"I guess 0 with c3po. My falcon survives with 1 hit."

*flips table.

+1 Crit with ATC

Hell, even if you reintroduce gravity AND aerodynamics, pretty much every airborne craft that flys can do it...even the lumbering

.

That's a 707, not a 747. Pretty big difference.

Fine, I'll raise you an

,

I re-raise with the Concorde. (Skip to 2:55 for explanation).

Hell, even if you reintroduce gravity AND aerodynamics, pretty much every airborne craft that flys can do it...even the lumbering 747.

That's a 707, not a 747. Pretty big difference.

Fine, I'll raise you an Airbus a380,

That's... very clearly not a barrel roll. Neither is what the 707 does in the first video.

Roll <> Barrel roll.

Well if you've ever played tie fighter the difference in mobility is really obvious and I think they did a good job capturing that in x-wing.

Rebels are less mobile but tankier empire relies on superior movement to survive.

I was playing it last night in a defender attacking a station when it struck me, I'm going so fast literally all I do to set up my next attack run is k turn.

Well if you've ever played tie fighter the difference in mobility is really obvious and I think they did a good job capturing that in x-wing.

Rebels are less mobile but tankier empire relies on superior movement to survive.

I was playing it last night in a defender attacking a station when it struck me, I'm going so fast literally all I do to set up my next attack run is k turn.

**** that makes me wana play them through again, I just can't decide if I should get them on steam or GOG.

When you spin a top, it's not gravity that keeps it spinning.

When you spin a top, it's not gravity that keeps it spinning.

That's called circum trivial force

Gravity is what stops it.

What we call a barrel roll in x-wing is actually a side slip.

Doing a barrel roll in space will just spin the craft.

Don't think of X-wing or star wars in general as space mechanics, it's mostly just atmospheric physics going on.

To get a good idea of how space combat would work, look at battlestar galactica or better yet Babylon 5

The Starfury was actually designed by JPL and NASA owns the rights to build them IRL!

Well a space forklift version with out the guns of course

Short answer....

"Once you've got one on your tail, watch it!"

"I can't shake him"

Long answer....

It's worth thinking abut the difference in agi vs action, vs maneuvers, the 2-d plane, the scale of space, length of a round and how they are abstracted. I haven't heard many people complain that the tie has greater agility than an x wing, nor complain that the x wing can do a forward 1, while a tie screams ahead at a faster speed.

We take for granted that the path that we see is the same scale as the model of the ship - I suspect it's likely a much greater distance, ie ship scale and space scale are not equal. Agility represents the ability to juke and dodge shots while moving along the template. Our game has split movement and firing, but they're really simulating a simultaneous battle. Our ships are diving around somewhere in that space that our models are flying about, and the ties are a whole lot better at maneuvering in that invisible space. They can perform the maneuver, staying on target and have the speed and time to evade - any ship can evade, merely by flying unpredictably, you can't shoot what you can't hit... And those firing arcs, they're not that wide, it's that the ships are shooting while weaving and turning in that micro scale.

Likewise, they have the speed and time not just to spin around, but to make a larger helical path at much higher g forces, that would stress the s foils a bit more heavily.. its not that x wings don't barrel roll, it's that it causes stress to the ship, and the only pilots that do it in synch with the faster ties happen to be elite and know how to expertly handle the stick.

If we ever someday see a version two, I'd like a whole lot more templates, with different turn rates, and a tighter arc of fire, to more accurately describe that micro-fight, on a smaller scale... But err... That wouldn't be the super fun fast arcade like version that we know and love, but it would be interesting as an offshoot... X wing aces... Each ship with its own template set.... 1v1... Or 2v2... Heehehe

I would have assumed it's because some ships have sufficiently advanced built-in systems or propulsion engines to make barrel-rolling a relatively simple task (eg. TIE Fighters, Interceptors, etc), whilst others do not and so require the pilot to be skilled enough in executing specific flight maneuvers to do the same thing (eg. Expert Handling).

I've been kicking an idea around for a while of "red" actions, akin to Expert Handling - something that would add actions to your action bar (or perhaps ships that already had them on the action bar), but would cause a stress to use. Evade, Barrel Roll, and Boost all seem like good candidates for such a category.

