Lexington Depression

Interesting. I just noticed something...

This weapon can punch through the heaviest shields, and it delivers four times as much damage as the most powerful gun on any fighter
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Even by 2669, the ability of the gun to phase penetrate shields had already been acknowledged to be lost. Now, it slams shields like any other gun. Change in shielding perhaps?
 
Dragon1 said:
Hello everyone,

I have recently re-acquired a copy of Wing Commander IV and began playing it for the first time in almost three years. Having defected Confed, I have come to the mission where Eisen orders you to escort the Intrepid through the jump point in the Silenos nebula. During the mission, Eisen states, "...don't get sentimental on me Colonel. You know what you have to do...", meaning, remove the TCS Lexington from the path of the jump point.

Up to this point in the game, my choice to defect was based more on being able to fly the cool BW fighters as opposed to the same old Hellcat and Longbow, not so much on the story providing me with a true motivation to defect Confed.

Eisen's little speech is interesting, he implies to Blair that the Lexington must be neutralized (in the case of the game, destroyed or leeched). The Lexington, reborn after the Battle of Earth, and arguably one of the few Confed fleet carriers in service immediately after the Kilrathi war was something of a symbol of Confed- or, more to the point, of the soul of Wing Commanders I-III. The in-game model is even a cleaned up version of the Victory. Destroying this ship really serves as a full disconnection from Confed, perhaps the game makers point. But, because of the my past playing Wing Commander for so many years, I had a really hard time firing the torpedoes to kill the ship.

Further, for reasons beyond my current understanding of the game mechanics, the ship only takes TWO torpedoes to kill, even though the specs on the WCIV torpedo show 2000 damage units and the core points of the Concordia-class CV = 6000 armor units (so, at the very least, THREE torpedo hits to kill). They could have at least made the damn thing harder to kill! and where by god are its escort ships?

All in all , I love Wing Commander IV, but this mission for me is really the lowest point in the game. Again, the ship could be leeched, but this isn't even brought up in the mission briefing. I think the game designers wanted the Lexington destroyed, even if that wasn't the official resolution in the Wing Commander IV novel.
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Wow, I didn't know you could just leech the Lexington. It's been so long since I'd played it (PS1 version), I forget the option if it was even there or not. But I always just took the meaning to destroy her. Maybe I'm a heartless bastard, but killing the Lex posed me no troubles.
 
Dragon1 said:
Excerpt from 'VICTORY STREAK' on the Antimatter Gun



In fact, it would appear in 2669 when standard heavy fighters and bombers and were equipped with phase shields that the AMG was an integral part of defense. Not so much an offensive weapon against capships, but as a defensive weapon against Corvettes, heavy fighters and bombers.

So why scrap it. Surely, the guns would have been more than useful against Avengers and Broadswords (or anything else the BW could field).
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Yeah, but remember in WC II where you flew a Broadsword that found a Kamekh (or two...? Don't remember exactly) that you could then down? Officially, they weren't supposed to have antimatter guns, and even then, the antimatter guns weren't supposed to be able to be accurately aimed against even bomber-sized craft. But they got me a few times anyway. Good thing those Broadsword shields were so durable!
 
Going on a tangent here, but I never quite understood why the Lexington would have to be at the jump point itself. It was obvious enough at the time that Paulsen knew where the Intrepid was going - so why not just send a strike force in wait at the jump point instead of going face to face.

Knowing how vulnerable a fleet carrier is at point blank range...
 
Mincemeat, that was the point, to show how little Paulsen knew about combat. In the novel Eisen comments to Blair that he has no actual combat experience, being a paper-pusher back on Earth with no more fleet service than as a junior lieutenant aboard a destroyer (IIRC on the ship type).
 
It would have been nice though if Paulsen at least kept some escort ships around. A destroyer or a cruiser would have at least increased the mission difficulty a little.

Does anyone remember what the Lexington's fighter force consisted of at this time according to the novel?
 
I imagine she carried her standard complement of 96 ships. Probably two squadrons of Arrows, two Hellcat squadrons, two Thunderbolt squadrons and a Longbow squadron. WCIV squadrons were sixteen ships each so that would be 96 total.
 
