Weapons of the marines/army

Oh LOAF, since we're on the topic of mass drivers and stormfires, I might as well mention something I have been thinking of for a while now.

Stormfires and mass drivers do pretty much the same thing, fling mass at a target, but as of wc4, stormfires were pretty much abandoned by the confed military.

Stormfires rapidly fire tiny projectiles stored in a drum or belt or whatever.

Mass drivers slowly knit together big projectiles using energy from the reactor.

Pirates probably take advantage of stormfires because they are simple, cheap, and can simply hose down a target with lead.

Mass drivers hit for more damage and don't need to carry bulky, limited ammunition. In the military it doesn't matter so much how rapidly the gun fires because the pilots are trained to properly lead their shots, they have ITTS, etc.

Did mass drivers simply fill the niche previously filled by the stormfire, or did they complement eachother, with the stormfire just falling out of favor?

Also, if the stormfire had fallen out of favor, why would they bring them back by 2681? Budgetary reasons? Lobbying by Blair and company? An influx of poorly-trained pilots from the Border Worlds? Were stormfires really all that popular, in the wing commander universe or with regards to gameplay?

THE PEOPLE WANT ANSWERS!
 
Quarto said:
Well, nobody ever said that the armour itself forms the hull, or that it is pressurised. For all we know, it may be possible to create an air leak by puncturing the hull from the inside without the armour being affected. Don't ask me why this would be the case - but if people are worried about punching through the hull with handheld munitions, then presumably they have reasons to be worried :).
Remember how much easier it was to take down Vesuvius by attacking inside the flight deck? Not all of the ship has thick hull plating, and besides, even if you're nowhere near the outer hull, it's not a good idea to shoot holes through God-knows-what is on the other side of a bulkhead.

edit: There are also shields dissipating the energy of your shots, but only on the outside.
 
Vinman said:
Stormfires and mass drivers do pretty much the same thing, fling mass at a target, but as of wc4, stormfires were pretty much abandoned by the confed military.
I don't see how you can suggest that stormfires were abandoned by Confed by WC4, given that WC4 is the very first time we actually see stormfires :p.
 
Quarto said:
None of these projects ever came to fruition, however - it seems as though WC FPS projects are cursed :p.

Including so far the fan projects. If they ever existed to a good degree, that is.
 
Quarto said:
I don't see how you can suggest that stormfires were abandoned by Confed by WC4, given that WC4 is the very first time we actually see stormfires :p.

Don't forget the Midway of WCP, whose front-of-the-line Shrike bomber carried a Stormfire Mk II. You don't usually find abandoned technologies on first-line craft, at least not weapons systems.
 
Delance said:
Including so far the fan projects. If they ever existed to a good degree, that is.
Naturally, including the fan projects - they were what I was referring to in the first place. As far as I know, there has never been any serious consideration for an Origin WC FPS project.
 
I figured that the Stormfire Mk. II was just another example of technology leaping ahead. Stormfire Mk. I guns were probably pretty popular during the pre-WC1 era where fighter weapons were effective against capships. Somewhere probably a bit before WC1, mass driver technology advanced to the point where mass drivers could output comparable damage-per-second to Stormfires, and the lack of need for limited ammo (thus making the assembly smaller and lighter, reducing the need for shipboard munitions storage, and avoiding embarassing running-out-of-bullets-in-a-fight) resulted in a switch to mass drivers for front-line military craft. After WC4, however, a new Stormfire was developed that had more range and hitting power than its predecessor--the Stormfire Mk. II does more damage per second than any other WCP gun--which resulted in its being readopted for fighters that need to pack a quick punch.
 
