WC! & 2 ship design...

Preacher

Preacher

Swabbie
Banned
Questions: I realize this is the way that Chris Roberts & team designed the ships way back for WC1, but don't it seem the long-barrreled guns on most of the ships (whether capital ships or fighters) were ridiculously long & thin?...They just look out of place, just "aching" to be snapped off in the event of a direct hit in a dogfight. I mean, since most of these "guns" are energy weapons, a long barrel seems stupidly "retro". Long barrels in conventional solid projectile weapons (sadly, all we have here in this day & age) provides better rifling for increased muzzle velocity & accuracy. Is this not a moot point when yer dealin' with an energy weapon?:confused:
 
Well the only reason I can think of having a long barrel is somehow in the case of the laser it has something to do with actually forming the shot. I think a long barrel might have some good use for a round from a mass driver during ground attack missions and such though but i never totally understood how the mass driver worked but it seems most similiar to todays weapons
 
Originally posted by $tormin
i think they are supposed to look cool or menacing.
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They fail (spectacularly!) to accomplish either.

What's more, I shoulda mentioned the fact that you'll note that such designs are quite absent from most (if not all) ships from WC3 onwards. That right there should tell ya something...
 
Originally posted by $tormin
a change in the game engine will do that.
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That, and the simple realization that such design elements were, how do you Americans say.....Dorky in the first place.:)

Or, to invent another term, "Dorkular".;)
 
Perhaps the long barrels could also be used as an acceptable 'reason' as to why the guns changed from being circular energy particle like balls into long blasts - the barrels causing them to build up into a more condensed area.
 
It's sci-fi. I.e., it doesn't have to be realistic in any form, so long as it looks cool :)

Just to be fair, those cannons on the X-Wing seem kinda fragile too...
 
Yeh, but some realisim is nice for us astrophysicist nerds who just want to go indepth and analyze every possibilty :p

Besides, it makes for better ideas when creating new games - like, if you damage a ship that had this, would the particle then become elongated.... or better yet, would it blow up in your face!
 
Adding four long octogonal gun barrels to say, a Hellcat in WC3 would double the model's facecount. (And it wouldn't be the best representation of a cylinder either) So although long barrel guns look cool, menacing, and pointless, I think they were simply impractical in WC3's engine.

Else, how do you explain that in WCP, when they had a better engine to use, they added that long tube to the Shrike? (And that was supposed to be a jamming device.... so a long barrel here is even more useless than in a gun!.. so the point here is that it looks cool)

--Eder
 
I agree with Eder...
No need to go looking for some kind of scientific explanation... it just happened that since the game engine changed from WC2 to WC3, lots of things changed with it, among these the barrel guns... more simple to modelise in short length...

Hell, if you think of it, even the gun blasts changed from their "round shape" to the thin energy beams in WC3... Maybe also for programming practical problems...
I like the round-shaped blasts from WC1 and 2 better though... :)
 
The WC1/2 bursts were Sprites.

The WC3/4 bursts are polys... I guess they just chose to use polys either because they thought they looked better (for the game), or because it was more efficient on the workload required to play the game - possibly both.
 
Originally posted by Eder
...so a long barrel here is even more useless than in a gun!.. so the point here is that it looks cool)

--Eder
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I have to disagree. For a handheld weapon, perhaps a longer barrel looks "cool", but (for some reason), when I see a WC 1 or 2 fighter, it just looks, as I said, dorkular. Nasty. Most UNcool. Ridiculous. Ugh!:rolleyes: :p
 
I think most people think the long barrels look cool and the guys at Origin must have had the same opinion when they designed WC1-2.

Six big guns looks a lot more menacing than six little holes in the hull, no matter how much firepower comes out of them... think about the Jalthi ;)

--Eder
 
Originally posted by akashra
The WC1/2 bursts were Sprites.

The WC3/4 bursts are polys... I guess they just chose to use polys either because they thought they looked better (for the game), or because it was more efficient on the workload required to play the game - possibly both.
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I think that sprites do a better job as bursts even by today's standards... but of course, some texture filtering and trasnparency are always welcome :)

--Eder
 
I think that (if you really wanted to rationalize this) you'd have to explain the large external weapons by

A) the designers didnt have the internal space to put a weapon... the lasers on the Hornet are almost as long as the craft itself, so to keep the ship as small as the did they would need every bit of internal space for fuel and powerplant.

B) the weapon designs hadnt progressed enough that they COULD fit them into a ship's hull. As technology progresses it tends to get smaller and more efficient, but initially it is large and bulky (and fragile). Witness the evolution of the armaments of the Rapier from WC1 to WC2. While still visible, the weapons are noticeably smaller for the same firepower. Also witness the massdrivers - they go from the i-will-impale-you attachments of the Scim to the little cheek pods on the Ferrret. Your tax dollars at work...

Two other things to keep in mind - there was the major design philosophy change from WC2 to WC3. It seems that the techs recognized the value of internalizing everything and armoring over it all, creating a much more survivable (especially in terms of spare parts!) craft. However, the space allocated to the weapons (prime example: dorsal and ventral weapons boxes on the Longbow) is still significant, taking in mind that the ships of this era are larger than their earlier cousins.

Finally, for Preacher: yes, the long barrels ache to be snapped off. Seemed that happened every time the shields on my Hornet went down in fact... however, there is a purpose. Until the weapons were miniaturized, the longer barrels would have provided a better bottling and focusing for the laser, and a longer acceleration run for the massdriver.
 
Chernikov: Your theory would be alright, except for that when ships came out and stuff is wacky in WC. Some of the WC3 stuff is just as old as some of the WC1 stuff. We know they had Arrows, Hellcats, and Longbows during the time of WC1. So they must have used the same technology.

Same thing goes with Ranger and Concordia Classes. Everyone thinks they are new ships, when in fact both are older than a Bengal.

So it appears there no real purpose to having the long barrels on guns; someone just thought it would look cool.
 
Originally posted by Ladiesman^
Some of the WC3 stuff is just as old as some of the WC1 stuff. We know they had Arrows, Hellcats, and Longbows during the time of WC1. So they must have used the same technology.
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Hey--where'd you get that info: that Arrows/Hellcats/Longbows were around during the time of WC1?... I've got all the games except WC:KS (and the documentation that goes with 'em), and have read 3 of the novels, and I don't get that ANYwhere!... Please spill the beans on this, as I'm most curious!...
 
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