destruction of Concordia
I can't begin to imagine how the Concordia was eventually shot down. The fact that Blair wasn't on board goes a long way toward making it plausible that a concentrated Kilrathi strike force may have had success in bringing the super-ship down, but damn....I can vividly remember how good the Concordia was at defending herself! No Cruiser, Destroyer, Carrier, or Dreadnought could withstand a single blast from her Phase-Transit, or even two volleys from its anti-matter cannons. The Phase-Transit could get off a shot every two minutes or so, with intermediary shots coming off from its anti-matter guns, which managed to fire about every two minutes as well. Because of the superb armament of flak cannons she had at her disposal, as well as her gigantic fighter escort (100+ of Confed's finest fighters!), I don't believe that any bomber/fighter wing could have made a successful bombing run (plus the Concordia had a tough shell, and could take 6-8 torpedos AT LEAST). And that's even with Corvette support. That bit of deduction implies that a large carrier force (or two) would have been sent to intercept the Concordia if the Kilrathi made it their primary target. However, even if two carrier groups were launched and managed to achieve the element of surprise I still think even their best efforts at destroying the Concordia would have still ended in failure. Bottom line: Kilrathi fighters cannot penetrate her fighter support, Bombers cannot complete the torpedo runs neccesary to destroy her because of the fighter/flak/anti-matter screen, and CapShips cannot threaten her because for every 3 CapShips they get within firing range they would have already lost 2....that attrition rate is simply too high, even for the battle-hungry Kilrathi- not to mention they lose CapShips so fast against the Concordia that those ships don't have enough time to get off enough anti-matter volley to significantly damage her. Despite all of tjhese deductions (and I admit, while logical, they are still based on the limited knowledge/data that I have available though experience fighting alongside the Concordia) the ship ended up a scrap heap on some backwater planet. The cats managed to take her down. So finally, here's my theory on how the invincible Concordia was destroyed. Remember how the Tiger's Claw was destroyed? Of course you do. The Kilrathi held on to some top-secret, extremely devastating new technology (in this case, stealth fighters) and they waited to the most opportune time to use it for a first strike. My theory is that in the Concordia's case, they waited until Blair was off-ship and then used the opportunity to unveil the Skipper missle. Without the infallible Blair to take down these missles, and with a sufficiently large volley, none of the Concordia's vast defensive array would have been capable of exposing and stopping the Skippers. Since they were first used sometime between WC2 and WC3, which is the same time the Concordia was destroyed. I don't know how the hell a race of warmongering cats with giant precision-less digits, and little value placed on science and discovery keeps managing to developing such miraculous technologies, but the Skipper missle sure paid off anyway. !!