Jets N Guns

[Tabita Knezevic]

Jetsn'Guns is a 2004 2D horizontally scrolling shooter for Microsoft Windows by Czech studio Rake in Grass. In April 2006, a version for Mac OS X was released. In December 2006 an expansion, Jets'n'Guns Gold, was released. A version for Linux has been developed by Linux Game Publishing.[1] A sequel, Jets'n'Guns 2, was available in early access,[2] and released on 25 July 2020.[3]

Between levels, players are given the option to buy upgrades for their ship. Some of the most vital upgrades are for maneuverability, speed, health/armor and cooling. They can also give their ship a new paint job for free. Another item is the Atarix, which gives players a chance to unlock crates found when they destroy transport ships during a mission. There are several upgrades that boost the ship's defense and provide slow armor regeneration, such as shields and nanomachines. Other upgrades give players bounties for killing certain enemies, and bonuses for mass killings of enemy troops. There are also upgrades that allow players to customize up to five different weapon profiles, which can be switched mid-game, or allow players to change the angle of their weapons to adapt to changing strategic situations.

As the game progresses, more weapons and items are made available. The fighter the player starts with only has slots for two front weapons and rather limited ship upgrades. The TMIG-226 has slots for one bombing system, one missile system, three front weapons, and one rear weapon. Some weapons can only be used in the front or rear slots. There is a large variety of weapons, ranging from flamethrowers to electro-balls to acid guns. Most weapons can be upgraded after they are bought. This may enhance power, projectile velocity, rate of fire, or the nature of the attack itself. When viewing the status of an individual weapon, meters are shown that indicate its power, heat generation and speed ratings.

Most weapons give off heat when fired, indicated by a heating gauge. This heat dissipates when firing ceases. If the needle passes the orange and then red zones of the gauge the ship overheats, and it will be unable to fire until the needle passes back behind the orange zone. This makes upgrading the cooling system essential. With an improved cooling system, the ship will take longer to overheat, and will cool down faster. Missiles and bombs do not generate heat. The rate of fire for missiles is determined by their upgrade level. Bombs are the only weapons that have a limit pertaining to how many can be fired at any given time. Each bomb that is dropped uses up a portion of a slowly replenishing 'bomb meter'; the amount used by each bomb decreases with upgrades.

In Jets'n'Guns, the player starts out as a freelancer, contracted to drive out a gang of criminals from a sector of space. Soon, the player is contacted by their old commanding officer from a previous war, Col. Troubleman, who is based aboard the United Space Ship Impotence. He explains that Xoxx, the evil dictator, has appeared again and has kidnapped a scientist, Professor Von Hamburger. The professor was developing a gigantic quantum cannon, which he intended to use for peaceful purposes. Xoxx, however, wants the cannon because it could, theoretically, destroy the entire universe with a single shot. Erecta Von Hamburger, the professor's daughter, also contacts the player, but she is mainly concerned with the rescue of her father.

The player first has to steal a better fighter, the TMIG-226, from the heavily guarded FeX labs. The player then has to rendezvous with the USS Impotence, and is only just saved from destruction by pirates by a well-timed volley of torpedoes from the Impotence. The majority of the following missions involve assaults on Xoxx's forces and attempts to ascertain the locations of the professor and the quantum cannon.

Eventually, after many battles against Xoxx's forces and hench-beings, the player rescues the professor. Soon after, the location of the completed cannon, the Lord Chaos Mk 1, is discovered. However, when the player defeats Xoxx, Xoxx escapes in a "backup time washing machine", his parting message revealing that it is too late to stop the cannon firing. The universe is destroyed, leaving the player's ship flying in a field of rocky debris as the credits roll. Eventually,

The developers have stated they were heavily inspired by the games Tyrian 2000, Project-X and Walker.[4] As in Tyrian, players earn money by destroying enemies and picking up bonuses in each level. In-between levels, players can purchase weapons and devices for their ship, and upgrade them, provided they have enough money.

However, Jets'n'Guns is more complex than Tyrian in this respect. There are many more weapons to choose from, a greater variety of devices to purchase and more ways to upgrade the player's ship. Also, unlike in Tyrian, where a player could get through most, if not all of the game using the weapons available at the start of the game (with upgrades and new ship systems), in JnG the player is forced to experiment with their weapons in order to be successful. The game has no lives, so the player can keep attempting a level until they beat it.

