The Little things that bug me.

I start to fear that the Crossbow will be useless once Sabres are available. Sure, the Crossbow has thick shields and armor, but that won't protect it from turret fire in the long run, while the Sabre's afterburners will. Sabres can quickly reach their target, fire and get away, and both have four torpedoes.
 
Actually, that's just an oversight on our part. We were supposed to increase the torpedo loadout on the WC2 ships, to counter the fact that our capships sometimes require more than two torpedoes to kill. A Sabre should be able to kill any capship class (...except for one :p) without assistance, though, so it ended up getting four torpedoes (which, in WC2, only ever happened during the final mission where Blair specifically asked for as many torps as possible). The Crossbow obviously should get a similar boost in firepower, in order to be able to kill two capships unassisted... we had forgotten to change that earlier, but we'll fix it in time for episode 4. Needless to say, a ship with more torpedoes than the Sabre will be very useful on some occasions.

(and of course, there will also be missions where flying a Sabre is simply not an option, while flying a Crossbow is)
 
Well, the Gladius in Episode 3 only got two torps because killing the Snakier takes three, and it would have made the mission too easy for the player to be able to kill a fleet carrier unaided. It can still kill a Fralthi though. Besides, the Gladius is supposed to be the crappiest bomber that the player can fly.

As for the Hakaga, there's a bridge (two torps probably), and six engines to kill, and six launch bays as well, and the launch bays could threoretically continue to function even with bridge and engines out. I don't see a Hakaga dying with torps from less than three Crossbows.
 
Ijuin said:
Well, the Gladius in Episode 3 only got two torps because killing the Snakier takes three, and it would have made the mission too easy for the player to be able to kill a fleet carrier unaided. It can still kill a Fralthi though. Besides, the Gladius is supposed to be the crappiest bomber that the player can fly.
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Actually, a Fralthi takes three torps, not two (...blame the two engines for being so far apart :p). But yeah, the Gladius is not supposed to be on par with a Sabre or anything like that.

As for the Hakaga, there's a bridge (two torps probably), and six engines to kill, and six launch bays as well, and the launch bays could threoretically continue to function even with bridge and engines out. I don't see a Hakaga dying with torps from less than three Crossbows.
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Hehe, I don't see a Hakaga taking much damage at all from three Crossbows - you're talking about a situation where three Crossbows deliver all six torpedoes each, which obviously isn't too probable ;).

(also, I'm pretty sure it's got a few more components than you think)
 
Yeah, but what I mean is that even all of the torps from two Crossbows wouldn't be enough--so you're going to need a whole wing of them. I don't know what components you plan to include beyond bridge, engines, and launch bays though.
 
I don't think it includes any more component types, but, IIRC, it does have multiple bridges.
 
4 MkIV torps barely scratched a Hakaga...I think it is going to take slightly more than the torps of 3 crossbows to damage one of them nevermind destroy one...
 
A Sabre should be able to kill any capship class (...except for one ) without assistance, though, so it ended up getting four torpedoes (which, in WC2, only ever happened during the final mission where Blair specifically asked for as many torps as possible).
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The 'strike' Sabre in Wing Commander 2 actually has six torpedoes.

I think it shows up more than once, too -- I'm pretty sure you fly it again at the end of Special Operations 1, too (when you have to take out two Fralthra in a Sabre).

I have often wondered why they didn't go ahead and up the number of torpedoes on the Crossbow -- compared to the Gothri and Blair's magic Sabre, four isn't much.

Moreover, though, the improvement from the Broadsword to the Crossbow is very, very subtle -- far more so than any other Wing Commander 'reward ship' ever is. It impresses me, but I wonder how it came about...
 
Confed getting stuck with just 4 torps on its bombers is also strange. The kilrathi had 6 on multiple fighters (gothri pakthan) and yet confed stuck with 4. I'm not sure if it can be attributed to what confed thought was better torps (the kats seemed to have a fair respect for the Mk IV and MK V torps)
 
Ijuin said:
Yeah, but what I mean is that even all of the torps from two Crossbows wouldn't be enough--so you're going to need a whole wing of them. I don't know what components you plan to include beyond bridge, engines, and launch bays though.
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Also, some Hakaga components might survive more than one torpedo hit. FA spends pages talking about the armor plating around the engines and what not.
 
The book makes it sound like the engines are the most heavily protected part of the ship. They are buried 30 meters from their exhaust ports on the rear of the ship. I feel like the torps of 3 crossbows alone might not be enough to take out one engine of the Hakagas.
 
I don't know, the Morning Star is not that impressive either. WC2 has the least powerful 'super' ships around.
 
I don't know, the Morning Star is not that impressive either. WC2 has the least powerful 'super' ships around.
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I would say that the Morningstar is more of a step ahead than we see in the original Wing Commander. Sabre to Morningstar is more impressive than Raptor to Rapier II... if only for the Mace missile, which essentially removes the single most difficult gameplay element of Wing Commander 2.
 
Dundradal said:
4 MkIV torps barely scratched a Hakaga...I think it is going to take slightly more than the torps of 3 crossbows to damage one of them nevermind destroy one...
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According to page 260, the four torpedo hits took all three forward launch bays out of service. I think that one torpedo per launch bay and two torpedoes each per engine/bridge would be balanced--with two bridges and six engines that would require twenty-two torpedoes to down a Hakaga if the launch bays must also be killed, sixteen if engines and bridges are sufficient.

For gameplay purposes I would think that a strike force about twice what we had against the Snakier in Episode 3 would feel about right. Six each of Crossbows, Sabres, and Rapiers from the Firekka (More Sabres would fill in for any missing Crossbows, and the remaining Rapiers stay behind to protect the Firekka), and six each of Broadswords, Sabres, and Epees from the fleet.That makes 36 friendlies on-screen.

Now, as for the four-torp limit for the Crossbow, this was a game engine limitation. WC2 ships were limited to sixteen weapons (with "weapons" meaning guns + missiles + torpedoes + turrets). The Crossbow had five guns, one turret, and two chaff pods. This left eight slots for missiles and torpedoes. It could have abandoned the chaff pods in favor of more torps, but that would have required a mission that needed them--the designers would have had to toss in an extra gratuitous Fralthi or something.
 
knocked them out? I thought I recall Lonewolf looking into the bays afterwards and seeing the kats that had been knocked down getting back up and going back about their jobs, with the internal power still on...
 
Page 260, second to last paragraph:

"Tarvakh is still contending with internal fires, all three forward launch bays are closed." (Thrakhath's XO reading out the report)

So even if the launch bays were not totally destroyed by this, they were definitely taken out of action and shut down.
 
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