the L-21 Wolf

[Shadow Reaper]

Similar to the Talon, though a smaller target. Bad sight picture—you’re missing all the view below because of the cockpit placement. 2S4 weapons like the Talon. Fast and nimble like the Talon. No word on the shields, but my guess is just 1S1 instead of the Talon’s 2S1. Twice the missile load as the Talon.

Not really enough to go on to make much of a judgement, but the Talon’s exquisite sight picture may make it the better choice. The Talon is hard to beat and throws in -40/-40 stealth armor. With twin Mirage running its sig is just 2k. So can the Wolf beat it at its own game?

View: https://youtu.be/z0rjaxR0ufg?si=YuavQXekiQY1sDUT

 

[Daak Gelrin]

I love the design, hate the fin and hope we can retract it or fly without it extended. At least in space.
I see my M50 losing it's seat, and being replaced with this ship.
It all depends on cost. I hope they don't try to pull a $200 light fighter sale.
Gotta say it again, the fin seems to mess up the overall flow of the design.
I really do like the cockpit, your side and top view area seems fantastic.
Overall, it's looking like a strong contender to join my fleet. Time will tell.

 

[Shadow Reaper]

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[Lorddarthvik]

Agreed on the fin messing up the design. It's way too blocky compared to the rest of the sleek naboo design, serves no purpose, and it's scale is just exactly wrong. Too small to be impactful, too large to not be an eyesore. It either needs a sensor pod or something slightly bulbous on it's end to give it the roundness and weight that flows with the ships shape, or make it 3 small fins that don't move, like diffusors on the rear bottom of car.
I do like the rest, pretty sleek, very much unlike the other ships.

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

I don't have an opinion on the fin, so I think we should do a poll on it.

Here's one I made earlier:

The Ultimate Poll

When a poll is made, invariably there is a forum member unable to vote in it as their opinion is not represented. Fear not brave souls, for you now have this: The Forums Ultimate Poll! When someone cannot vote in your threads poll, link this and all shall be well! And what could be better...

testsquadron.com

 

[Shadow Reaper]

I love the aesthetics as is. I’m just uncertain how it gives us something new. Maybe it is extreme in acceleration even compared to the Talon? Can’t wait to find out.

Still not in Erkul nor Performance Viewer.

 

[Shadow Reaper]

The rear of the center engine looks like a rotating detonation aerospike, which is in keeping with the cutting edge of rocket engine design. Reminds of Thunderbird 3. With 5 engines, expect this is insane fast.

View: https://youtu.be/GIkbsN1Dw_U?si=hQANXbGjiLnsJ_gS

Giving the Gatlings twice the ammo of a Revenant seems like bait to me that will be removed in a balance, unless of course these are bespoke and hit half as hard as a Revenant. Just note bespoke weapons are almost always inferior to standard weapons and players generally don’t like them. For instance, the 4 types of bespoke weapons in the Vanguard nose are almost all inferior to their competition. The laser cannons are okay but you then need to nerf the chin gun to get a single pip.

Space Tomato pointed out these dedicated ballistics will be much less annoying when the Vulcan is released and you can replace ammo in situ.

This guy is comically clueless about sight picture. WTF, dude?! We saw this same response when the Guardian was released. How many times do you need to die until seeing your opponent becomes important? Depends upon how sexy your ride, you say. Em, any of you ever try to park a Plymouth Prowler? What you cannot see quickly becomes a real pain in the ass.

On a sailboat, the “fin” that comes out the bottom is either a centerboard, or a daggerboard, depending upon whether it swings or stabs strait down. On a sailboat it stops the boat from slipping laterally. It is an entirely necessary part of the boat. In air or space all it does is look cool. Rudders really need to be astern, not amidships. A centerboard is definitely a callback to sailing small boats—boats too small for a keel, usually termed “dinghies”. (I used to race a Lightning. It was a real kick, but have a care. Dinghies easily flip or go out of control.)

I think they missed an opportunity if indeed they left VTOL off the wingbourne engines. I didn’t catch any rotation there.

