Confederation at War

TopGun said:
what ship are you reffering to by "flying spoon that splits in half", the only ships I know that seperate are the Galaxy-Class (Saucer Section and Stardrive Section) and the Prometheus-Class (Saucer Section and 2 Stardrive Sections)

One assumes he meant the Galaxy, which looked vaguely spoonish.
 
TopGun said:
what ship are you reffering to by "flying spoon that splits in half", the only ships I know that seperate are the Galaxy-Class (Saucer Section and Stardrive Section) and the Prometheus-Class (Saucer Section and 2 Stardrive Sections)

The latter ship. IIRC, the Prometheus was only featured once in the Voyager episode where the Doctor is transferred from the Delta Quadrant to the Beta Quadrant. And it didn't actually have a saucer. It was more of a flattened plumb-bob.

One assumes he meant the Galaxy, which looked vaguely spoonish.

Hey now! Those are fightin' words! I will not have something as elegant as the Galaxy class compared to something so distastful as the Intrepid class! ;)
 
Edfilho said:
I'd like to point that planets also move. a lot.

Erm, not really. As far as a battle is concerned, a planet stays put. And as far as an astrogater is concerned, it always stays on its eliptical path. So it "moves" in the strictest sense of the word, but from an astrogation perspective it's about as stationary as things get it space.

Besides, planet's don't utilize EW to hide their position either. ;)


and that ST has wnothing to do with WC.

Amen to that. Two separate universes. Let's keep it that way.
 
[Berman] doesn't know the first thing about military tactics...

That's because he's a television producer. Okay, that's enough said about Star Trek.

My input on the "thirty-year old carrier design." What is so hard to accept about a 30 year old carrier design? 30 years isn't that long, particulary when a war as intense as the Terran-Kilrathi one might have stalled new ship development. This is just my opinion; I'm not going to spout a bunch of real-world paralells that have nothing to do with a science-fiction universe.
 
What about loom?

i think that argueing over the age of a carrier is kinda crazy. I do like to debate WC, but this is too nitty picky IMO. maybe this one design did very well... maybe they ran out of design monry... maybe the guy who built them was the chief senator's cousin...
 
What about loom?

You mean the latest masterpiece of fantasy storytelling from Lucasfilm’s™ Brian Moriarty™? Why it’s an extraordinary adventure with an interface of magic; stunning, high-resolution, 3D landscapes; sophisticated score and musical effects. Not to mention the detailed animation and special effects, elegant point ‘n’ click control of characters, objects, and magic spells. Beat the rush! Go out and buy Loom™ today!

There, now that someone asked me about it, I can take that stupid Monkey Island reference out of my signature. :p
 
Dralthi5 said:
[Berman] doesn't know the first thing about military tactics...

That's because he's a television producer.

So was Roddenbery. Berman's problem is that he's an idiot. Remember when Star Trek technobabel made (at least some) sense and was used to further the story rather than *be* the story?

Kim: "Captain on Bridge!"

Janeway: "Ensign! I'm out of coffee! Any ideas?"

Kim: "I think we can reroute the EPS conduits through the primary phase inducers to produce a reverse poloron charge in the primary deflector dish, thus resulting in an inverted tachyon beam!"

Janeway: "I see where you're going with this!"


:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:


My input on the "thirty-year old carrier design." What is so hard to accept about a 30 year old carrier design? 30 years isn't that long, particulary when a war as intense as the Terran-Kilrathi one might have stalled new ship development.

Why would it *stall* development? War tends to encourage new ship designs, not inhibit them. The only inhibiter is the necessary industrial base to build these ships. Action Stations makes it clear that Confed has this. Not to mention the number of ships being chucked out by private yards in Privateer...

This is just my opinion; I'm not going to spout a bunch of real-world paralells that have nothing to do with a science-fiction universe.

Honestly, this is all opinions anyway. But I'm focused heavily on the parallels, because the Wing Commander universe as a whole is focused on WWII parallels. AS just happens to be the worst abuser of parallels, with the movie following a close second.
 
Ugh, don't even mention Voyager while trying to argue a point. Voyager was such a chore to watch after a while.

And I really don't believe that a war would stall ship design, either (just playing devil's advocate, really), but the fact that a design, however modified, would still exist 30 years in the future is still quite believable, to me. That doesn't mean Confed didn't design new carriers (they obviously did), but the fact that we see one or two carriers show up that happen to be older designs isn't a cause for alarm or derision, IMO.
 
