Gamal Gan/Bonnie Heather

That would be ordnance. :p

Yet again, the game designers had to resort to "cheap tricks" to preserve critical capital ships, ie render them invincible. You can lob a Mace at the Gamal Gan (which, for some reason, seems to have a far smaller sprite than normal Dorkathi) and it will not blow up. Similarly for the Concordia. Using the 'finger-of-death' in debug/cheat mode on such ships will cause the game to freeze, IIRC.
 
The 'smaller sprite' bug is odd... it happens a few other times, too - the BWS Tango in Wing Commander IV has a similar problem.
 
Really? I never bothered looking at the Tango... that's the capship which picks up the Bearcats in Speradon, isn't it? I can understand sprites being smaller than they're supposed to, but whole 3D models?
 
There's something wrong about how the Tango displays its model - you *always* see the 'far away' version and never get the detailed close up model. The latter does exist - you can play around and display it elsewhere in the game...
 
While I have crashed in the Gamal Gan several times due to its small size I never realized something is odd with the Tango - but I rarely go to Speradon, I found the Circe missions to be more fun.
 
LOAF, do you mean that the textures are all low quality or is the actual mesh itself simplified as well? Either way, that's a fascinating little bit of trivia. Too bad I prefer to fly the Circe missions, I'll have to keep that in mind next time I'm in Speradon.
 
LOAF, do you mean that the textures are all low quality or is the actual mesh itself simplified as well? Either way, that's a fascinating little bit of trivia. Too bad I prefer to fly the Circe missions, I'll have to keep that in mind next time I'm in Speradon.
Click to expand...

I *believe* the capship models themselves are simplified at a distance, but I know for sure that the textures are. You can notice this most easily with a ship that has a fly through bay - once you get a certain distance away the bay becomes 'painted on' instead of a hole in the geometry.

The Tango was especially noteworthy to me because it's a "fixed" version of the Intrepid -it shows what the carrier would have looked like without the damage (the Aces Club group used to insist it would have had a 'conning tower' where the blast damage in WCIV is... but no.)
 
This is the Tango:

wc4durango2.png
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thanks for that. So the model we see for the Intrepid just has the blast damage on the top-side.

BTW, the links to the Durango in the ships2 directory are broken. But I suppose it is still a WIP.
 
I don't really see where the tower would have gone... the damaged section is off to the side, and not far enough to the side to not be above the landing bay.
 
There's no tower - that was just something the Aces Club group used to insist (another popular instance was that the Intrepid was two destroyers welded together... I'm not sure where that one came from).
 
Bandit LOAF said:
There's no tower - that was just something the Aces Club group used to insist (another popular instance was that the Intrepid was two destroyers welded together... I'm not sure where that one came from).
Click to expand...

Thats what I'm saying, I do not understand the Aces Club's thinking here as the ship really doesn't have a place for such a tower. In terms of the design... I can actually see two ships welded together as a feasable thing. I always thought that the Intrepid seemed a bit large to be a destroyer.
 
Thats what I'm saying, I do not understand the Aces Club's thinking here as the ship really doesn't have a place for such a tower. In terms of the design... I can actually see two ships welded together as a feasable thing. I always thought that the Intrepid seemed a bit large to be a destroyer.
Click to expand...

Well, the Ace's didn't always think too *hard*. This is the group that had Mechwarrior-style marines in Wing Commander and which killed Blair immediately after Wing Commander 3 since they assumed there wouldn't be a sequel to the best-selling game of all time (at the time). :)

Point of fact, though, we have absolutely no idea how big the Intrepid is - it never gets a length or mass. It is sort of interesting that the Achilles-class ships from Wing Commander Academy look vaugely similar - with the same 'two prongs' along their hulls.
 
Isn't there a way to compare size in the engine itself?

Out of curiosity, did the Concordia-class carrier ever have a designated lenght/mass? Also, was there ever a specific reason for it to only have 9 turrets, instead of the 11 on the Victory? I always thought that was a little strange that they went to the trouble of removing the two side turrets.

I agree that the Intrepid did seem to be bigger than the Southhampton classes, but I always thought it was at most half the size of the Lexington.
 
I assume you meant half the length. The flight deck, clearly, is much shorter than the Lexington of WC4.
 
mustanger said:
Out of curiosity, did the Concordia-class carrier ever have a designated lenght/mass? Also, was there ever a specific reason for it to only have 9 turrets, instead of the 11 on the Victory? I always thought that was a little strange that they went to the trouble of removing the two side turrets.
Click to expand...

Maybe the 2 turrets were replaced with more anti-capship weapons? I know we never see them but given that every Confed carrier class we see, with the exceptions of the Concordia-class and the Lexington-class which we never see engage enemy capships, has anti-capship weapons it's only logical to believe that there are some on the ship.
 
I think half the size is a bit of an extreme. I did my best to eyeball both ships size based on the size of the Hellcat right as it launched out of the hanger. She's definitely smaller, but i think the Intrepid being a bit more then 2/3s the size is more accurate.
 
Out of curiosity, did the Concordia-class carrier ever have a designated lenght/mass? Also, was there ever a specific reason for it to only have 9 turrets, instead of the 11 on the Victory? I always thought that was a little strange that they went to the trouble of removing the two side turrets.
Click to expand...

I don't think there's a specific size or a reason for the turret change (other than the most likely one, an artistic choice to make the ships look a little different.)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top