Launch tubes on tigers claw

Wow really cool pictures LOAF thanks for those, but now theres another problem, do you think its ok to take the 9 tubes from the ACADAMY Claw and give it the claw from WC1. I mean what do we really know from the Acadamy CLaw? I dont know what backstage info you have but i did only watch the episodes and there are absolutly no stats to this ship, hell it could be a completly other class of ship or another version of the bengal we see in wc1 (thats why I stated at the beginning that i am refering to the "original claw" from wc1 with the blueprints from the "claw marks")

For better understanding, suppose the guys from saga or standoff or any other mod would make THE most accurate Tigers Claw in 3d we ever saw with the blueprints from claw marks, would it still have 18 tubes?

(btw, sorry about so much technobabble but hell i am the kind of guy who is mostly interested in the ships and their capabilities :) )
 
But LOAF, doesn't the Handbook refer to the Movie TClaw?
The numbers for fighter heights mentioned here a kinda crazy. Current fighters (which seem to have roughly the same proportions) are rarelly taller than 5 meters
 
Edfilho said:
But LOAF, doesn't the Handbook refer to the Movie TClaw?
The numbers for fighter heights mentioned here a kinda crazy. Current fighters (which seem to have roughly the same proportions) are rarelly taller than 5 meters
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I agree but the lenght for a wc1 aera fighter is given in the claw marks and when you do a rough pixel comparision you get this numbers, but yes i agree they are way to large.......but what is to be done since its canon?
 
Wow really cool pictures LOAF thanks for those, but now theres another problem, do you think its ok to take the 9 tubes from the ACADAMY Claw and give it the claw from WC1. I mean what do we really know from the Acadamy CLaw? I dont know what backstage info you have but i did only watch the episodes and there are absolutly no stats to this ship, hell it could be a completly other class of ship or another version of the bengal we see in wc1 (thats why I stated at the beginning that i am refering to the "original claw" from wc1 with the blueprints from the "claw marks")
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I'm not clear on what you mean - they're the same ship... the majority of Wing Commander Academy episodes take place *during* the original Wing Commander (in mid-late 2654).

But LOAF, doesn't the Handbook refer to the Movie TClaw?
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It'll still give you a good idea of what percent of the ship is dedicated to what facility... and it's the best source we've got for pinpointing where most individual areas are.


I agree but the lenght for a wc1 aera fighter is given in the claw marks and when you do a rough pixel comparision you get this numbers, but yes i agree they are way to large.......but what is to be done since its canon?
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The fact that they're "canon" simply means that future fighter lengths should (and did) take into account the weird error -- it doesn't mean we have to think up an excuse for it. Clearly the fighters *can't* be so big, because we see them compared directly to the size of a person in a cutscene...
 
Bandit LOAF said:
I'm not clear on what you mean - they're the same ship... the majority of Wing Commander Academy episodes take place *during* the original Wing Commander (in mid-late 2654).
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Well I know thats (in theorie) the same ship but come on, you must confess that the acadamy claw - although there are many similarities - looks quite different. You just need to compare it to the Bengal in the Unknown Enemy Mod which comes pretty close to the WC 1 Bengal ship.
 
Has anyone actually ever tried scaling the fighters using say a comparason between their cockpit sizes and the size of a comparable conventional fighter to come with a more reasonable length than usually arrived at? I seem to recall trying this with the Rapier-G early on in the XWA conversion, which wound up somewhere around the 11-12m range rather than the typically quoted 19m.
 
Well I know thats (in theorie) the same ship but come on, you must confess that the acadamy claw - although there are many similarities - looks quite different. You just need to compare it to the Bengal in the Unknown Enemy Mod which comes pretty close to the WC 1 Bengal ship.
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I don't think the style in which something is drawn is enough of a reason to make up some sort of convoluted story about there being two Tiger's Claws at the same time that all the same characters are on. That's just silly - even the original Wing Commander had three conflicting 'looks' for the Tiger's Claw:

Claw Marks: http://claw.solsector.net/ships/tigersclaw.gif (five engines)
In Combat: https://www.wcnews.com/ships2/images/4views/wc1bengal4.gif (six engines)
Cutscene: https://www.wcnews.com/loaf/amithetc.jpg (seven engines)
 
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Nob Akimoto said:
Has anyone actually ever tried scaling the fighters using say a comparason between their cockpit sizes and the size of a comparable conventional fighter to come with a more reasonable length than usually arrived at? I seem to recall trying this with the Rapier-G early on in the XWA conversion, which wound up somewhere around the 11-12m range rather than the typically quoted 19m.
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Well, my guess is they mixed up 'meters' and 'feet' - in that case, the 36-foot length and approx 12-foot height of the Raptor fits in perfectly with the tech standing beside it as you taxi in. However, since they've written those figures down, we'll keep 'em.
 
