In praise of the Waterloo

[Farbourne]

There was a thread going on a bit ago about comparing capship speeds, but it got me thinking again about something I have wondered about in the past, and thought it might spark some interesting discussion...

It always seemed to me that the WC2 era Waterloo was one of the best capital ships of its day. If I remember correctly from the Janes guide included in the WC2 documentation, the Waterloo was equal to or superior to the Kilrathi Fraltha (which was considered one of the Kilrathi's most fearsome designs at the time--or at least this is the implication in the games) in almost every respect. It mounted four AM cannons to the Fraltha's three, had equivalent armor and was faster (I think?...I don't have the manual in front of me right now...), carried a significant fighter complement, bristled with flak cannons, and apparently even had the hanger/launcher capacity to carry large bombers such as the Crossbow (or at least, could be modified to do so, as the Gettysburg obviously was). In fact, the Waterloo was so powerful that Blair judged the Concordia's chances of taking on the mutineer base to be "not good" if the pirates brought the Gettysburg to her defense, and Jazz refers to the presence of the Agincourt as a huge aid to the Concordia when they are in K'Tithrak Mang.

I'm wondering what its disadvantages were, if we (i.e. the people who are experts in WC canon) know of any. Were they damage prone despite their armor, or extremely expensive, or difficult to maintain? Or was the Jane's guide that came with WC2 "wrong" and overstating how good the Waterloo actually was? Or were they really just a fantastic capital ship?

And what happened to them? I haven't read all (actually, any...I know, I know, I'm getting to them...one of these days!) of the novels, but in the in-game fiction, the Waterloo never shows up after Special Ops. Were there never that many of them in the first place? Were they all mothballed during the cease fire and destoryed by surprise Kilrathi attacks, or were they wiped out at the Battle of Earth, and none could be rebuilt by WC3? Or were there still plenty operating, just not where we the player ever happen to see them? Or were they a design that was heavily dependent on the paticulars of WC2-era technology (completely protective phase shields, slow-firing AM guns, small fighters such as ferrets and epees, etc) and hence quickly became outdated when technology evolved?

 

[Mekt-Hakkikt]

While I agree that the Waterloo is a good ship (I was always impressed by its speed 200 kps to the Fralthra's 150 kps), it's not as perfect as you remember:

it has considerably weaker armour than the Fralthra (700/600 cm vs. 300/250 cm) and they both carry the same number of fighters (40). And it is said that a Gettysburg only carries small fighters like the Ferret and Epee (though I am not entirely convinced by that).

 

[floundericiousMI]

Right on M-H, I always thought of the Waterloo vs. Fralthra as being HMS Hood vs. HMS Rodney

Both heavily armed, both similarly equipped and crewed...but the Hood having the advantage in agility & speed and the Rodney being much more heavily protected.

 

[Eder]

Well, we know from SO1 that Waterloos can carry Crossbows, so if they only carry small fighters (where is that mentioned?), it's not due to a limitation in their design.

 

[Dundradal]

Well, we know from SO1 that Waterloos can carry Crossbows, so if they only carry small fighters (where is that mentioned?), it's not due to a limitation in their design.

I think it's a confusion of a quote. IIRC The Crossbow is designed to work on smaller flight decks because it smaller than the Broadsword. Will have to go look at the text to be sure though.

 

[Farbourne]

The TCS Gettysburg could obviously carry Crossbows, because she was testing the prototypes when the mutineers took over. And you fly a Crossbow off the Gettysburg.

However, I do recall reading somewhere that Waterloos only carried Epees and Ferrets (although that may have been fanfic and not canon). Certainly, when flying against the mutineers, you only encounter Epees and Ferrets, although I'm not sure that's conclusive given that space stations obviously can carry Sabres (we see some on the flight deck on Caernarvon), and the mutineers did manage to take over a space station as well as the Gettysburg.

