Today I got a taste of how much has changed indeed. I flew into a new sector - and stumbled right into a huge space battle between 8 or 9 capital ships by Plutarch and Alliance of Free Worlds. These capital monsters - and their attached fighter wings. If you never have experienced something like that in X-R, then it is hard to describe and even harder to believe. Remember the huge, the really huge battles in later seasons of Babylon-5? It looked like that. Tracers and missiles from here to the horizon, at all vectors. Bombing drones humming by and getting shot down before they could impact. Huge beam weapons by the capitals. The huge ships maneuvering to get alongside their enemies, exchanging kind of broadsides, or trying to get their monster beamers aiming alongside their axis on their enemies. Fighters criss-crossing back and forth everywhere, hushing over the hulls of the big ships, avoiding Flak-laser and trying to get rid of swarms of Hydra missiles in their necks, while firing at other fighters. It was colourful, it was chaotic, it was different from any battle I have seen before. Since the scene was away from a station, the capitals could freely maneuver without getting deadlocked when slamming into station structures.
Later, when Plutarch gained the upper hand, new enemies fell out of the cosmic highway slipstream: a huge number of ultra tough and ultra-fast Reaver fighters engaged Plutarch and unfortunately also me. Then another Plutarch carrier arrived, launching more swarms of missiles, Flak, and fighters. I escaped with burning ship and into the arms of Plutarch fighters who engaged the Reavers while I landed on the flightdeck of a Plutarch carrier seconds before my hull would have collapsed, from there I went to the gate and watched the battle outside. It was breathtaking. Before I escaped the battle, fighters hang in my neck like vampires, I have a relatively good equipped ship and a Nivell-4 drive, but these beasts I have never met before, they had hilarious speed, acceleration, agility and sturdiness. I did nit fight, I fled and desperately tried to stay alive.
Nice to see that it was possible to hide between the burning dead hulls of big ships, or break the enemy's lockon by racing into the huge smoke clouds left by big ships that had exploded earlier. No physics, please. Discussing physics is forbidden in this thread.
You may need luck to see such things happening, and they may not happen on that scale too often. But when it happens, don'T play: lean back, watch and enjoy the show. Its breathtaking and shows what the game is capable of and what shine hides under its dusty surface.
The huge final battles in the ending episodes of Babylon-5 - take me by my word.
If needing to estimate how many ships, big and small, were participating, I would dare to say that it were probably around fifty, I would say. I use several mods, to what degree they are responsible for this or not, I cannot say. But all objects, particles, salvos beams, laser shots were on screen as well, plus debris, ejected cargo, rocks...
Frames were not always super-smooth, but always remained absolutely playable. Stuttering means in this context: frames that I felt to be around 30, maybe.
Its nice to see that the various factions now actively wage war against each other, in regions that are close to both of them. Or that they launch surprising raids into the heart of the enemy.
The Xenons I can deal with. But those Reaver fighters - I need better - I do not know what I need. A sixth sense to avoid them, maybe.
After it all was over, space around was a graveyard, and a scene of chaos and destruction. I launched, and went into a good observing posiiton, then monitored how the remaining three Plutarch giants gathered their surviving fighters, maneuvered and charged their jumpdrives. Then they warped away, and I suddenly was alone.
After that furious action the 5 minutes before, that felt strange, I tell you.
