Plunkett Class Cruiser - Improving wiki entry

Iceblade

Admiral
Here's the story:

The original layout of the Plunkett class cruisers mounted 2 anti-fighter missile turrets in place of the 2 particle cannon turrets on the center pylon. (...)

Shortly after her commisioning, the Plunkett and two sister-ships (Cernan, Borman) were involved in a brief skirmish with a group of pirate corvettes. Through the course of the engagement, the Cernan and the Borman were destroyed as the faster and more manueverable corvettes repeatedly flanked the two cruisers.
The Plunkett was eventually able to force the remaining pirate vessels to disengage, and returned to port with heavy damage. Following this encounter, all the remaining ships in the class were scheduled for refit, which involved removing the two missile turrets, strengthening the pylon and mounting the particle cannons.


I found it a bit strange that two small AA missile turrets were replaced by two massive Anti-Capship gun turrets with no reduction in any other field. Well maybe there were, I just don't know.

From a thread... a long long .... long time ago, back when the poor still used dial-up for internet. There is this little nugget about the Plunkett that I didn't know before.

So there was development history for the Plunkett class! I knew about the design document, but never this story. It looks like there is more information to this story as well. Would be great to include on the WC wiki; at least in the trivia section or as part of a non-canon section.

Also a spent a little time fixing up the Plunkett entry on the wiki. Suggestions are welcome.

https://www.wcnews.com/wcpedia/Plunkett-Class_Cruiser

Edit: So, the ellipses made me think there was a portion removed. There wasn't. This is whole story. Still a nice bit of history.
 
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Unfortunately, I cannot upload the source documents to the wiki. Not sure if it is a privilege issue or a wiki bug or a browser incompatibility.
 
Unfortunately, I cannot upload the source documents to the wiki. Not sure if it is a privilege issue or a wiki bug or a browser incompatibility.

Hmm, I don't think it's not you. Something is up with uploads it seems. Do you just get a white screen page when you try to go to the upload screen?

I don't recall that story. Where was it from?
 
Yeah, a white screen.

I honestly don't remember where I downloaded the document - probably the wcnews ftp or news article link.

The story is brought to us by Loaf from way back in 2000/2001, and I believe it was written by Captain Johnny or by a designer under him.
 
Oh, is there a name for the Secret Ops campaign? I'm not sure that Nephilim Incursion is the correct term.
 
Will have to wait until Kris can take a peak at what's going on with it to upload the file.

I'm not 100% sure. Is it given a name in S*S?
 
No official name, it mentioned for Amazon that she participated in the Kilrah Campaign and the capture of the Proxima Gate. So maybe the Sol campaign or the Proxima campaign.

There is actually a lot of information about the Nephilim War included in Star Soldier. Numerous battles and campaigns are mentioned as well as additional wormholes.
 
I could've sworn the events of Secret Ops were referred to as the Proxima Incursion but I'm not sure anymore.

How old is the Plunkett model anyway by Secret Ops? Is it supposed to be the successor/replacer to the Tallahassee?
 
I think this thread calls for a Loaf cameo

Regarding the Plunkett:

In-universe, there is nothing to indicate age. The story above implies a post-Kilrathi war introduction of the cruiser.

The ship along with the Murphy were actually non-WC side projects by their respective artists that were "too cool" not to incorporate into Secret Ops. We got two brand new capship classes out of the blue... or rather black in this case instead of seeing more Tallahassee and Southampton class capital ships - how boring would that have been.

I would assume that they are post-war production (though not necessarily post-war designed) capships. Since they were not encountered at Ella or the frontier during the Black Lance Incident, we can assume that none of them had been commissioned by WC4.

The similarity in the Murphy bridge with the Midway's imply some cross pollination in bridge design, but I have doubts that the TSY Archology created the Murphy class given the definition of Arcology.
 
I think this thread calls for a Loaf cameo

Regarding the Plunkett:

In-universe, there is nothing to indicate age. The story above implies a post-Kilrathi war introduction of the cruiser.

The ship along with the Murphy were actually non-WC side projects by their respective artists that were "too cool" not to incorporate into Secret Ops. We got two brand new capship classes out of the blue... or rather black in this case instead of seeing more Tallahassee and Southampton class capital ships - how boring would that have been.

I would assume that they are post-war production (though not necessarily post-war designed) capships. Since they were not encountered at Ella or the frontier during the Black Lance Incident, we can assume that none of them had been commissioned by WC4.