I always figured that maybe the Waterloos only carried light fighters in their "basic" configuration, but obviously they can be modified or equipped to carry larger fighters. Chances are there are tradeoffs to be made (i.e. maybe they can carry 40 Ferrets and Epees, but one sabre takes up the space that 3 Ferrets take up, and one Crossbow takes the hangar space that five Epees do, or something like that).

 

[Farbourne]

Also, I know Standoff isn't "canon", but I imagine the Standoff designers had some material somewhere that suggested that a Gilgamesh class destroyer could carry larger fighters (the Lionheart carries Gladii and we see Sabres landing on her at the end of Ep 1). A Gilgamesh is significantly smaller than a Waterloo, so I don't see why a Waterloo should be limited to carrying only the smallest, lightest of fighters.

 

[Eder]

Well, there's two issues there.

First off, I'm not sure where we got the idea of a Gilgamesh carrying fighters from. It may have well been something we made up for no particular reason other than knowing that Exeters (which are also destroyers and which weren't originally planned to be included in Standoff) carry fighters, coupled with the need for a small capship that carried fighters in order to set our prologue during the false truce. Maybe WC2 mentions Gilgameshes carrying fighters, but right now I do not remember such a thing.

Second, and more important, everyone just needs to realize that there is no reason at all why ship sizes should be directly related to fighter capacity. At all. Ever. Ships are built differently, for different roles, and fighters aren't added to them to fill the extra empty space, nor is space by any means the only or the most important factor to determine if a capship can support more fighters or not.

I've been seeing a lot of this kinds of reasoning around here lately (granted, most of them sparked by whatshisname's absolutely idiotic posts) and it's just too drastic an oversimplification to make. Operating a fighter wing is more complicated than stuffing fighters inside big empty spaces which may or may not exist inside a ship... and even the existance of huge empty spaces depends on the ship's internal layout (which we have absolutely no idea about), and not on how long a ship is.

 

[Farbourne]

Second, and more important, everyone just needs to realize that there is no reason at all why ship sizes should be directly related to fighter capacity. At all. Ever. Ships are built differently, for different roles, and fighters aren't added to them to fill the extra empty space, nor is space by any means the only or the most important factor to determine if a capship can support more fighters or not.

Eder,

Thanks for the clarification. I didn't mean to put words in your mouth, or imply that Standoff was any more than it is from a canon point of view (although, as a testament to you guys, to me it FEELS more Wing Commander than some of the actual "official" WC sources that are in the canon...nice job!) It's actually ironic that you did something that may or may not be consistent with the "official" story (put fighters on a Gilgamesh) for story-driven reasons, but when you get right down to it, that's probably exactly how many of the characteristics in the official WC canon came to be--the game designers (or movie/TV show writers, or novelists) did things for story driven reasons, and the only reasons why their work is canon and Standoff is not is that you guys didn't get paid by EA!

On the second issue:

I would agree that to just take a ship's length (or tonnage) and extrapolate a fighter complement is probably overly simplistic. As you said, ships have different functions, and different capabilities that have nothing to do with their size. And the fact is, we just don't know enough about the physics of how WC ships work to extrapolate anything. But I would argue that the ship size sets an upper bound on fighter complement. For an extreme (and kind of silly) example, there's no way a Venture-class corvette could carry a complement of 100 fighters.

Fighters are fairly bulky, and while they are not added to fill empty space, you certainly need to have a certain amount of space on a ship that's not being used by something else before you can have fighters. Not only is the space to actually store the fighter when not in use necessary (and for a fighter that's ~10-20 m long and ~5-10 m wide or high, we're talking quite a bit of space per fighter), but you need to allow space for working on the fighter, and space for moving fighters around and getting them to the flight elevator/launch tubes/whatever you use. Then there's the space taken up storing spare parts, armaments (missiles, etc), fuel, and the space necessary to support the technical staff and pilots who service and fly the ships.

