the L-21 Wolf

[NaffNaffBobFace]

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

View attachment 26604

As a pilot of a 350r since catch 2.4, I can tell you there are 3 aspects to going fast:

Top Speed
Acceleration
Manuverability and how fast you can change direction and get back up to top speed.

the 350 hasn't had the manuverablity since... maybe 2.8...? But top speed and especially acceleration have stayed.

If the L21 has crazy acceleration and the manuvering to be able to retain that kenetic energy or at least get back up to speed fast without too much drifting, even at 230 it'll be a joy to fly.

DISCLAIMER they might make it 500m/s tomorrow and any grief will have been pointless anyway.

 

[Daak Gelrin]

It needs to be faster in SCM/NAV, but I'm not gonna throw the baby out with the bath water.

I'm banking that the mav thrusters can throw this thing around. It is a light fighter, not an interceptor. (I have to keep reminding myself that)

The price point is right where I hoped it would be. I'm going to add one to the stable. We'll see how it works out.

 

[Ayeteeone]

Handling is.. it'll be tuned as the game goes on, it's a light fighter, whatever.

The guns are the make or break, just like the Ares since the player has no means of altering them. And these Gats are well into the OP level. Very high projectile velocity, better alpha, longer range and more than double the total damage of the Revenant. It outclasses anything else size 4 and some bigger guns. While the usefulness of the extended range is questionable with the normal GATS spread, it might work against large targets.

It's a like a GT-220 went gym bro with years of steroid abuse and heavy lifting.

I haven't flown it yet, so don't know how fast or slow they spin up.. that can be an issue too.

Given these stats, likely it'll be nerfed, or another balance pass is coming for weapons.

 

[Montoya]

CCUd from the Arrow to the wolf. I dont need more light fighters. I love everything about this ship, we all know it will be nerfed in the future, but the design speaks to me.

 

[BUTUZ]

CCUd from the Arrow to the wolf. I dont need more light fighters. I love everything about this ship, we all know it will be nerfed in the future, but the design speaks to me.

I copied boss man.

 

[Shadow Reaper]

This is in Erkul now, and at first glance I noted it comes with +12IR/+12EM armor. That’s really shit armor if you want to hide. Nonetheless, I looked at it with the obligatory stealth components and with shields on it puts out a very low signature. EM 2.7 is not record breaking, but it is decent. This is with shields on or off, so expect changes. Of special note if you're Flying this soon, the IR of 1.6 only goes up to 2.4 if you replace the Steal Mirage shields with Military FR-66. Since it’s not above the EM figure you aren’t losing anything for all that extra shield and refresh. So tinker.

The guns are glorious. With a projectile speed of 1650 and a range of 3878, they are unmatched in the ‘verse. These are easily the best S4 weapons in game which means they will be nerfed after a couple months of sales.

So. . .decent. If you’re stuck with ballistics you ought to have some stealth. Not bad.

The ventral fin irks me the more I look at it. Without the ship has a cupped, very Star Wars E-Wing vibe. Makes me want to cut the bloody thing off.

The Gatlings fire out their center instead of the top; which is terrible. It’s like these designers have no idea what a Gatling is. I think I would have gone another way, as if the graceful lines deserved to remain unperturbed; and leave weapons unseen except a pair of tiny holes that open. That would have been more graceful, methinks.

I do agree it is pretty. Worth keeping one in the tool shed, IMHO.

 

[Ayeteeone]

After several hours of running this thing around in AC, my verdict is.. It's Perfect. They nailed it right out of the box. Which, sadly, means it'll probably be nerfed.

Flight is typical light fighter. Agile and mostly able to position itself where it needs to be. Stock components could be improved but there is enough of them that once the ship is set up and power is adjusted it really doesn't demand any more thought.

Most importantly, the Wolf has no inherent issues with keeping the guns on target. If you have enough skill to track consistently these guns are VERY satisfying to use!

Some other observations:
Ammo count is high enough to keep you in the fight. In AC at least, I had to put more thought into managing the GATS overheating than the capacity.

700-750 rounds from each GAT to take down the Corsair without using Precision targeting. This was consistent, and I'm sure a higher skill pilot could get that number down.

There was no trouble at all making it to Wave 8 in Pirate Swarm vs the Hammerhead. The Hammerhead itself is another matter for future practice with ballistics.

There are videos out already of players taking out turrets and engines on capital ships. This Wolf can Hunt.

There IS a tiny delay in the spin up to first shot.. maybe .25 second? and a bit more until it reaches full speed. If you are used to using GATS, it's noticeable but not overly intrusive. Spin down is slower, so it's possible to fire bursts close together with no delays.

The projectile velocity and cockpit visibility meant that the target was nearly always in clear view, not buried beneath the nose like the P-series.

