I would think that any small craft intended to engage other small craft in combat is a fighter. The Gunstar could probably be classed as a "Heavy" fighter for sure. I guess it depends on how you define a "Gunship" as in terms of spacecraft. On Earth its an aircraft with an attack role against ground targets. Usually in support of ground operations.

Don't forget the ships from the Expanse for physics-based interplanetary ships.

This would be akin to flying a highly manuverable bomber into a fray, but having a single gunner, and no bombs. At the moment, we have a single man flying the ship and firing the guns, and a "back seat" for nav and target acquisition, as well as an extra set of eyes. From a real-world perspectuve, the designer is very sound, save for one thing. The heads-up in the Gunstar should have incorporated VR, where the gunner is literally looking through the ship. As a single fighter, not so important, but a fray with several other Gunstars in range, firing through a mess of target locks would undoubtedly result in some friendly fire.

Your definitions are wrong. The Starfighter is the Gunnery /weapons Officer. The ship is a Gunstar.

Dude, check your production notes/commentary, for B5 and you will find, that the Gunstar was the inspiration of the Starfury's layout and maneuvering engines. In essence, starfuries, are the inferior knock-off, of the Gunstar.

That was one of my biggest peeves as a kid. The controls were usually nothing like the real thing, and some were just plain illogical.

Too young for that, but our copy was a VHS copy labeled "Empire Strikes Back" with sharpie. Pleasant surprise each time I put it in as a kid.

I assure you this CG was cutting edge for its time, there were few things even close.

If you listen carefully Grig tells Alex to only use the lasers while charging death blossom, likely to conserve and charge power for DB. He lost power maybe because the lasers were the last to transfer power to DB. As for targeting, there was a minimum range the enemy ships needed to be in, and they all needed to be in that range. After that, it was partly targeting, partly spray and pray. The rockets got the locks, where the lasers shot at anything that wiggled. That, in my head cannon anyway, makes sense, and why the ship was fully drained. Also, it said "slight" weapons modification. This makes me think the doors that open are normally used to load the weapons magazines and not normally used during combat. Grid seems to have programmed the ship to fire directly from the magazines rather then them load into launch tubes. Maybe why the warning it could blow up the ship if something didn't go right because of a misfire. It could blow the mag and destroy the ship. my 0.0002 cents anyway.

I think of modern cwis cannons they can be set to fire at anything in range moving. Friendly or not. Sort of a death zone. Not something normally used for obvious reasons but worse case scenario a ship with multiple missiles coming all directions you may not care. set weapon system loose and pray you survive.

I wouldn't consider the "ship" from explorers to be a spacecraft. The only space worthy part of it was the shield. They could have rigged it up to a car or a rowboat and got the same result. Otherwise, that's my favorite list of movies as well.

It is a must watch. 👀 Search " The Warmonger's Legacy " on YT and share.

"Death Blossom" is a term used derogatively when an operator with a P90 goes into panic mode during a firefight and blindly sprays fire in a wide arc.

@@BogeyTheBear that is BS.

Never put much thought into it, but now it does seem to have some quirks. Seems like it would make more sense to fire all missiles first, (after assigning each to a target, they are guided after all). Then overcharge the capacitors or whatever technospeak you like to start the laser weed eater of doom, and go to town on whoevers left.

@@blackc1479 . they are called photon bolts. they appear to be largely dumb fire. the death blossom basically has a spherical area that is covered where it just fires everything without any targeting data. basically a last ditch defense that should wipe out every enemy in range but can leave the gunstar defenseless. it is a prototype after all and never been tested.

@@toomanyaccounts yeah, i get the way it was presented, but they obviously werent true dumb weps. And i get the whole last ditch thing, but if its your last chance shouldnt it count for as much as possible? They obviously have the tech, the ship tracks all other targets, all the rest of the time.

When Alex lost power to his weapons and asked if he should unleash Death Blossom, I assume the reason he lost energy for his weapons was because it was all going into charging up the Death Blossom system.

The Expanse also has very good physics based craft.

@@invaderzim1964 thank you, and yes they are hard Sci-Fi.

:) It was called the Starcar. It was pretty cool.