So I guess I would agree with you that just because a Waterloo (or another large ship) is biggerer than a Gilgamesh or an Exeter, it doesn't imply that it has an equal or larger fighter complement. However, size and space do factor in. It's likely that the reason why a Waterloo carries 40 fighters, and not 80 or 100, is that it's not big enough to carry 80 or 100 (at least, not without shedding some AM guns or some armor and becoming a carrier instead of a cruiser, but that gets back to your point about function). And furthermore, unless it is limited to 40 fighters for reasons unrelated to space (and I can't think what those would be), a ship that carries 40 Epees and Ferrets probably could only carry a much smaller number of Broadswords and Sabres.

 

[Eder]

Yes, capship sizes (or rather, volumes) do set an upper limit on how many fighters a ship can carry... that much we know, from Physics.

However, what I object to is the comparation between ships. There's no way to do that. You can say that it's impossible for a Waterloo to carry 4000 fighters, but you still can't say that a Waterloo being half as long as a Bengal is the reason it can't carry more fighters than X % of a Bengal's complement. Maybe the Bengal just has a really, really big fish tank in its rec room.

I also disagree about the 10 Broadswords versus 40 Epees thing. There are probably much more important things to consider than storage room... It's not a matter of being able to *store* the ships, it's a matter of being able to *operate* them. Can the ship support extra pilots? Extra mechanics? Extra tow trucks? Extra fuel pumps? Extra spare parts? Can you just park three small ships in the same big hangar, or is each hangar designed to store a single ship? None of this stuff depends on the size of each fighter, it only depends on the number of fighters.

Even in the most extreme case of space deprivation we know about (Wake-class CVEs), the Tarawa DOES manage to carry extra Marine LCs when it absolutely has to... yet, this space isn't normally used to store more fighters.

(IIRC, Bear also mentions that these LCs were almost as big as Broadswords).

 

[Bandit LOAF]

And what happened to them? I haven't read all (actually, any...I know, I know, I'm getting to them...one of these days!) of the novels, but in the in-game fiction, the Waterloo never shows up after Special Ops. Were there never that many of them in the first place? Were they all mothballed during the cease fire and destoryed by surprise Kilrathi attacks, or were they wiped out at the Battle of Earth, and none could be rebuilt by WC3? Or were there still plenty operating, just not where we the player ever happen to see them? Or were they a design that was heavily dependent on the paticulars of WC2-era technology (completely protective phase shields, slow-firing AM guns, small fighters such as ferrets and epees, etc) and hence quickly became outdated when technology evolved?

There's no background about them - or *most* capital ships. We don't know how old they are in Wing Commander 2 and we don't know when they're 'removed' from service. In all likelyhood they're around later... they certainly 'feel' more advanced than the destroyers and cruisers in Wing Commander III (which were as old as the war itself.)

I think it's a confusion of a quote. IIRC The Crossbow is designed to work on smaller flight decks because it smaller than the Broadsword. Will have to go look at the text to be sure though.

I don't think this is stated anywhere (it certainly *is* smaller than a Broadsword and we know that Confed was developing spacecraft for CVEs at the time... but I don't think anything canonical ever puts one and one together.)

However, I do recall reading somewhere that Waterloos only carried Epees and Ferrets (although that may have been fanfic and not canon). Certainly, when flying against the mutineers, you only encounter Epees and Ferrets...

What we're actually told is that the Gettysburg specifically has a complement of Ferrets and Epees... and then it's later revealed that she's also testing the top secret Crossbows. Which is to say that the comment defines only what that particular Waterloo has been assigned, while the game itself confirms that they can operate fairly large bombers at the very least.

... but then End Run weirds things up a little by calling the Gettysburg a fleet carrier. The Wing Commander bible tries to retcon that by claiming that there's a carrier conversion called the Jutland which has alternate specifications... but that never becomes official. It is worth noting that you can shoot down more than 40 Confed fighters in Special Operations 1 -- although some of those might come from the captured supply depot.

... although I'm not sure that's conclusive given that space stations obviously can carry Sabres (we see some on the flight deck on Caernarvon), and the mutineers did manage to take over a space station as well as the Gettysburg.

