Aerodynamic sleekness

I think deep down most people know damn well why the fighters in a space sim are aerodynamic (even though there probably not) It's just to make them look good, no one wants to fly a space sim with cube like or sphere like fighters (which are both great shapes for (deep)spaceships). I think people should stop trying to explain the physics in a game like wing commander, because they just make no sense. Take the engines for an example, they are all placed in a cluster on the rear (atleast the big ones are) this really sucks because if you accelerate forward for 10 minutes you would have to turn your ship around 180 degrees and need 10 minutes just to come to a halt, and flying backwards for 10 minutes with all your guns mounted forward is just plain unhandy. Most funny thing in wingcommander (imho) is that there are still human pilot's in the 27'th century i mean, keeping humans alive in a space fighter would be a big problem because we can only stand forces of up to 9 g's for a verry short period of time. An ideal space fighter should easily be able to accelerate with forces of say 90 g's wich is a force that would turn a human into pulp. The US army is already making great progress with remote controlled fighters and fighters with an AI (Please don't respond with something like computer AI's might be hacked, the chances that an other intelligent race can easily understand and hack an alien computer interface like in independance day are ridiculously small. And if they could then why not just attack the computer that controls the shield generator.... that must be one impressive chip to keep up a large electromagnetic'ish forcefield like that.). Another big silly thing in space sim's is sound SPACE IS A VACUUM there is no medium to transport engine noice trough!
Also i would like to understand how the engineers in the 27'th century control matter/antimatter reactions. The bomb on hiroshima resulted in a 6 gram mass loss (the equivalent of joining 3 grams of mass with 3 grams of antimass) wich resulted in 6*299,792,458^2 = 539253107242090584 joules of energy wich is a lot believe me. Containing these amounts of energy in an engine must be... problematic i'd say.
Please respect wing commander as a great and fun arcade style space sim but don't try to make sense of it because it just doesn't.
 
There's an acceleration compensator in the fighter. Next time you take damage in WC 1 or 2 (or Armada, I believe) pay attention. It'll get damaged sometimes.
 
Not much to watch out for, though, since the games don't simulate any effects of acceleration absorber damage.
 
Moonsword said:
There's an acceleration compensator in the fighter. Next time you take damage in WC 1 or 2 (or Armada, I believe) pay attention. It'll get damaged sometimes.
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Not the point I was trying to make dude :)
 
Fenris Ulven said:
True... Just a LITTLE off-topic, in star trek: star fleet command III you can control a cube, borg cube...
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I really liked the borg cube, their designs are good :), too bad that they keep sending only 1 cube to destroy the federation, if they just would have send 12 or 100 for that matter, the alfa quadrant would have been there's eons ago :D
 
They're nominal synonyms. In practice you'd probably find that confederation generally refers to a grouping of states with less of an emphasis on a central government than you'd assosciate with a federation.
 
Dishwasher said:
I really liked the borg cube, their designs are good :), too bad that they keep sending only 1 cube to destroy the federation, if they just would have send 12 or 100 for that matter, the alfa quadrant would have been there's eons ago :D
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Man don't do that. You got me all wanting to talk about Star Trek and all of their ships now. I've always been wary of starting Off Topic Star Trek threads. But I love the design of spaceships in Startrek. Egad, that Bree (not sure how to spell that) and Dominion ships are so cool. The Scimitar is still my newest favorite. And that St. Helens, man it just looked so menacing because it looked so featureless.
 
Aerodynamics don't matter in space. For example, the LEM (Lunar Excursion Module) of the Apollo missions were box like craft that were made for one purpose and that was to land on the moon. With no atmosphere on the moon, hence no friction, the LEM didn't need to be aerodynamic. Plus both the LEM and Command Module had maneuvering thrusters on them for making in flight adjustments.

I suppose using this as a guide WC ships were made with less aerodynamics in mind because they are meant primarily for space flight. It's also possible that WC ships have small maneuvering thrusters as well for performing tight turns and stopping foward momentum after the main engines have been cut. So yeah anyhow...
 
