Thoughts (spoilers)

[MavS]

I think the issue here is gun speed. One of the major differences in Standoff is that speeds feel slower than WCP/SO because WCP/SO projectiles had crazy speeds, which was not the case with WC2 guns. Due to this, the WCP/SO AI seems to be fairly better adapted to using faster guns (lasers) which does indeed make a Drakhri seem more deadly than heavier fighters sometimes.

Well, gun speed is the one issue I really have with Standoff - as far as I recall, ALL those guns were slow in WC 1 & 2 , but it wasn't a problem there, because the ships were less maneuverable, too.
Now in Standoff, we have all fighters more maneuvrable sorts of, while on the other hand SOME guns were kept at low speeds (the Massdriver feels perfectly like it did in WC 1 & 2, just now the targets are more maneuvrable) , while others feel more like they were adapted to the higher maneuvrability of the targets and even feel very much like the WC3/WCP guns (Lasers especially, and Particles a bit maybe).
While this may make sense story-wise (Standoff playing between WC2 and WC3, thus some techs from both eras) , it somehow hurts the "canon" and (more important to me) the "recognization" feels of the ships...

Well, this was the case in WC2 as well. The Sabre is a mediocre dogfighter at best.

As I said above, I nearly can't recognize the Sabre in flying performance. After all that's the ship you were dogfighting Thrakhaths' Bloodfang in at the end of WC 2.... Even more, it was the ship I got my best gauntlet score with in WC Academy (the game, not the show...) - level 13 wave 3 and about 91000 points , whereas my record for the Morningstar was level 13 wave 1. Honestly, I was pretty disappointed after I had my first try at the sims with a Sabre, and still feel pretty frustrated whenever I try again - not only are the Massdrivers too slow, but also are they too far apart, and the turret really isn't much of a help in dogfights any more ...
What I'd like to see would be either an increase in Massdriver speed to make it again comparable to the other guns; or a reduction of the other guns' speeds, for the same reason.
(...and an automatically shooting turret like in WC2, but I'd guess that might be asked too much of the engine)


Anyway, it's your mod and you are the people who put lots of work into this project (a big THANK YOU AND PLEASE CONTINUE here ) , AND lots of people seem to have no problem with it, so this is just my opinion and you are of course free to ignore it.


(sidenote: the Raptors' guns also feel like spaced too far apart, but I sort of adapted to this by now; like my scores might show...)

 

[Quarto]

Well, I can assure you that the Mass Drivers are exactly the same speed (both numerically and relatively to the other guns) as in WC2.

One problem with such conversions is that the numbers may not mean the same thing - that is to say, 500kps in WCP feels totally different to 500kps in WC2. That's probably the main thing that makes ships feel different - after all, we used exactly the same stats as in WC2 (and I don't mean the manual stats, but the in-game stats), so there's no excuse for the Sabre to feel like it has less armour than it did in WC2. And yet, it still does...

 

[MavS]

..., so there's no excuse for the Sabre to feel like it has less armour than it did in WC2. And yet, it still does...

Well, after having played WC Academy again the day before yesterday, I'd say it's the shields that feel thinner, or, to be exact, they seem to recharge slower.
Of course this results in it losing more armor, making the armor feel thinner, too.

I might be wrong on this, it was just my impression (though it seems quite propable to me) - I'll watch it again when I next play Academy/Standoff...


Oh, and again - the massdrivers seemed to be nearly as fast as the particles - and I surely had nowhere as much of a hassle hitting something flying away from me as I usually have with Standoffs' massdrivers, while the particle cannons feel much the same in both games...

And sorry - I'm a bit too focused on this, I know. You and your team have done a great job with Standoff.

It's just that the Sabre was by far my favourite ship in WC 2 and Academy (yes, even for dogfighting - see here) , and it really hits me to see what has become of it in Standoff...

 

[PopsiclePete]

It's just that the Sabre was by far my favourite ship in WC 2 and Academy (yes, even for dogfighting - see here) , and it really hits me to see what has become of it in Standoff...

That's funny, because the Sabre was probably the ship I hated most in WC2. It felt like it was a very versatile ship, but it couldn't excel for no roles. I much preferred flying every other ships, apart maybe for the Crossbow.

 

[Quarto]

The shield recharge rates are also taken straight from WC2. Generally speaking, we took everything we possibly could from the WC2 data files - the only stats we didn't take were those that didn't seem to exist (that is, gun capacitator capacities). The Sabre is identical to WC2, and so is the Rapier.

Presumably, the main problem is that we kept the ships to scale. But that's not something we're going to change, or even talk about - heard it all far too many times already .

(as for the mass drivers being nearly as fast as the particles... I don't have any of my data files with me, but it may well be that WC2 mass drivers were exactly as fast as particles... whatever the case may be, though, our mass drivers certainly are exactly as fast as WC2)