"Dogfight" Flight Model?
- Thread starter Darkslayer
- Start date
The standard Star Destroyer is about 1.6km in length vs 2.2km long for the smallest Mon Calamari Cruiser. Even Mon Calamari frigates are 580m, nearly three times the size of the Cutter.
It would be more appropriate to compare a Raider-II (150m, it’s the SWBF2 Corvus) to a Star Destroyer since the scale is extremely similar to the Federal Corvette and Farragut. Even the fighters the Raider-II and Corvette are capable of launching are of similar size and maneuvering capability.
SWBF2 has the “dogfighting/airplanes in space” flight model with nearly identical ship sizes yet I think Elite blows it out of the water due to the 6DOF and FAOff that enables larger ships to use tactics that force a smaller ship to be smart about how, and if, it fights.
I’m able to stick to the rear of a Corvette, Conda or Cutter with my Vulture or VIV since I’m also able to use the same 6DOF and FAOff in a smaller, faster and more maneuverable ship. However if I make a mistake or the other pilot does something I wasn’t anticipating, I’m most likely going to lose at least a ring of shields, if not take some hull damage.
Now look at SWFB2, specifically in the campaign when you’re supposed to shoot down the CR-90 Corvettes (again a 150m long ship) that are attacking the docked Star Destroyer. As soon as you get on it’s tail it’s as good as dead since it can’t turn or shoot you with it’s many turrets simply due to the “airplanes in space” model. It wouldn’t matter if a human was piloting it either, they’d still be limited to speeding up or slowing down in a less maneuverable ship with a blind spot directly behind it and no way of clearing it.
Translate that to Elite and a Viper would be able to 1v1 a Corvette, but then the Eagle would easily 1v1 a Viper, which would both be annihilated by the SLF that the Corvette is able to launch, so now we’re back at square one.
If you're trying to say PVP'ers were flying around in loops trying to get into each other's six before the engineers you're very mistaken.
Dogfighting was never relevant, not even in small ships, if you actually understood how the flight model worked.
To me it sounds like you never flew an aircraft carrier in real life.
Controversial
I concurIt was a Vickers gun from infantry (sgt Cedric popkin from the AIF)
I think basically everyone here misses pre-engineer balance
...
Hell, I miss pre-shield-cell-bank balance... which is REALLY showing my in-game age, lol.
Even a star destroyer could circle strafe and do barrel rolls if it had a sufficient thrust to mass ratio and was crewed from a centrally located area by people with similar g force tolerances to our CMDRs (what is is it, +40g/-15g before we experience blackout/redout in ED).
Our CMDRs are genetically and pharmaceutically augmented supermen with really fancy flight suits, while even the big three have better thrust to mass ratios than the most nimble fighter aircraft that have ever existed in reality.
Beta 1, immediately prior to the introduction of SCBs (which have been around since Beta 2 in October 2014) had all sorts of even more profound issues.
Namely being able to use FA off to maintain full boost speed in any orientation, which made it impossible to catch someone doing this with a Viper. There were also only two weapon loadouts with a purpose, quad fixed cannon, and quad seeker racks. The latter was essentially unstoppable when combined with the FA off boost, due to their damage, range, and ease of use.
Ok so it appears this has went off the rails. My original statement stands as "What was the point of designing a flight model that apes dogfighting when most pilots use larger ships that are better off not using that flight mechanic"?
Does it matter? The flight model works well, it is the flight model that keeps me coming back.
Dogfighting is fun.
What's the point of adding mining mechanics when most players just want combat?
Ok well once again thanks to everyone who has tried to help me get my point across. There are some great ideas in here to make small ships more viable. To everybody else, oh well I guess. You all know best and there is no point trying to see things differently.
Big ships do scale in some ways, particularly in trading and general hauling where their size scales very rapidly as big ships have several times the cargo capacity of small ships and over double most of the medium ships. However, combat is one of the ways where they scale the least, partially because of the issues raised in this thread about how a single fighter should stand a chance against a large ship.
The reason why I brought up the suggestion of compact modules which offer greater performance at near-extortionate prices is because I see two very different arguments occurring whenever a thread like this occurs:
Firstly, there's the big vs small ship argument. Some players want to play in little fighters and take down bigger prey rather than floating around in lumbering leviathans in combat.
Secondly, there's the expensive vs cheap ship argument. Nobody would expect an E-rated ship to match up against an A-rated one, so why should a little fighter that only costs a few million when fully outfitted ever be an equal of a heavily armed behemoth that costs 100x as much?
As long as there are no options for expensive little fighters that cost 200+ million to fully outfit, then there's no possible way to reconcile these different arguments. If you buff up fighters to threaten big ships then why would anyone ever risk a 500 million 'vette in a CZ when a 20 million fighter does the job just as well? Alternatively, then if you make all ships have performance in combat scaling based on their price (not necessarily a linear scale, mind you) then players that enjoy small ship gameplay get frustrated as they are just actively gimping themselves and facing off against near-unstoppable opponents. By giving options for fighters to become expensive, established players would then have the option of having their little fighter of doom that can threaten big ships without letting cheap ships strike above their price range. Bonus points in particular if FD also go the other way and implement stuff so that players can get big ships on the cheap if they are willing to sacrifice performance down to roughly a fighter of the same cost.
Bob Lighthouse
Banned
Bob Lighthouse
Banned
Watching them drop out of supercruise is awesome!
Is this a good federal assault ship
https://coriolis.io/outfit/federal_...DYQBhAUwIYHMA2SQgMwwFYB2IA==&bn=Avenging Star
https://coriolis.io/outfit/federal_...DYQBhAUwIYHMA2SQgMwwFYB2IA==&bn=Avenging Star