Ijuin said:
I figured that the Stormfire Mk. II was just another example of technology leaping ahead. Stormfire Mk. I guns were probably pretty popular during the pre-WC1 era where fighter weapons were effective against capships.
But... this is entirely baseless. We only ever encounter the Stormfire guns in two games - WC4, and WCP. Neither of them gives any indication whatsoever as to the gun's age - all that we know about it is that the Mk. II from Benelli Corporation is based on the BW gun (so it must be post-2673), and that the Mk. I we saw in WC4 was apparently pulled from a wrecked pirate by Pliers.

(...a truly freakish explanation, if there ever was one - it seems that Mr. Develops-A-Cloak-In-His-Spare-Time has a pack of rabid elves in the back of the hangar, manufacturing enough copies of newly-discovered equipment to arm the entire BW fleet)

Based on the fact that the Stormfire was found on a pirate - that is, civilian - ship, we can also assume that the Stormfire was invented at some point between 2669 ad 2673... had it been invented earlier, we would have been able to purchase it in Privateer. And yes, there may have been an earlier bullet-based weapon before the war (or at any point during the war), but it would not be the Stormfire. I mean, if being bullet-based means that a weapon is called a Stormfire, then the US Army today is using hand-held Stormfires Mk. -500 :).
 
Remember how much easier it was to take down Vesuvius by attacking inside the flight deck?
This was because of the effect of the Flashpak weapon, not conventional warheads. If you took out Ella then using torpedo's and guns does about the same damage either inside or out. (the huge advantage of course being the from the insides of the ship she couldn't hit you, and some pretty stupid BL pilots tried to shoot throught the ship on the odd occasion.)
 
Just straying from the discussion at the moment, does anyone have an idea or have a list of the different weapons used during the different time periods of the Kilrathi War -

Early Years => 2634-2644
Mid Years => 2644-2654
End Years => 2654-2669

And the
Black Lance Crisis
Nephilim Crisis
 
Based on the fact that the Stormfire was found on a pirate - that is, civilian - ship, we can also assume that the Stormfire was invented at some point between 2669 ad 2673...

While I agree with your desire to challenge the classic fan view of the Stormfire gun, I think this particular statement is a poor leap in logic.

I would imagine that we can apply the "if it's not sold in Privateer, it doesn't exist!" to a host of weapons that certainly *do* exist before 2669. Heck, this line of thinking manages to eat the Talon. They're flown by pirates - that is, civilians - in Privateer... but they're not available for the player to buy!
 
During the bit where Pliers is describing the Stormfire, he says "It's old technology, but it still works", and "if the range weren't so short, it would still be in service today". To me that implies that the Stormfire Mk. I has at least been around long enough for Confed to have declared it obsolete and withdrawn it from service.
 
Kilrathi beam weapons in action

sm1screenshot10.gif
 
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Stormfires are not the same as mass drivers. Stormfires requires no energy from the gun buffer and uses ammo. Mass Drivers use no ammo but drain energy. Also on WCP the player can use a neat trick to increase the power by holding the fire button.
 
Definitiion of being shot at....I almost went through that expereince..dont want to experience that again.....eh *shrugs*

But then a gun is gun
A Knife is a knife
A bomb is bomb
A Behemoth is a bloody B.F.G...heehehe
 
Delance said:
Stormfires are not the same as mass drivers. Stormfires requires no energy from the gun buffer and uses ammo. Mass Drivers use no ammo but drain energy. Also on WCP the player can use a neat trick to increase the power by holding the fire button.

That's not entirely true - the Stormfire actually uses a very small amount of the gun capacitor's energy reserve in WCIV (5 units).
 
The Stormfire Mk II is a beast. I have probably killed more ships with the Stormfire than any other gun with the exception of tachyons in WCIII
 
Bandit LOAF said:
That's not entirely true - the Stormfire actually uses a very small amount of the gun capacitor's energy reserve in WCIV (5 units).

Strange, because I used to simply diver all gun power to shields. If the stormfire used anything, it was not enough to drain the gun buffer, because it could simply fire until exhausted without recharge. At any event, there’s still the fact that MD’s don’t run out of ammo.
 
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