The star bases in Wing Commander II are actually huge - 2.4 kilometers across. They can carry as many as *400* fighters (although Caernarvon only has a few.)

First off, I'm not sure where we got the idea of a Gilgamesh carrying fighters from. It may have well been something we made up for no particular reason other than knowing that Exeters (which are also destroyers and which weren't originally planned to be included in Standoff) carry fighters, coupled with the need for a small capship that carried fighters in order to set our prologue during the false truce. Maybe WC2 mentions Gilgameshes carrying fighters, but right now I do not remember such a thing.

There's no *official* confirmation that Gilgameshes carry fighters... but there are two indicating factors. One is that the Wing Commander movie novel mentions that Blair was briefly assigned to the TCS Gilgamesh after graduation. It doesn't specify that he was flying fighters... but what the heck else would he be doing? The second is just the fact that Captain Johnny used to say that any ship larger than a corvette could carry fighters if it were necessary... which seems like a good design axiom to follow.

For an extreme (and kind of silly) example, there's no way a Venture-class corvette could carry a complement of 100 fighters.

Tell that to The Secret Missions SNES.

Maybe the Bengal just has a really, really big fish tank in its rec room.

In fact, it does - there was a large swimming pool on the Tiger's Claw (from the Ultimate Strategy Guide.)

 

[Farbourne]

On Gilgameshes and fighters:

In the in-game mechanics in WC2, in at least one mission (I only tried it once) at the end of the mission you can actually fly up to a Gilgamesh (the TCS Hector? Whatever was escorting the Concordia) and "Request Docking" instead of flying up to the Concordia and "Request Landing", and end the mission that way. At least I think you could.

That at least implies that a Gilgamesh could dock with fighters. Of course, a Dorkathi or Free Trader could also dock with fighters (as we see in Special Ops), so that doesn't imply that it could "carry" fighters in a hangar.

 

[Mekt-Hakkikt]

Just to clarify: I didn't mean to say that an official source states that Waterloos only carries Ferrets and Epees but that people here have said (or I understood them that way) that because the Gettysburg carried only Ferrets and Epees that all Waterloos only carry Ferrets and that anything else is an exception.

 

[ChrisReid]

On Gilgameshes and fighters:

In the in-game mechanics in WC2, in at least one mission (I only tried it once) at the end of the mission you can actually fly up to a Gilgamesh (the TCS Hector? Whatever was escorting the Concordia) and "Request Docking" instead of flying up to the Concordia and "Request Landing", and end the mission that way. At least I think you could.

Are you sure about that? There'd be no landing animation for such a thing, and obviously you never fly off a Gilgamesh in the game.

 

[Farbourne]

About 90% sure. I remember thinking "how odd, I wonder if they planned at any point to have you operate off a Gilgamesh?"

I even tried it. This was a long time ago, so I don't remember exactly what happened. It may have just said "Permission denied" and nothing happened. But I have vague memories of it working... All it does (if I remember correctly) is trigger the Concordia landing sequence, and you end up on the Condordia. Unfortunately, I discovered this at a point in the mission before I had fulfilled all the mission goals, so I landed immediately and ended up failing the mission. :-(

 

[floundericiousMI]

I could be off my rocker here...but wasn't there something in one of the official booklets/books about Gilgamesh-class ships being better than the old Exeter-class because they were modular and could be converted for all kinds of duties, including carrying fighters.....

?? *shrug* anyone else recall that passage?

 

[Mincemeat]

About 90% sure. I remember thinking "how odd, I wonder if they planned at any point to have you operate off a Gilgamesh?"

I even tried it. This was a long time ago, so I don't remember exactly what happened. It may have just said "Permission denied" and nothing happened. But I have vague memories of it working... All it does (if I remember correctly) is trigger the Concordia landing sequence, and you end up on the Condordia. Unfortunately, I discovered this at a point in the mission before I had fulfilled all the mission goals, so I landed immediately and ended up failing the mission. :-(

It might be one of the solo courier missions where you see Downtown... I think the game engine needed a dummy "home base" and the destroyer was it.