1.) Graphics
-While they were good in 1991, they are lousy by today's standards. This is in hind-sight from a 2003 point of view.
-The ships are only limited to 256 colors, leaving the ships with very basic colors such as green, red, orange, yellow. There are also silver colors as well, and some brown, but that's about it. The colors are not muted or toned-down.
-The ships moved jerky.
*When they turned left, they did so not in one smooth motion, instead you saw them from the front, then suddenly from the side.
*This was because they used hand-drawn pictures, and turned them into sprites... whatever they are and only took pictures of them from certain angles, so they wouldn't have to incorporate an entire 3D-Mesh into the design which would have been beyond the resources of their technology back then, and even if not, would have been beyond the system-requirements of most computers.
-The laser beams, and neutron bolts look like balls of light, rather than beams. That's not realistic.
2.) Flak Cannons
-Oi Vey! These are these stupid balls of light which explode. They are so stupid!
-How do you make energy explode? Maybe if it was some kind of plasma charge, but exploding balls of fire?
-These were put in because they probably didn't have the resources or system requirements to simulate dozens of smaller point-defense guns, which would have been way cooler.
3.) Capship's Shields
-They're too thin: If you can disable their shields with a single running pass, in one fighter, they're too weak!
-Capships are supposed to be big vessels of war. They should be able to take a couple of shots from a fighter attack and not fail.
4.) Capship's Armor
-They're too thin: If you can gun them down in a single running pass with a few
-Capships are large vessels with a thick layer of armor. They should be able to take a pounding without failing.
5.) You get a medal for surviving a bailout?
-That's stupid. The exception is if you get injured during the course of the bailout... that's called a Purple Heart.
6.) Fighters carry too few missiles
For a fighter that's some 36 meters long (Raptor) one could expect to carry more than 5 missiles.
7.) TCS-Tiger's Claw
-She's not completely covered: Her flight-deck is uncovered for a good part of the forward deck. This is bad because fighter hangars could be strung along the sides of the runway if the bay was covered, thus reducing fighter capacity.
-She lack's a fly-through flight-deck requiring pilots to fly in through the front. This was probably due to the limitations of the game-engine or because nobody seriously gave it much thought.
*in reality such an arrangement would have required fighters to approach the carrier with closure rates in excess of 300 kps. Too fast to land! The only ways it would work, would be to fly in reverse as you approach the carrier head-on so that the carrier overtakes you slightly, or to fly ahead of the carrier, and slow up so the carrier overtakes you from behind.
-Still couldn't they have had you fly towards the rear of the carrier for landing?
-The ship has two pylons on either side of the ship, and under each wing. I have no idea what these things do. The drawings seem to suggest a gunning port, since there are 2 turrets wrapped around each one. Other suggestions were that they were some kind of bombardment-cannon.
7a.) The ship's too small
-How do you wedge 104 fighters into a ship with that size and shape? Especially when the Ranger from WC3 was longer, and deeper (top to bottom thickness) and only carried 40-fighters.
-And all the Bengal's after the Tiger's Claw were 10 meters SHORTER, and still carried the same fighter-capacity! At least it certainly appears so.
7b.) The mass is insane!
-In reality a 700 meter ship weighing in at only 80,000 metric tons would be a light-weight, but Wing Commander weights are skewed. 80,000 metric tonnes for a capship which is only 700 meters is absolutely insane. Particularly considering that a Ranger, which 20 meters longer, weighs 52,000 tonnes lighter, and the Concordia, which was bigger by 283.7 meters, and one of the Confederation's largest capships until the Behemoth, and Vesuvius came out, weighed in at only 73,000 metric tonnes.
-To their defense, it was later stated that the Bengal weighed only 60,000 metric tonnes in the WC4 Novel.
8.) Mass
8a.) Fighter's Mass
-The fighters are WAY too light
-The Raptor for example, at 36 meters (120 feet about), weighs in at only 20 metric tonnes (that's 44,000 pounds). Maybe fully empty, but this ship's got a nuclear reactor onboard, and it's respective shielding, (can't be light), missiles, shield-generators, capacitors, powerful lasers and neutron-guns, armor, not to mention inertial dampers, magnetic-ramscoops, thrusters and their respective fuel-tanks, landing-gears, and several mines.
8b.) Capship's Mass: Now if you thought fighter's were a little bit light, you should have some fun with this!