Haesslich said:
Well, my guess is they mixed up 'meters' and 'feet' - in that case, the 36-foot length and approx 12-foot height of the Raptor fits in perfectly with the tech standing beside it as you taxi in. However, since they've written those figures down, we'll keep 'em.
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Yes sounds like a good idea, didnt the NASA loose a satellite or something because they mixed foot and meters? :p

@ LOAF, well if you say that each Tigers Claw (no matter how many engines or if it looks different) has the same stats and fighting capabilieties its perfectly ok for me i wont bother you with it until judgement day :) . I just wonder why they didnt incorporate such a superior design (the number of fighters you can launch at a given time) in more modern ships as the confederation class. Maybe because of better armor and shielding technology and superior torpedo defense (in fleet action it seems that cap ships are almost invulnerable to torpedos if not attacked by entire bomber wings) fighters once again where not as usefull as in the claw aera? Or was the confederation class designed mostly for defensive action and holding the ground? Or both? whats your thoughts?
 
Atekimogus said:
...didnt the NASA loose a satellite or something because they mixed foot and meters?
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One of the Mars probes, actually.

The launch tubes may have been an unacceptable design compromise, Atekimogus. Also, remember, other carriers are designed to operate in battlegroups, not as lone wolves like the Bengals. Because of that, they don't necessarily need to launch fighters as fast. Personally, I'm not sure that the reasoning holds water, but it does make some sense when viewed logically. It probably is cheaper and increase hull strength to limit the number of openings to space in the armor.
 
Oh, I'm sorry, I lost this thread somehow. Yes, I would say that any iteration of the Tiger's Claw has the same specifications - they're just drawn in different styles. Like how all the SWC ships look different, but they all have the same lengths/masses/shields/armor/etc.

My guess is that the Confed-class is a rush job - an attempt to meet the Kilrathi PAG threat as quickly as possible... they went from the Sivar being destroyed to the TCS Confederation entering service in just five years, which is an incredibly fast amount of time.
 
Possibly already in the works in some form but then altered after the advent of the PTC? Although I know this idea might not work as we all know the PTC makes up the keel of the ship, but after knowing that a heavy carrier typically takes 5 years to build (and that's after designing and testing etc) it's very hard to swallow that a ship that is able to take such a beating (Does anyone have a count of how many torps we know hit the Concordia?) is such a rush job.
 
Hm the confederation also have two wings which do not serve an obvious purpose, would it be possible that they have also small tubes for emergency launches there? (although in the first few missions in wc2 you have to save the concordia because of their two launch bays closed but i think its either more a gameplay issue (hell, two ferrets saving a concordia??) or the damage to the launch bays was an internal one so that they couldnt shift fighters?)

It would also be a nice explanation why the bengals and confederation classes are the more expensive ones and not as easy to mass product then the concordias, because of the much more complex launching systems (i never fully understood why exactly a ship which is smaller (bengal) or only about 200m bigger is that more expensive to built in comparison to the concordia-class carriers)

So whats your thoughts?
 
Something like this, you mean?
 

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Hm the confederation also have two wings which do not serve an obvious purpose, would it be possible that they have also small tubes for emergency launches there? (although in the first few missions in wc2 you have to save the concordia because of their two launch bays closed but i think its either more a gameplay issue (hell, two ferrets saving a concordia??) or the damage to the launch bays was an internal one so that they couldnt shift fighters?)
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Well, we've never seen anything like that on the Concordia... and as you point out, there's story reasons that indicate that such a thing doesn't exist. So given the lack of evidence and the fact that it'd only introduce a weird contradiction it's probably best not to try to find extra ways for the Confederation-class to launch fighters.

It would also be a nice explanation why the bengals and confederation classes are the more expensive ones and not as easy to mass product then the concordias, because of the much more complex launching systems (i never fully understood why exactly a ship which is smaller (bengal) or only about 200m bigger is that more expensive to built in comparison to the concordia-class carriers)
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I don't think anyone's ever claimed that they *are* more expensive, though. They're closer to "line" ships - armed and armored for capital ship combat, which theoretically could increase cost and complexity... but I don't think anyone has ever said that they cost more (in terms of time or money) than an ordinary fleet carrier.
 
6+7: Very nice confed class, but is there still enough room in those wings for the engines with the launch tubes in?
Ed: Hornets are not more expensive then civilian heavies, overall, but pound for pound they definitely are because of the amount of design work and the amount of extra equipment that has to be stuffed into such a smaller volume. Not to mention the stress differences, different performance envelopes, etc...
 
Thanks, SonOfStorm. To my knowledge, the engines are located wholly in the tailfins, leaving the wing-like structures without much of any purpose. I'm not ashamed to say that I started making stuff up when my recollection of the game and the images I could dig up came up short.

I threw the launch tubes in when this thread first started, actually, as a study in feasibility. It's certainly possible for the wing structures to house launch tubes, given appropriately scaled fightercraft (I haven't actually scaled either ships in the picture to their given measurements), although I'd be more inclined to believe that they're used to mount some of the ship's antimatter guns.

However, I agree with Loaf's assertion that it creates too many contradictions to suggest that the Confederation-class has anything other than the primary runways as a means of egress. To be perfectly honest, I always assumed that the Confederation's carrier capacity was an afterthought, given how easily (and the degree of frequency) the Concordia's flight deck is knocked out.

Realistically speaking, I'm sure that any ship fulfilling a dedicated carrier function would have a secondary launching mechanism (with some obvious exceptions, like the kitbashed CVEs of End Run, or any destroyer with a token fighter wing).
 
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