Sylvester said:
I imagine she carried her standard complement of 96 ships. Probably two squadrons of Arrows, two Hellcat squadrons, two Thunderbolt squadrons and a Longbow squadron. WCIV squadrons were sixteen ships each so that would be 96 total.
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Except a large portion of the fighter storage deck was off limits due to Tolwyn's projects. When Blair arrived, the Lexington had just four squadrons (one each of the four you mentioned. your numbers don't add up to 96 btw).
 
I think the game designers wanted the Lexington destroyed, even if that wasn't the official resolution in the Wing Commander IV novel.
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Other way around -- this is the *most* pure mission of Wing Commander IV... because it's the one that doesn't make the 'good' choice obvious.

The game is clearly designed to reward you (with the other cutscene) for figuring out a more moral way to complete the mission.

It would have been nice though if Paulsen at least kept some escort ships around. A destroyer or a cruiser would have at least increased the mission difficulty a little.
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This is discussed in the novel - Paulsen intentionally moved the Lexington ahead of her escorts in order to catch the Intrepid as quickly as possible... and paid the price for his incompetance.

Even at maximum difficulty, the Lex still goes down with two torpedoes. I am a little confused about the mechanics of the game. As stated earlier, the torpedoes are stated as doing 2000 untis of damage and the Concordia-class has 6000 core hit points (this would mean at least three torpedoes to kill). So what's up?
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There's some odd mechanics to the 'core' idea... but basically, 6,000 is the *maximum* number of damage points it can suffer. You almost always hit some critical component well before that number is reached.

LOAF, in the universe continuity, were the DDs and CCs from WC III the same as those from WC IV that were lacking the AMGs and had less protection? Would it be a stretch to say that the Wing Commander IV ships were older and didn't incorporate the same technology that the Sheffield, Coventry, and Ajax had?
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I suppose you could come up with any number of stories -- maybe they're just intentionally lighter versions which are being used for border patrol and anti-piracy, where heavy hitting battleships aren't necessary.
 
Just a thought...

We know that the AMG came as refinement in the particle gun and has been equipped on Confed ships since the Concordia-class Super Cruisers (if not before). The technical specs of the AMG in WC II and III pretty much match, but their descriptions do not. The WC II AMG is hailed as shield penetrating anti-capship gun, and besides the PT-cannon on the Concordia, would appear to be the primary battery of Confed capships.

By the time 2669 rolls around though, the AMG is stated to be a 'secondary' armament that while being four times more powerful than the heaviest fighter-scale gun, is no longer as useful against other capships. It is good for engaging corvettes, bombers, and heavy fighters. Further, it is known that the AMG has lost its shield-penetrating capability.

While we see some actions in the 2669-2673 era where capships in the games exchange AMG fire with eachother (specifically Ajax vs. Fralthi II and Vesuvius vs. Saint-Helens), the far more prevalent method of capship warfare consists of using guns to defend the ships against opposing fighters, and using missiles to take out other capships. The games specifically use CSMs, while capships in the novels use torpedoes. We can assume that both CSMs and torps exist on Confed ships.

Did Confed realize that the AMG has lost its effectiveness? Perhaps the heavy ion guns, plasma batteries and particle batteries that were so prevalent in the Prophecy/ SO era were already in development for new ships and were to be the new 'primary' anti-shipping guns of Confed capships. Perhaps ships like the Pluncketts were so massive simply because they were implimenting technology that had yet to be refined and minaturized.

Again though, just a thought.
 
Sylvester said:
I imagine she carried her standard complement of 96 ships. Probably two squadrons of Arrows, two Hellcat squadrons, two Thunderbolt squadrons and a Longbow squadron. WCIV squadrons were sixteen ships each so that would be 96 total.
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Minus a few ships, of course, due to Eisen, Maniac, Blair and Vagabond. :D
 
Dragon1 said:
We know that the AMG came as refinement in the particle gun and has been equipped on Confed ships since the Concordia-class Super Cruisers (if not before). The technical specs of the AMG in WC II and III pretty much match, but their descriptions do not. The WC II AMG is hailed as shield penetrating anti-capship gun, and besides the PT-cannon on the Concordia, would appear to be the primary battery of Confed capships.