Well if you've ever played tie fighter the difference in mobility is really obvious and I think they did a good job capturing that in x-wing.

Rebels are less mobile but tankier empire relies on superior movement to survive.

I was playing it last night in a defender attacking a station when it struck me, I'm going so fast literally all I do to set up my next attack run is k turn.

**** that makes me wana play them through again, I just can't decide if I should get them on steam or GOG.

GoG already has dosbox integrated so they run on modern systems i'm not sure steam is the same, i got tie fighter off GoG it worked flawlessly right off.

There's really no reason why every small base ship can't evade. Barrel roll I can understand a bit, I suppose its a timing thing, an X Wing can execute the maneuver but not in the space of time for it to be classified as an action.

That gets right to it. When you watch the classic masterpieces that are Episodes 4, 5, and 6 you see that TIE Fighters do B-rolls faster than X-Wings. Most ships can do it, but some are faster at it.

I did notice that our wonderful, beloved Y-Wings did not B-Roll however... not once... meanwhile the lousy little A-Wings did it even faster than TIE's do it... just say'n.

Dont forget, if you watch EpIV you can distintly see Vader's Adv oneshot a Y.

Well, to be fair, we don't know how much damage the Y wing had already taken.

Hell, even if you reintroduce gravity AND aerodynamics, pretty much every airborne craft that flys can do it...even the lumbering 747.

That's a 707, not a 747. Pretty big difference.

Fine, I'll raise you an Airbus a380,

Almost had me you SOB.

1. I think in this game, they should keep the "barrel rolls" how they work. It is better for gameplay balance.

2. They're not truly barrel rolls. If you perform a proper barrel roll (in atmosphere at least), you'll end up in the same place that you started. The idea behind them is to take more time to travel less distance, so a proper barrel roll action would take whatever maneuver you're executing, and decrease the speed by 1. The maneuver in X-Wing, is technically a 1/4 or 3/4 barrel roll. Ok, that's my piloting two cents.

There is sound in space in Star Wars. Your argument for barrel rolls on all ships is invalid.

Star fox lied to you. This is actually a barrel roll.

Pizza Roll!

So, I want to address this question, because I think the OP is right. Technically every ship should be able to execute a barrel roll. It's a simple maneuver, and thank you to treybert for posting a pic of the difference between a barrel roll and an aileron roll so that I don't have to. However, if we were going to introduce that kind of realism into the game, we would have to start changing dials, beginning with the B-Wing. In aerial combat, the primary use of the barrel roll is as a displacement roll. It moves you to the inside or outside of the turn circle, thus changing your aspect relative to your opponent. In order for this technique to make sense in X-Wing, the dials would have to correctly reflect turn circles, and they do not. To understand this, let's talk a little bit about turn circles.

A turn circle is the circle that an aircraft describes in the sky when it is making a turn. Pretty simple. The faster the airplane is going, all other things being equal, the wider the turn circle is going to be (the greater its diameter). The slower the aircraft is going, all other things being equal, the smaller the turn circle is going to be. However, turn circle is also dependent on the absolute turn rate of the aircraft, usually measured in degrees of turn per second. Your smallest turn circle is going to be at your maximum turn rate in degrees per second. However, most of the time, a max-G turn is not energy sustaining. You bleed off too much speed in the turn, and this slows you down and actually slows your turn rate down. So, oftentimes in a fight, it's advantageous not to max-G the airplane in the turn, and it's better to slack off a little, to turn at your best turn speed the whole time. The difference between these two methods of flying is the difference between fighting the rate fight and fighting the radius fight. Each is useful in different situations.

The barrel roll, or displacement roll, comes into play when you have a speed advantage over the opponent, but your absolute turn rate is lower than his. Think F-4 Phantom versus MiG-19. The lag roll allows you to fly outside the enemy's turn circle, thus enabling you to get a shot. If you imagine two aircraft on rails, both chasing each other's tail around the same circle, the one who flies around the circle fastest will win. But if you allow one of the aircraft, the slower-turning one, to shift to the outside of the turn, it can then pull its nose inside and get a good shot at the other plane, even though it never actually turns faster around the circle. That's what Phantom pilots did in Vietnam to get good low-aspect missile and gun shots, and that's the beauty of the barrel roll as an offensive repositioning technique. Barrel rolls are also useful in defensive situations, when an enemy is coming in too aggressive, if you barrel roll into him, you can force him to overshoot, and come out directly in front of you. It's probably my most favorite defensive technique in the world, though if your opponent is ready for it, it often leads to a rolling scissors, which is pretty much a barrel roll battle, to see who can execute the maneuver more tightly.

