Tolwyn & Carriers

J

Jebe

Spaceman
In WC2 I saw the Concordia's problems as just a reference to Top Gun. Then came WC3 with the Behemoth and WC4 with the Vesuvius.

Is it just me or does Tolwyn seem to simply unable to use a Carrier or Carrier Battlegroup effectively?

As the Behemoth was already getting shot at before it even got underway I never got the impression Tolwyn was managing to be even vaguely discrete about it, while picking a Battlegroup that would really only be sufficient for the task if he was discrete.

Why did he not keep regular patrols and pilots on stand by ready to alpha strike from the Victory? Why would he interfere with Eisen, when his purpose is managing the Battlegroup instead of micromanaging the Carrier?

These antics seemed to me to ultimately be more then simply the needs of the plot.
 
Very good points, I have always felt the game does very foolish things with carriers in general. I dont know if the plot seems to be centered around poor uses of carriers because of a lack of tactical knowledge of the games developers or if it was actually made to seem like Tolwyn made poor choices with his flat tops. To me at least, it does seem to get better for the most part as the games go on. I thought WCP did a pretty good job of trying to give the feel of actual fleet tactics.

I always thought it was odd when the game had a carrier operating by itself. Even in peacetime you would have a a few escorts with an asset like a carrier. Granted they use decent plot twists to make it seem rational. WC1 starts with a banged up Claw that just fought a delaying action and WCP had the midway into action before it was full operational and so on...

I think for the sense of immersion it would have been better if more ships were present in the allied fleet. Hell even one inept DD and some transport that the AI ignores would have made some of the games feel more like fleet actions. Of course the hit boxes on the cap ships in the first few games caused me to explode more than once so maybe it was a blessing in disguise... I'm just rambling now.:rolleyes:
 
I'm sure the developers had more than enough tactical knowledge about the proper use of carrier battlegroups to not give a damn about the proper use of carrier battlegroups :).

There's three factors at work here:
- Plot. Why is it so easy for the Behemoth to be destroyed, and why does the all-powerful supercarrier Vesuvius get beaten? Gee, I wonder :). Maybe because in the first case, that setback was needed to set up the Temblor Bomb, and maybe because in the second case, the player ultimately always wins?
- Technical issues. WC2 allowed 16 ships per mission - that's the player, plus all the capships, plus all the friendlies, plus all the enemies. Having more than one ship tagging along with the Concordia would mean one less enemy fighter in every mission. These same issues continued to exist in WC3, WC4, and boy, can I assure you they still exist in WCP/SO - in each case, there was a limit, though it was caused by different factors. In WC3/4, it was performance issues (there's a reason why the carrier hangars only become 3d when you get right up close...). In WCP, uou can have just about any amount of capships you like at a navpoint in - but if you have more than three or four, the sound system gets clogged up, because each living capship continually emits a humming sound.
- Development issues. It takes time to develop a model and implement it in-game - and in the case of WC1/2, it takes disk space to store them. Virtually every WC game contains traces of ships that got cut either because the project's timespan didn't allow them to be done, or because there was no space for them. That's actually where most of the "new" ships in the add-ons come from. In any project, you always envision lots and lots of ships, and then cut them down to the stuff you really need - that's a standard part of the development process. And ultimately, things like destroyers and cruisers flying around as escorts tend to have a lower priority than friendly and enemy fighters...
 
Had he actually ensured the thing had proper defenses set up (Why didn't they have fighters all around the thing at all times? Why weren't those turrets in place?) it might have withstood the assault.
 
It was a black operation - only Victory and her battlegroup knew about it, besides Tolwyn's staff. Behemoth was considered his pet project, and I'm willing to bet that other Confederation commanders wouldn't have been willing to release the limited assets that Confed had to protect his project. Remember, the Confederation was badly mauled at the Battle of Terra. It was a pyrric victory - even though the Kilrathi were turned away, the majority of Confed's remaining carrier fleet died in the actions leading up to and during the battle. A few carriers were blown apart in drydock on the moon. Leyte Gulf and Moskva were lost in battle. Lexington was crippled so badly that she wouldn't see service till after the war. And adding on to that, there was the loss of Concordia in Vespus, the destruction of TCS Winterrowd in the Gemini sector (by what turned out to be the Steltek drone), and the loss of TCS Kennedy's entire battlegroup to a Hvarkann Dreadnought.

