Nightshrike
-
Content Count
1,320 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by Nightshrike
-
-
Well, if you play the X-Wing version of things. It has limitless uses as a model for Star Wars RPG-X-Wing fusion.
-
So, I want to address this question, because I think the OP is right. Technically every ship should be able to execute a barrel roll. It's a simple maneuver, and thank you to treybert for posting a pic of the difference between a barrel roll and an aileron roll so that I don't have to. However, if we were going to introduce that kind of realism into the game, we would have to start changing dials, beginning with the B-Wing. In aerial combat, the primary use of the barrel roll is as a displacement roll. It moves you to the inside or outside of the turn circle, thus changing your aspect relative to your opponent. In order for this technique to make sense in X-Wing, the dials would have to correctly reflect turn circles, and they do not. To understand this, let's talk a little bit about turn circles.
A turn circle is the circle that an aircraft describes in the sky when it is making a turn. Pretty simple. The faster the airplane is going, all other things being equal, the wider the turn circle is going to be (the greater its diameter). The slower the aircraft is going, all other things being equal, the smaller the turn circle is going to be. However, turn circle is also dependent on the absolute turn rate of the aircraft, usually measured in degrees of turn per second. Your smallest turn circle is going to be at your maximum turn rate in degrees per second. However, most of the time, a max-G turn is not energy sustaining. You bleed off too much speed in the turn, and this slows you down and actually slows your turn rate down. So, oftentimes in a fight, it's advantageous not to max-G the airplane in the turn, and it's better to slack off a little, to turn at your best turn speed the whole time. The difference between these two methods of flying is the difference between fighting the rate fight and fighting the radius fight. Each is useful in different situations.
The barrel roll, or displacement roll, comes into play when you have a speed advantage over the opponent, but your absolute turn rate is lower than his. Think F-4 Phantom versus MiG-19. The lag roll allows you to fly outside the enemy's turn circle, thus enabling you to get a shot. If you imagine two aircraft on rails, both chasing each other's tail around the same circle, the one who flies around the circle fastest will win. But if you allow one of the aircraft, the slower-turning one, to shift to the outside of the turn, it can then pull its nose inside and get a good shot at the other plane, even though it never actually turns faster around the circle. That's what Phantom pilots did in Vietnam to get good low-aspect missile and gun shots, and that's the beauty of the barrel roll as an offensive repositioning technique. Barrel rolls are also useful in defensive situations, when an enemy is coming in too aggressive, if you barrel roll into him, you can force him to overshoot, and come out directly in front of you. It's probably my most favorite defensive technique in the world, though if your opponent is ready for it, it often leads to a rolling scissors, which is pretty much a barrel roll battle, to see who can execute the maneuver more tightly.
So, if we're going to give every ship the barrel roll ability, we have to put it within the context of realistic maneuvering. That would mean that the relative turn rates and turn circles of all the ships would have to make sense given their mass and their maneuverability. In other words, a B-Wing wouldn't be able to make any turn tighter than a 3 hard without incurring stress, and probably ditto for the Y-wing. The X-wing could make 2-hards without stress, but to make a 1-hard, if it could even do it, would stress the ship out. The TIE fighter and TIE interceptor would both probably retain the 1-hard without stress, as they're lighter and more agile ships. Something like the Millennium Falcon is a huge bus, and probably shouldn't be able to turn tighter than a 3-hard, period, stress or not. Same goes for the Lambda shuttle and the Firespray, and the Aggressor. Something like a Decimator shouldn't be able to turn much tighter than a 4, which we would have to create for that ship.
With these realistic turn circles in place, we now have a reason to give every ship the barrel roll ability. It allows the slower-turning ships to reposition themselves for a shot, even though they'll never be able to yank and bank hard enough to get on the six of the enemy ships. Actually, this is the way I think X-Wing should have been designed, and it seemed to have been designed this way, up until the B-Wing. The B-Wing really broke everything when it was given 1 hard turns, which it absolutely shouldn't have. It should be barely able to squeak out a 2-hard with stress, and should mostly be turning a big circle with 3-hards. This break in the maneuverability meta has a lot to do with the X-Wing getting less table time.
Anyway, I don't think X-Wing is ever going to go for realism, but I wish it would. Air combat tactics would work much better on the tabletop with the system I've described, and it's basically the same system used by Wings of War/Wings of Glory, though for them each individual aircraft has its own unique set of maneuvers, which adds to the realism factor.
-
Really excited for mine to come in the mail. It has shipped, so I'll be painting it up soon. Thanks so much for putting the model on shapeways!
-
I want to see these for Scum and Villany
I have all of those. Love them. Fantastic miniatures. The Vaksai is better in person than it is online, the Kimogila detail is fantastic, and the Dunelizard is a beauty.
