Notice: Proposed stats are very rough, and anything but final.

[EDIT] Slightly lowered armor and mass. Significantly increased Torque at zak's suggestion. [/EDIT]

TPG Raptor - Falcon Class
(Agile Weapons Platform)

Faction Level: 350
License Level: 5/5/-/-/-
Armor: 7400
Cargo: 6 cu
Weapons: 2s
Mass: 3590 kg
Length: 17 m
Thrust: 215 N
Speed: 60 m/s
Spin Torque: 24 Nm
Turbo Speed: 220 m/s
Turbo Energy: 60 e/s

The idea for this variant came from a long, protracted conversation between Miharu, Surbius, and myself of IRC the other night about what sort of role the Raptor might be adapted to fill. I have taken the liberty of reproducing the idea here; although we never settled on any definitive stats, the above is something like what we were aiming for.

The "Falcon" class Raptor is designed to be less of a traditional fighter and more of a firing platform. Its turning capacity has been augmented considerably and it retains a certain amount of chase capability due to its high mass/thrust ratio (albeit over short distances, because of its high drain), but its hidden drawback is that its lateral movement--which is already somewhat poor--has been severely gimped.

Designed explicitly for sniping, its purpose is to maintain weapons lock on its target even as it closes to medium range. This makes it an excellent craft to mount rails on, and giving the Hornet some serious contention for the platform role (although the Falcon wouldn't match the QuadRail's firepower, it would be able to target more effectively). In a pinch, it can still perform a modest interceptor role, but it'd be hopelessly outmatched in a traditional dogfight.

The Falcon is, ostensibly, named for the bird of prey with the best eyesight. We agreed that it seemed fitting.

I'd like to hear people's opinions on this, particularly your suggestions on how this could be improved. I'd love to see what Miharu and Surbius had in mind, especially.

Basically a high turning rate while strafe movements are nerfed; it makes for a good 'shoot and scoot' ship while severely hindered in a dogfight as stated.

I wonder if incorporating LeberMac's suggestion of reducing the ship's overall length to resemble an increase is spin torque would do it justice.

I suggest probably dropping a few hundred kilograms and armor points so it has more 'git up and go.'

EDIT: And give this the same price or near the same as the Greyhound.

Long, protracted and distracted in my case; I was playing something on the other display at the time. ;)

EDIT: The Raptor is pretty much universally understood to be a flying scrapheap in its current forms. It seems like an ideal candidate for the creation of task-specific variants, in this case a ship intended specifically for snipers.

By lowering the thrust available for strafing, the Falcon is all but guaranteed to be even less useful in a dogfight than the original Raptor. The increased spin torque will, as said by CNH, will allow for the pilot to keep a bead on his intended victim for a longer amount of time. Assuming that the Falcon retains the Raptor's defining characteristic -- the built-in storm radar extender -- it could very well become a viable pirating tool in ion storms or whatever Incarnate decides to replace them with. The increased thrust for forward/backward motion and turbo will allow the Falcon to get in and out of places in a hurry as it will be an easy target.

It appears mostly balanced as-is, but as with all ship variants, only time and testing will tell.

*low mass/thrust.
But actually you mean high acceleration which is equal to thrust/mass.

Anyway, as something that makes raptor actually useful while not being total vult clone it seems nice.

I like it. I'd like to see maybe 200 more armor, but thats just me and I'm not sure if that would over-buff it. Good concept.

A Raptor needs more spin torque than a Vulture to turn as quickly. I don't know exactly how VO calculates the angular mass of ships[0], but I expect this will need a lot more spin torque to have any advantage over a higher-end Vulture for the same purpose. Also, the Raptor's size puts it at a significant disadvantage; it would be inferior to a Corvult in combat even if given exactly the same performance specs. This isn't a bad idea, but the specs are far too weak for the ship to see much use. Incidentally, I'm working on my own Raptor proposal, which will be posted soon. It's not intended for the same purpose as this one, but I'd appreciate commentary from others interested in making the Raptor useful.

