Why is the Cobra faster than the Viper?

Alexander the Grape · Feb 15, 2015

Don't get me wrong, I love my MK III, it just seems a little odd that the dedicated fighter/interceptor ship cannot run it down.

(Yes I know, the Viper's non-boost top speed is higher: but in a chase that means nothing at all, what matters is the boost speed.)

I did a test by stripping down the Viper and Cobra to the absolute bare minimum weight (apart from A rated thrusters) and the Viper's top boost speed was a paltry 444m/s to the Cobra's 467m/s.

Things get even worse when you add weapons: Since the viper has lower rated thrusters, the weight has a much greater effect. When specced in the exact same manner focused around light weight combat (4x weapons, smallest fuel tank A rated thruster and power distributor, 1 shield cell bank, 2 chaff, D rated shield generator and all other modules D rated for weight) the disparity was even more jarring:

414m/s for the Viper and 455m/s for the Cobra.

This seems unbalanced, especially considering the Cobra is more maneuvrable and is supposed to be an all rounder, not a specialist fighter.

Can anyone explain why Frontier would do this? It seems to go against the Viper's entire raison d'etre

Phier · Feb 15, 2015

Why is the eagle slower than the viper?

Alexander the Grape · Feb 15, 2015

Phier said:
Why is the eagle slower than the viper?

I suppose the idea behind that is that what the Eagle lacks in speed, it makes up for in manoeuvrability: sadly no matter how fast you can turn, its pretty useless against an enemy who knows how to reverse. Personally I think the eagle and sidewinder should be waay faster, but that's a separate discussion I suppose...

smiths121 · Feb 15, 2015

Not sure it is true in 1.1, but the Cobra could always out turn a Viper without thruster tricks and/or FA off, although the Cobra always seems sluggish to me compared to Viper. I think I got used to using the thrusters to fly the Viper.

As to the OP's question, although they seem fairly similar in price, the Cobra costs way more to kit out and therefore should it not have some way to fight against the Viper?

Blastbeats · Feb 15, 2015

As far as why engines capable of producing as much thrust as the Viper's can, can't fit on an Eagle, or why a Viper can't have a modified engine that produces more thrust than a Cobra...I don't know.

I am assuming the game is designed in a way where the physical size of the engine installed takes up X amount of mass, which the overall mass of the ship, affects the ships actual speed.

The thing is, all A specced cobras are the same speed as each other, and are faster than all A specced vipers. This is probably the one thing I don't like all that much in this game. Being an old SWG player, I always compare modern space sim games to it.

In SWG (JTL), each ship chassis had a set mass. Each component had a set mass based on it's certification level. The levels went from level 1 to level 10. Level 1 components were small, usually between 300-4000 mass, while level 10 components, usually had between 30,000-50,000 mass. So if you had a ship like an A-wing, which had 66k available mass, you would have to decide if you wanted to fit a level 8 engine with 110 speed, but sacrific your shields, armor, weapons, weapons capacitor, droid interface, etc. Or you were willing to throw a level 6 engine at 100 speed, but a level 10 gun for the damage.

It was a constant trade off, and not every player who had an A-Wing had the same speed shiip, or did the same damage out put, or had the same shield etc. We have Modified F-16 and F-18's, that have slightly different W/t/l ratios, so it only makes sense that in space, we would have the same thing.

I know ED's realism is more with space itself, and our galaxy, I just hope they add more variety for ship components in the future. So far, the only variety we have is an inner system trading loadout, rare trade loadout, PVE weapons loadout, or PVP weapons loadout. Other than that, every cobra is the same speed, and is faster than every Viper.

I think SC is doing something similar to this, or at least will have a variety when it comes outfitting your ship.

It would be nice to be able to outfit a Viper purely for speed and fly it like an A-Wing, or a Cobra purely for tanking, etc. Who knows.

Mohrgan · Feb 15, 2015

I think it is because the Viper has class 3 thrusters/FSD, while the Cobra has class 4.
.
P.S. The Viper's non boost top speed is faster than the Cobra's.

DoneWithFD · Feb 15, 2015

The Cobra is probably 70% engine

Look at that beauty.

Crimson Kaim · Feb 15, 2015

Why is there a max speed at all?

InMemoriamSirocco · Feb 15, 2015

Just FYI: At some point it is planned to have different types of drives and thrusters available for our ships, so we can tune them like racing cars. This feature is not yet implemented but is still on the list, as far as I know. It was mentioned in a Dev Diary and in the DDA.

Bluebottle · Feb 15, 2015

Crimson Kaim said:
Why is there a max speed at all?

Gameplay.

Kastor · Feb 15, 2015

Because the game devs didn't think about the effect thrusters classes would have on speed.

I honestly believe this, the viper was supposed to be the fastest ship in the game but it comes first. Once both are combat loaded the cobra has a faster, boost, topspeed and pitch rate and the imperial clipper has a faster boost and topspeed.

So yeah, thrusters should be priced and blanced PER SHIP not per class.

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Crimson Kaim said:
Why is there a max speed at all?

Because of orbital physics. The top speed of your ship is the speed it can maintain while counteracting gravity and rotational gravity without flying out of the orbital plane. I can embellish more if you want.

Anthony Jones · Feb 15, 2015

Q, Why is the Cobra faster than the Viper?

A, Simples the Cobra goes 467m/s and the Viper 444m/s. 467 is greater than 444 which makes the cobra faster!

rdslw · Feb 15, 2015

Kastor said:
Because the game devs didn't think about the effect thrusters classes would have on speed.

I honestly believe this, the viper was supposed to be the fastest ship in the game but it comes first. Once both are combat loaded the cobra has a faster, boost, topspeed and pitch rate and the imperial clipper has a faster boost and topspeed.

So yeah, thrusters should be priced and blanced PER SHIP not per class.

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Because of orbital physics. The top speed of your ship is the speed it can maintain while counteracting gravity and rotational gravity without flying out of the orbital plane. I can embellish more if you want.

Please, taking into account that you can travel with cobra max 467m/s heading into planet mass center and the same max 467m/s while having planet mass center directly behind you.

There is no physics explanation to it, only gameplay one (and I'm fine with it).

Shizuka · Feb 15, 2015

On the shipyard says the speeds of boost and normal, does the numbers of the cobra outrun the viper?

knowles2 · Feb 15, 2015

Crimson Kaim said:
Why is there a max speed at all?

The ship computer limits the speed of the vessels so that the ship is manageable for human reaction times, allowing for the thrill of dog fights and manually flying through asteroid belts that humans pilots demanded from the earliest days of mass affordable space travel without the high death toll that truly manual space flight would cause.

Yanaran · Feb 15, 2015

The Viper was faster, but was nerfed in beta because it was so much better than the other ships in its class. Just like the Python they reduced all aspects of it - acceleration, speed and manoeuvrability.

So "Gameplay reasons".