I, for one, think that the computers in WCU are pretty lame, compared to what 600 hundred years of tech advance could have done. With the exception of merlin in the movie. I mean, there are people researching direct neural-machine interfaces now... it could be real in less than 100 years. But you don't see me complaining about this, because the game wouldn't be so good if the pilots stayed in the carrier piloting remotelly with their brainwaves or something.

BTW, great Monkey Island quote.
 
AKAImBatman said:
Honestly, this is all opinions anyway. But I'm focused heavily on the parallels, because the Wing Commander universe as a whole is focused on WWII parallels. AS just happens to be the worst abuser of parallels, with the movie following a close second.

Its nice to find the similarities between WC and WW2, but to say WC canon is wrong in the instances that it isnt similar to WW2 is just stupid.
 
Dralthi5 said:
Ugh, don't even mention Voyager while trying to argue a point. Voyager was such a chore to watch after a while.

No kidding. What's the Wing Commander solution? Put some grinds in the coffee machine, of course! :)


And I really don't believe that a war would stall ship design, either (just playing devil's advocate, really), but the fact that a design, however modified, would still exist 30 years in the future is still quite believable, to me. That doesn't mean Confed didn't design new carriers (they obviously did), but the fact that we see one or two carriers show up that happen to be older designs isn't a cause for alarm or derision, IMO.

The problem is that the concepts for why a 30 year old carrier would be there don't make sense. If the carrier is really 30 years old, then why try to steal it? It probably is not worth risking the much more valuable fighter assets you do have. If the carrier *isn't* 30 years old, but is a 30 year old design, then why was it built? If other classes superceded the "Concordia class", then they would build those new classes. Which gets into the unconfirmed point about 10 years for retooling. If it really took Confed that long to retool for a new carrier, then they deserve to lose the war! (It seems more likely that it's 10 years to build a new shipyard.)

So in short, if Chewbacca lives on Endor you must agree that this is a 30 year old carrier design. ;)
 
Sarty said:
Its nice to find the similarities between WC and WW2, but to say WC canon is wrong in the instances that it isnt similar to WW2 is just stupid.

that makes sense. even if it's the inspiration, it's not a freaking law.
 
AKAImBatman said:
The latter ship. IIRC, the Prometheus was only featured once in the Voyager episode

I hate to do this to you buddy, but you can see the Prometheus in End Game
 
. . .it's not a freaking law.

Right, and another way of putting that is that WWII history is not a canon source like the games, manuals, movie, and novels, etc.

It’s fine to try to use WWII as an analogy in the attempt to deduce and “discover” the reasons why Confed operates as it does militarily; it’s even fine to “equate” specific WWII ships to WC ships to see how well they “fit” (i.e., suggest a certain pattern) and whether the former might thereby help to further elucidate the nature of the latter. But to say that a 30-year-old carrier class and design would not continue to be used in WC because it would not have continued to be used at the time of WWII is the proverbial tail wagging the dog, and so is not a valid argument in the realm of canon. The whole idea of canon is internal consistency, with conformity to any external sources of law, reason, or practice being entirely secondary if not coincidental.
 
Nemesis said:
But to say that a 30-year-old carrier class and design would not continue to be used in WC because it would not have continued to be used at the time of WWII is the proverbial tail wagging the dog, and so is not a valid argument in the realm of canon. The whole idea of canon is internal consistency, with conformity to any external sources of law, reason, or practice being entirely secondary if not coincidental.

Except for one problem. *There's no canon that says what the Concordia class is!* The concept that the Concordia class is 30 years old is itself a fan creation based on events in the Action Station novel. The novel never states that the class type is Concordia. For all we know, it could be an Ark Royal class carrier!

This brings into the discussion of how we define canon. Is something in the book canon? If the answer is always yes, then the Princeton is a Confederation class dreadnought now apparently referred to as the "Concordia Class". So do we make something up to fill the holes and call that canon? Well, apparantly yes. But what if what was made up doesn't make sense? And how can we argue it as fact when our own canon sources don't agree with us?
 
If that were the case, then shouldn't it refer to the model/type? i.e. "Type VII phase shields are the latest improvement to capship defenses, blah, blah, blah."

While I agree that would be ideal, it's certainly the case that the other weapons descriptions in the JFS 2664 Update are listed by general type when they refer to a specific model. The description for the "Torpedo" is actually for the "Lance Mark III Anti-Matter Torpedo" -- which is distinct from a proton torpedo or a fusion torpedo or a light torpedo or even the other models of Lances.

Source? My impression was always that the Midway was a far larger capital ship than the Vesuvius.

