Draymans had multiple turrets.

What a wonderfully contradictory thought process.

It looks nothing like a Drayman, therefore it cannot be a Drayman, but the manual says its a Drayman, therefore it must be.

That's a logical fallacy waiting to happen. If I were so foolish enough as to present it at school, I'd be clubbed senseless by the prof as a mercy-killing.
 
Ladies and gentlemen of the supposed jury, Origin's attorney would certainly want you to believe that the Scarab was a Drayman twelve years ago. And they make a good case. Hell, I almost felt pity myself!

But ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, I have one final thing I want you to consider: Ladies and gentlemen this [pointing to a picture of the Priv Drayman] is a Drayman. The Drayman is a cargo ship from the Confederation, but the Drayman operates in the Gemini sector. Now, think about that. That does not make sense! Why would a Drayman — a pain in the ass to protect because it has no turrets —want to fly in Gemini with a bunch of pirates and Retros? That does not make sense!

But more important, you have to ask yourself, what does this have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense!

Look at me, I'm a programmer helping keep alive a major videogame franchise, and I'm talkin' about a really obscure game manual reference. Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense. None of this makes sense!

And so you have to remember, when you're in that jury room deliberating and conjugating the Emancipation Proclamation... does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense.

If a Drayman looks like a bug, you must acquit! The defense rests.
 
is there a reason why you people are being deliberately retarded? its simple. there are 2 ships by the name drayman. just as the SWC Raptor is the Privateer Gladius, and the Armada Banshee is the SWC Scimitar. Also, the SWC Gratha is our beloved Privateer Talon. It's the way it goes. the majority of, if not all, of the regulars accept it. for you to be like 'well, i don't like it, so i'm not going to ignore it' or 'i don't think it makes sense, so i'm going to change it' is just dumb. things are the way they are, accept it.
 
Lighten up *hugs* I suppose that SOME drays would have turrets... like... put a 1975 Chevy Corvette side by side with a 2005 Chevy Corvette and look at the difference... (Now having turrets on a car, THAT would be sensible!) i mean the whole thing about being an independent is that you can mix and match bits of ship. If you can do it why not NPC's. Now Confed-issue Drays, that's another story, but still... even a something as inertial as a military contractor would eventually catch on to the fact that that a putting around C80000 in laser turrets on a C1500000 ship is a good investment for its survival.
 
Though I could be mistaken, I remember an evil Drayman shooting at me while it was facing an opposite direction headed for a jump node. Hmm.. I'll have to load up dosbox again....
 
Can't someone (read: BradMick) just open up the Priv Drayman model and check what turrets it has?

Unless, of course, it has none, which is what I suspect.
 
the priv dray has none, the wc1 dray has one wimpy flak gun, the transports in wc2 same, the priv-wcu dray has six very ineffective turrets because this gives the player the ability to buy upgrades. That's my take on it. If you have a better idea gameplay wise please being it up :)
 
spiritplumber said:
Lighten up *hugs* I suppose that SOME drays would have turrets... like... put a 1975 Chevy Corvette side by side with a 2005 Chevy Corvette and look at the difference... (Now having turrets on a car, THAT would be sensible!) i mean the whole thing about being an independent is that you can mix and match bits of ship. If you can do it why not NPC's. Now Confed-issue Drays, that's another story, but still... even a something as inertial as a military contractor would eventually catch on to the fact that that a putting around C80000 in laser turrets on a C1500000 ship is a good investment for its survival.
Click to expand...

Good points, Spirit! Looks can change for a maker and model name. Also, people might mount extra turrets on their ships. Okay, here comes a big question: Maybe Draymans in Privateer have no turrets; but does that imply necessarily that they have no turret attachment points that could be furnished with turrets? And are there any references in the cannon to how easy or difficult is to add turret attachment points to a ship that does not come with them built-in? I'm sure it would be hard to find extra room on a demon, but a Drayman? Because, maybe if we make all Draymans equal and having 6 turrets there might be an argument about going against cannon; but maybe if we have different Draymans with different cannon locations, there might be less of a contradiction? Just thinking...

EDIT:
Hey! What about, if you buy a Drayman, maybe it has only one turret attachment point, but you meet people in the game that offer you a mod job to add more attachment points!!!

And, BTW, if there have been different-looking models of Draymans, shouldn't WCU show some of the older models flying around, sometimes? I think it would be super cool to have vintage models of some of the ships. Maybe the posh classes, around New Constantinople, should fly them... ;-)
And what about mods?
Say, some of the pirates in WCU I've noticed, fly Draymans; but maybe they'd put big rotating guns on them like the Paradigm has at the bottom. On the target display it would show simply as Drayman, Modified. Others might show as Drayman, Vintage, and the year.. ;-)
 
Well, the Confed drayman has the "big external cargo box" look right now. And Drays come standard with six empty turret mounts -- the turrets are randomly generated. (An empty turret mount is a turret that's smaller than normal and shoots a wimpy blue laser that does almost no damage, it's kinda like those fake security cameras)
 
Okay.
Sorry to change the topic for a moment: WRT the other big argument, about leading autotracking in turrets. Maybe to get a turret to have leading autotracking you'd need to get for it:
1) A radar (with ITTS)
2) Autotracking expansion
3) A computer
4) Software

So, with a plain turret, you have to use it manually, and aim by eye.
Once you put a cheap radar, you can lock things to use the tractor beam
Once you put a radar with ITTS, you get a leading reticle; still manual operation
Once you put a computer and software, it can fire by itself
Once you add autotracking expansion, it can fire by itself and lead the target.