Grave13 and SFC Snuffy reacted to this -
And it has the benefit of looking practical for the most part, which appeals to me greatly.
danicusrex reacted to this -
I stopped reading X-Wing novels when Stackpole left, as I was invested in his characters as a kid. Now, looking back, I'm not sure why, he's not the greatest writer. I've heard Allston's stories were better.
danicusrex reacted to this -
-
Yeah, Andersonville and other prisons had such terrible quality of life not out of a malicious plan, but rather because they weren't supposed to keep prisoners indefinitely. For a while there was a parole system going on, such that they exchanged prisoners with the promise that they wouldn't take up arms again in the fight. Well, the Union realized this wasn't to their advantage because they could afford to have men sit out where the South, with its lower population, could not. So, they ended the parole system, and the result was an incredible backlog of prisoners crowding into prisons which were designed to function during the parole system's tenure. They couldn't cope with being forced to retain the prisoners on an indefinite basis.
-
-
My biggest question is why didn't the Prequels have the Z-95 headhunter?
Instead we got these wanabe X-wing only they were some stupid triple wing x-wing.
Gah they make the N-1 look good
Wow, way to choose the least flattering image of the ARC-170 possible just to assert your fairly meh point.
Try again dude.
Better picture, fighter still looks awful.
I mean there aren't even laser cannons on the S-foils. Why do they even have S-foils?
No seriously the Z-95 headhunter would have been better. At least that looks like a proper prequel to the X-wing as one without S-foils not one with useless S-foils only because they wanted moving wings as what was in Episode 4.
The S-Foils are heat sinks, so that when you shoot the cannons the ship doesn't overheat in combat. It increases the surface area. That's the fluff text for it anyway. Personally, I don't much care whether it has s-foils or not, it looks like a P-61 Black Widow inspired spaceship, and that's plenty good enough for me. Puts it miles ahead of pretty much anything from the EU.
-
I'm not keen on it, but hey, it's way, way better than a K-Wing. Oh, and prequel stuff rocks, just not the movies themselves. Their spaceships are pretty sweet though. You've got a P-61 Black Widow inspired bomber, a couple of A-Wing and F-102 Delta Dagger inspired fighters, a fighter based on iconic art deco race planes, another fighter based on the P-38 Lightning, and a cruiser designed after the SR-71 Blackbird. What more could you possibly want?
A bounty hunter in a light attack ship based off the OV-10 Bronco.
Mist Hunter? I'm not a huge fan, but good catch, they do look similar.
-
I'm not keen on it, but hey, it's way, way better than a K-Wing. Oh, and prequel stuff rocks, just not the movies themselves. Their spaceships are pretty sweet though. You've got a P-61 Black Widow inspired bomber, a couple of A-Wing and F-102 Delta Dagger inspired fighters, a fighter based on iconic art deco race planes, another fighter based on the P-38 Lightning, and a cruiser designed after the SR-71 Blackbird. What more could you possibly want?
-
Would love to see the Decimator or the Millennium Falcon running as a blocker. The "fridge" has got nothing on Chewbacca.
-
X-Wing works very differently from aerial combat, but I think the principle of simply trying to murder your enemy as brutally and efficiently as possible is probably a good one nonetheless.
Depends on your squad, of course. For some ships, it's "Rule Number One: Don't Get Killed" - Squints are good examples of a ship where if you have a choice between a head-to-head pass and neither side having a shot, you generally take the latter.
But yes, throwing out fiendish false leads and subtle traps work well in theory and lousy in practice.
Well, most fighter pilots also avoid the head-on. The head-on pass is the one place where skill as a pilot doesn't matter. If you choose to commit to it, you're giving the enemy a free shot at you in exchange for a free shot at him. The only time you would ever think about doing that is if the enemy is a lousy shot, or a much, much better pilot than you are. But, if you're a fighter pilot, you don't actually believe there is any such thing as a better pilot than you are, so you're going to avoid the head-on.
Avoiding the head-on shouldn't be mistaken as not being aggressive, it's just a channeled and intelligent aggression. You don't fight that fight, you fight your fight, you force it on your opponent. While he's trying to blaze away at you on the head-on, you avoid the shots, and then you steal angles with a hard break across his nose (and under it so he doesn't shoot you). This sets you up with an advantage at the merge and enables you to then move in for the kill from a position where he can't shoot back.
WickedGrey reacted to this -
Long lines is probably more realistic than tight clouds anyway. Real combat pilots tend to fly in spread formations, separated by miles of space to allow room to maneuver. If you put these ships in a proper combat spread, the way you would do in modern aviation, you'd need about a 30 foot long table to fit the ships in properly.
As to this battle itself - looks fantastic. Also, it makes perfect sense you didn't finish - Han got that shield down!
-
Really? My order from April 27th STILL hasn't shipped. Grr...
-
I would say not so. Good players should size up what is on the board and play the other side, make decisions as if they were the other player based on the most beneficial move for them. If indeed their opponent picks a different move and it somehow counters, then the "good player" didn't really make a genuine effort. Sometimes an excellent player just needs to fall back on basics of winning the game: shooting up the enemy ships.
In real fighter combat, there are a ton of complicated maneuvers that get crazy names, but you don't just perform those maneuvers because you are skilled or that is in your hand. If an F-18 is coming up behind a bandit who hasn't seen him, there is no maneuver to do other than fly into range and attack.