I’m guessing like the Talon, this needs an expert pilot to really get the performance out of it that it offers. Avenger_One will probably love this, no matter its signature, which I expect will be pretty high with so many engines.

 

[Daak Gelrin]

I'm hoping it gets great performance to match it's looks.
High top end speed, and at SCM very nimble.
They themselves called it a nimble glass cannon, that really needs to avoid getting hit.
I'll dance with her all day, if she moves the way she looks.
grrrr

/where's my drink now...

 

[Ayeteeone]

I'm hoping it gets great performance to match it's looks.
High top end speed, and at SCM very nimble.
They themselves called it a nimble glass cannon, that really needs to avoid getting hit.
I'll dance with her all day, if she moves the way she looks.
grrrr

/where's my drink now...

No Doubt!! This one got a visceral reaction within my group of friends, just on the appearance. If it fights as good as it looks... 0.0

I am decidedly feeling 'fighter fatigue'.. we've got enough already. You want a fat payday CIG, send that Medium Salvage ship.

 

[Shadow Reaper]

Or the Vulcan. Or the Crucible.

 

[Lorddarthvik]

The rear of the center engine looks like a rotating detonation aerospike, which is in keeping with the cutting edge of rocket engine design. Reminds of Thunderbird 3. With 5 engines, expect this is insane fast.

View: https://youtu.be/GIkbsN1Dw_U?si=hQANXbGjiLnsJ_gS

Giving the Gatlings twice the ammo of a Revenant seems like bait to me that will be removed in a balance, unless of course these are bespoke and hit half as hard as a Revenant. Just note bespoke weapons are almost always inferior to standard weapons and players generally don’t like them. For instance, the 4 types of bespoke weapons in the Vanguard nose are almost all inferior to their competition. The laser cannons are okay but you then need to nerf the chin gun to get a single pip.

Space Tomato pointed out these dedicated ballistics will be much less annoying when the Vulcan is released and you can replace ammo in situ.

This guy is comically clueless about sight picture. WTF, dude?! We saw this same response when the Guardian was released. How many times do you need to die until seeing your opponent becomes important? Depends upon how sexy your ride, you say. Em, any of you ever try to park a Plymouth Prowler? What you cannot see quickly becomes a real pain in the ass.

On a sailboat, the “fin” that comes out the bottom is either a centerboard, or a daggerboard, depending upon whether it swings or stabs strait down. On a sailboat it stops the boat from slipping laterally. It is an entirely necessary part of the boat. In air or space all it does is look cool. Rudders really need to be astern, not amidships. A centerboard is definitely a callback to sailing small boats—boats too small for a keel, usually termed “dinghies”. (I used to race a Lightning. It was a real kick, but have a care. Dinghies easily flip or go out of control.)

View attachment 26596

I think they missed an opportunity if indeed they left VTOL off the wingbourne engines. I didn’t catch any rotation there.

I’m guessing like the Talon, this needs an expert pilot to really get the performance out of it that it offers. Avenger_One will probably love this, no matter its signature, which I expect will be pretty high with so many engines.

Regarding boats, exactly what I thought of on seeing the fin, thus it feels wrong. It's perfectly the wrong scale to be anything. It's way too short and small for what you'd have on a boat, or as an aero piece, but too blocky and large for an aesthetics piece. I feel like they had a design checklist that said it must look like a boat and it must have moving gimmicks, so they added it on but didn't account for there being not enough space to fit anything that would actually look good.