The Gatlings fire out their center instead of the top; which is terrible.

Yeah, to my eye it's kind of a sloppy animation. With the shape of the barrels they missed an opportunity to nail a unique, high-fidelity muzzle flash.

 

[Pash_Kraken]

No. A piece of junk with a fin. I'd rather fly a garbage scow into combat.

 

[Daak Gelrin]

Just got done flying mine for a couple of hours, running bounty missions.

I like how it handles! It's wicked little fun to fly. I had no troubles lining up my targets and taking them down.

Ammo becomes an issue, especially with bigger ships, but generally speaking there's plenty of bullets to go around.

I plan to keep it around for awhile, the thing is dead sexy. I'm even getting used to the fin (still want to be able to retract that however.)

We will see how the nerf bat hits, after the sale's up though.

 

[Shadow Reaper]

Handling is.. it'll be tuned as the game goes on, it's a light fighter, whatever.

I’m curious if it can snap the 180 we see in the trailer. That was pretty over the top. Looked like over 200* rotation/second on the X axis. Seriously, less than a second to be pointed the opposite way is NOT something the Talon can match. In one shot it looks like the center engine is dim, like maybe that’s the boost engine and the wing engines are primary, so if you split the throttles it spins like a top.

Ship Performance Viewer lists the yaw at 52* and boosted yaw at 62*, so if it is possible for the ship to do what it does in the vid, seems to me this has to come from splitting the throttles. BTW, this is just how the physics should work. The wing engines are far enough off center to evoke extreme rotation but not so far it’s unrecoverable. Reminds of Wash flying the Firefly, pulling a “crazy Ivan”; “Here’s something you can’t do.”

If someone set up with twin throttles wants to try this, you don’t need to move both throttles at once. Just pull one throttle all the way back into retro. . .and. . .you’ll figure the rest out.

We should start a petition to leave the boating references to Origin, take the centerboard out and leave everything else alone. Well. . . I’m none too fond of the clock. . .but I can live with it.

Anyone hear whether this will dock with the Connie?

View: https://youtu.be/rjiq3XLOXag?si=dntMIA51HHcGeXmi

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

Anyone hear whether this will dock with the Connie?

It's not a snub so no, it's almost twice as long at 21m vs a Merlins 12m

But who knows what they've got planned for upgrading the Connie in future, maybe one day you may be able to upgrade the docking clamp from Snub to Light...? But not now and I've heard no plans for that to be a thing but the Connie would be the ship for that to happen on.

 

[Daak Gelrin]

If someone set up with twin throttles wants to try this, you don’t need to move both throttles at once. Just pull one throttle all the way back into retro. . .and. . .you’ll figure the rest out.

We can't map a throttle lever to just one engine to try differential thrust. With our current bindings we can only map a single throttle lever to "forward/reverse thrust".

Might be able to to map each lever to a yaw direction, but for someone like me, taking yaw from rudder pedals would severely mess with my muscle memory for normal Earth flying.

Personally, I'd just de-couple, zero-out thrust, yaw hard, then boost in the new desired vector while re-coupling as needed. Do it all the time, and the Wolf can do the dance nicely.

That move is great fun for NPC's, but against a good player in open space at close ranges, you're just making yourself a juicy sitting target when you change vectors like they show in the vid.

 

[Shadow Reaper]

I get it but what we are seeing in the vid is the ship yawing at 4X the yaw rate. So something is up.

AI says there is a custom individual thruster keybind. I think someone at CIG has custom bindings on the main engine groups, left and right. Without using the wing engines, the ship can’t turn this fast. If we can figure it out, the Vanguard should also be able to pull these kinds of rotations, which would make it crazy deadly. It’s possible AI is speaking of maneuvering thrusters only. I don’t see a custom way to map mains. Actually though, what we need to find is a way to individually map retros.

• Keybind Customization:
  You can customize keybinds for specific thrusters or thruster groups within the game's settings, allowing you to map individual thrusters to different buttons or axes on your controller.

 

[Ayeteeone]

No. A piece of junk with a fin. I'd rather fly a garbage scow into combat.

Have you tried the Fury, The Garbage Can of Doom?

 

[Shadow Reaper]

I think Gelrin called it. I just can’t find a way to map main engines independently. So don’t expect to do what’s in the trailer. 3-4 seconds to flip a 180.

View: https://youtu.be/bI8mXyl2Xmc?si=_jgCa_UBTvsn9_yg


As to stats: https://www.spviewer.eu/performance?ship=krig_l21_wolf&loadout=rpcjXjQ7

 

[Ayeteeone]

I think Gelrin called it. I just can’t find a way to map main engines independently. So don’t expect to do what’s in the trailer. 3-4 seconds to flip a 180.