Except most video game space fighters, probably.

@@ScumBunny Do you mean those crazy old school shoot-em-ups like R-type or Truxton? probably true ^_^

It absolutely would dominate any realistic space battle. The only other space fighter that even comes close in my opinion would be the Starfury which is not armored like the prototype Gunstar1 was. Bar none the Gunstar is the best.

I'd se it as more of a gunboat/gunship than a fighter. It had longer range, FTL capability, had 360 coverage of weapons, and far less maneuverability than the small craft used by the the Kodan armada

1 fighter class ship takes out an entire space armada. Reminds me of Andromeda with Kevin Sorbo who Captain's a High guard ship that is 500 years old (but because the universe fell into a dark ages, is more advanced than the current ships) and so his 1 ship takes on entire fleets. So very unrealistic without a supply base to reload his missiles and drones and repair the circuits and parts of his ship which always take damage in every battle of every episode. Sheer atrophy alone should have prevented his ship from even surviving a single tv season after all the "battle damage" it repeatedly endures in every fire fight - and always because Captain Diplomacy always waits to be attacked and respond instead of shooting first. In real life naval combat, first strike always wins given how deadly the weapons of today are.

@@toddkes5890 I see a few comments like this calling it a gunship/gunboat instead of a fighter. But my question is how are you defining a gunboat/gunship in terms of spacecraft? For aircraft a gunship has a ground attack role. For boats a gunboat has a role for attacking coastal targets. The Gunstar definitely fills the space fighter role. If you are trying to say it's big and well armed I think calling it a Heavy Fighter is accurate.

@@dtester Gunstar as gunboat because the facing barely affects arc of fire for the direct-fire weapons. A Gunboat carries smaller weapons for its size, but they point in all directions so there is almost no safe spot. A fighter is where the direct-fire weapons are primarily aimed in a small cone and the platform rotates to bring them to bear. Facing determine danger. This allows a platform to carry heavier weapons for its size, at the penalty of reduced firing arc.

@@toddkes5890 So my follow up question to that would be "Where did that distinction come from?" It sounds like something that comes from maybe one particular sci-fi IP but does not seem to be a universal rule. edit: To add, I tend to lean toward role-based classifications. A fighter is a fighter because it performs a fighter role. A gunship would be one when it performs a gunship role. I don't think have turrets or not is a factor :)

Would love some kind some kind of sequel! Also, this is probably one of the few cases that I wouldn't mind for them to "remaster" the original with the CG graphic quality that they would have wanted to do but couldn't at the time.

Thats a great analogy that i always had in mind as well. Those 2 craft had such similar design philosophies and mission profiles. Big, tough, fast, dual crew, carrying a huge arsenal that it could deploy on multiple targets simultaneously. Both beautiful and deadly

@@razorfett147 also there are certainly some design similarities with an Apache which has a pilot and a gunner with helmet targeting :)

@@dtester yea it definitely seemed to have incorporated a lot of contemporary military design elements. The mark of a thoughtful designer. It would have been easy to design something that was pure fantasy that looked cool, but they clearly went a step further

That could be a factor for "Death Blossom range". At that range the ship's computer has a good enough sensor capability to tell the difference between decoys and real targets.

The fact that the Beta Unit tells Alex that having an android as a Starfighter pilot 'wasnt allowed' seems to show an unwillingness to have machines in control of weapons

Also no smell of popcorn or red vine candy

Could make a good miniseries.

Graphics were cutting edge at the time.

@@chaos.corner Not if the Woke Kult get their hooks into it. Nah, I'd rather let it stand alone then let them ruin it. Some things should be untainted.

@@TheJaymundo True dat.

You can never have enough Dakka.

Are they still going to remake it? Yep I can imagine how badly they will F it up.

I though it was a sequel not a remake. It does have the original writer. So I hope it is not going to be bad.

@@jonmiller9534 The blog, Future War Stories, also reported the new film is a sequel to The Last Starfighter.

That's no surprise. B5's VFX guys admit that the Starfury design was inspired by the Gunstar.

Always love that scene of the Sidonia firing that gargantuan railgun