Dishwasher said:
Take the engines for an example, they are all placed in a cluster on the rear (atleast the big ones are) this really sucks because if you accelerate forward for 10 minutes you would have to turn your ship around 180 degrees and need 10 minutes just to come to a halt, and flying backwards for 10 minutes with all your guns mounted forward is just plain unhandy.
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On the other hand, if you had a duplicate set of engines in front for deceleration, then you would have (gasp) two sets of engines! The extra engines take up space in your fighter, and add weight to it as well. That is why it is usually better to have just the one set of engines (unless you are trying to slow down while somebody is shooting you from in front of you).

Most funny thing in wingcommander (imho) is that there are still human pilot's in the 27'th century...
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Within the WC universe it is pretty much established that human controllers are smarter than AI controllers. For example, in the WC4 novel, Blair is forced to use automatic systems to control the rear turret of his Thunderbolt specifically because there were not enough human gunners available. The attitude of the tech telling Blair that he had to "make do" with automatics and Blair's reaction definitely imply that the automatics don't perform as well as a human.
 
I'm thinkin... said:
It's also possible that WC ships have small maneuvering thrusters as well for performing tight turns and stopping foward momentum after the main engines have been cut. So yeah anyhow...
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I recall always having to repair my maneuvering jets in Privateer.
 
Perhaps people here should try Dan Simmons Hyperion series, he has quite interesting idears of future space combat. And i still stick to my people suck for future air and space combat, already pilots have verry big problems with keeping up with their machine in dog fights. And believe me when you have weapons like (my favorite) tachyon cannons you really want an computer to lineup and kill the target on the other end of the weapon. And about the engines up front that would be silly indeed i was just trying to ilustrate that dogfighting in space would be verry frustrating :).
 
Ijuin said:
On the other hand, if you had a duplicate set of engines in front for deceleration, then you would have (gasp) two sets of engines! The extra engines take up space in your fighter, and add weight to it as well. That is why it is usually better to have just the one set of engines (unless you are trying to slow down while somebody is shooting you from in front of you).
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Don't forget that WC's fighters tend to use atmospheric-style maneuvering because of the scoop fields that extend in front of each spacecraft - fighter and starship - that feed the engines. As a result of this, the classic inertial-style flight model no longer applies well; a ship not under constant thrust, when scoops are deployed, will eventually come to a stop due to the 'friction' of the scoops and the fact that each collision with hydrogen or other particles in space will cut its velocity down just a bit.

The computer also seems to compensate for this - using thrusters to help bring the speed down to 'zero' relative to some target in the system (system's primary, your home carrier, the target NAV point, etc). Notice that, after you use afterburners while at a zero velocity, that your ship comes to a halt? Part of this is scoops, and part of this is probably the computer helping you maintain that zero speed.

Between these two systems, you really don't NEED the extra weight for the engines or fuel, or the extra vulnerability you've introduced - inertial flight is not a factor in WC unless the scoop fields are shut down, which is only done when you're trying to get somewhere quickly and need to be moving at 10000 kps. Even then, the scoops are deployed to slow you down once you get to the destination.

Ijuin said:
Within the WC universe it is pretty much established that human controllers are smarter than AI controllers. For example, in the WC4 novel, Blair is forced to use automatic systems to control the rear turret of his Thunderbolt specifically because there were not enough human gunners available. The attitude of the tech telling Blair that he had to "make do" with automatics and Blair's reaction definitely imply that the automatics don't perform as well as a human.
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I suspect that humans are also cheaper than a really good AI - at least, they don't seem to have really effective AI technology deployed anywhere - not in the ship, not in their missiles, and not in things like comm stations where you'd expect them to have something like that set up. Remember the Comm Station in WC4? The computer seemed to be as dumb as a post, almost. Granted, we didn't see them talking with it or dealing with it much (it could be they hacked the AI to get the records they needed), but that's one place where I'd have put an AI to do the day-to-day tasks of managing comms... and they didn't seem to have one. Either they're too expensive, or else AIs have fallen out of favor... or the technology just isn't up to that level, and their grasp of AI isn't much better than ours.
 
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