WipEout 2048 Ships

[kingpin12345]

This thread is for discussing the ships from 2048. Please share your thoughts openly.

[Snakenator1]

I guess they really liked the Jedi starfighter from star wars episode II when they designed the speed ships. The similarity is striking ;)
And the only time I use a piranha as my dominant ship of choice is in 2048. SPEED :D

[Jonny]

I like them, because they are much smaller than every other craft in the series.

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

I like the fact that they are much smaller than the HD ships, and some of them do look pretty cool... But the weapon restrictions, weak stats, and forgettable thruster trails make me shoot for the HD and Fury ships a lot more.

If you were to take the HD and Fury ships, shrink them and then allow them to be used in 2048... The Triakis HD would dominate every fighter ship, the Icarus HD would dominate every speed ship, and the FEISAR HD would dominate every agility ship.

[Jonny]

Also their sound is very cool:rock

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

Yeah, I guess.

I still want to use my Icarus HD and AG-Systems Fury in 2048 though ;-;

[Snakenator1]

You know the 2048 ships also have gears? You can hear it change (engine sound gets louder and drops) followed by the screen shaking.
It also seems the 2048 ships have an infinite number of gears as well. They just keep going :)

[Jonny]

Like in 2Fast 2Furios :P

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

You know the 2048 ships also have gears? You can hear it change (engine sound gets louder and drops) followed by the screen shaking.
It also seems the 2048 ships have an infinite number of gears as well. They just keep going :)

I think that is what those five bars represent, now that I think about it. And also note that it never stays at the very top, it sometimes goes back down if you turn too sharply. Or if you let go of the thruster or get hit or something.

[Snakenator1]

Actually those five bars is your speedometer believe it or not and the one underneath is thrust (but you probably knew that one)
Its weird and a impractical way of displaying your speed, but its the case. But who knows I may be wrong like I always am :|

[Jonny]

I'm just loudly thinking...

Foir bars, maybe
1st - D-Class
2nd - C-Class
3rd - B-Class
4th - A-Class and faster

judging by the fact that in C Class only 2 and in B class only 3 of thse bars are filled on top speed.

But they defenitely don't fill up when the ship shifts.

[mannjon]

Well if you watched the opening video at least once, the theme is evolution of the sport. It started with a 1940's-ish looking racecar, and ends with the ships in the 2048 season. So the gear shifting would make sense if this was the first season of the sport. It would have been the in between step and makes sense for the first ever AG racing league. I think Snakenator is right about the 5 speed bars as being gears. Do speed laps and watch closely, and you'll see that they don't simply clock speed. There are definitely street racing style sound effects, which would further support this theory.

If you played the original Wipeout, you know that the first 4 ships were FEISAR, Auricom, AG Systems, and Qirex. Then later, Piranha made an appearance in Wipeout XL. So based on the inclusion of the Piranha in 2048, and the exclusion of it in the first Wipeout, chronologically speaking, this would imply that Piranha was just taking a break until the XL season happened. It is not coincidence that the original 4 ships are all included in 2048. You have to remember that 2048 is unique in the storyline. Consider it a prequel. The ships don't handle like their later iterations do, and I partly think that SL was trying to tell a story and hint that these were the first ships. They feel heavier because well, they still handle a little like cars which fits the narrative. I don't know if SL was trying to imply that AG racing came about because of street racing, but the feel of the game would almost appear so, because the races are more like street races rather than the futuristic off-world races we've come to accept in the series. All in all I think the ship handling was deliberate to fit in with the story.

So if you take the story into account, then you have to follow it the whole way through to figure out how Icaras, Triakis, and all the other ships came to be. That is to say that yes, if you took the Icaras from HD, it would obviously nerf the Piranha Speed (Icaras nerfs Piranha in HD too). But comparing the two is like comparing a Model T with a Bugatti Veyron. The 100 year difference in development time accounts for many improvements.

