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TheJusticar wrote:

The way the turrets operate now seems to refect reality.

It's up to the pilot to fly straight and level.

I'm not sure how you would get around this issue?

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I can absolutely assure you this turret system does NOT reflect reality. My previous 7 years was spent gunning on Bradley Fighting Vehicles in the Army. All turreted military vehicles have been carrying a "stabilization" system, to my knowledge, since the 80's. Having a turret able to remain fixed on a target independent of vehicle motion,is the only realistic way to have reasonable success in gunning. It can be done without, but it damn sure won't be done anything close as well.

I would think that this would not be unreasonably hard to code in, either. Hopefully we shall get the chance to see.

I'm behind this idea 100% and I think it would make these kinds of experiences much more fun and rewarding.

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Sin-Vraal wrote:

I think you missed my point. Lucas didn't care about what state-of-the-art bombers in the mid 1970's had. He cared about what they had in WWII. Which *wasn't* self-correcting turrets. In case you weren't aware, the AC-130 wasn't in use in 1945 (and isn't "stuffed full" of cannons; it features three weapons), nor were B-52's (some models of which, incidentally, had a rear-firing cannon).

My point still stands. Lucas envisioned space combat in Star Wars to mimic aerial combat of WWII, and planes in WWI /did not have this feature/. So tell me what relevance modern technology has here, besides offering a talking point for people who want life as a turret gunner made easy?

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I don't think Lucas was concerned at ALL about how, if you are correct in knowing his intent, turrets in MPS's in a game that was 25 years down the road from the making of his movie would work. So I'm not sure exactly what validity your point would have here.

Message Edited by Mavic on 11-14-2004 05:33 PM

I can't believe that the only argument you can come up with to justify leaving the most expensive (and should be most feared) ships in JtL totally crippled is that you think Lucas would want his science fiction bootstraped to WWII technology. Yes, SW used WWII-style dogfighting instead of a more technically accurate frictionless (and silent) vectored flight system, but to try to read into that idealism about making the technology of the ships reflect WWII equivalents is just hogwash. He just knew it would LOOK more natural to people. There were hardly any astromechs rolling around on the surface of WWII bombers repairing damage in-flight but that hardly stopped him from doing it. And I seriously doubt - after all the brainwork he and his staff have put into making this SW universe as consistent as they could - that he would advocate leaving off a technology so patently obvious as to be sick that I even have to mention it for no reason other than WWII bombers didn't have it.

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Mavic wrote:

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Sin-Vraal wrote:

I think you missed my point. Lucas didn't care about what state-of-the-art bombers in the mid 1970's had. He cared about what they had in WWII. Which *wasn't* self-correcting turrets. In case you weren't aware, the AC-130 wasn't in use in 1945 (and isn't "stuffed full" of cannons; it features three weapons), nor were B-52's (some models of which, incidentally, had a rear-firing cannon).

My point still stands. Lucas envisioned space combat in Star Wars to mimic aerial combat of WWII, and planes in WWI /did not have this feature/. So tell me what relevance modern technology has here, besides offering a talking point for people who want life as a turret gunner made easy?

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I don't think Lucas was concerned at ALL about how, if you are correct in knowing his intent, turrets in MPS's in a game that was 25 years down the road from the making of his movie would work. So I'm not sure exactly what validity your point would have here.

In short, show me a documented case of Lucas saying something along the lines of: "I believe multi-player ships should have non-stabilized turret systems" and I may swallow.

Message Edited by Mavic on 11-14-2004 05:33 PM

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Show me a case where lucas said he wanted them to be stabilized and I'll say your argument it right on the mark......

One more thing i have to mention.....

A long time ago....

In a galaxy far, far away.....

Oh come on, admit it. You guys are just arguing for the fun of arguing now. Go spend an hour in a Nova getting creamed by anything that comes for you, life the adventure of not being able to hit ANYTHING while your little capitol ship gets torn to ribbons, breathe the plasma and feel the burn, then come back and tell me you think it works just fine the way it is.

And while your at it, justify to me why a warship that represents the combined simultaneous efforts of at least 5 people, at least 2 of whom are highly skilled pilots (need a person of high skill in the operations chair too after all) should add up to LESS fighting force than a tier-4 single man fighter. This goes beyond just making turrets work the way they logically should and right to the blatantly obvious fact that more money and more effort from more people should yield more effectiveness.