Edit: assuming the spin torque is off by a factor of a million, we get reasonable numbers. Here are some angular acceleration figures[1] (in radians/second^2, rounded to nearest integer):

Vulture MkIV, FC, 2x Adv. Rail: 83
Falcon, FC, 2x Adv. Rail: 57
Orion Hornet, FC, 4x Adv. Rail: 25
Rev. C, FC, 2x Adv. Rail: 133
Rev. C, FC, 2x Raven: 217

[0] I attempted to perform calculations using listed values and the assumption that a ship had the angular mass of a 2-dimensional rod of the same length. I came up with absurdly low angular acceleration figures for several ships. Since none of the fighters actually handle like an XC loaded with swarms, I'm making a bad assumption somewhere, or the figures given for spin torque aren't actually used by the game as Newton-meters.

[1] Still using the assumption that the angular mass of a ship is calculated as a rod, which is almost certainly wrong, and not accounting for the drag that limits the maximum spin rate, as I don't know how that's calculated. Actual figures will be lower if the ship is treated as a 3D object resembling its model. Still, these seem to be valid ballpark figures for comparing ships.

I think they're measured kilo-Newton-meters. I could be mistaken, but I believe that the devs have mentioned a "physics model" for each of the chassis, so it might not be calculated as a rod.

In any case, I appreciate the feedback. I honestly have only a very fuzzy idea at best on how this would perform; your opinions are helping me to refine the concept idea a great deal.

In most programming languages, you can use the following as the body of a function to calculate the angular acceleration using the method I described:

(torque * 1000000)/((mass * (length * length))/12.0)

I hope that saves all the would-be ship designers some time.

The Valkyrie seems singularly suited to this task. It's round, light, heavily armed, and already overpowered. I'd do something like this:

Faction Level: 990
License Level: 6/10/5/1/-
Armor: 9500
Cargo: 2 cu
Weapons: 3s
Mass: 3000 kg
Length: 12 m
Thrust: 200 N
Speed: 60 m/s
Spin Torque: 8.75 Nm
Turbo Speed: 200 m/s
Turbo Energy: 55 e/s

The lowered speeds mean it'll be less effective in avoiding shots than the original forms. The lowered thrust adds to this. It'd make a wicked attack platform, with rails or otherwise, but would have difficulty on defense. Basically, I took a Mk I variant, lowered its movement by 20%, and increased the turning by a proportional amount.

The Valkyrie is already useful, Mynt. The point of this is to give some utility to a ship that is generally overlooked in favor of its contemporaries. Lets be honest: is the integrated storm extended useful enough to warrant use in most situations? Really?

This is designed to fill a niche role for the Raptor here; making this a Valkyrie variant would be fairly self-defeating to the point of making it in the first place. Besides, doesn't the Valk have enough variants?

And for the final Raptor variant... I'm not opposed to this idea at all. Would be interesting as a support ship in a blockade if people were working in teams. Given the nerfed top speeds, I don't see this vessel as much of a PvP threat. Might be useful to lower the armor just a little more (I know it can't really run, but that just means that it needs to be defended by its partner). Nevertheless: [stamp of approval].

Fine. Marauder.

Again: completely missing the point. If you don't have anything useful to contribute, then I'm going to have to ask you to can it, Mynt. I want suggestions as to change the ship as-is, not to change it into a variant for another ship.

Anyway, ignoring the peanut gallery, and focusing on legitimate critiques...

OK, so the general consensus is that the armor and mass should be reduced a bit more. That seems reasonable; I could drop each by a few more hundred.

Now, zak, you said that you calculated that the actual angular acceleration would be fairly poor, even with the torque beefed as-is? For what its worth, I believe you, but it would be nice to know exactly how high I should be going with the spin Torque. Even compared to the figures generated by other craft, I still don't really know what they mean. You seem to have a better feel for this sort of thing. Thanks for the formula, though; I'll try to figure it out later for future use. (for reference, I'd expect this thing to be loaded with a FC and Adv Rails a lot, so I can understand if its turning is still too poor).

Assuming all ships equipped with FC and rails, to equal the Vulture Mk. IV, the spin torque would need to be 14. To equal the Rev. C, it would need to be 22.

I want suggestions as to change the ship as-is, not to change it into a variant for another ship.

Very well then... the radar storm extension is completely nonsensical for this ship style. It adds nothing but novelty, and the fact that it extends your storm radar range. That concept only has a correlation to sniping if you insist there is one; any situation where you claim that extended storm radar range is useful for a firing platform, can be substituted for any style of ship, because radar range is a such a general attribute. A better solution would be to give this ship an additional modular port which could still fit a radar storm extender if the pilot chose to, or add additional weapons, bringing the ship more into part with the Hornet, its obvious competitor, in consideration that the Hornet is designed as an "attack ship".

