Gilgamesh Class Destroyer

I don't know, the Paradigm carries only normal fighter type guns whereas the Gilgamesh sports 2 Antimatter guns which bypass shields (and seem to to have a 360° fring arc). I don't think the Paradigm's puny armour can sustain many hits. The Gilgamesh is also faster.

To be honest, it always bugged me the Paradigm was classed a destroyer it's so incredibly unimpressive from what we know. Especially if we consider that its counterpart in Priv, the Kamekh is a corvette. The Paradigm always felt like a corvette to me.

But the official word is destroyer and obviously wasn't a mistake since FX manual says that it's even one of the most advanced destroyers. So the Paradigm probably has some hidden capabilities we don't know of. Still, from what we do know I think it's rather a stretch to say that the Paradigm would put up a good fight :).
 
But the official word is destroyer and obviously wasn't a mistake since FX manual says that it's even one of the most advanced destroyers. So the Paradigm probably has some hidden capabilities we don't know of. Still, from what we do know I think it's rather a stretch to say that the Paradigm would put up a good fight :).

Hmmm... I see your point. Perhaps that's why we never see any more of them.
 
To be honest, it always bugged me the Paradigm was classed a destroyer it's so incredibly unimpressive from what we know. Especially if we consider that its counterpart in Priv, the Kamekh is a corvette. The Paradigm always felt like a corvette to me.

The version of its counterpart that we see in WC2 is a corvette. The Kamekh in Privateer is a destroyer. It definitely seems that there are things that we don't know about Confed's "most advanced destroyer" however.
 
The version of its counterpart that we see in WC2 is a corvette. The Kamekh in Privateer is a destroyer. It definitely seems that there are things that we don't know about Confed's "most advanced destroyer" however.

I get the feeling it was a prototype... perhaps the actual model was supposed to have thicker armor and more conventional weaponry.

Or perhaps a destroyer escort? Designed to be an anti-fighter ship?
 
Or maybe confed was trying to save money on armor since it was just fighting corvettes anyway! :p
 
I get the feeling it was a prototype... perhaps the actual model was supposed to have thicker armor and more conventional weaponry.

We see them all over patrolling the border, so doesn't seem like it.

Or perhaps a destroyer escort? Designed to be an anti-fighter ship?

Then it would be a corvette. It is what it is, you can't come up with explanations to solve a problem that doesn't exist.
 
Do you know if the concept of armor value (thickness or "equivalent protection") was normalized across the games from the beginning to the end or did each game make up its own values as it went along?

Yes and no, I suppose. Yes in that the entire system is an imaginary scale invented for the fictional background of the Wing Commander universe... no in that balancing was done, by necessity, on a game-by-game basis... it's a lot more important for the armor numbers to work right inside one game than to be broadly applicable to everything that has come before.

Still, that does seem to have been the overall attempt -- the armor numbers increase over time in rough parity. Of course, there's the problem of setting versus production timeline - Privateer becomes something of an odd man out, since its numbers are scaled (if that's a fair term) to those of the developed-at-the-same-time Wing Commander II rather than the set-at-the-same-time Wing Commander III.

To be honest, it always bugged me the Paradigm was classed a destroyer it's so incredibly unimpressive from what we know. Especially if we consider that its counterpart in Priv, the Kamekh is a corvette. The Paradigm always felt like a corvette to me.

As Chris noted (and I think others missed), the Privateer manual actually calls the Kamekh a destroyer (it's in the maneuvers guide - the specifications simply call it a capital ship). Still, there must have been some internal debate about the Privateer capital ships before the final decision was made. The game's internals actually refer to the Paradigm as 'FRIGATE'.

Hmmm... I see your point. Perhaps that's why we never see any more of them.

That isn't much of an argument, as the escort ships rarely (if ever?) make the transition from one game to another. In fact, the Paradigm may be the rare exception, as it appears in both Privateer and Origin FX.

I get the feeling it was a prototype... perhaps the actual model was supposed to have thicker armor and more conventional weaponry.

This doesn't pass the 'huh?' test, meaning that it's possible but there's absolutely no reason to think so. There's no indication anywhere that the Paradigm is some sort of prototype; rather, they're several years old (the description in Origin FX is dated 2664), they appear in the 'Gemini Sector' civilian guide to the sector and they're a fairly common sight in the regio (Paradigms - sometimes two at once - can randomly appear at thirty-odd places in Gemini, not counting plot missions).

Yeah in Gemini. Besides Perry, Gemini didn't seem to high a priority to anyone.

I guess that depends what you mean by priority. We know there was fighting there: the Privateer manual says the last major battle was in 2658 and we see an apparent Kilrathi fleet deployed there in Righteous Fire.

... but more importantly, we know that the entire region only exists in the first place because of the war. The Confederation explored and entrenched Gemini specifically to help counter the Kilrathi threat (think of the United States' desire to secure California in the 19th century in order to keep it away from the British).
 
Still, that does seem to have been the overall attempt -- the armor numbers increase over time in rough parity. Of course, there's the problem of setting versus production timeline - Privateer becomes something of an odd man out, since its numbers are scaled (if that's a fair term) to those of the developed-at-the-same-time Wing Commander II rather than the set-at-the-same-time Wing Commander III.
We can suppose, though, that this stems from the upgradeability of the armour in Privateer. Wasn't it always a general theory that the WC3 designers upscaled the shield and armour values specifically to take this into account?

