Consistency???

[Bandit LOAF]

This, I have been advocating all along. One would still have to remove 3 cm of durasteel plate and place 3 cm of tungsten on the aforementioned Arrow to get the 60 cm equivalent. Wouldn't this necessitate a refit?

The fallacy would be that they're necessarily upgrading existing Arrows rather than simply building new ones.

Privateer says the Confederation is losing 'hundreds of ships a day'... and presumably the shift in technology (plus the Earth Defense Campaign) is going to mean there's a pretty constant rate of turnover.

Also, no one is really sure what armor is - the Privateer seems to be able to buy and attach armor plating effortlessly... presumably a field kit and a carrier's crew can do this as well.

The TCH had established that phase-shields have been on fighters since at least 2654 as opposed to the Meson shields found on the capships. So it would seem that the capships were upgraded to technology that already existed in the fighter force, although AS referenced phase-shields on the Confed Battlefleets of 2634. I guess my real confusion comes from not understanding the difference between phase and meson shields.

I think the way to best explain shields is chronologically.

Wing Commander I featured shields, no proper noun attached. Wing Commander II then added capital ships with special, nigh-invulnerable shields that meant capital ships could only be damaged by three 'shield skipping' weapons in the game - anti-matter guns, phase transit cannons and torpedoes. The new shields were named "Phase Shields".

For the longest time (1991-1996), that was the only terminology that existed: 'Shields' and 'Phase Shields'.

As I mentioned above, the TPoF novelisation suggests that the explanation for the high shield numbers in WC3 forward is that by mid-2669 all ships (rather than just capital ships) mount "Phase Shields". So far, so good.

Then in 1998 Action Stations wanged things up a bit - it used the term 'Phase Shields' to refer to the type of shielding capital ships had in 2634.

The Confederation Handbook's shielding is an attempt to explain this error. It uses "Phase Shields" to refer to the shielding on fighters and "Meson Shields" to refer to the shielding on capital ships. The suggestion is that some twenty years afer McAuliffe, the old variety of 'Phase Shields' is now the ordinary fighter shield... and the new 'Meson Shield' is the capital-strength technology.

So, simply put - there's two kinds of 'Phase Shields'... the 2634 Phase Shield and the 2664 Phase Shield. Are they related? Perhaps they're the same technology, advanced at some level... perhaps they're completely unrelated and are just trying to confuse us. 'Meson Shields' then come in the middle, and refer to all the shields in the original Wing Commander I (fighter and capital) and the fighter/transport/corvette shields in Wing Commander II.

 

[Ijuin]

Let's assume for the moment that the whole X10 issue is just the result of a misprint. In that case, there is a very smooth upgrade curve from WC1 through WCP.

From WC1 to WC2, there is a small increase in shield power and armor (upgrade from WC1 durasteel/plasteel to tungsten), but very little fighter weapons advancement beyond a new gun (particle gun).

Come WC3, there is an approximate doubling of shield strength from WC2, implying a new generation of shield technology for fighter-sized craft (the Broadsword had to be three times as heavy as the Longbow to get the same shield and armor strength), and it also appears that Plasma Cannons, previously capship-only weapons, are now small enough to be carried by fighters such as the Thunderbolt, which has replaced the Sabre due to its heaver gun loadout and superior shields.

Going to WC4, there is only a slight upgrade in shield and gun strength, reflecting optimization for cheap and easy maintenance over maximizing performance.

However, in WCP, we see that armor strength doubles over WC4 levels (switchover to isometal), and we begin to see the introduction of another generation of guns--especially a heavier plasma cannon for bombers that can penetrate the latest capship shields.

 

[Haesslich]

Come WC3, there is an approximate doubling of shield strength from WC2, implying a new generation of shield technology for fighter-sized craft (the Broadsword had to be three times as heavy as the Longbow to get the same shield and armor strength), and it also appears that Plasma Cannons, previously capship-only weapons, are now small enough to be carried by fighters such as the Thunderbolt, which has replaced the Sabre due to its heaver gun loadout and superior shields.

The only possible problem with the WC3 upgrade you mention is that plasma guns are also available to the Privateer around this period as a civillian weapon. If it's that 'new', then I'd have expected them to be selling Reaper cannons to the Privateer as well, given that those weapons would be of equally recent vintage, especially as WC2->WC3 is a period of around 3 years, versus the 10 required for the jump from WC1->WC2. Plus, the Thunderbolt's an older fighter; most of the fighters in WC3 are supposedly older craft, with the noteable exception of the Excalibur.

However, while the designs are old, the fighters physically are probably 'newer' craft as they're of recent manufacture, and so mount the upgrades which we didn't see in WC2's ships, such as the better shield generators. This doesn't mean that there aren't Sabres with equally impressive stats out there, just because we don't see them in WC3 - it could merely mean that they're either 'too new' to be on a junker like the Victory, or else that they're assigned in other roles now, or even that the factories which made them may have gotten smashed to pieces during the Battle of Earth, Sirius, or the other fights during the post-Armistice incursion, which means that there aren't as many of them out there and thus they're using these older designs because that's all they're able to build for now.

 

[Dragon1]

The fallacy would be that they're necessarily upgrading existing Arrows rather than simply building new ones.

Perhaps the fighters don't get upgrades. Or the upgrades can be completed by the carrier crew.

The capships would surely be upgraded though. We know the Victory was really old, and no matter how you look at, it had to have been refit to keep her up to date.

The scene at the Torgo HQ in WC3 showed perhaps a dozen Tallahassee class Cruisers tied up behind Tolwyn's office. Would it be too much to assume that while they are not deployed, that the are being refit and upgraded?

