X_FIREFALCON
Spaceman
Not sure if this has been asked (if it has, I can't really think on how to do an effective search through the forums on it), but I'm a bit curious about distances and the time it takes to get there in the Wing Commander Universe.
I suppose if we wanted to get technical about it, we could take the data on the speed of various ships, base the approximate time it'd take them to get from Point A to Point B in a given game and determine how that fits into the universe map of Wing Commander, but just in general, this is something that's always nagged at my brain a bit...
In a mission in Wing Commander, the area you need to patrol passes through X number of waypoints tens or hundreds of km apart (or more?), so you set the autopilot, you get the cool little flyby, and you're at the next waypoint a second later. How much time would actually have passed, though? Minutes, hours? Based on this, how long would you expect an average flight patrol mission to take?
As another thing that's been nagging me, it seems that in games, the ship you're stationed on crosses a number of systems in a matter of days. By contrast, in the part of the Wing Commander movie where Tolwyn is bringing up the map to approximate the Kilrathi and Concordia Fleets' time to enter Earth Space, the maps that are brought up are of Vega and Sol, and it seemed like it was going to take each group 1.5-2 days to reach Earth without anything in their way. Does anybody remember (either in the movie or have background information) where the Concordia was at this point? From the maps brought up, it almost seemed like the Concordia was actually IN Sol in the middle of nowhere and had to crawl all the way back to Earth (and again, that would take them nearly 2 days)...but then it's mentioned that they're passing through Jump Points, so they must be outside of it somewhere??
Also, perhaps indirectly related to all the above, part of me is also wondering about the standard pilot rotation schedule aboard ships of war during conflicts in Wing Commander. It seems like the poor main character is doing his flight one second, has to turn around and help rescue the second shift, then is woken up to defend the ship from an enemy attack, then has to lead one of the squadrons assaulting an enemy fleet or enemy starbase the next morning. It seems like most of the games occur during events that transpire over just a week or two, and only a couple of days pass while you're doing your thing in a given system (which tends to amount to more than just 1 or 2 missions), and usually that involves quite a number of different duties like I say...and part of me assumes the games kind of ignore the occasional likely patrols the main character might be flying where absolutely nothing happens. When you consider the time that needs to pass between the waypoints in these missions and factor in the whole time thing...just kind of curious how long these poor guys are expected to stay alert and functional... Does anybody sleep in those 1-2 weeks??
Anyway, just some random little oddities that popped up in my head over the years that I never managed to locate answers to elsewhere yet (as always, please correct me if I'm wrong about this)...
I suppose if we wanted to get technical about it, we could take the data on the speed of various ships, base the approximate time it'd take them to get from Point A to Point B in a given game and determine how that fits into the universe map of Wing Commander, but just in general, this is something that's always nagged at my brain a bit...
In a mission in Wing Commander, the area you need to patrol passes through X number of waypoints tens or hundreds of km apart (or more?), so you set the autopilot, you get the cool little flyby, and you're at the next waypoint a second later. How much time would actually have passed, though? Minutes, hours? Based on this, how long would you expect an average flight patrol mission to take?
As another thing that's been nagging me, it seems that in games, the ship you're stationed on crosses a number of systems in a matter of days. By contrast, in the part of the Wing Commander movie where Tolwyn is bringing up the map to approximate the Kilrathi and Concordia Fleets' time to enter Earth Space, the maps that are brought up are of Vega and Sol, and it seemed like it was going to take each group 1.5-2 days to reach Earth without anything in their way. Does anybody remember (either in the movie or have background information) where the Concordia was at this point? From the maps brought up, it almost seemed like the Concordia was actually IN Sol in the middle of nowhere and had to crawl all the way back to Earth (and again, that would take them nearly 2 days)...but then it's mentioned that they're passing through Jump Points, so they must be outside of it somewhere??
Also, perhaps indirectly related to all the above, part of me is also wondering about the standard pilot rotation schedule aboard ships of war during conflicts in Wing Commander. It seems like the poor main character is doing his flight one second, has to turn around and help rescue the second shift, then is woken up to defend the ship from an enemy attack, then has to lead one of the squadrons assaulting an enemy fleet or enemy starbase the next morning. It seems like most of the games occur during events that transpire over just a week or two, and only a couple of days pass while you're doing your thing in a given system (which tends to amount to more than just 1 or 2 missions), and usually that involves quite a number of different duties like I say...and part of me assumes the games kind of ignore the occasional likely patrols the main character might be flying where absolutely nothing happens. When you consider the time that needs to pass between the waypoints in these missions and factor in the whole time thing...just kind of curious how long these poor guys are expected to stay alert and functional... Does anybody sleep in those 1-2 weeks??
Anyway, just some random little oddities that popped up in my head over the years that I never managed to locate answers to elsewhere yet (as always, please correct me if I'm wrong about this)...