-The Exeter is longer than all modern-day aircraft carriers, and weighs around a 10th that of most of them. Granted it doesn't carry 92 fighters and stuff, but still, that's a bit light. A modern ship which weighs about as much as an Exeter is a Ticonderoga-Class guided-missile Cruiser (CG), which is 567 feet long (173 meters) about.
-I actually prefer the ships sizes in metric since capships along with fighters would have to carry things that most modern-ships don't have.
9.) Carrier's Crew Compliment
-The Bengal only has a crew of like 550.
-With 104 fighters and about 4-5 men to service a single aircraft, that's 416 people already, as much as 520. Plus on most usual Carriers there are about 1.5 times as many pilots as aircraft (USN)
-104 x 1.5 = 156.
-So counting 4 techs to a fighter, and 1.5 men per 104 fighters, you have a grand total of (drumroll please) = 572 people.
-Plus that doesn't even count the naval crew which operate the ship. That would probably be a little less than half that. So you could easily walk away with 900 men onboard that thing. And that's pretty thin considering modern day carriers have about 5,500 men onboard.
10.) The Ralari
-It looks like a big-giant fighter, which is really the only capship design I strongly object to. Oddly enough the Hakaga followed the same basic design, and it looks cool enough (of course it's much more bloated and beefed-up).
11.) Kilrathi Fighters
-Salthi: Looks like a Star Trek TNG Shuttlecraft with forward sweeping wings on it. Doesn't look up to snuff with a Kilrathi fighter. Even the SWC version doesn't look much better, but it's acceptable.
-Gratha: Looks more like an airliner than a heavy fighter.
-Jalthi: Too wide... maybe this could be a good thing, but I don't know how it would fit on any carrier. Maybe it's the Kilrathi equivalent of the Broadsword...
12.) Transports in General
-Drayman: WTF is this? It looks like a box with soda-cans pushing it and a bridge in front of it.
-Diligent: Huh? This looks a little bit better because of it's coloring. But still, it looks like a scaled-up Drayman except it's carrying a blue-colored compressed-gas canister under it's belly instead of a brown-colored box behind the bridge.
13.) Kilrathi Capships
-Ralari: It looks like a gigantic fighter, which I'm not fond of.
-Fralthi: It's got it's engines on nacelles? Who does this? An engine failure would produce such intense yaw that the ship would come a part in a flash before they even knew the engine failed. No... to be honest, it reminds me of a hot-rod turned into a Capital ship.
-Snakeir: Looks ugly and stupid. At least they got one idea right... PUT YOUR CONNING TOWER LOW ON THE FRAME (notice the blue area which is just above the flight-deck?)
14.) The Tiger's-Claw needs to refuel???
-I thought all capships, particularly CARRIERS, could refuel themselves as they went?
-Shameful considering the Tiger's Claw is a practically totally-independant carrier. At least with escorts, it still needs tankers whever it went... great! I'm amazed the Kilrathi didn't just cook every transport in the area. It's one thing to be dependant on food and supplies, but to be dependant on fuel is another thing. That's why we built nuclear-powered aircraft carriers!
15.) Only 8-guns?
-The Tiger's Claw's 8-laser cannons are a bit light considering the much older, and lighter Ranger-Class was able to carry 11 of them. Sure the Bengal carried more point-defense guns, but we don't see them in the game, now do we? The six-missiles are a good touch though.
16.) The Venture has no turrets
-No, I'm serious. In the novel, William R. Forstchen fixed that problem with several pen-strokes, but still. It required a novel to fix that!
17.) Sometimes your actions factor too-deeply into the plot.
-So what if you have to bail out? Why do you always lose that mission? Some other guy might be able to do the same job. It's not all you. I know the Army of One thing is a slogan for the Army, but it's a crock of sh*t. Wars are not won through one person, they are fought through team-work, dedication, and cleverness. I could understand in some cases you ARE the deciding factor, but every time you bail out, you lose?
18.) Jumpspace Communication?
-In WC1:SM1, they talk about that in length, explaining why they have to make so many jumps. That makes no sense. They can communicate through jump points or through jump-buoy's. That may make sense... if they're jumping so they can contact a jump buoy through line of sight, but that's another story. They also can also send translight msgs which somehow travel faster than the speed of light and make the lights go dim.
19.) The medal of valor looks like Saturn, which looks silly. Why not use the Medal of Honor.
20.) Ranks: They should all be navy. Naval Aviators? You know?
