Meson, Reaper MIA?

F4U Corsair

Spaceman
These were pretty awesome guns equipped to a few different ships, does anyone know why they were replaced w/ Ion guns?
 
Mesons are seen on kilrathi ships in wc3.

Reaper guns were probably phased out for economic reasons maybe? even in the 27th century money is still like money now...its always in short supply
 
Well, there's two reasons. One, because the guns are expensive and it aided Confed to consolidate their weaponry to just a few types, and two because game programmers got lazy and didn't have to invent a new gun when one already existed.
 
Nappydman said:
Well, there's two reasons. One, because the guns are expensive and it aided Confed to consolidate their weaponry to just a few types, and two because game programmers got lazy and didn't have to invent a new gun when one already existed.

How would reusing an old gun be inventing a new gun? What's lazy about this process here? They added a whole bunch of new weapons to WC4 and phased out a few of the less common ones to make room.
 
Sorry, that was poor phrasing on my part. It's just a theory I've got here, nothing more. Perhaps the programmers did the ion guns first and just made them the standard gun when they realized how many more weapons they had to make?
 
It's called "trimming the number of guns WC ships use to realistic levels." WCArmada and WCIII had something on the order of a dozen gun types each - Armada got closer to two dozen. It was getting pretty ridiculous before it got trimmed down in WCIV.
 
Nappydman said:
Sorry, that was poor phrasing on my part. It's just a theory I've got here, nothing more. Perhaps the programmers did the ion guns first and just made them the standard gun when they realized how many more weapons they had to make?

I don't think that's a good theory. Changing the color of a laser beam and adding a different damage value doesn't take any time at all. If they were lazy, they wouldn't have added a whole bunch of new weapons. More likely, as others have said, there were just too many different guns with the new additions, and they wanted to make the number more practical. Additionally, we no longer flew the Excalibur, which would be pretty much the only ship to still carry the Reaper. Since we were instead fighting them, it was no longer necessary to give them such good guns.
 
Im curious what new weapons (Besides missiles) they created in Wing commander 4? I MEAN THEY MADE A HUGE AMOUNT OF NEW ONES IN PROPHECY AND SO, almost to the WC3 level.
 
SO featured weapon creep again, to my annoyance. Prophecy was pretty good about it, though. The only new "gun" was the charge capacity on all the mass drivers. (This isn't counting the alien guns, but we've been talking about player-only ships so far, so I'm not counting them.)
 
There were the 'modern' stormfires, too.

I didn't mind so much in Secret Ops, since the backstory was that you were testing the newly developed weapons rather than suggesting that Confed had suddenly replaced its entire inventory again.

Im curious what new weapons (Besides missiles) they created in Wing commander 4?

Completely New Guns: Stormfire, Leech Laser, Scatter Gun, Recon Camera and Fission Cannon

New Variants: Heavy Photon, Heavy Ion, Heavy Mass Driver, Light Tachyon
 
I took the modern Stormfire as just being a Stormfire.

The interesting thing about WC4 guns is that each one is sort of a "variant" on already established technology. It felt like an evolution of technology, not just a sudden tech dump.

And LOAF, it still bugged me in SO because there was a replacement gun for every ship in the fleet. The Black variants of the ships were supposedly going to go frontline after the testing - where did all these weapon designs come from?
 
I think the Secret Ops fiction claims that the 'Black' versions of the fighters were designed as unique for the CIS. WCSO introduced 'updated' versions of the standard line fighters with regular weapons at the same time, like the Vampire-B and the Tigershark-C.
 
SpaceDrake said:
The only new "gun" was the charge capacity on all the mass drivers. QUOTE]

What about that new ass kicking Plasma gun, I know they had other Plasma guns before, But not like that. Also, I didnt like the PIS particle cannon, it seemed more like the WC2 one then the ones in WC3 or 4. But what was that huge green pulse from the Nephilim bombers? Was that as powerful as the Plasma gun?
 
I don't even want to know what you think 'PIS' stands for.

Different Nephilim ships have different versions of a plasma weapon in the same vein as that mounted on the Devestator - a light version on the Manta and a heavy version on the Stingray (cluster).
 
PIS wasnt supposed to be something like POS (piece of shit). If you switch to that cannon in SO its called the "PIS particle gun."
 
Additionally, we no longer flew the Excalibur, which would be pretty much the only ship to still carry the Reaper.
Well there is the Wraith, but point taken. Btw both Excalibur & Wraith are Secret Ops ships so mybe thats why their weapon load out had reapers.
PIS wasnt supposed to be something like POS (piece of shit). If you switch to that cannon in SO its called the "PIS particle gun."
Meaning its a pulse particle gun, nice gun btw. What I dont understand why did they bring in the chain ion or cloudburst. Hell the could have used normal plasma(Priv, WC3-4), Ionic Pulse Cannon, fusion, reaper, neutron, light tychon, meson, heavy massdriver & fission gun. Personaly I think they could have dumped the ion gun, massdriver is better it only lacks range that ion has.
 
but see the Excalibur got to see a large number of production units whereas the Wraith most probably only had a few before Confed dropped it due to high criticism.
 
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