By the time 2669 rolls around though, the AMG is stated to be a 'secondary' armament that while being four times more powerful than the heaviest fighter-scale gun, is no longer as useful against other capships. It is good for engaging corvettes, bombers, and heavy fighters. Further, it is known that the AMG has lost its shield-penetrating capability.

Did Confed realize that the AMG has lost its effectiveness? Perhaps the heavy ion guns, plasma batteries and particle batteries that were so prevalent in the Prophecy/ SO era were already in development for new ships and were to be the new 'primary' anti-shipping guns of Confed capships. Perhaps ships like the Pluncketts were so massive simply because they were implimenting technology that had yet to be refined and minaturized.
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What are you trying to figure out here? You're kind of theorizing elaborate scenarios based on shaky stuff to begin with (drawing lines where none necessarily exist). Before you start guessing about specific things at specific times here, you need to understand that weapons and shields evolve in cycles. It's not that the AMG "lost" anything in WC3 so much as shield technology is more resistant. As guns become better at penetrating shields, better shields are developed so that all weapons appear to have to batter them down. Later on, weapons reach the point where they appear to slice through shields (or actually do, in weapons such as the phase-transit cannon). In every cycle, there may be different weapon technologies which happen to perform better against the shielding at the time. In WC2, AMGs are powerful weapons against corvettes, bombers and heavy fighters, and in WC3 they're still powerful anti-capship weapons.
 
I think I was trying to figure out why they are classified as 'secondary' weapons on friendly and enemy capital ships in 2669, and what the 'primary' weapons might have been. I don't think that I was suggesting that the gun itself becomes less powerful. In fact I stated that the physical specs of the WC II and the WC III AMG remained the same, while the description of the function of the gun changed.

If the AMG wasn't becoming obsolete due to improvements in defensive technology, then why were they not featured on ships in SO? The Hades, Murphy, and Plunckett class were all armed with Heavy Plasma, Particle or Tachyon weapons and the Midway with Ion Cannons- note, no AMGs. The Vesuvius class had AMGs, but being a carrier (not a capship vs. capship vessel) the inclusion of such guns would fit the defensive description found in the 2669 version of the Victory Streak manual.
 
Plasma and Particles were probably just better. I mean, the technologically superior Nephilim uses plasma weapons for this purpose, so I guess it's "the capship gun of the future".:)
 
...or the past.

We know that older battleships like the North Carolina, Malta, and Belarus were armed with plasma batteries. I wouldn't say better though, just different.
 
I disagree with fans doing this. Ask yourself *why*. For what reason would we ever need to sit down and decide, untold, which technologies are 'obsolete' and 'decomisioned'. What about not having a particular gun in a paricular game makes us need to explain anything at all? It's not there -- that's all we can know.


We don't need to strike it from the record, we don't need to take it out of our toybox and throw it away. A technology isn't obsolete, a ship isn't retired until they say so -- and maybe not even then (look at the neutron gun).

Antimatter Guns weren't in Prophecy -- maybe it was a gameplay reason (well, it was), maybe it was a continuity reason... without more information, which we don't and can't have, we can't 'decide' anything. There is no requirement that we narrow the size of the universe ourselves. The next t ime someone puts together a Wing Commander game or a fan project or a piece of fiction, they can take any of the dozens of guns introduced in the past -- from ordinary lasers to those sonic guns from Armada. No reason to force that possibility away... there's no limits!
 
Antimatter Guns weren't in Prophecy -- maybe it was a gameplay reason (well, it was), maybe it was a continuity reason... without more information, which we don't and can't have, we can't 'decide' anything.
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Well, in Prophecy, the capships are made immune to most of the "older" guns(fighter based, anyway), and the plasma gun shows up, and cuts through them like butter. That lead me to believe that the plasma gun would be the favored anti capship cannon of the Prophecy era.

I wasn't making up some weird fan explanation as to how antimatter guns couldn't possibly exist at the time, simply pointing out that the plasma gun was the newest anti capship weapon and seemed to be quite capable of getting the job done, and that might be the reason for us not seeing the AMG on the newer ship designs.
 
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