As to the whole concept of the actual design of the ships, they may resemble the StarWars crafts, but you know what came out before Episodes I, II, and III? Wipeout did. If you look at the original ship design for the original Wipeout, you'll notice that all the ships look almost identical. It may have initially just been due to limitations of 3D modelling, but SL did an excellent job of tying that in to the 2048 versions of the ships. I would argue that George Lucas modeled the StarWars fighters after original Wipeout ships. In either case, you can see the evolution of the ship design by following the series in chronological order:

2048 -> Wipeout (very similar ship designs)
Wipeout -> Wipeout XL (Piranha prototype released, ship design remains mostly unchanged)
Wipeout XL -> Wip3out (note that we see some new teams with Goteki45, Assegai, Icaras, and the commercially available Piranha, and that we also see the evolution of the dual hull ship designs as a first too)
Wip3out -> Fusion (things got a little weird here, but the dual hull design translated over for Auricom, and Xios was essentially Qirex also with a dual hull)
Fusion -> WipeoutHD (designs are refined, and retain all previous styling to support the ship evolution)
WipeoutHD -> Fury (Fury ships are bulkier than HD counterparts, HD counterparts more closely resemble previous versions)

And obviously one final point to be made is the teams evolved in a way that maintained their specific team attributes. Piranha and Icaras are fast. AG Systems and FEISAR are good at handling, etc...

[Jonny]

Awww, we start talking about the stoyr :D

[mannjon]

Well, it isn't so much about talking about the story as it is just what has transpired from game to game. Even without a storyline to explain why or why not the changes may have taken place, you can trace the evolution of the ship designs. There is a very clear path from Wipeout - Wipeout HD if you follow each of the games in chronological order based on release date.

Here is an example:

First check out the original ship designs from the first Wipeout game...
http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/203/c/6/c62104a91299a49e3e0c2e743aec8a00-d588do7.jpg
http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2012/204/4/2/42418deb092c7b2cbf52e20a6bf949cc-d58agv4.jpg
http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120919005757/wipeout/images/4/4a/6fcb8a90739003165fc10977b8770664-d58agsg.jpg

Notice how they are all single hull with a much wider frame towards the engine??

Now look at the 2048 renditions of the same ships...
http://static.wixstatic.com/media/ad36f5_37378f11798f5420627908ad7add1e77.jpg_srz_55 0_320_85_22_0.50_1.20_0.00_jpg_srz
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7017/6440367325_bbdb0460fe_o.jpg
http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&docid=AlRBZ9urBUic0M&tbnid=N6rKBdu4rYuKnM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwipeout.wikia.com%2Fwiki%2FFile%3 AQirex_AGRC.jpg&ei=46HNU6zvM8fwoATLloKgCQ&bvm=bv.71198958,d.aWw&psig=AFQjCNHIKMxcWBCQJBzbn1CwoyGzXcn0PQ&ust=1406071643370534

You'll notice that the ships in the first Wipeout game are very similar in design to the 2048 versions. I won't bother to post the additional comparisons, but the train of thought here is that the ships have evolved over time throughout the course of the various games. If you look at one ship in the timeline and compare it to the same ship in a consecutively ordered game, the differences are small.

I think that SL attempted to essentially go back in time with the 2048 ships in an attempt to maintain the order of the evolution between the ship designs. A nice touch for those of us who have played every game in the series.

[Jonny]

Again just loud thinking....

2048-2050 -> Small ships with turbines, basic design.
2052 -> Bigger ships but still simple with turbines.
2097 -> Dual Hulled and Semi-Dual Hulles crafts, Ion-Engines.
2098 -> No changes, Piranha switched to Semi-Dual Hull
2116 -> More variations in ship designs, also the basic designs for later (compare a w3o FEISAR with a PurE one)
2160 -> More complex ships, Triple Hulled crafts (Reminds me the 2008 F1 cars with all the wings)
2197 -> Ships again like in the F7200
2206 -> Again individual engine sounds
2207 -> New engines for all contender.

(BTW the reson why Pir-hana is in 2048 is that the Brazilian comoanies Pir and Hana merged to Pir-hana, probably a reference to the misspelling in w3o as Pirhana. 2050 it was bought by Chinese business men and dragged out of ag racing. 2116 it was relocated to Bazil.

