Wed Mar 26, 2003 4:31 pm
Testing manueverability.
I was hanging outside a base while my partner did some trading inside. With no asteroids to shoot at, I opted to exercise my impatience by doing circles around a spire sticking out from the station. Suddenly it occured to me that this would be a passable way to test the turn rate of the ships.
I haven't flown all of the ships since I started this, and I'm not focusing on it. If I decide to switch ships, I'll check it. There are a number of different structures I use for testing. When I started, I was using the thin tower-like structures, similar to what you see with the narrow Junker bases. For the Hawk, Legionaire, and Dragon, this works fine. For the Drake, I had to take it a step further. It's turn rate was so small that it would hit the narrow tower. I ended up doing circles around the antennae sticking up from the tower instead. It's that nimble. For heavy fighters and freighters, I think the round structure sticking out of the bottom of bases like that of Freistadt will work. They're fatter.
This simply gives an observable idea of how nimble a ship is. As I said, the Dragon, Corsair, and Hawk seem to be aproximately the same for turn radius. The difference is slight enough not to matter, at any rate. I'm amazed at the turn rate of the Drake, and unless I find a comparable ship, that's as good looking, I think I'll be sticking with it. It's made mince-meat out of every opponent it's come up against so far, to include five Centurion heavy fighters at once.
I did die once, and it leads me to a new gripe about the game. I was ferrying a load of Engine Components from Kusari to Bretonia when I passed through a jumpgate. While I was parked in the new sector after the jump, and waiting for the cinematic to end, about six enemy ships were targeting me and opening fire. In the split second after the cinematic ended, it was my pleasure to see my HUD light up with red targets, and the rest of the screen light up with my ship's explosion. Two ways to look at the outcome: 1.) if I'd had a stronger ship, it would've ate the damage and kept going; 2.) if the AI couldn't target ships before the cinematic ended, I would've been able to react at the same time they did and avoid the fire.
I haven't flown all of the ships since I started this, and I'm not focusing on it. If I decide to switch ships, I'll check it. There are a number of different structures I use for testing. When I started, I was using the thin tower-like structures, similar to what you see with the narrow Junker bases. For the Hawk, Legionaire, and Dragon, this works fine. For the Drake, I had to take it a step further. It's turn rate was so small that it would hit the narrow tower. I ended up doing circles around the antennae sticking up from the tower instead. It's that nimble. For heavy fighters and freighters, I think the round structure sticking out of the bottom of bases like that of Freistadt will work. They're fatter.
This simply gives an observable idea of how nimble a ship is. As I said, the Dragon, Corsair, and Hawk seem to be aproximately the same for turn radius. The difference is slight enough not to matter, at any rate. I'm amazed at the turn rate of the Drake, and unless I find a comparable ship, that's as good looking, I think I'll be sticking with it. It's made mince-meat out of every opponent it's come up against so far, to include five Centurion heavy fighters at once.
I did die once, and it leads me to a new gripe about the game. I was ferrying a load of Engine Components from Kusari to Bretonia when I passed through a jumpgate. While I was parked in the new sector after the jump, and waiting for the cinematic to end, about six enemy ships were targeting me and opening fire. In the split second after the cinematic ended, it was my pleasure to see my HUD light up with red targets, and the rest of the screen light up with my ship's explosion. Two ways to look at the outcome: 1.) if I'd had a stronger ship, it would've ate the damage and kept going; 2.) if the AI couldn't target ships before the cinematic ended, I would've been able to react at the same time they did and avoid the fire.