Simply put - there weren't any other resources Tolwyn could draw on to protect his project. If two fleet carriers had been with Behemoth, yes, they may have prevented its destruction. But these ships were guarding the core worlds, and it makes more sense to defend your remaining inner colonies then send a quarter of your remaining fleet carriers to guard a giant under-protected space gun.
 
Also consider how obvious you want to be. The Victory group is a lot easier to get lost in the shuffle than an all-up carrier battlegroup, even if you have one to spare.
 
Especially when the other battlegroups were busy trying to keep the heat off the Behemoth and the Victory by attacking other areas.
 
IIRC - the major attacks by Confederation fleets were to cover Victory's taking of the Freya system - so Gold Squadron could make it to Kilrah with as little opposition as possible.
 
you are also assuming that kilrathi intelligence was completely incapable of detecting a gigantic ship buildup in an otherwise inconsequential location. They'd notice if a few hundred fighters and support craft were transfered to sector X to defend a useless asteroid.
 
Regarding the questions about the Vesuvius - Tolwyn didn't expect that one, Blair had a captured flashpak to use (otherwise, Vesuvius needs considerable amounts of torpedo hits to die) and two, that his carrier's equally powerful sister (Saint Helens) would suddenly emerge from the Sol jump point and start firing on him.

Speaking of the Vesuvius battle....what the hell was Blair thinking chasing her? I mean, I understand if he tried to beat Vesuvius to the Sol System....but he seemed completely unconcerned when he emerged from a jump point directly behind a ship that outgunned his about eight to one. It was only when Vesuvius turned around before entering Sol that got him concerned. But what happened if they had made the jump? Vesuvius would have still engaged Intrepid...this time with other Confed forces to assist it.
 
Actually WC1 and WC2 had a CAP to my memory. I definitely remember Angel fussing about it being our duty to take out some inbound on the carrier following launch while she and them were snagging most of them in WC1. One of the few times I ordered com silence to stop the broken record routine.

When you enter Torgo you scramble to save the Behemoth from getting blown to component parts by wave after wave of Paktahns. Except for when you go out to steal some fuel from the Kats they keep sending enough of the things they aren't screwing around. Plus they're inbound on the Behemoth while it's getting ready to fire in Loki.

The plan was to drive this thing to downtown Kilrah, which should be vastly better defended then Loki VI who successfully scrambled Paktahns to its defense. The question is more one of maintaining a defensive patrol, and having enough watching to get on the horn to tell Eisen he needs to alpha strike now.

If they were trying to hide the fact they where driving the Behemoth around they were doing a sucky job of it. Something had to launch those bombers in Torgo, and somehow I doubt we cleared out everyone in Loki who could have forwarded a message to Kilrah about something big that just blew up Loki VI. The Pulsar might stop calling for reinforcements immediately, but not some straggler jumping out and reporting to his superior.

So the question for me is whether Tolwyn is meant to be just that bad at managing even what he had, or whether Orion's plotting could not come up with a more appropriate way to meet the same requirements. Such as giving away exactly where they'd be after a jump to Tharkath who moves the bulk of the his personnel fleet in to annihilate them, or the tact used in the WC movie. One would need to build up a fake out that flopped thanks to Hobbes, but not much else for that. Highlighting areas that can be visually IDed as incomplete is a little different from giving them a flight plan that insures they can park overwhelming assets to knock the Behemoth out of commision.

Engaging the Vesuvius doesn't even involve smacking down a single attempt at torpedoeing your glorified Heavy Destroyer, which Tolwyn should have more assets then he knew what to do with for at least one attempt. This tends to imply lack of thinking in terms of the fighter wing then of his ship as a battleship, destroyer, or otherwise.

The question here is related to managing the air wing, not fighting the ship like it was a battleship. I personally at least would rather not treat him as if he simply was incapable of handling a ship period.
 
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