Shipwright Archive
Thread: ARC 170 Art (Rage of Wookiee new ship)
I too hope it doesn't blow away the "modern" ships, such as the X-wing, but rather is a nice supplemental option that perhaps fills some of the gaps between the other fighter's roles.
On the old/obsolete issue... Older craft often remain in service, even in the real world, for a variety of reasons. Take the U2 spyplanes for example. They're still flying. Why? Because they're cheap to operate. The SR-71 Blackbird was far more advanced, but was retired due to a $90k/hour operating cost.
Imaridril wrote:
I have a feeling that the issue of laser convergance is going to make the ARC 170 almost worthless in combat. Just look how far apart the two main guns are on the ship's wings. From looking at the pictures, I'd sayit's quite likely that the ARC 170 will have the widest fire pattern of any ship in the game. I definately won't be using it if that's the case.
Complaining about convergence is for people who need to have an excuse for their poor flight skills. Whatever keeps you from having to look to the real source of the problem I guess
TomoRainer wrote:
That's a very curious opinion to hold, Lexington, as I know for a fact Imaridril is one of the better pilots on our entire server.
If he thinks that lack of convergence makes a ship worthless then he's not as good of a pilot as he could be.
Crop dusters are still biplanes, or mono-wings with simple engines.
The anti-mine planes in the US fleet are WW2 vintage. Heck, some of the minesweepers are WWI vintage. They just keep doing their jobs.
Should I mention our refitted battleships?
The AK47 is WW2 vintage and still in heavy worlwide use.
But more important than all of that, they are adding more Star Warsy content, and I'm all for that.
lexington23 wrote:
TomoRainer wrote:
That's a very curious opinion to hold, Lexington, as I know for a fact Imaridril is one of the better pilots on our entire server.
If he thinks that lack of convergence makes a ship worthless then he's not as good of a pilot as he could be.
There's a reason why pretty much all fighers from WWII and on employ gun convergence, or "harmonization" as its called. Its because pilots figured out back then that it was much more adventageous to be able to focus your fire on a set point rather than employing a "spray and pray" technique. There's also a reason why modern fighters generally employfuselage mountedguns instead of wing mounted guns, and that's because the closer your guns are to the center-line, the greater amount of fire you'll be able to put on your target at any range. Furthurmore, did you even look at the pic of the ARC170? Its guns aren't just spread out a little like in an Interceptor or X-wing. It's fire pattern looks like its going to be wide enough that you could miss even a Firespray if it was directly in front of you. Why would you want to hinder yourself with such a fighter? I highly doubt its going to have some sort of other amazing stats that make up for the higher level of skill necessary to accurately use the guns. Basically, look at it this way... Image that they put two version of the ARC170 in the game. Both version are identical in all ways, except that one has its guns out on the wing-tips, and the other has its guns on the fuselage. Now, in such a situation, I think its safe to say that assuming you have two pilots of equal skill level, the pilot flying the ARC170 with the guns on the fuselage is going to do better in both PvE and PvP.
Now, ideally, the devsshould add a three-way selectable convergence system to the game. It could be done by adding a command such as follows...
/GunConvergence Auto - In this mode your guns would automatically converge at the range of your currently selected target. The convergence range would dynamically change as your target's range changes.
/GunConvergence150 - In this mode your guns would converge at a fixed range. (150 meters in this case.)
/GunConvergence Off - This would disable gun convergence and set your guns to fire as they currently do.
Imaridril wrote:
lexington23 wrote:
TomoRainer wrote:
That's a very curious opinion to hold, Lexington, as I know for a fact Imaridril is one of the better pilots on our entire server.
If he thinks that lack of convergence makes a ship worthless then he's not as good of a pilot as he could be.