-Concordia
-While they were good in 1991, they are lousy by today's standards. This is in hind-sight from a 2003 point of view.
-The ships are only limited to 256 colors, leaving the ships with very basic colors such as green, red, orange, yellow. There are also silver colors as well, and some brown, but that's about it. The colors are not muted or toned-down.
-The ships moved jerky.
*When they turned left, they did so not in one smooth motion, instead you saw them from the front, then suddenly from the side.
*This was because they used hand-drawn pictures, and turned them into sprites... whatever they are and only took pictures of them from certain angles, so they wouldn't have to incorporate an entire 3D-Mesh into the design which would have been beyond the resources of their technology back then, and even if not, would have been beyond the system-requirements of most computers.
-The laser beams, and neutron bolts look like balls of light, rather than beams. That's not realistic.
2.) Flak Cannons
-Oi Vey! These are these stupid balls of light which explode. They are so stupid!
-How do you make energy explode? Maybe if it was some kind of plasma charge, but exploding balls of fire?
-These were put in because they probably didn't have the resources or system requirements to simulate dozens of smaller point-defense guns, which would have been way cooler.
3.) Capship's Shields
-They're too thin: If you can disable their shields with a single running pass, in one fighter, they're too weak!
-Capships are supposed to be big vessels of war. They should be able to take a couple of shots from a fighter attack and not fail.
4.) Capship's Armor
-They're too thin: If you can gun them down in a single running pass with a few
-Capships are large vessels with a thick layer of armor. They should be able to take a pounding without failing.
5.) You get a medal for surviving a bailout?
-That's stupid. The exception is if you get injured during the course of the bailout... that's called a Purple Heart.
6.) Fighters carry too few missiles
For a fighter that's some 36 meters long (Raptor) one could expect to carry more than 5 missiles.
7.) TCS-Tiger's Claw
-She's not completely covered: Her flight-deck is uncovered for a good part of the forward deck. This is bad because fighter hangars could be strung along the sides of the runway if the bay was covered, thus reducing fighter capacity.
-She lack's a fly-through flight-deck requiring pilots to fly in through the front. This was probably due to the limitations of the game-engine or because nobody seriously gave it much thought.
*in reality such an arrangement would have required fighters to approach the carrier with closure rates in excess of 300 kps. Too fast to land! The only ways it would work, would be to fly in reverse as you approach the carrier head-on so that the carrier overtakes you slightly, or to fly ahead of the carrier, and slow up so the carrier overtakes you from behind.
-Still couldn't they have had you fly towards the rear of the carrier for landing?
-The ship has two pylons on either side of the ship, and under each wing. I have no idea what these things do. The drawings seem to suggest a gunning port, since there are 2 turrets wrapped around each one. Other suggestions were that they were some kind of bombardment-cannon.
7a.) The ship's too small
-How do you wedge 104 fighters into a ship with that size and shape? Especially when the Ranger from WC3 was longer, and deeper (top to bottom thickness) and only carried 40-fighters.
-And all the Bengal's after the Tiger's Claw were 10 meters SHORTER, and still carried the same fighter-capacity! At least it certainly appears so.
7b.) The mass is insane!
-In reality a 700 meter ship weighing in at only 80,000 metric tons would be a light-weight, but Wing Commander weights are skewed. 80,000 metric tonnes for a capship which is only 700 meters is absolutely insane. Particularly considering that a Ranger, which 20 meters longer, weighs 52,000 tonnes lighter, and the Concordia, which was bigger by 283.7 meters, and one of the Confederation's largest capships until the Behemoth, and Vesuvius came out, weighed in at only 73,000 metric tonnes.
-To their defense, it was later stated that the Bengal weighed only 60,000 metric tonnes in the WC4 Novel.
8.) Mass
8a.) Fighter's Mass
-The fighters are WAY too light
-The Raptor for example, at 36 meters (120 feet about), weighs in at only 20 metric tonnes (that's 44,000 pounds). Maybe fully empty, but this ship's got a nuclear reactor onboard, and it's respective shielding, (can't be light), missiles, shield-generators, capacitors, powerful lasers and neutron-guns, armor, not to mention inertial dampers, magnetic-ramscoops, thrusters and their respective fuel-tanks, landing-gears, and several mines.
8b.) Capship's Mass: Now if you thought fighter's were a little bit light, you should have some fun with this!