It's a situation similar to the Tiger's Claw (specific example) and the Confederation-class: The Midway-class is 1,830 meters long and masses 200,000 tonnes... the Vesuvius-class is 1,600 meters long and masses 250,000 tonnes. The tonnage for the Vesuvius comes from the Wing Commander IV adaptation, the length is that which is simulated in Secret Ops. The numbers for the Midway are from Prophecy's official guide. The Vesuvius shows up in her post-role war in the introduction to Secret Ops, with the TCS McKinley as the centerpiece of the fleet assigned to the Sol Sector.

As I said, though, the RN and Amphibious Assault Ships are a fairly close approximation. Although the more I dig, the less Prophecy seems internally consistant with itself.

At ths risk of bringing the debate to a new area, I'd certainly be interested to know how.

Also, I feel the need to admonish myself for my previous posting: I somehow managed to say "Cerberus class" instead of "Hades class".

The book also describes the Lexington and Princeton as having dual flight decks, and having almost exactly the same internal design as the Concordia. How do we resolve that?

I always preferred the alternate train of thought: The engine wasn't capable of doing a true Concordia in 3D. As a result, we were supposed to pretend that the ship was like the Concordia. Sure, it has holes, but no more holes than the 30+ year old carrier design theory.

That's a good question, and one that I don't think we've properly addressed since the whole "Concordia secretly being a Confederation-class ship" argument died out some years back.

My suggestion for an in-fiction explanation involves two things:

a) the "internal" layout of the ship is very similar to the Confederation-class -- as a rush job to counter the supposed Sivar-class threat, the designers of the Confederation-class borrowed existing deck plans from the navy's standard Concordia-class wherever possible.

b) the "two flight decks" refers to the idea that the carrier has two catapults (side to side) and then two completely independant fighter storage/repair/ready-ing bays (one on each side).

Just to annoy the starch out of you, I'm going to point out that there are only TWO Concordias in the game and book continuity. A third one only appears if we attempt to harmonize the movie with the game. Not to mention the fact that Action Stations kind of screwed with the continuity anyway...

Well, right back at you, then -- because I can prove that there's a third TCS Concordia without using the movie (not that I have any personal reason to separate it). In fact, among the community, the 'third Concordia' claim pre-dates the release of the movie for specifically this reason: the Kilrathi Saga manual references the existence of a TCS Concordia in 2656. Fleet Action gives a solid 2661 service entry date for Wing Commander 2's TCS Concordia (CVS-65)... and her own backstory (a rush job based on technology recovered the wreck of the Sivar) also precludes a 2656 Confederation class.

Actually, I considered pointing out that the Ark Royal and the Concordia line up pretty well with the Yorktown and Enterprise, but I decided to bite my tongue. No, the mapping between carrier classes is not 1 -> 1, but we can use general parallels from WWII to apply to the WC universe. Using those parallels makes it fairly easy to to demonstrate the most likely outcomes of certain situations. And one of those outcomes is that a pre-war carrier is doubtful to be manufactured throughout a 30 year war. (WWII only lasted about 6 years, and look how many new classes of carrier were produced!)

Actually, I think there's a much better analogy here. The "pre war" designs which appear in AS (the Coral Sea, Soryu, etc.) are the equivalent of the Yorktown-class.

The Concordia-class is Wing Commander's equivalent of the Essex-class... a *design* which precedes the war (the USS Essex was laid down in April, 1941)... but continues to serve well beyond it (often with significant modifications). Essex/Ticonderoga-class carriers that were laid down during the war -- the equivalent of the Princeton! -- continue to enter service in the post-war era.

The Lady Lex was recently remodelled, so it makes sense to keep her on. But was she really a Concordia or Ranger class carrier? The only reference we have is the book, which suggests that she's actually a Confederation class dreadnought! Certainly it seems that the scripts had intended the Confederation class to continue to serve despite any issues with the main canon... err... I mean cannon.

She's certainly not a Ranger-class -- they were retired after the war (per the novel), and they're shorter (and carry less fighters) than the Concordia-class.

It's a possibility I suppose. It would certainly explain why the Princeton was at the shipyards, and why she had little to no defensive capability. (A carrier's fighter compliment doesn't just magically disappear.) The destruction of the Lexington would provide a good backstory for that, because the Lex (being recently remodelled) was probably supposed to cover certain operations even after the Vesuvius was online. (Actually, wasn't the Lex under construction during the Battle of Earth? In which case, she would be a relatively new carrier.)

In looking over the elaborate 'carrier production history' TC and I devised some years back based on novel references, we were required by the sheer amount of carriers referenced in late war sources (Privateer, WC3, FA, etc.) to list the TCS Princeton as a Concordia-class hull that was begun in 2668 and then finished after the war. That also seems like a perfectly reasonable explanation why it's still around -- but a twenty year old ship of the same class like the TCS Liberty was scrapped. (But then note that the Liberty was scrapped in 2672 rather than *immediately* after the war ended...).

