the fourth sim mission in WCP with a Shrike. I must say... I hated every second of it, and it was quite a challenge to stay alive in that thing. Here's a few reasons why I hate the Shrike so much:

1. Poor firepower
2. Poor shields
3. Very slow
4. Poor armor

But personally... I'd gripe more about flying Kilrathi fighters, since they can die really quickly.
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Damnit, ya beat me to it!!! But I agree... its a more advanced version of the Longbow in my opinion.
 
I recommend trying out the mine laying capabilities of the think. They will probably help more than you might think, Plus switch up the guns. Dont stick to the defaults. Use something like charging mass drivers or stormfire instead and see if your odds improve.

But otherwise it is somewhat slow and weakly armored (compared to the devastator). It shouldn't be too bad against the kilrathi fighters though.
 
Firepower: You're not using regular mass drivers instead of the charging kind, are you? A fully charged CMD salvo will pop a turret in one shot, and put a hurt on any ship it happens to land a hit on. Yes, its 2 heavy torps don't match up to the 4 of a WC4 era Longbow, but it also has 6 light torps to suplement its firepower, not to mention a metric butt-tonne of rockets you can unload in some idiot fighter's face or on a turret to compensate for fewer missiles (which the Longbow desperately needed, with or without escort).

Maneuverability: It has better maneuverability than not only the Longbow, but also the Thunderbolt (55/70/80, 30/40/30, and 50/50/50, respectively)

Defenses: Shields may be weaker than the Longbow, but as I recall (don't have the WC3 guide available at the moment, and the ships2 guide doesn't help) the Shrike's shields recharge faster. Also, the Shrike does have more armor, if not a great deal more.

Speed: Shrike does 360/820 cruise/AB in its default settings, with a maximum of 416 cruise if you dump all power to engines, compared to the Longbow's 320/700, which no power settings will modify.
 
Ok, I'm more the fighter pilot than the bomber pilot, but for a bomber I liked the Shrike somehow. Not as good as the Devastator, naturally, but I liked the chargable mass drivers and the fact that it wasn't as sluggish as the Longbow.
 
I felt that the Shrike had good speed, maneuverability, and weapons for a fighter-bomber, but its shields and armor felt a bit light for its bombing role--you really had to get rid of the enemy fighters and turrets BEFORE trying a torpedo run, or you were at high risk of being shot down. To me it feels like a successor to the Thunderbolt for its mix of light bombing with halfway-decent dogfighting, but likewise it is NOT meant for making torpedo runs while surrounded by gunfire.
 
I totally agree with AD, the shrike's mines are an often-overlooked asset. In general, I hate flying bombers in WCP because you can't stop bugs from latching onto you, but the charging mass drivers were like a poor man's plasma gun, they could do a lot of damage per hit, and in the shrike, you could bring them to bear a lot better than you could in a devastator.
 
Mines are a greatly overlooked weapon. If you start popping them off with a few fighters chasing you and you continue to stay in the same general area. It's surprising how many enemies will ram them as you dodge and weave.

They are *DEADLY* in MP games. You can lay a field fairly quickly and before you know it your enemy has rammed 2 of them and is exploding on your 6.
 
The Shrike was supposed to have two fun things that were removed from the final game. As explained by Sean Murphy (both of them appear in the art for the ship):

1) An escape pod. When the ship was heavily damaged you could detach the 'front' part and fly around as a fast interceptor with just a pair of lasers (similar to the Nephilim drones.)

2) A radar jamming device. The 'tube' underneath the Shrike (now considered a torpedo tube) was supposed to be a jammer which you would have used to briefly disable enemy ships.
 
But the rocket pods look so cool! I have a nice image in my head of a Tigershark in an atmosphere taking out some expanse of jungle with its rockets.

Also, remember how you could mass-fire them in the 3dfx demo? They killed that in the finished game, right?
 
Bandit LOAF said:
An escape pod. When the ship was heavily damaged you could detach the 'front' part and fly around as a fast interceptor with just a pair of lasers (similar to the Nephilim drones.)
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I think it was wise to cut this. When you're in that much trouble that you need to eject, you want to preserve your own life, not go looking for more trouble...
 
Wedge009 said:
I think it was wise to cut this. When you're in that much trouble that you need to eject, you want to preserve your own life, not go looking for more trouble...
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I dunno man, I could name several pilots, and people here, who would have gone for that.
 
Bah, I despise the Shrike! Sure, the Stormfire is nice but it will run out of ammo fast enough if you only rely on it. And the carging MD, while great, have the problem that the Shrike's gun capacitor is not very large and reloads slowly.

Maybe it would have been cooler with the two features LOAF mentioned.

Bandit LOAF said:
(...)
Also, remember how you could mass-fire them in the 3dfx demo? They killed that in the finished game, right?
Click to expand...

I didn't even realize it was possible in the demo? That's awesome! And yes, it's not in the finished game. Or I overlooked it there as well.
 
I don't think it's in the demo proper - that's pretty much the finished game... but I'm *pretty* sure you can do it in the 3dfx Test. I remember that being one of the tricks for getting as high a killscore as possible (it was a timed gauntlet)... mass-unload one of your rocket banks into a Kilrathi fighter.
 
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