-The Exeter is longer than all modern-day aircraft carriers, and weighs around a 10th that of most of them. Granted it doesn't carry 92 fighters and stuff, but still, that's a bit light. A modern ship which weighs about as much as an Exeter is a Ticonderoga-Class guided-missile Cruiser (CG), which is 567 feet long (173 meters) about.
-I actually prefer the ships sizes in metric since capships along with fighters would have to carry things that most modern-ships don't have.
9.) Carrier's Crew Compliment
-The Bengal only has a crew of like 550.
-With 104 fighters and about 4-5 men to service a single aircraft, that's 416 people already, as much as 520. Plus on most usual Carriers there are about 1.5 times as many pilots as aircraft (USN)
-104 x 1.5 = 156.
-So counting 4 techs to a fighter, and 1.5 men per 104 fighters, you have a grand total of (drumroll please) = 572 people.
-Plus that doesn't even count the naval crew which operate the ship. That would probably be a little less than half that. So you could easily walk away with 900 men onboard that thing. And that's pretty thin considering modern day carriers have about 5,500 men onboard.
10.) The Ralari
-It looks like a big-giant fighter, which is really the only capship design I strongly object to. Oddly enough the Hakaga followed the same basic design, and it looks cool enough (of course it's much more bloated and beefed-up).
11.) Kilrathi Fighters
-Salthi: Looks like a Star Trek TNG Shuttlecraft with forward sweeping wings on it. Doesn't look up to snuff with a Kilrathi fighter. Even the SWC version doesn't look much better, but it's acceptable.
-Gratha: Looks more like an airliner than a heavy fighter.
-Jalthi: Too wide... maybe this could be a good thing, but I don't know how it would fit on any carrier. Maybe it's the Kilrathi equivalent of the Broadsword...
12.) Transports in General
-Drayman: WTF is this? It looks like a box with soda-cans pushing it and a bridge in front of it.
-Diligent: Huh? This looks a little bit better because of it's coloring. But still, it looks like a scaled-up Drayman except it's carrying a blue-colored compressed-gas canister under it's belly instead of a brown-colored box behind the bridge.
13.) Kilrathi Capships
-Ralari: It looks like a gigantic fighter, which I'm not fond of.
-Fralthi: It's got it's engines on nacelles? Who does this? An engine failure would produce such intense yaw that the ship would come a part in a flash before they even knew the engine failed. No... to be honest, it reminds me of a hot-rod turned into a Capital ship.
-Snakeir: Looks ugly and stupid. At least they got one idea right... PUT YOUR CONNING TOWER LOW ON THE FRAME (notice the blue area which is just above the flight-deck?)
14.) The Tiger's-Claw needs to refuel???
-I thought all capships, particularly CARRIERS, could refuel themselves as they went?
-Shameful considering the Tiger's Claw is a practically totally-independant carrier. At least with escorts, it still needs tankers whever it went... great! I'm amazed the Kilrathi didn't just cook every transport in the area. It's one thing to be dependant on food and supplies, but to be dependant on fuel is another thing. That's why we built nuclear-powered aircraft carriers!
15.) Only 8-guns?
-The Tiger's Claw's 8-laser cannons are a bit light considering the much older, and lighter Ranger-Class was able to carry 11 of them. Sure the Bengal carried more point-defense guns, but we don't see them in the game, now do we? The six-missiles are a good touch though.
16.) The Venture has no turrets
-No, I'm serious. In the novel, William R. Forstchen fixed that problem with several pen-strokes, but still. It required a novel to fix that!
17.) Sometimes your actions factor too-deeply into the plot.
-So what if you have to bail out? Why do you always lose that mission? Some other guy might be able to do the same job. It's not all you. I know the Army of One thing is a slogan for the Army, but it's a crock of sh*t. Wars are not won through one person, they are fought through team-work, dedication, and cleverness. I could understand in some cases you ARE the deciding factor, but every time you bail out, you lose?
18.) Jumpspace Communication?
-In WC1:SM1, they talk about that in length, explaining why they have to make so many jumps. That makes no sense. They can communicate through jump points or through jump-buoy's. That may make sense... if they're jumping so they can contact a jump buoy through line of sight, but that's another story. They also can also send translight msgs which somehow travel faster than the speed of light and make the lights go dim.
19.) The medal of valor looks like Saturn, which looks silly. Why not use the Medal of Honor.
20.) Ranks: They should all be navy. Naval Aviators? You know?
-Concordia
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