We have the Lexington as a ship that would have originally entered service in 2668... the further backstory was that it was then crippledi during the Battle of Earth and almost completely rebuilt afterwards - it ended up seeing a few months of service at the very end of the war.

(http://www.hamtwoslices.net/loaf/fleetcarriers.html is the quick-and-dirty carrier chart)

I'll have to reinstall the game and review the data when I get the chance. It just doesn't seem right that the Prophecy fighters would be *smaller*. Then again, Prophecy was done with a constant "brain drain" on its former Origin talent base.

In all fairness to the team, only Prophecy and Wing Commander II scale their fighters properly -- a Hellcat is *not* 27 meters long when Blair climbs into it on the flight deck. (Best guess is that someone in 1990 mixed up feet and meters and most further games decided not to create an inconsistency).

I believe the lengths and masses listed in the CIC's ship section are all taken right from the ship viewer, if you want to save yourself the trouble of reinstalling the game: https://www.wcnews.com/ships2/wcpconfed.shtml

If I may ask, what are we using as a reference?

I'm using the specifications for the 2619 Bengal 'utility carrier' in the Handbook as the 'original' Bengal -- and then a pair of later references to the 'Kipling and later' Bengals size. I've got them arranged online here: https://www.wcnews.com/ships2/wc1bengal.shtml

I do. Fleet carriers, destroyers, battleships, and the like *move*. They hide, they run, they attack, they play mind games that can keep a full intelligence agency busy. Planets don't do that. They just sit there. And recon is relatively easy to coordinate compared to the problems inherent in tracking outbound bombers, inbound enemy bombers, space superiorty battles, defensive battles, and bomber cover battles all simulataneously.

Wouldn't the normal CIC need to coordinate these things *anyway*? I'm not sure I'd want to serve on the carrier where they decided they could remain blind to other threats simply because they didn't have the proper kind of ordinance to attack them with bombers.

The closest relative of the supposed Concordia class, the Ranger class, is listed as having capship torpedos. The Concordia class is larger and more powerful, so my feeling is that we've simply never the tubes in action. Not to mention that the Visual rule was broken in WCIV during the conflict between the Lex and the Durango. While that might have something to do with the fact that Paulson was an idiot, we see similar engagements later in the game between the Durango and the Vesuvius, and the Vesuvius and her sister ship. Prophecy expands on this by showing the Midway present for a variety of capship engagements.

I think the core problem with the "keep your distance" rule in the WCverse, is that ships must use jump points. As a result, there are many instances where a carrier may be required to punch her way through an enemy line either on an outbound leg, or on an inbound surprise attack. I know I'd certainly feel better if my carrier could get a few cap missiles off while I'm still getting my fighters off the deck.

I think the 'keep your distance' rule applies to straight up fleet carriers in Wing Commander -- they have battlegroups that will clear jump points for them. (And Paulson is certainly ridiculed quite a bit in the Wing Commander IV adaptation for being so inexperienced as to move the Lexington directly into combat with Border Worlds capital ships.)

The Vesuvius and the Midway both have anti-capital-ship weaponry -- antimatter guns and heavy ion cannons, respectively. Both are classified as being "heavy fleet carriers", presumably including this as one of the reasons.

I believe you're referring to Capital Ship Missiles, though -- which *aren't* a form of torpedo. They're just large, long range, high yield explosives... that are present, per Victory Streak, specifically on *older* capital ships. They don't pass through phase sheilds or anything of the sort -- they're heavy enough to blast down shields like a plasma weapon. (They're what the Victory fires a time or two in Wing Commander III).

But he lists both Battleships and Battlewagons. That makes little sense overall, and battlewagon is a really stupid name for any sort of naval craft. ("Wagon" tends to imply wheels.) If he wanted to invent a new type of ship, he should have taken the time to understand how the various types got their names in the first place. i.e.:

(ship list cut for space)

Dreadnought -> Derived from the name HMS Dreadnought, so named because the ship's company would "dread nought but God." The HMS Dreadnought brought about the modern form of battleship, and thus battleships were referred to as "pre-dreadnought" and "post-dreadnought". Later, the later term was shortened to simply "dreadnought".

Using those as a base, I suppose he could argue that there was an HMS BattleWagon, and that was what resulted in the battlewagon name. But that makes little sense considering that he still uses the term "battleship" alongside "battlewagon". Thus it would have been far more accurate had he found a *use* for the ship, then given it a new type name. (I'd think of an example, but I really have no idea how a battlewagon differs from a battleship and/or cruiser or frigate.) Of course, given his WWII analogy, using the term Dreadnought instead of Battlewagon would have been more appropriate.