A bit offtopic, but I do wonder where CIG is going with all the low-emission stealthy tiny ships and this whole detection mechanic... I don't think they know yet either. The whole idea needs a rethink and an overhaul. Again.
It's such a mess with the mix of emissions, radars and meanwhile visual doesn't seem to line up with reality at all. I have had untargetable ships fly around and shoot me from like 50meters away (think it was an M50, the drake whatever tiny fighter, and some alien crap) clearly visible to the naked eye so I could even hit them back easily, yet they weren't on radar... Was a while ago that I last ran into this issue but it was just wrong on every level. I remember when some time ago they did the insanely low 10-15 degree cone of detection for radars which was just outright stupid gameplay. They clearly dropped that idea since, but now I can seemingly detect and lock anything from a certain large distance, no matter where they at in relation to me, even when obscured and unpowered, behind asteroids or stations... What they came up with in theory might be good, but it's absolutely not working in-game as intended.
As for the untargetable "stealth" ships, the whole idea is a joke. I could argue that we have optical sensors on planes today that can easily spot and track planes well outside of human vis range, hell even the soviets had them on theri fighters for like 50 years... How is it not standard to have an array of these on every hyper advanced sci-fi space fighter, possibly aided by the on-board ship ai, making it almost impossible to hide when in LoS? I just find the whole concept poorly thought out and immersion breaking.
In case of this ship the argument "but it's a tiny crossection!" is just dumb. It's A CHROME SHIP! on a mostly dark background! Even an effing webcam from 2000 with a resolution of 320x200 could track it from a 100miles away!
Just to have some sort of stealth gameplay, no matter how unrealistic and immersion breaking it is, I get it, it could be fun if done right. But they keep releasing stealth capable ships, meanwhile lowering speeds and the effective range of weapons so they can bring the action back down to ww2 dogfighting distance, defeating the whole point of stealth! All this leads to is dumb unfun gameplay, like having clearly visible ships going sideways on full boost shoot at you from 30m away, yet remain untargetable cos an old detection system designed for 10x the engagement ranges says so...

 

[Shadow Reaper]

If you have ships at 500m you can’t sense, you have a hacker. There are no ships with signatures that low. That is a sig <1. I think the current low sig holder is the Razor EX with coolers, Q drive and shield all off, has an IR of 900 that might drop to 700 with the stealth switch on, until it fires its tiny guns. Then the jig is up.

Ships with no EM or IR attenuation in their armor seldom hit EM<6k. The Meteor is a rare one. Ships with -40/-40 armor like the Sabre are rare, and I think only the Prowler has -60/-60 armor. Those are true stealth ships and should have very low sigs. The best stealth ships are toying around at the range of their guns. Only very few can fire on even the worst sensor systems without being seen.

Keep in mind, to get sigs really low, you have to turn off your coolers so you will start to overheat as soon as you start to fire, you have to turn off your Q drive so you lose the ability to escape quickly, and you have to turn off your shields. Stealth is very hard to manage. All these numbers require stealth reactors with greatly reduced power.

And FYI, the Buccaneer has very recently had its sig greatly reduced. That’s new, and I think what they’re trying to do with all the light fighters. Still, lowest sig is 2.9, which leaves it out of range for most of its guns. Most good stealth ships are only in range and undetectable for a narrow band of 1-200m. That’s a vanishingly small advantage for giving up power generation, cooling, shields and the ability to jump away. The best use of stealth is probably missiles, which always give you several seconds to evade.

In the real world, we do not spot ships visually. They’re too hard to see. We locate and track them with EM and IR, just like in game. The difference is in the real world, missiles have much greater range and are very hard to evade. Generally the harder to locate target fires before it can be seen. That’s why the F35 was built as such a shitty dog-fighter. That kind of combat is all ended now. What we do in the real world is win with big piles of cash that gets you a goofball size signature, so you can fire first and fly away.

 

[Lorddarthvik]

If you have ships at 500m you can’t sense, you have a hacker. There are no ships with signatures that low. That is a sig <1. I think the current low sig holder is the Razor EX with coolers, Q drive and shield all off, has an IR of 900 that might drop to 700 with the stealth switch on, until it fires its tiny guns. Then the jig is up.

Ships with no EM or IR attenuation in their armor seldom hit EM<6k. The Meteor is a rare one. Ships with -40/-40 armor like the Sabre are rare, and I think only the Prowler has -60/-60 armor. Those are true stealth ships and should have very low sigs. The best stealth ships are toying around at the range of their guns. Only very few can fire on even the worst sensor systems without being seen.

Keep in mind, to get sigs really low, you have to turn off your coolers so you will start to overheat as soon as you start to fire, you have to turn off your Q drive so you lose the ability to escape quickly, and you have to turn off your shields. Stealth is very hard to manage. All these numbers require stealth reactors with greatly reduced power.