[mannjon]

^ That.

I just think it is cool that the ship evolutions are traceable through the games AND the storyline! Can't just be a coincidence.

[Xpand]

You know the 2048 ships also have gears? You can hear it change (engine sound gets louder and drops) followed by the screen shaking.
It also seems the 2048 ships have an infinite number of gears as well. They just keep going :)

It's actually something that makes no sense. They're obviously using jet engines or some other kind of rocket/jet propulsion engine. Gears are only used when you want to convert high rpm and low torque to high torque but low rpm (or vice versa, depending on the usage), like for moving a car or rotating a big propeller in turboprop aircraft. They are unwanted in jet engines and really do nothing at all because the thrust is proportional to the rpm of the jet engine so having gears is the last thing you want, they're just dead weight and can actually reduce engine performance.

[Jonny]

It's future stuff, maybe there is something in the future that would make sense :P

[Xpand]

Nah, it's not that further into the future, plus it wouldn't make sense anyway because physics are the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. They have that sound because of the rule of cool, nothing more.

[Jonny]

Did you knew there are also electric cars with gears?

[Snakenator1]

I think the main reason the ships have gears is to give them that early development feel to the ships, like they only just left car designs and new technology isn't available to make the ships run efficiently so they put gears on them for better/ more reliable performance. Its really just to give the ships that special feel to them compared to the other games :)

[Jonny]

Dang it, it's WipEout so everything needs an explaination :P

[Snakenator1]

Nah it doesn't really, Wipeout is scifi so the likely hood that its lore would become reality isn't likely (do you really expect us to have created the plasma bolt by 2048?)

Just take everything light-hearted and you'll get the most enjoyment out of it :)

[Xpand]

Lol dude, no need to make excuses I already said why you should NEVER use gears on a jet engine/ airflow propulsion engine. The sound is like that because it sounds cool. Any explanation makes no sense. xD Gearboxes are only used when you need high torque, you don't need high torque on a jet engine, you need extremely high rpm. :D

[mannjon]

Nah it doesn't really, Wipeout is scifi so the likely hood that its lore would become reality isn't likely (do you really expect us to have created the plasma bolt by 2048?)

Just take everything light-hearted and you'll get the most enjoyment out of it :)

I think a plasma bolt by 2048 is entirely possible. I just don't want to be caught in traffic with some guy behind me charging one up. They can accelerate particles to a speed close to lightspeed already, given that it takes a gigantic super-collider to do so. But at one point cell phones were gigantic, and look at them now. A lot can happen in 30 years.

[Ruuku]

Maybe they actually have a small engine for an electric generator. If they levitate using superconduction which is most likely, the ship would have to power the cooling system to keep them working. It may take a quite a lot of power, or since there are no wheels it was added in place of an alternator. It could also be needed to power such things as the plasma bolt. Quite obviously, its an excuse to make the ships sound cool as well.

The roads would of course need to have magnets implanted in them, notice the lattice of stuff in the glass? that's most likely a network of magnets. The quake could actually be something to do with the polarity, causing all the ships to jump. No fire though, unfortunately. But the road could have a strip of LED lights change colour as the effect travels.

[Amaroq Dricaldari]

And turbines contain fans. Maybe these fans are also motorized.

[Xpand]

Honestly the most reasonable explanation for the "gear shifting" sound would be if some component of the ship that used the jet engine needed a constant rotation speed so you'd have to gear down the engine's RPMs to keep that rotation speed. Even so it doesn't explain the engine itself reducing the power ouput as you can tell by the noise. There's no way around the fact that if you use any kind of engine that uses air flow to move the ship you never ever want to have gear shifting, you want the engine working at max RPM for full thrust.

It makes even less sense if the engines being used have no moving parts like pulse-jet engines or Ramjet.

Not trying to be a buzzkill or anything, just saying that compared to all of the other WO games, Wo2048's ship sound design makes no technical sense, only artistic sense.