So, if we're going to give every ship the barrel roll ability, we have to put it within the context of realistic maneuvering. That would mean that the relative turn rates and turn circles of all the ships would have to make sense given their mass and their maneuverability. In other words, a B-Wing wouldn't be able to make any turn tighter than a 3 hard without incurring stress, and probably ditto for the Y-wing. The X-wing could make 2-hards without stress, but to make a 1-hard, if it could even do it, would stress the ship out. The TIE fighter and TIE interceptor would both probably retain the 1-hard without stress, as they're lighter and more agile ships. Something like the Millennium Falcon is a huge bus, and probably shouldn't be able to turn tighter than a 3-hard, period, stress or not. Same goes for the Lambda shuttle and the Firespray, and the Aggressor. Something like a Decimator shouldn't be able to turn much tighter than a 4, which we would have to create for that ship.

With these realistic turn circles in place, we now have a reason to give every ship the barrel roll ability. It allows the slower-turning ships to reposition themselves for a shot, even though they'll never be able to yank and bank hard enough to get on the six of the enemy ships. Actually, this is the way I think X-Wing should have been designed, and it seemed to have been designed this way, up until the B-Wing. The B-Wing really broke everything when it was given 1 hard turns, which it absolutely shouldn't have. It should be barely able to squeak out a 2-hard with stress, and should mostly be turning a big circle with 3-hards. This break in the maneuverability meta has a lot to do with the X-Wing getting less table time.

Anyway, I don't think X-Wing is ever going to go for realism, but I wish it would. Air combat tactics would work much better on the tabletop with the system I've described, and it's basically the same system used by Wings of War/Wings of Glory, though for them each individual aircraft has its own unique set of maneuvers, which adds to the realism factor.

It's like opening a can of worms, because the exact same argument can be made for the evade action.

Exactly kinda like how the xwing should be a 4 attack since it has 4 lasers, as well as the interceptor.

Like nikk whyte mentioned "gameplay>physics" or reality

So all laser cannons ever are completely equivalent?

Well if you've ever played tie fighter the difference in mobility is really obvious and I think they did a good job capturing that in x-wing.

Rebels are less mobile but tankier empire relies on superior movement to survive.

I was playing it last night in a defender attacking a station when it struck me, I'm going so fast literally all I do to set up my next attack run is k turn.

**** that makes me wana play them through again, I just can't decide if I should get them on steam or GOG.

The XWA-U mod that upgrades XWA's graphics to modern standards doesn't support the Steam version.

I can appreciate the desire to ask this question. Ive often felt that the ability to reposition in some way after dials are set is such a big deal that any ship that can't do it is very handicapped and thus don't see use when there are ships who can reposition available.

If all small ships did barrel roll, would the Awing, Ywing or Xwing become too good? or just good? Im leaning to just good. Would Bwings disappear or just become as evenly used as everything else. They still have the cannon and system slot and excellent shield ratio.

I get how you don't want everything the same.. but I don't think this change would ruin the game..and could shake up the variety in a good way. But I could see a point cost rebalance needed.. and thats a problem.

Star fox lied to you. This is actually a barrel roll.

Yeah but we are using Star Wars terms you know. Immelman is a Krogian, a bar is a catina. an aileron is a barrel.

Star fox lied to you. This is actually a barrel roll.

Yeah but we are using Star Wars terms you know. Immelman is a Krogian, a bar is a catina. an aileron is a barrel.

... and how-bout ZOOM?!

Dats a Afterburners thingie in the real world I suppose, but I do not give a crap about the real world in my STAR WARS FANTASY WORLD.

NOPE... DON'T CARE!

Someone already pointed out that every ship in the game CAN barrel roll given a skilled enough pilot with expert handling.