I know nothing about splitting throttles in this game. But as to the flight performance, pitch is 75 deg/s normal which means 2.4 seconds to flip 180. Boosted is 90 deg/s so a flat 2 seconds when you mean it. It flies good for what it is, a short range light fighter archtype with not much other purpose.

Avenger One put it as A-tier for both 1v1 and Team PvP, behind both the Arrow and the Gladius primarily due to the slight drawbacks of the gats vs laser repeaters.

IMO it's a beauty of a ship, flies smooth and hits hard. At the end of the day though, it's still just a fighter, and that's become a hard sell for me.

 

[Radegast74]

Avenger One put it as A-tier for both 1v1 and Team PvP, behind both the Arrow and the Gladius primarily due to the slight drawbacks of the gats vs laser repeaters.

Just my usual PSA that there will undoubtedly be a nerf coming, and that the Wolf may not be as highly ranked in the future as it is now.

The Gladius and Arrow always seem to be at the top; you can see all the other ships that have been released just drift down the rankings over time. Especially with the bespoke Gatlings, I don't think this will always be such a high-performer. I may be wrong, of course.

 

[Shadow Reaper]

I stand corrected. Ayeteeone is right to look at the pitch rather than the yaw. The vid though, clearly showed a yaw flip twice, both in a second or less, and without independent control of the mains I don’t see a way to do that.

I like Avenger but his numbers are very biased. He never uses missiles nor stealth, and he is not considering attacking large targets, nor the implications of ballistics with a magazine large enough, nor the fact the Wolf is half the size of a Gladius, nor the benefits of a small footprint on deck. All these things combined with the agility and speed of a Gladius say to me it is an excellent fighter. Even if they nerf the weapons range severely, it will continue to look good to me. If they leave the weapon range alone, this provides an attack ability v Capital ship hard points with the range to loiter and ability to evade. This is quite rare—unique even. Just to put a fine point on the consequence of this combination. . .

The way this ship is at present, it can engage something like the Polaris or Idris, fly into range of its turrets and Point Defense, get their attention and evade, then circle out of range, loiter and take shots at those targets. When they lose interest because they can’t reach, it can rinse and repeat. That ties up the target’s defenses and even offers the chance to eliminate them.

I haven’t seen point defense range figures but I can’t imagine it’s more than 3km. So as long as these bespoke Gatlings exceed this significantly, it can be a real pain in the ass to a big cap ship. The only other ship I can think of that can loiter because if it’s gun range is the Ares, and it is too big to use for carrier ops. It would replace 3 Wolves.

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

I stand corrected. Ayeteeone is right to look at the pitch rather than the yaw. The vid though, clearly showed a yaw flip twice, both in a second or less, and without independent control of the mains I don’t see a way to do that.

I like Avenger but his numbers are very biased. He never uses missiles nor stealth, and he is not considering attacking large targets, nor the implications of ballistics with a magazine large enough, nor the fact the Wolf is half the size of a Gladius, nor the benefits of a small footprint on deck. All these things combined with the agility and speed of a Gladius say to me it is an excellent fighter. Even if they nerf the weapons range severely, it will continue to look good to me. If they leave the weapon range alone, this provides an attack ability v Capital ship hard points with the range to loiter and ability to evade. This is quite rare—unique even. Just to put a fine point on the consequence of this combination. . .

The way this ship is at present, it can engage something like the Polaris or Idris, fly into range of its turrets and Point Defense, get their attention and evade, then circle out of range, loiter and take shots at those targets. When they lose interest because they can’t reach, it can rinse and repeat. That ties up the target’s defenses and even offers the chance to eliminate them.

I haven’t seen point defense range figures but I can’t imagine it’s more than 3km. So as long as these bespoke Gatlings exceed this significantly, it can be a real pain in the ass to a big cap ship. The only other ship I can think of that can loiter because if it’s gun range is the Ares, and it is too big to use for carrier ops. It would replace 3 Wolves.

I suppose Avanger is playing the game his way which is pew pew front line battle - have you ever considered making some videos of your own showing the merits of stealth gameplay? The old adage for moving picture is "Show don't tell" and I'd love to see some of your words (which are excellent and dare I say it authoritative on the subject) put into practice to see how valuable signature management can really be.

If you don't want to make a video, I know not everyone does, do you have any video examples where others have put the theory into practice I/we can see working?

 

[Ayeteeone]

Avenger One is a good source of information for a VERY narrow spectrum of gameplay, primarily blowing up other players ships. I trust his insights on that, but very much disagree with him on the direction the game should take. He advocates for heavy weapons on fighters to take down capital ships, and IMO that is both completely wrong, and directly opposite CIG's long-term intent.

I haven't spent cash money on the Wolf yet, but it may still win me on aesthetics alone. There is space in the Polaris hangar for it next to the C8R.