GTWc Gryphon

by Alan Gordon White (alan_g_white@yahoo.co.uk)

| brief tech details | suggested use | how to use | visit my homepage

Tech Info

The GTWc Gryphon is the first of the new War Cruiser class - larger than a cruiser, but smaller than a corvette.  The Gryphon is specifically built as an anti-fighter / bomber cruiser, for fleet escort duties.  It has 8 missile turrets, 6 heavy flak turrets and 1 beam cannon mounted on the front.  The Gryphon is also substantially better armoured than other cruisers such as the Leviathan or Aeolus classes, and can carry 2 bomber / 3 fighter wings within.  Indeed, much of the Gryphons' design was taken from the R & D of the Aeolus class.

The Gryphon was initially developed during the closing stages of the Second Shivan War.  The very first prototypes, the GTWc Orc and the GTWc Warlock, were deployed during this time.  Following it's success in escorting Refugee convoys from Capella, the Gryphon has went into full production at various GTVA shipyards.

The main weakness of the Gryphon remains it's focus on AAf weaponry.  It has insufficient beam cannon weaponry to take on Shivan cruisers, and relies on the bomber wings on-board to eliminate the main beam cannons of these ships before it can engage.  However, it can handle multiple Shivan bomber wings with little difficulty.

 

Suggested use

This time round, I haven't bothered making a test mission for the Gryphon, mainly to cut down on the download size.   But I have some helpful pointers for those of you better than I with FRED2.....
  • The Gryphon is hopeless one on one against Shivan cruisers.  It simply doesn't have sufficient beam weaponry to counter them.  If you want a mission where you are facing a cruiser, either alter the missiles to fire Helios bombs, etc, or have the player responsible for disabling the enemies main beam cannons before the Gryphon gets in range.  High payload dumbfires might be good too for the missile turrets.
  • If you want to alter the main loadouts to weaken the Gryphon, I'd advise altering the flak cannons to fire weaker flak/lasers.  Likewise, you're best off playing with extra AAf on the turrets to strengthen it.
  • Obviously, the best way to take down a Gryphon is to attack using long range missiles, etc, out of range of the Gryphons main cannons.  The Gryphon can pretty much cover anything around it in a furball, making it a bitch to attack.

 

How to install

  1. Copy griffinTer.pof into Freespace 2/data/models
  2. Copy the PCX image files into Freespace 2/data/maps
  3. Copy the ships_tbl_data information into your ships.tbl file in Freespace 2/data/tables (you may need to download VPView to extract the tbl file for this) - recommended place is just before the Faustus entry
  4. Test it in FRED2 - enjoy!

As always, report any bugs to me... alan_g_white@yahoo.co.uk