And FYI, the Buccaneer has very recently had its sig greatly reduced. That’s new, and I think what they’re trying to do with all the light fighters. Still, lowest sig is 2.9, which leaves it out of range for most of its guns. Most good stealth ships are only in range and undetectable for a narrow band of 1-200m. That’s a vanishingly small advantage for giving up power generation, cooling, shields and the ability to jump away. The best use of stealth is probably missiles, which always give you several seconds to evade.

In the real world, we do not spot ships visually. They’re too hard to see. We locate and track them with EM and IR, just like in game. The difference is in the real world, missiles have much greater range and are very hard to evade. Generally the harder to locate target fires before it can be seen. That’s why the F35 was built as such a shitty dog-fighter. That kind of combat is all ended now. What we do in the real world is win with big piles of cash that gets you a goofball size signature, so you can fire first and fly away.

I highly doubt those were hackers, I didn't die, not even once lol The detection system is just as broken as the elevators, that's all probably.
Yeah I know how modern air combat works here, heck I might still have some Lockheed Martin monthly magazines laying around here somewhere...
I just don't see the current trend of what CIG is trying to do with combat being compatible with what they were trying to do with stealth before. It looks good on spreadsheet or in erkul, it does not properly translate to gameplay in the PU. AFAIK we are in for yet another flight model overhaul so... who knows where this will go.

Anyways, I was too getting the figher-fatigue like others, but this ship is differently shaped enough that I don't mind it too much. I do like the Porsche clock in the middle. I won't be buying it though. I object to this trend of proprietary weapons. This is the second ship in a row that will probably have them with the gattlings, making it a problem rather than a feature.

TBH the only ship I care about won't be coming out for a long long time, and will probably get ruined in the final redesign. The Genesis Starliner.
Crusader ships gained a design language that excludes about 50% of the shapes that make up this OG concept. It would fit Kruger or Origin way more than Crusader by this point.

 

[Shadow Reaper]

One point I haven’t heard yet is that not only does it have a small deck footprint, but the shape lends itself well to stacking. So we may find given nice stats it supplants the Arrow and Razor as first choice for carriers. It’s just about small enough, and with the firepower it appears brings to the table, could be a good call. Depends a lot on the sig, IMHO.

 

[Lorddarthvik]

top down it looks like a nabbo starfighter just the cockpit and engines are reversed lol
It will be interesting to see how many can fit inside some of explorations ships, alhtough I'm yet to see how "fragile but in numbers" vs "less but tanks" stack up in reality

 

[Wolfy]

No Doubt!! This one got a visceral reaction within my group of friends, just on the appearance. If it fights as good as it looks... 0.0

I am decidedly feeling 'fighter fatigue'.. we've got enough already. You want a fat payday CIG, send that Medium Salvage ship.

A medium salvage ship would be the dream. Tbh I really, really want to see an Argo salvage ship.

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

A medium salvage ship would be the dream. Tbh I really, really want to see an Argo salvage ship.

I'm still waiting for a solo gas harvester like the Starfarer but smaller and everything doable from the pilot seat. I can see the SF being soloable but with lots of running from station to station.

It's going to be a new mechanic and play-loop though so a medium salvage is way more likely.

I imagine pickings from the depths of Crusader being dangerous due too the pressure but making some phat returns, but a commercial licence with the planet owners will be prohibitive with them taking like 70% of every sale or something encouraging illicit operations...

Stands to reason Crusader would have a bathesphere ship given their planet would need a deep dive rescue vessel but MISC has that submersible ship style language and already has a gas harvester in its lineup...

Dreams and theorycrafting since 2012

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

L21 ad:

View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rjiq3XLOXag

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

£82 GBP where I am, seems reasonable: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/en/comm-link/transmission/20710-Kruger-L-21-Wolf

 

[Shadow Reaper]

There are some underwhelmed responses to the 230 SCM. It’s a smidge slower than the 325A and a lot slower than the Razor.