Either way, it could definitely be argued that the stats in the Privateer manual are simply valid before the switch to plasteel and then tungsten. We don't see any ships other than the player getting an upgrade during Privateer, but that doesn't mean there are no upgraded ships out there already (...for example, on the Vega section of the frontline)
 
The version of its counterpart that we see in WC2 is a corvette. The Kamekh in Privateer is a destroyer. It definitely seems that there are things that we don't know about Confed's "most advanced destroyer" however.

As Chris noted (and I think others missed), the Privateer manual actually calls the Kamekh a destroyer (it's in the maneuvers guide - the specifications simply call it a capital ship). Still, there must have been some internal debate about the Privateer capital ships before the final decision was made. The game's internals actually refer to the Paradigm as 'FRIGATE'.

Cool, thanks for that piece of information. I indeed missed that statement in the maneuver guide. It balances then the Paradigm at least in Priv itself but makes the Kamekh also one unimpressive destroyer ;).

Paradigm as a Frigate...would make it better in my mind (what is completely irrelevant) but I still thought of it as a corvette.
 
Another thing occured to me... Priv, judging from the stats taken from the Playtester's Guide (has anyone ever extracted actual in-game stats to confirm these?), seems to actually have the correct in-game stats in the manual itself. That is to say, when the manual says the Paradigm has 80/65/50 cm of armour, the Playtester's Guide confirms that this is indeed what it has in-game. This is in contrast to WC2, where the manual claims the Gilgamesh has 250/250/200 cm of armour, while the game itself only gives it 58/58/50 cm. So, the interesting thing is that if we went by the in-game stats, we'd have to say the Paradigm is in fact the better armoured of the two.

Does this mean anything, considering that the manual stats remain what they are? I don't know. I mean, we can't just ignore the manual stats... but then again, the WC2 manual gives us data about the Kamekhs (300/300/280 cm and phase shields) that would also make them better armoured than the Gilgameshes in that same manual are. Ironically, that would mean that having Kamekhs as destroyers rather than corvettes in Privateer is not so far-fetched - but we do have to reconcile this with the Kamekh's remarkable weakness in the game itself.
 
Another thing occured to me... Priv, judging from the stats taken from the Playtester's Guide (has anyone ever extracted actual in-game stats to confirm these?), seems to actually have the correct in-game stats in the manual itself. That is to say, when the manual says the Paradigm has 80/65/50 cm of armour, the Playtester's Guide confirms that this is indeed what it has in-game. This is in contrast to WC2, where the manual claims the Gilgamesh has 250/250/200 cm of armour, while the game itself only gives it 58/58/50 cm. So, the interesting thing is that if we went by the in-game stats, we'd have to say the Paradigm is in fact the better armoured of the two.

Does this mean anything, considering that the manual stats remain what they are? I don't know. I mean, we can't just ignore the manual stats... but then again, the WC2 manual gives us data about the Kamekhs (300/300/280 cm and phase shields) that would also make them better armoured than the Gilgameshes in that same manual are. Ironically, that would mean that having Kamekhs as destroyers rather than corvettes in Privateer is not so far-fetched - but we do have to reconcile this with the Kamekh's remarkable weakness in the game itself.

What about a different form of Armor? Does it specify what armor the Gilgamesh has? Could it have Tungsteel instead of plasteel or something like that as its an older ship? In theory that would make sense as to why its armor would need to be thicker??
 
Another thing occured to me... Priv, judging from the stats taken from the Playtester's Guide (has anyone ever extracted actual in-game stats to confirm these?), seems to actually have the correct in-game stats in the manual itself. That is to say, when the manual says the Paradigm has 80/65/50 cm of armour, the Playtester's Guide confirms that this is indeed what it has in-game. This is in contrast to WC2, where the manual claims the Gilgamesh has 250/250/200 cm of armour, while the game itself only gives it 58/58/50 cm. So, the interesting thing is that if we went by the in-game stats, we'd have to say the Paradigm is in fact the better armoured of the two.

Does this mean anything, considering that the manual stats remain what they are? I don't know. I mean, we can't just ignore the manual stats... but then again, the WC2 manual gives us data about the Kamekhs (300/300/280 cm and phase shields) that would also make them better armoured than the Gilgameshes in that same manual are. Ironically, that would mean that having Kamekhs as destroyers rather than corvettes in Privateer is not so far-fetched - but we do have to reconcile this with the Kamekh's remarkable weakness in the game itself.

That's interesting.

Also, I just remembered that WC1 offered a fair share of ridiculous cap ship armour values when compared to fighters, especially on the Ralari.
 
Also, I just remembered that WC1 offered a fair share of ridiculous cap ship armour values when compared to fighters, especially on the Ralari.
Well, yeah... but the WC1 capship armour values were more or less consistent between the game and the manuals. I think that's more a case of something else - a capship could conceivably have such weak armour and still be really tough to destroy, if you take into account that most of the vital stuff is shielded by an additional layer of armour in the form of the ship itself (i.e., the ship's power plant is probably hidden behind several layers of crew cabins, recrooms, briefing rooms, engineering rooms, and so on).

That's the way it works in real life - it's ridiculously easy for a modern jetfighter to breach an aircraft carrier's hull with even a single missile, but that really doesn't get you far - it's a huge target, and you've merely made a small hole in it.

So basically, the armour values in WC1 are ok - and so is the Kamekh's in-game armour value, too. It's just that the games don't simulate (the way WCP and Freespace eventually did) the idea that a single hull breach is not enough to kill a capship.
 
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