The similarity in the Murphy bridge with the Midway's imply some cross pollination in bridge design, but I have doubts that the TSY Archology created the Murphy class given the definition of Arcology.
Internally the Plunkett and Murphy are referred to as wc3crusr.iff and wc3dstry.iff respectively. They may have planned for the Talla and South to be those ships but replaced them with the Plunkett and Murphy from the side project later on.

The pretty poor Vesuvius model is also referred to as wc3cv.iff internally but the Vesuvius wasn't from WC3 so you can take file names with a grain of salt.

I know we're going totally off topic here but since we're talking about SO craft and their implications on timeline, continuity, and lore, was Ella expanded from it's prior state or rebuilt? I don't remember what Origin considered the canon choices in WC4, I believe someone who knows their stuff said the novel takes precedence. It's expanded upon in the SO design and I'm not sure if that's supposed to be an improvement, retcon, or new version after Blair flashpak'd the old one.
 
I know we're going totally off topic here but since we're talking about SO craft and their implications on timeline, continuity, and lore, was Ella expanded from it's prior state or rebuilt? I don't remember what Origin considered the canon choices in WC4, I believe someone who knows their stuff said the novel takes precedence. It's expanded upon in the SO design and I'm not sure if that's supposed to be an improvement, retcon, or new version after Blair flashpak'd the old one.
Well, this is really a bit of a myth. We often talk about the novels taking precedence, because they provide one path through the non-linearities of the games. In fact, though, that relationship between novels and the rest of the canon has always been unstable and inconsistent. While we know of a few situations where Origin requested specific changes to novels in development in order to make sure they are consistent with what they're planning to do in the games, we also know that Origin was quite content to disregard the novels when preparing the WCP map, for example.

I believe that Origin never had an internal, "official" stance on what is and isn't canon in the WC universe. The universe itself was small enough that they didn't really need to concern themselves too much with such details, and simply never had to confront any genuine challenges on this part. The books were always written "on order" from Origin, and so they never encountered a situation where one of the books would create significant changes to the universe, changes that had to be taken into account in the future. Even something like Action Stations, which practically rewrote the start of the war... just plain wasn't ever relevant, because Origin was busy at the other end of the timeline. For similar reasons, nobody ever really would have needed to ask whether the choices made in WC3 and WC4 book adaptations were "canonical" over other alternatives presented in the games, because most of these choices would never have any impact on the rest of the universe. Did it matter how Blair and the rest of the crew got along in WC3? Not in the long run. It's not like the writers of WC4 or WCP would go back and check what possible choices Blair had in WC3, and would then write their script accordingly. New stories had no need to refer back to the old, so the question went unanswered. The only instance where we know Origin cared about keeping the choices made in the novel in line with their own thoughts, was when they requested that Maniac and Vagabond survive the final mission in the novel. But that was actually the only instance where such choices mattered in the first place. You must also keep in mind that the range of possible conflicts was much smaller than might be thought. Of course Blair didn't flashpak Ella. Of course Blair didn't replace Tolwyn and seize control of the Black Lance. You know, these were utter no-brainers, because Blair is the hero, and he follows the winning path :). (the only time anyone ever dared to make the non-winning path the canonically correct one, was us - in Standoff. But Standoff wasn't a canonical product; I'm sure if Origin made Standoff, they would have determined that the winning path must be designed as the official outcome)

We know that various Origin staffers over the years have confessed to never reading the novels, and thus never sparing a thought to whether something from the novels could or should be imported. The Landreich was a big elephant-in-the-room - you had this significant political entity that the novel writers just kept on pushing, and then you had Origin continually refusing to take any note of it. They didn't deny the canonicity of the Landreich, they just ignored it (unless you choose to take the WCP map as an outright, in-your-face denial of the canonicity of the Landreich). At the same time, we can clearly see that Origin's internal writing department must have read the novels and been familiar with them, because we get the Hakaga mentioned by name in the Armada manual (albeit with a spelling mistake), and because the KSaga manual contains a press clipping that explicitly refers to some of the events of End Run.

Managing the canon of a universe is not something most game developers in the 1990s had to seriously deal with. It wasn't Star Trek or Star Wars, where you had to keep things sorted because there was ten or more products in development at any one time, and hundreds of products already available. It just didn't seem to matter. So we never got an official stance on any such details like order of precedence etc.


Ok, that digression aside, as for Ella itself - I'm pretty sure it's identical in SO as in WC4, just a slightly revamped and retextured model.
 
Thank you. Unfortunately, it doesn't allow for document files.

As for the entry, I have done much of what I am able to with the entry.
 
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