There's a reason why pretty much all fighers from WWII and on employ gun convergence, or "harmonization" as its called. Its because pilots figured out back then that it was much more adventageous to be able to focus your fire on a set point rather than employing a "spray and pray" technique. There's also a reason why modern fighters generally employfuselage mountedguns instead of wing mounted guns, and that's because the closer your guns are to the center-line, the greater amount of fire you'll be able to put on your target at any range. Furthurmore, did you even look at the pic of the ARC170? Its guns aren't just spread out a little like in an Interceptor or X-wing. It's fire pattern looks like its going to be wide enough that you could miss even a Firespray if it was directly in front of you. Why would you want to hinder yourself with such a fighter? I highly doubt its going to have some sort of other amazing stats that make up for the higher level of skill necessary to accurately use the guns. Basically, look at it this way... Image that they put two version of the ARC170 in the game. Both version are identical in all ways, except that one has its guns out on the wing-tips, and the other has its guns on the fuselage. Now, in such a situation, I think its safe to say that assuming you have two pilots of equal skill level, the pilot flying the ARC170 with the guns on the fuselage is going to do better in both PvE and PvP.
Now, ideally, the devsshould add a three-way selectable convergence system to the game. It could be done by adding a command such as follows...
/GunConvergence Auto - In this mode your guns would automatically converge at the range of your currently selected target. The convergence range would dynamically change as your target's range changes.
/GunConvergence150 - In this mode your guns would converge at a fixed range. (150 meters in this case.)
/GunConvergence Off - This would disable gun convergence and set your guns to fire as they currently do.
lexington23 wrote:
Imaridril wrote:
lexington23 wrote:
TomoRainer wrote:
That's a very curious opinion to hold, Lexington, as I know for a fact Imaridril is one of the better pilots on our entire server.
If he thinks that lack of convergence makes a ship worthless then he's not as good of a pilot as he could be.
There's a reason why pretty much all fighers from WWII and on employ gun convergence, or "harmonization" as its called. Its because pilots figured out back then that it was much more adventageous to be able to focus your fire on a set point rather than employing a "spray and pray" technique. There's also a reason why modern fighters generally employfuselage mountedguns instead of wing mounted guns, and that's because the closer your guns are to the center-line, the greater amount of fire you'll be able to put on your target at any range. Furthurmore, did you even look at the pic of the ARC170? Its guns aren't just spread out a little like in an Interceptor or X-wing. It's fire pattern looks like its going to be wide enough that you could miss even a Firespray if it was directly in front of you. Why would you want to hinder yourself with such a fighter? I highly doubt its going to have some sort of other amazing stats that make up for the higher level of skill necessary to accurately use the guns. Basically, look at it this way... Image that they put two version of the ARC170 in the game. Both version are identical in all ways, except that one has its guns out on the wing-tips, and the other has its guns on the fuselage. Now, in such a situation, I think its safe to say that assuming you have two pilots of equal skill level, the pilot flying the ARC170 with the guns on the fuselage is going to do better in both PvE and PvP.
Now, ideally, the devsshould add a three-way selectable convergence system to the game. It could be done by adding a command such as follows...
/GunConvergence Auto - In this mode your guns would automatically converge at the range of your currently selected target. The convergence range would dynamically change as your target's range changes.
/GunConvergence150 - In this mode your guns would converge at a fixed range. (150 meters in this case.)
/GunConvergence Off - This would disable gun convergence and set your guns to fire as they currently do.
Selectable convergance would be a great feature.
However, we don't have it. Have you ever experimented with your ships weapons. They fire 2 blasts, if either single blast hits or if both blasts hit it is the same effect. Go into space and try it. The game only registers hit or miss. It doesn't acknowledge both blasts as hitting to be worth more. It should but it doesn't.
I don't think that would be the case with the ARC170. In a ship like the TIE Interceptor, the fire pattern works ok because its still a tight enough pattern that most ships can't fly in the center of the pattern without getting hit. On the ARC170, however, the wingtip guns appear to be so far apart that you will miss the vast majority of fighters if you aim at the targettting recticle. The result is that in order to use the ARC170 effectively, you're going to have to constantly be aiming off-center, thus pushing the other wing-tip gun even farther away from your target.
Considering this important fact I would much rather have a wide firing pattern than a tight one. I hit more and do the same damage. In your scenario above i would take the spread guns and I bet if we were equally skilled pilots then I would kill you. This is nothing like real life and your real life example is invalid.
As for the convergance, I wouldnt worry about it because your not going to be able to track fighters with this ship anyways. Those big guns are for blasting away at big slow moving ships.
Message Edited by xtxShifter on 03-28-2005 02:05 PM