Ship supplies

Wedge009

Wedge009

Rogue Leader
I was watching a surprisingly interesting 17th-century(?) shipping drama on the (Australian) ABC a few nights ago and it brought up a few issues which never seemed to be resolved in the games. Not that supplies ever seemed important in WC, unless it was grog...

I understand from the SO fic that the Midway was meant to be self-sufficient, yet a supply convoy was to rendezvous with it. Of course, fresh supplies can never be refused, but since the convoy never made it, surely morale would have fallen some.

The Cerberus pulled into several ports (as well as comandeering a convoy :)), but I wonder how the other carriers re-supplied.

The Lexington carrier in Armada was meant to be totally self-sufficient - how are self-recycling systems supposed to work? I can see how water purification can solve the water problem, but food? I don't really know what they'd do with their sewege...

Any comments?
 
The Lexington wasn't self-sufficient in that sense, Wedge :). That is to say, they weren't capable of existing indefinitely in a bubble cut off from the rest of the universe. It's just that they didn't require supply convoys and bases. Instead, what they did was gather raw resources from planets. They then (presumably) used those resources to grow food in hydroponic vats or something.

The Midway also wasn't self-sufficient in that 'we can live all by ourselves for a century' sense. That supply convoy was needed - but it wasn't the only convoy around. We can assume that once they had re-established their link with Confed HQ, supply convoys were sent out regularly. The Eisen Carrier Group, for example, probably had five or six Pelicans right behind it. The reason why the player didn't see these ships, of course, is because escort missions are just so boring when you can be killing Leviathans and Orcas instead :).
 
Fair enough. It's just that the show I referred to had the problem of suspected plague. The first supply ship was blown up by the enemy upon sighting (major morale drop, the ship was on half rations already) so they sent a small group to a port to negotiate for grain, cattle and such. Trouble was that after the trade was made, the native negotiator collapsed with fever, and the team had to be quarantined for three weeks.

The SO 'story' makes a point of disease outbreak, I just wonder how Confed would have handled that one.
 
Originally posted by Wedge009
The SO 'story' makes a point of disease outbreak, I just wonder how Confed would have handled that one.
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That's what the next game was supposed to answer among other questions. :)
 
Quarantine

They have had a couple smaller epidemics to practice with. The WCIV novel discussed how the Intreped was forced to stay in orbit after the Black Lance Bioweapon attack, and force craft to return to the surface or shoot them down if they wouldn't. The SO documentation also talked about ships and facilities that had been contaminated being destroyed. It may have been done at the initative of the commanding officer or it may have been SOP in that situation. I would tend to think it was the latter. My gues is Confed would try to juggle the responsibilty of fighting the bugs and try to keep people from traveling between systems. How well that works... Ever read Stephen King's The Stand? If not it offers some insights to this kind of problem.
 
(a) Yes it was and it was a damned good series
(b) NR: Your .sig is much too long.

TC
 
What's the deal with those buoys around the Midway in the sims??? is there anyway of getting stuff out of them? how come we can't blow 'em up? what's the point of them?

and yeh...what do they do with their excretements??? just chuck it into space??? that would be lovely wouldn't it??? ur flying against an ace and all of a sudden, this big pile of poo comes right into your windscreen and you can't see!

ur sensors detect soemthing funny going on around a satellite and u go and investigate to find out what somebody had for breakfast, lunch and dinner all in one!

an enemy carrier runs into this floating pile of wee and the liquid shortcircuits the carrier and it explodes :)))
 
Buoys, or containers? Why blow up Confed's precious jump markers?:) If you want to dock with something, look for the Redeemer in one of the missions.
 
Originally posted by No Regret
TC: Bite me :) There's only 22 days remaining :D
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You greatly overestimate your remaining lifetime, NR.

TC does have a point (unlike the one atop your head) about the sig. It is kinda long, especially considering the shortness of most of your posts. (No, that doesn't mean babble even more to bulk up your posts, either.)
 
Originally posted by No Regret
I believe you're talking about the critically acclaimed Horatio Hornblower tv drama series.
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Correct, I didn't think anything on the ABC would be well known. Last night I saw the ep where he gets captured by the Spanish, and 'wins' his freedom by rescuing Spanish from a shipwreck in the middle of a storm. Risking yourself like that, seemed a bit Blair-ish to me. Predictable ending, but it was still good fun. Wish I'd found out about it earlier.
 
containers...why can't we blow 'em up? its fun to blow up stuff like that :)

what's the point of them anyway? I mean you can't exactly do anything with them, except bounce them around and waste ammo on it...oh hang on...they kind of do serve if an enemy force attacked, coz some fire would be blocked by those containers...but i still don't see the point of them and it would be good to be able to get stuff like ammo out of 'em...somehow...
 
Well, when I, for example, make a mission, there's usually tons of stuff in it which I just happened to be trying out, and forgot to remove later. You know, derelict remains of the Intrepid, 'cloaking' alien drones, a Fralthi cruiser or two... that sort of thing :).

Does that answer your question about the existence of the containers? The mission designers were probably just playing around with the training missions.
 
Well, they don't really cloak... they just become sorta seethrough... you can still target them, though, so the system is kinda buggy. We're working on it, though ;). As for 'how', go see the 'Films' thread over in Editing.
 
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