 

[Quarto]

Let's assume for the moment that the whole X10 issue is just the result of a misprint. In that case, there is a very smooth upgrade curve from WC1 through WCP.

The problem with this is that you're trying to solve something which, for all we know, may well have been done intentionally to resolve another potential problem. Think about it - if we know that, circa 2669, there is an alloy out there that can be used to make armour x20 stronger (for the moment, we'll assume that isometal, having only come onto the market during Righteous Fire, is unavailable - though even this is not necessarily the case, because the military was likely to have isometal before it appeared on the civilian market) than durasteel.

So... we know that ships in 2654 had durasteel armour, and in some cases (e.g., the Raptor, going by in-game stats) had as much as 10cm of armour. Now, let's go onto 2669, accepting your assumption that the boosted shields and armour are just a misprint. The heaviest ship at this time is the Longbow, with a grand total of 30cm of armour. But we know that a Raptor, with its durasteel armour merely replaced by tungsten, would have 100cm of armour. And suddenly, it's clear what a huge problem your proposed solution has created - because if the Raptor could have 100cm of armour in 2669 merely by changing alloys... why does the Longbow only have 30cm of armour? It doesn't make sense.

There is another thing to consider, BTW. Why do you assume that there should be a smooth curve from WC1 to WCP? This goes against what we know from real life - technology doesn't follow curves. Sometimes technology will develop slowly and gradually for a century... and then will make a huge leap forward in the space of a few years. And of course, this is more likely to happen in wartime than otherwise, because it is during wartime that people put the most effort into making their technology better than the enemy's. So, how much sense would a smooth curve really make?

 

[Dragon1]

There is another thing to consider, BTW. Why do you assume that there should be a smooth curve from WC1 to WCP? This goes against what we know from real life - technology doesn't follow curves. Sometimes technology will develop slowly and gradually for a century... and then will make a huge leap forward in the space of a few years. And of course, this is more likely to happen in wartime than otherwise, because it is during wartime that people put the most effort into making their technology better than the enemy's. So, how much sense would a smooth curve really make?

This is what I have been saying all along. We definitely have an issue when we try to glue the WC3 world into the rest of the WC Universe in terms of ship specifications.

One thing though....perhaps Tungsten and Isometal were not used by Confed at all during the war period. We know that the TCS Lexington (the Heavy Carrier) had 90 cm of plasteel armor (or the equivalent of 900 cm of durasteel). This was a brand new ship. So this may mean that Confed just chose not to armor their ships with other material.

Thus, going by the Armor Unit / CM debate, a Ranger class CV had
100 cm equivalent of forward armor (or 10 cm of plasteel)
Knowing that a Bengal class CV in 2654 had 24 cm of forward protection, I can see a Ranger in 2654 as having 10 cm of forward protection.

 

[Quarto]

This is what I have been saying all along. We definitely have an issue when we try to glue the WC3 world into the rest of the WC Universe in terms of ship specifications.

That's the opposite of what I just said, though - we do not have an issue when we try to glue the WC3 world into the rest of the universe. Yes, the first time you look at WC3 stats and you see that tenfold increase, it is shocking - but it's only shocking because it's different, not because it doesn't make sense. In the context of the rest of the universe, it makes perfect sense. There is no issue.

One thing though....perhaps Tungsten and Isometal were not used by Confed at all during the war period. We know that the TCS Lexington (the Heavy Carrier) had 90 cm of plasteel armor (or the equivalent of 900 cm of durasteel). This was a brand new ship. So this may mean that Confed just chose not to armor their ships with other material.

Strictly speaking, we know that the Lexington has 90cm of... durasteel equivalent. That's right - while the stats shown on the fighter selection screen inside Armada use plasteel armour, the manual uses durasteel equivalent, giving the Armada Arrow the dubious honour of being the weakest-armoured ship ever seen in the Wing Commander universe, with a mere 1.2cm of durasteel equivalent .

What this means exactly is beyond me, though - do we assume that the Armada ships are indeed protected more by their paintjob than by their armour, or do we assume that both the Lexington and the Shiraak have the WC universe's most incompetent intelligence officers? Indeed, Voices of War throws another spanner into the works by providing a date for the Kilrathi officer's ship intel reports.. and the date is 2654.092 . Which would of course be a good way of getting us out of this terrible problem of having ships with 1.2cm of durasteel armour... except that while we can have doubts in regards to the rest of the ships (i.e., even the "new" Banshee could be a new version of an old Banshee), we know the Wraith and Jrathek are absolutely brand new ships, whose prototypes had first appeared in 2667. So... uh... whatever .

 

[Dragon1]

That's the opposite of what I just said, though - we do not have an issue when we try to glue the WC3 world into the rest of the universe. Yes, the first time you look at WC3 stats and you see that tenfold increase, it is shocking - but it's only shocking because it's different, not because it doesn't make sense. In the context of the rest of the universe, it makes perfect sense. There is no issue.

Understood. But there is an issue.

An 800 cm. torpedo against a cruiser that has 1000 cm armor and 30,000 cm core points would cause little damage. Now if the centimeters of armor/core were in fact 'armor units', 4 torpedoes would kill said cruiser. Now that makes sense.

 

[Death]

Strictly speaking, we know that the Lexington has 90cm of... durasteel equivalent. That's right - while the stats shown on the fighter selection screen inside Armada use plasteel armour, the manual uses durasteel equivalent, giving the Armada Arrow the dubious honour of being the weakest-armoured ship ever seen in the Wing Commander universe, with a mere 1.2cm of durasteel equivalent .

On the other hand, it also has the honor of being the fastest fighter ever, with a cruise speed of 795, and an AB of 2195 (values off the top of my head, too lazy to look).