While I agree with the fact that battlewagon is a silly sounding name, it's *not* something Forstchen invented -- it's a normal term used to refer to the big World War II battleships that Forstchen is trying to put in the novel. As I mentioned earlier, the internet dictionary supports this theory... though I'm loathe to site it as a serious source. Here's a better experiment: run 'battlewagon' through Amazon. You'll come up with the term used in a dozen book titles that are about World War II battleships. I don't know the etymology (I would be interested, though!), but it's a real term that refers to the very thing AS wants.
 
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Hmmm... not sure about this. We never actually saw a differentiation between regular flight and afterburner flight in the movie. So therefore we don't *know* that the skipper was slower, because we don't *know* if Blair's Rapier was on full burners or not.

I was referring to the two page history/description of the 'movie Skipper' from the Handbook -- that's where the designation and so forth came from as well.

It makes perfect sense in the sort of "down home" english that Eisen speaks. (Part of the charm of his character. He manages to stay military without sacraficing his southern mode of speech. It wouldn't seem at all odd to hear him use a term like "cock-eyed.") In real life, someone might consider saying that "the Enterprise is a new type of carrier, powered by nuclear engines." Unfortunately, that sounds good on paper but lousy out loud. Most people would shorten it to the more clumsy "the Enterprise is a new type of /nuclear-powered/ carrier" or simply "the Enterprise is a new type of /nuclear/ carrier" (since the "powered" is implied in nuclear energy). Note that they will usually put a sllight pause and stress on the word "nuclear" to point to the fact that they are referring to an attribute of the new item.

I know what you're trying to say, but there's a specific way to write it: "a new, cloaked, missile" (or: "a new, nuclear, carrier"). There's no comma in the Wing Commander III screenplay: "a new cloaked missile".

Interesting. But does it actually say that you need 10 years to retool for a new class? Your quote is "ten years to build a yard", which is acceptable (although a bit long, actually). As mentioned before, most of the US ships in WWII came out of existing shipyards.

I believe (without having the book here) that the ten years number refers to the amount of time it takes to build a carrier yard, not the amount of time to get it ready for a new class of ships. There was certainly very little transition time at all when the Trojan IV yards went from Bengal-class ships to Jutland-class ships in the late fifties. (And yes, as you referenced before, they're built in batches -- Trojan IV had five shipyards, ultimately turning out a new Bengal every year... the yards that constructed the Concordia-class would produce eight at once.)

Ah true. They tend to get lumped together since they are literally right across from each other. If I remember correctly, the Yorktown carriers came out of Newport News yards, and the Forrestal class came out of Norfolk yards. The Enterprise and Nimitz classes came from Newport News. To an onlooker, this pretty much means they all came out of the yards in Norfolk, but there is a difference in who actually built the ships.

That's true. I should say that the majority of ships are built in Norfolk. There used to be a Naval shipyard in San Francisco as well, but I'm not sure if they ever produced any capital ship hardware. The Puget Sound yards support the Pacific fleet, although capital ships aren't constructed there. They did construct submarines at one point, however.

Wikipedia says Newport News for the Forrestal-class too. I don't *think* they actually build ships at Norfolk -- since it's the Navy's yard, it's probably beyond their role to actually construct new ships. Rather, Norfolk is where ships are home ported, repaired, drydocked, etc.

(Speaking of which, if there are any Wing Commander fans on the east coast who are interested, a trip to see a carrier at Norfolk some weekend might be fun.)

To bring this back to what we're all here for -- obscure Wing Commander trivia -- the original draft of the Wing Commander movie script had a cool Norfolk-derived name... Tolwyn's headquarters was "Polaris Roads Naval Station". It's a shame they turned that into another Concordia...

If they have to EV to build a ship, then someone isn't doing their job properly. Space construction should be handled in as much of a robotic fashion as possible. And as I said, it opens up the possbility for new manufacturing methods.

Even if we assume that manual labor is still needed, then someone should hollow out an asteroid and pressurize it. That would allow work crews to operate just as effectively as here on Earth.

We certainly see the Vesuvius and the Mt. St. Helens undergoing their final work exposed to space... but AS does reference the idea of fully pressurized space drydocks that allow ships to be repaired/constructed under normal conditions. My guess is that most work is done in this fashion -- and then it's only minor repairs and work that's done in EV (or, covert stuff, like the work involving the Karga in False Colors... which certainly involved extensive extravehicular activity).
 
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