According to the developers, one of the reasons they chose to do a side scroller, as opposed to a vertical scroller, was so they could insert much visual humour.[5] Players can expect to see, among other things, spacefighters with knives strapped to them and various humorous signs. They can also expect most of the weapons in the weapon shop have advertising posters, emblazoned with messages such as "Ultimate destructive power!" or "As seen on TV!". Also, cultural references are scattered throughout the game, both in the equipment and the actual levels.

Why do fighters still have cannons? The day of dogfighting is long over, now it's just fire some missiles and forget. Even if they expended all their missiles, 182 cannon rounds is only 6 seconds of firing (I think the GAU is rated to 1800 rpm).

The only reason (and I'm not sure if I should answer my own question) is that they need something to shoot warning shots over the bow of another airplane. But that seems an awful amount of weight for this rare occasion. And it'd mean loading tracer rounds.

The idea that missiles will be all a fighter aircraft needs was prevalent in the late Fifties. The McDonnell-Douglas F-4 Phantom II carried initially only missiles, but at the start of the Vietnam war this turned out to be inadequate. The long-range missiles back then were rather unreliable, and in a real conflict things turn out always different than anticipated. As von Clausewitz said, the plan is the first casualty of war.

F-4s frequently found themselves in close-combat situations for which they were inadequately prepared. Even today, a gun gives the pilot a lot more options, and if the situation is unclear, close-up visual inspection before shooting is still vital to avoid politically embarrassing situations.

From the F-4C on, F-4s were equipped with a gun. First in external pods, from the F-4E as an internal gun. What also helped to make the F-4 more effective was better training for pilots and ground crew, so the missiles were in better shape and better applied.

Starting with block 50 (as far as the F-16 is concerned anyway), provisions have been made to fire the new 'hotter, faster, farther' PGU-28 round. It reputedly travels three times as far as the standard M53 round, effectively closing the gap between the Sidewinder minimum engagement range and the gun's maximum engagement range.

Up-close and personal is the norm in peace-time: e.g. the Chinese buzzing American planes n the China Sea; or NATO planes flying to meet Russians in the North Sea or off Alaska. What would you do without a short-range weapon? You would have to:

The plain fact is that bullets cannot be diverted or fooled, unlike missiles, for which there are flares, chaff and different electronic countermeasures and early warning systems. It' s also much easier to destroy a plane with bullets now than it was a few decades back (during WW1 and 2 for instance). Unless your aircraft has some serious armor plating to guard against explosive and incendiary rounds which are quite common, it's difficult to guard against bullets

The internal gun for the F-35A, including a full load of ammunition, is less than 500 pounds - this represents about 2.5% of the F-35's total weapons payload capacity. That doesn't really sound too bad. They can save 80 lbs if they choose not to load it.

Six seconds is actually a lot of 'gun time' for modern air-to-air systems considering speeds, targeting systems and lethality of the projectiles involved. It's not like WWII anymore where you'd slowly pull up behind a bomber and then have to spend several seconds pumping a bunch of crappy .50-cal lead in, hoping to poke enough holes in an oil cooler to make a difference.

A long time ago I used to build fighter aircraft (yes, with my hands). Anyway, the designers whispered behind their hands that the guns on this particular aircraft were there to make the pilots feel happy. The gunfire vibration tended to destroy the delicate instruments, so they were strongly discouraged from ever firing them.

In those days the designers (I was aspiring to be one) said, only half joking, an aircraft is a platform for delivering missiles or bombs, so it is basically a radar and a missile management system. The rest is infrastructure.

edit: chatting to my old colleague about this, he said he offered to give a pilot a loudspeaker in his helmet going "Da-Da-Da-Da-Da", since it would be just as much use and a lot less weight. But the pilot was unimpressed.

As missile guidance and tracking systems evolve, so do countermeasures and maneuvers to cause a missile to miss. Planes don't carry that many missiles to begin with, and as mentioned before, missiles also have a minimal range. For all of these reasons, guns are still the only way to hit a plane with modern countermeasures. After all your missiles went for bust, or you're closer than the minimal operating range of your missiles. Turning away to gain distance is usually not an option, because as you increase your distance from the enemy, you open up an opportunity for them to turn in and engage you, not to mention losing airspeed is still generally considered a blunder in air-to-air combat.

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