Actually, pondering it some more, it occurs to me that while turret stabilization is EXACTLY what the big MPSs need, it would be a bit unbalancing for the smaller fighters with turrets. Thinking about the Y-Wing in particular this would make it a much more effective vessel - a little too effective perhaps? Maybe a good compromise would be to put stabilization on MPS turrets but NOT on fighters? Just shooting from the hip - thoughts?

Or in a perfect world you could knock this out by making turret stabilizers an optional component that has very high energy consumption. If you got it tweaked right it could be a situation where a lower-level pilot wouldn't be able to equip a big enough reactor to cover it which would prevent it from giving an undo advantage to low-levels, but then a high-level pilot (who could use a bigger reactor) might actually have a reason to choose to fly a Y-Wing (with a stabilized gunner in the back) instead of one of the more agile higher-tier fighters. After all, there were some pretty skilled pilots in the movies flying Y-Wings so there must be something redeaming about them...

Yeah I know, I'm clearly way too tired and floating into a dream world if I think THAT will ever happen.

As I said - I'm not talking about the fun/challenge of working a turret at all ever in any circumstance. I'm talking about the turrets on multi-player ships in THIS game and how ineffective they are COMPARED TO other vessels operable by players AND the mobs you are fighting. Space combat in this game is very unforgiving - the winner is whoever kills the other guy faster and the time periods involved are pretty short. When the ability of fighters to target the MPS is GROSSLY HIGHER than the ability of the turret operators to target those fighters then you create a situation where the MPS has very little chance of survival - which is BAD. Stabilized turrets, on the other hand, would turn the tables - it would become much easier for the turret operators to target the fighters than it is for the fighters to target the MPS. That would give an advantage to the MPS, which a) is reasonable since as a multi-person effort it should be more effective and b) it needs that advantage to make it justifiably playable given the greater effort required.

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Jay-Bird wrote:

Show me a case where lucas said he wanted them to be stabilized and I'll say your argument it right on the mark......

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i like the idea of stabalized turrets, however this could open a pandora's box, i'll use the new mig for this example, which has it's nosecannon attached to whatever the target may be. This could be unbalancing if say an a wing were able to fly in a half circle around an opponent while his cannon was pointed anywhere along a 180 degree arch so he wouldn't even be pointed directly at his target and still able to fire upon it. And i'm not even going to start on the rear facing missle launcher... However as it relates to MPS i fully agree, either that or give them the heavy armor and sheilds that a ship of that size should have so they can survive by flying level. As it is right now a MPS cannot fly level and straight to give the turrets time to line up a shot because they are blown up as fast as the basic tie would be. I think this is the true issue at hand. If you want to use the WWII argument here and many of you seem to i'll try it, the bombers of WWII first off were huge heavily armored planes, capable of taking multiple hits from enemy fighters, they were able to fly along a level flight path so there turret gunners could line up the shots and give back to the enemy. Also bombers in WWII were almost always accompined by a fighter escort usually at a 3 to 1 ratio of fighters to bombers, so a typical run would have 5 bomber planes and 15 fighter escorts. Now since that is a large number of players to get into space at once, most in this game will not be able to do it, therefore, i say give stabalizing to the turrets of a MPS, but make it an astromech command. the theory would be this, the droid would be able to stabalize the turrets giving a better chance to put "steel on target" so to speak.

Also while i'm on the topic of space combat, does it seem weird to anyone else that we need to be within gun range to engage missiles? (another thing that didn't exist in WWII for those keeping score at home). I know that the Phoenix missles can engage at ranges of up to 15 miles. And AMRAM's can lock on from 8 miles in. This seems weird to me that you cannot engage at longer range with a missile from outside of what about 800 meters? this also gives no time to use countermeasures, and effectivley means that i hardly ever use the missiles unless i'm taking on a capitol ship, simply because i fight a good number of a wings and it's hard to keep them in sights long enough to get a lock. Now i have no problem getting enough hits on them with my blasters, but it just kind of irk's me that i pay good money for all these fancy launchers that i hardly ever use