Even with additional spin torque, at its length, the Raptor is going to turn pitifully slow. If the model were shrunk down to a size of, say, 12 meters--Marauder Length--then it'd be one of the most accurate ships around however. Yet, a scaled down Raptor would look slightly odd. It might be better to create a whole new model, much like how the Revenant is a clone of the Wraith. I was thinking something along the lines of this...



Finally, no support/offensive ship is complete without the ability to infiniboost, as premeditation and this is often their only defense in a furball. You're certainly not going to outmaneuver a dedicated fighter, unless it involves an endurance race. However, speed, lungs, and increased turning are too much of an advantage for one ship, lest nothing else can compete. For this reason, I believe the most convenient kind of turbo would be a 200m/s, 50e/s one, following in line with other heavy support ships, such as the Ragnarok, and Centaur. Sacrificing speed for accuracy, this would make the Mar - er, I mean the Raptor a ship not to be overlooked, as any national special shouldn't be. (Oh wait...)

Mynt, shut up.

You're not helping, and you're completely missing the point behind this. This isn't supposed to be here because of a perceived need for a sniper vessels; the suggestion is here for a perceived role for the Raptor to fill.

Your incessant babbling is both uninformed and pretentious. This variant is a sniper, first and foremost, not a chaser or a dogfighter. The storm extender has only limited use on this? Well, its only limited-use now; this could be potentially useful in most situations. Infiniboost? pointless. This is designed to be a weapons platform--it doesn't need to move.

So if you don't have anything useful to contribute, I suggest you can it. Everyone else, at least, has been giving advice as to how it might be better modified to fit its intended role. They have been quite helpful in refining the design.

You, on the other hand, have been doing nothing but attempting to hijack the thread by saying how it 'sucks so much', and trying to adapt it to adapt it into being yet another variant for ships which already have established roles and too many variants as-is.

Now, if you don't like it, then fine. But just leave it as "[Stamp of Disapproval](tm)" and be done with it, ok? If you want a sniper Valk or a sniper Maud, start your own thread; your attempts to derail this suggestion are not appreciated.

"[whining] yet another variant for ships which already have established roles and too many variants as-is."
The Valkyrie variants are painfully identical. The Marauder is unjustly unpopular, indicating it needs some different variants, if not more ones.

"You, on the other hand, have been doing nothing but attempting to hijack the thread by saying how it 'sucks so much',"
Sure, fine, whatever you say, but I've been doing so through constructive criticism. Does this irony escape you? Perhaps your established hatred for me is clouding your judgment.

"This variant is a sniper, first and foremost, not a chaser or a dogfighter"
No ship traveling at 200m/s is going to be a strong chaser, even with infiniboost. This will, however, allow someone to survive combat should things go awry. A maneuvering speed of 60m/s is crippling in a dog fight, as it reduces acceleration as well as speed. I have been faithful to your outline of a sniping ship. However, your persistence in forcing the Raptor into this role is asinine; no combat ship is worse suited for this role! The evidence is in how obfuscated the stats need to become in order for it to perform accordingly. Not even a 'Moth has 24 in the spin torque department.

If you're not too upset to listen, consider the weaknesses this ship has as a sniper -- only two weapon ports, and a length which hinders aiming. The only logical solution would be to give this role to a ship that has both more weapon ports, and a shorter length, of which there are only two, the Valkyrie and the Marauder, because all ships that have attributes suited to sniping are logical solutions to creating a ship suited to sniping. Can I explain it any clearer than this?

The point is for people to use the Raptor, Mynt. I think you missed that part.

No, that's merely the only point I chose not to address, as a sniping Raptor makes as much sense as a trading Vulture. An alternate solution would be to shorten the model of the ship up, perhaps removing that vestigial tail it has, but of course this makes it like a Vulture/Valkyrie/Centurion/Marauder, which is against the concept of the Raptor in the first place. You can't have your cake and eat it too, without doing some really nasty surgery.

Your displeasure with the concept is noted, Mynt. "[Stamp of Disapproval](tm)" and all that. Just leave it at that; you're not communicating anything further (and certainly nobody is going to take your suggestions to modify the design to another ship variant--that belongs in its own thread).

Meanwhile, there seem to be people who are actually interested in the idea. You've already had your say; can it and let them have theirs.