Real fighter combat is actually a really good analogy. You never "perform maneuvers" with fancy names as your objective. Your goal is to kill the opposing pilot as quickly and brutally as possible. The best way to do that is to fly in low and behind him where he can't see you, preferably after a dive out of the sun to keep your speed up, squeeze off a murderous burst, and leave. If you do your job, the dead man will have never even known you were there. Maneuvers happen when the other guy is a jerk about it and tries to keep you from brutally killing him. But the maneuvers are never an end-goal in themselves, they are always designed to solve one of the four problems of BFM (Range, Closure, Aspect, and Angle-off) and solving those four problems puts you in the six o'clock position you're describing.
X-Wing works very differently from aerial combat, but I think the principle of simply trying to murder your enemy as brutally and efficiently as possible is probably a good one nonetheless.
-
Nice! I wish I hadn't bought XWA through GOG then.
Why...? O.o GoG's version is DRM-free, comes with most of the bonus material, is more compatible with mods (mods which yes, in the case of XWA do make the game look better), and even incorperates a few mods from the get-go.
All wonderful points, but I was kind of hoping to get different multiplayer functionality. Seems like that might not be there with Steam either.
-
Honestly, I think that Rudell was not a nazi. His memoirs are very interesting, indeed. He was a glorified Hero who was awarded an Iron Cross with real diamonds, so he is remembered as a nazi.
Even more, he never condemned Adolph Hitler action's, but never defended him. He was a ground support pilot, a tank buster, and never exerted upper comand positions. He fought in the loosing side, and in one of the most nazified arm of Germany's armed forces. But he was a pilot.
He describes Hitler as a "soft" and "unstable" person. Per example, when Adolph in person ordered.him to stop flying he said "No". Downed 17 times, lost one leg and several radio operators KIA.
A nazi? I think no.
A soldier who cryed after the war " I knew nothing about crimes, Hitler was a demon, I.am a good boy? No
He said that Hitler was his.commander
Rudel was completely a nazi. He led a neo-Nazi political party after the war. He said he completely supported National Socialism on many occasions. He met Josef Mengele and helped him to flee to Brazil - you know, the guy who tortured and mutilated Jewish children at Auschwitz. The mourners at his funeral tossed him Nazi salutes. The guy was completely and totally a Nazi.
-
The issue you're driving at is whether or not beginners have an immunity to feints, and other complex strategies by virtue of their ignorance. The solution, I feel, is to never make feints in the truest sense. A feint is a threat of attack, or a movement designed to draw a response to set up the opponent for a stronger attack someplace else. If you make all of your feints also full-intention attacks, you solve the problem. If the enemy bites on the feint, good, mission accomplished. If they don't, your feint becomes the main line of attack. This is a principle used in fencing all the time.
-
Once the regionals are done (going this weekend!), I'll be hosting an X-Wing roleplaying campaign in my area. 3 players will be controlling a cut off group of Rebels escaping from Hoth while I handle the Imperials and Scum that they will be facing. I already wrote a 22 page instruction manual detailing stuff like:
- Pilot progression (generic pilots can become named pilots) and injury/death.
- Actions between missions (intelligence gathering, supplies, recruiting named pilots)
- How to rescue captured pilots
- Etc
Each "round", the players (each of them being a commander) will be given a list of possible missions with long lasting repercussions whether they win or lose. Each game is played invidually, so that the other 2 players can just play standard games in the meantime for fun.
The really fun mechanic that I'm implementing, however, is that if a player does not do some intelligence gathering then the enemy's forces will have its pilots and upgrades face down on the table, with only me being aware of what they are until used. I expect to lose many games while DMing this, but it will be worth it for the giggles of revealing weird combos that you never see in 100 point matches but just happen to be terrifying in that specific context
Love this idea. It would see me playing the game much more regularly.
danicusrex reacted to this -
-
I think part of it may be down to introversion/extroversion too. Boardgamers and wargamers tend to be introverts as a rule...
That hasn't really been my experience. Do you have any data to share?
I'd like something potentially cooperative, something with more of a goal in mind, something that builds organically over time, something that forces social interaction.
I know you'd much rather play X-Wing than Imperial Assault, but the campaign is exactly all of those things. You really should give it a try.
I haven't seen the IA campaign played where I am. They just play random skirmishes. I think this may be down to my specific place in the world, WW. Nobody wants to play a campaign of Star Wars anything. It's depressing.
-
if you send me the CT data, I can render a 3D model with it and print out exact copies of your dice on a 3D printer, including the exact location and configuration of the air pocket(s).
Thx, but that might be pushing it a bit too far. Besides we do have a 3D printer at work too, but I do not feel the need to go in to counterfeiting just yet ;-)
It wouldn't be a counterfeit anyway, since the material would be wrong. It'd just be fun.
Forensicus reacted to this
How about this ship?
in X-Wing
Posted
Well, from reading Wookieepedia, seems like the Blade-32 was primarily atmospheric, so it needed them.