The most loathed startfighter ever.

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ptk said:
LOL. I'd actually love to do that. Damn shame there is no way to do so.

Yet . . . yet. I'm absolutely certain that, sooner or later, a programer with an avid love of WC is going to catch a wild hair and rig up a WCP/SO multi-player mod, and then I'll be owning all of you (with the probable exception of one or two, I'm sure).

That, or Origin might catch a wild hair and release a new WC with multi-player and more nifty features; in which case, I'll still be all about owning newbies and the weak-minded.

Of course, the dream multi-player WC would be the one with all ships from all games, customizing options (with limitations, of course), and co-op, duel, campaign, etc etc.

My personal dream is to play a part in a battle for an entire system. Flying off of a specific carrier, in a specific squadron, playing a specific role in each encounter. And, real battle plans, thought up and coordinated by players, with consequences for success/failure. The thought of flying second position in a wing of Broadswords on a strike against a Fralthra, with Rapiers and Epees flying escort to keep Sartha and Drakhri off my back, and watching my torpedo streak away towards my target . . . mmm . . . makes my heart race just thinking about it . . . oh HELL yeah!
 
Col.Dom said:
The Hellcat V does, in fact, rule.

No, it really doesn't. Even the Black Hellcats in the PoF novels got owened by regular T-Bolts.
 
Yeah but those battles were written with an anti-Hellcat bias.

I will say, though, that the 2669 gun configuration on the Thud VII was uncanny. Nothing at the end of those guns could possibly survive. The torpedo was a pleasant addition. Nearly the perfect fighter, if not for the dock in maneuverability. I like how the Thud VII compensates with being able to take a beating... but I prefer being able to dodge & weave than take hits.

The Hellcat may have a vanilla gun compliment and so-so, well, everything, it was the most well-balanced, inbetween fighter and made for some fun dog fighting!
 
The Hellcat might not be everyone's favorite, but it was a "get the job done" fighter. It's the beat-up but reliable truck you drive to the worksite, not the tweaked-out sports convertible you buy to compensate for a small penis.

It's not flashy, but it's a damned reliable fighter with enough staying power to get you home safely, if you have any skills at all.
 
overmortal said:
Dumbfires in WC1 & 2 would have been much more fun if they'd have been the power monsters that they were in wc3 on up.

Yeah, WC3 had the best balanced missiles I think. Dumbfires hit hard enough to kill even a Paktahn in one shot, which compensated for the difficulty in getting a hit. Likewise, Heatseekers were a bit faster and harder hitting than ImRecs to balance their inferior targeting. Basically, the harder it was to hit with a missile, the bigger the "reward" for a solid hit.
 
Sabre said:
I use IFFs. Why did they make the missiles pointed? There's no reason for aerodynamics in space!

Not in space, but these missiles are ALSO used in atmosphere. In the games, the Hellcat, Excalibur, Vindicator, and Dragon are designed for in-atmosphere missions as well as space missions (in End Run, we see that the Rapier is also capable of atmospheric missions). It is much simpler and more convenient to produce and mount just one type of missile to do both jobs, assuming that using atmosphere-capable missiles in deep space does not give grossly inferior performance to vacuum-only missiles.


Random Pilot on atmosphere mission: DAMN! I'm out of atmosphere-capable IFF missiles! All I've got left are these six vacuum-only ones!

:D
 
Col.Dom said:
Yeah but those battles were written with an anti-Hellcat bias.

The Hellcat may have a vanilla gun compliment and so-so, well, everything, it was the most well-balanced, inbetween fighter and made for some fun dog fighting!

How were they anti-Hellcat? If anything, they were for them. After all, it was Seether's Special Ops unit using them.

If you want fun dog fighting, I suggest an Arrow. Aside from having two more missiles, it was fast as shit. Same reason why I loved the Wasp so much.
 
Yea, the Arrow's capability to duck and weave out of just about anything more than made up for it's softer guns. The increased payload was also very nice, and made the arrow a very effective interceptor.
 
Yeah, the gun payload was my least favorite part of the Arrow.
 
LeHah said:
Yeah, the gun payload was my least favorite part of the Arrow.

If there was room in the frame, you could've substituted the Light Tachyon for the Ion Guns and gotten the same amount of energy usage with a similar refire rate, but double the damage. Personally, I'd have fitted the Arrow with a few more shorter-ranged weapons like mass drivers; it has the speed and maneuverability to dance in close, and those mass drivers do over double the damage of the lasers it currently has.
 
I'm sure a light point defense fighter could hold a gun made for a bomber or an ATF. :rolleyes:
 
LeHah said:
I'm sure a light point defense fighter could hold a gun made for a bomber or an ATF. :rolleyes:

The Bearcat (14 tons) isn't much heavier than the Arrow (13 tons), though the extra 7 meters don't seem to affect the wings where the light tachyons were stored. It's still an example of a substitution which could've proven effective. Ideally, they could've stuck shorter-ranged guns into that frame and make it work, given its speed. As it is, the ions and the lasers aren't really the best combination - the lasers take half the power of the ions, but only give you 500m extra range, which you could cross in less than a second at max velocity. Particle cannons and mass drivers have been seen on craft that were both lighter and smaller than the Arrow (Ferret, Epee), so the combination does seem at least theoretically possible.
 
If worse comes to worse, wouldn't retrofitting an Arrow with "heavy ions" be more feasable then tachyons?
 
My guess would be that such refits are more limited by *power* than by size... an Arrow won't be able to generate a large enough hydrogen scoop if it's using all its energy on a bigger gun, or somesuch.
 
Even with the weaker guns, I believe the Arrow to be better than the Hellcat V. I always picked the former over the latter.
 
Haesslich said:
The Bearcat (14 tons) isn't much heavier than the Arrow (13 tons), though the extra 7 meters don't seem to affect the wings where the light tachyons were stored. It's still an example of a substitution which could've proven effective. Ideally, they could've stuck shorter-ranged guns into that frame and make it work, given its speed.

If you ignore the fact that the Bearcat has a larger and radically different frame, an extra ton of weight and a different power application system. Not to mention the fact that the Arrows were made for Recon and not Attack In Force. They don't need a heavier weapon.
 
Arrows are sufficient for their purpose, and, as such, rather well designed. Sure, for those of us who ended up taking an Arrow out against a destroyer with Vaktoth escort, a little heftier gun would have been quite useful. But, officially, Arrows weren't designed for such things. They were designed to recon, escort (possibly), and intercept. Of course, a Hellcat, though a bit slower, could also do just about any of those (it might have a harder time in the role of Interceptor because of it's smaller missile loadout). Arrows also work well as CAP.
 
LeHah said:
If you ignore the fact that the Bearcat has a larger and radically different frame, an extra ton of weight and a different power application system. Not to mention the fact that the Arrows were made for Recon and not Attack In Force. They don't need a heavier weapon.

The Mass Drivers were put onto the Ferret, which was definitely NOT meant to be a space superiority fighter - and those take less power than the ions do, for almost as much damage. Ditto, the Epee was classed as a light fighter, more geared towards interceptor work - and it carried particle cannons. I'd have dropped the ions or lasers in favor of the mass drivers, myself, though I tended more to use the Ions than the lasers in Arrow-based combat, myself.
 
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