Spirit, did you get the zip files I sent you?
 
Okay, people, new perspective: Let's look at the semantic side.

It's a drayman.

A drayman , according to Webster's Dictionary, is "A driver of a dray." Now, what's a dray?

A dray is a " A low, heavy cart without sides, used for haulage"

So it's no corvette, no destroyer, no fighter. It's a low-tech pushcart to haul cargo (in other references, a dray is mostly used to haul barrels o'beer).

To give it a real-life reference, it's something like those big, yellow, slow machines from the company so fittingly calling itself "Caterpillar" that we get annoyed about if they dare to creep up the highway. So much power, big engines, but no speed, no agility - because they weren't designed for that.
A machine with the same power, but different purpose would carry another name - for lack of another example, let's take the Leopard II.

I'd argue along the same line for the draymen: Big haulers designed for transporting goods, with slow turnrates and engines sucking up most of the energy to create enough thrust for moving masses of cargo. Very little power left for shields and guns, but that's what the armor is for. But hey, it's a dray. If I want to haul and rule the galaxy at the same time, I'll buy a Galaxy. ;)
 
haha! thanks for the info, meow... never stop learning. So.... the Dray is a caterpillar, the Galaxy is a flatbed truck, the Orion would be a Hummer I guess? (H1, the H2 should not exist and does not deserve being talked about).... the Centurion is a Chevy Corvette and the Demon is a Ducati motorcycle.... I guess that makes the Tarsus something like http://www.distintirifiuti.it/aziende/agac-cd/RACCOLTA/Apecar3.JPG this?

Well the forward armamnet of the dray sucks, and usually the turrets are plinkers or lasers (exceptions: pirate drays, which I suppose have been turned into "space galleons") And btw, confed militia and BW owned drays DO have externals cargo boxes.

And it's still as unflyable as ever. I personally fly a Dray into a spot, park it there, get my Demon from it, and do missions with it knowing that if anytthing goes bad I have my own mini-base to hide behind.
 
Cats (caterpillar tractors) are workers for a specific job. Hauling cargo is not one of them. And most the time I see a Cat on the highway its sitting on the flatbed of a truck.

Now this is what I imagine the Drayman would be in real life http://www.bobyoungprints.com/images/autolrgMac truck .jpg and with the correct upgrades could eiter be something like this http://mailer.fsu.edu/~akirk/tanks/UnitedStates/armored-halftracks/usaht-T12-1.jpg or this http://www.umzugs.com/pop_up.htm but not both.

What we really need is a ship constrution guide. Some standard for upgrading ships. I like the limited number of spaces for upgrades, but I think that number should be small enough to accualy mean something. Being able to buy the best of every part and max out your ship should be impossable.

Here is a way I would do it.

Low tech, poor quality parts = 1 space, cheap
Low tech, medium qulity parts = 2 spaces, inexpensive
Low tech, high qulity parts = 3 spaces, average price

Medium tech, medium quality parts = 1 space, average price
Medium tech, high quality parts = 2 spaces, expensive price

High tech, high quality parts = 1 space, 1 space very expensive

External or bolt on mods have a limited amount / ship and cost engine performance instead of spaces.

Tarsus can only mount low tech parts nativly. Modifications are required to mount medium or high tech parts and cost 1 and 2 extra spaces. Extra spaces can be exchanged for lessened cargo space (and a substantial amount of credits). 20 units of cargo = 1 space. Or in the case of bolt on mofifications (turrets, extra cargo, fule pods, etc...) they would be limited to X bolt on spaces max (non negosable) and reduce your engine performance (due to extra mass).

The Demon on the other hand would have less options for upgrade (it was only designed as a fighter, not a general purpose space frame) but can mount all high tech equipment.

Possable new equipment could include:

Fule tank: Bolt on mod. Reduce performance same as adding cargo expantions.

Turret: Bolt on mod. Cost 1 space (for the internal mechanisioms) but adds 1 space for weapons. Half the manuver cost of cargo expantion.
Heavy Turret: Bolt on mod. Cost 1 internal space, adds 2 spaces for weapons. Same manuver cost of cargo expantion

Fake Turret: Would show on scans to be a real turret (to diswade pirate AI from attacking, or smuggling) but not cost any internal space, but only provides half the cargo space of a normal cargo expantion. Manuver costs of a cargo expantion

Smuggling compartments: Cost one space and allow X amount of cargo (subtracted from your total amount of cargo not to exceed 50%) to not be scanable. Low quality would be scanable by high tech scanners but is cheap. High quality is completly immunte from scans but is very expensive.

Ill post more when I think of it.

And back in my day our Tarsus's were peddle powered. And that was top of the line. Gravety wells were everywhere and we had to hire crews to get out and push. And we liked it.
 
The Privateer Drayman has no turrets.....only 2, read 2, Meson Blasters.

The WC1 Drayman mounts 5 dual mount laser turrets, and 1 single mount.

The scarab (which is NOT a drayman) mounts 2 dual mount plasma gun turrets, and a torpedo launcher turret.

i would just stick to the actual weapons load. if people want a drayman with turrets, they can buy and old school one. following all the actual specs and numbers, etc..etc...etc...of the actual games would really go a LONG way towards fixing a lot of the problems that folks are have/have had/will have.

what really needs to happen, a ton of research into the proper values for all the ships, so the true values can be inputed. start small, get the original priv lineup fine tuned and balanced with one another per the originals stats, then begin adding the ships from the other games. really folks, this would be the best way to go about it. also, do research into all of the scanned design docs, etc..etc..there are a lot of things in those pages which would go a long way towards creating one helluva great WCU experience while keeping everything well within that dreaded 'canon'. there are plenty of options to give to a player once everything is in, balanced, etc...etc. really folks, there are about a bajillion designs to choose from. you want freedom of choice, start doing research into just what all is actually there, in game, or in the design docs.

bet you guys know nothing of the 5th Player ship. It wasn't in the game, but if you go looking around we have the hull design + cockpit design for it. Add the scarab to that list too. There's plenty of stuff, hell. there are even early sketches of some of the ships, so if you're wanting 'prototype' looks for ships, there you go. if you're going to do WCU, do it right you know? Do it with and within that which has already been established in both 'officially' and 'unofficially' released wing commander material, instead of just making stuff up or putting in random bits. adding in a crap load of customization options for players is one of those last things you do in overall game design and setup work. the first thing you do is get everything in and balanced, then you start adding things which unbalance the mix. at most, the drayman would have 3 turrets, and they'd all be on the bottom. if you really want to get technical about it, there are those 3 huge blisters on the bottom, the only ones which *look* like turret shapes.

anyway, there you have it, there you are. thoughts.
 
I always felt that a 5th player ship would be the Demon... look right now in PrivR how everyone is flying that :) Thanks for the suggestion though, I'll look. Right now my goal is to put in as many WC ships as possible so that mission designers have stuff to work with.

The early Tarsus design is cute. I swiped it for the generic asteroid fighter.

That I see, the fifth player ship looks a lot like the Free Trader from WC2 -- which would have been pretty cool seen how it would have helped tying the games together. (Funny how the ONLY ship that remains constant in ALL WC games is the Flying Pancake). I think it was removed because the Galaxy basically filled the same niche; I like the look of the Galaxy better personally, my take on it is "Okay, this is what the Millennium Falcon SHOULD have looked like instead of a broken magnetic reel wheel hub".

About stats: Compare the shield/armor values of a Raptor (WC1 heavy fighter) with those of a Razor (WC4 low-end light fighter, basically a Talon evolution, for people who can't afford anything better). People want to see ships they are familiar with in game, and they want them to be balanced against each other -- a Rapier in theory wouldn't have a chance in hell against, say, a Centurion. In practice, a Rapier is a medium fighter with great maneuverability, the Centurion is a heavy fighter. So we match them accordingly...

You're right about being accurate, I just felt that honestly Drays had to have a chance to be left on their own for more than 3 seconds and not get plinked to death by one guy's hand laser while they turn around.

This all said: I already said up front that I was only working on WCU until someone more knowledgeable came along. If you want to do that, the units.csv is easy to edit with a spreadsheet :) please be my guest!


The Scarab looks very cool but I would have to make it more squared-off for the simple reason that rounded lines are Steltek design. In fact, when first playing through the game I got confused and thought that my intro missile went and hit a Paradigm, and wondered why Confed weren't mad at me. The Scarab could look like a mini-Intrepid if it was a little more squared off, and I think it would be a good thing.

I don't do modeling beyond very basic stuff because I have perspective problems, but if someone wants to take it on...
 
Dyret said:
Why not just add two plasma guns to your drayman? that should keep you safe.
Click to expand...

Putting heavy front guns on a slow-turning transport does nothing but make a light show. The point of "fighter size" turrets is not to blow up an enemy by themselves but rather to keep an enemy away from finding a "plink spot" and blowing you up slowly; the idea is that your turrets keep the enemy fighters from just locking onto you and give time to your escort to do what they have to do, i.e. be fighters and fight. The meson blaster on a Dray's front are mostly there for the pilot's sense of security I think, you know blaster envy and all.

Right now, on the other hand, capship sized turrets do have a chance to be use offensively -- each carries six guns and usually has enough reactor power to actually keep firing them.
 
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