WC:CD "Dreadnought" Name Vote!!

[Bandit LOAF]

Maybe some color highlights, a la WC3/4 -- including a Confed star somewhere?

 

[Dundradal]

I'm still leaning towards Ise or Hyuga. There is already a precedent for using IJN ship names in Confed as well (TCS Soryu during AS). I think it fits well with what you've got here.

 

[Bob McDob]

That is an interesting idea using the Arena type batteries (I was just trying to make it easier on myself by using the SO ones.)

You don't necessarily have to steer away from that - my thoughts were along the lines of gathering up all the little two-barrelled turrets and placing them along the side of the hull (maybe in a staggered configuration to give better coverage - one on the top side, the other on the bottom, then top, bottom, etc.)

About the overall design; I have to confess to being a bit ambivilant about it - though this probably has to do more with my personal taste than anything else. The general design feels unfocused, a bit clunky. Were I doing it (and this is what you're going to get from the rest of this paragraph), I'd shorten the beam, make the ship more vertical, taller in appearance (something like the Tallahassees), allowing the "keel" to predominate, keep the tailfins but make them taller and more impressive (closer to the original Confederation ships - the Concordia's "Cadillac fins" are actually quite high). Dundradal's comments notwithstanding, this ship seems more like a classic battleship than a battleship-carrier hybrid (and I'd dispute the idea behind the last part - the Concordia was classified as a Dreadnaught but she carried more ships than a line carrier and occasionally got called a heavy carrier - there's nothing of the "half-and-half" mentality that the historical battleship-hybrids received.)

If you feel that's too radical, I'd give some consideration to the "runway guards" - they're pretty high and break up the lines of the ship, making it look overly awkward.

 

[Milatry]

In regards to the CVS-66 as it following the Concordia I think this is possible as the Concordia was at the time the largest ship and only ship of it's class. And as the war was still in full swing and the time, money and materials it would have taken to make another like it, they could have made many smaller ships and have a larger fleet made up of smaller ships but able to do there jobs sooner then it would take to make one Concordia class ship. Remember in End Run all the trouble the Kilrathi Prince went and got in to for all the supplies to build his super carriers and then think how many smaller ships could have been made with thus supplies. Allot like in WWII when the U.S. built up their navy with the small flat tops and then made their larger carriers. The same can be said here but spread out consuming more time to make. There are many was that you can say that the Dreadnought took so long to come into production. One reason could be that the money went to making the Vesuvius Class Heavy Carrier and before that there was the Behemoth, which was classified as a Dreadnought. Which took like 10 years to make and allot of supplies and maybe the military couldn’t get the ok to build anything that large until know with the Nephilim attacking. They may see having a ship like this to make short work of the enemy along with the current fleet complements as they are. Also to defened the designer they could have also said here all that your getting so make a warship with this and only this so there wont more kill the enemy and less oh that look great.

 

[Bob McDob]

The seeming problem here is that the Concordia seems to follow the 'carrier' designation sequence - CV with an 'S' dropped down after to signify "dreadnaught". Five ships later the Vesuvius pulls a reset of the system - CV-70 and -71 become CV-01 and CV-02 (to be fair, this apparently did not last long, as by 2701 the TCS Eisen is referred to as "CV-74") and then the Midways decide to go for their own independent numbering scheme and start over - CVX. It seems, in this scenario, that the slots from 66 to 69 have long been filled.

The other possibility is of course that the Confederation has, in fact, built 64 dreadnaughts (or ships classified as dreadnaughts) prior to the Concordia, which is certainly more than possible, of course (but my gut feeling about it is that it is wrong - the American naval scheme Origin was following in 1991 uses the modifier letter to designation different types of carriers while keeping the numbering sequence intact, a sequence all fleet carriers followed.

―with the exception of the CVEs - escort carriers, "supporting carriers" not meant to operate as part of a carrier strike force and in the historical timeline operated under sovereignty of the Army. The novels appear to follow this by declaring the Tarawa CVE-08. To this, however, must be added that the 'Claw (CV-07) was commisioned in 2642, and that unless she bears her designation from a time where she was laid down some time after 2619, lay on the stocks for twenty-odd years and then was finally commisioned (which would explain the Tigerclaw / Tiger's Claw bug addresed in Star Soldier) her number sequence is totally out of whack with the Victory, CV-40 (as a final point, a light carrier) which is very definitely older.

...which brings the final disqualifier: If the ship on the cover of WCII is to be taken as part of the continuity (which it usually is), we have a Confederation-type ship numbered "14", which would go well with the Tiger's Claw but not the Concordia's final designation. (The Concordia was not, at least, the only ship of her class; Kilrathi Saga's manual makes reference to several other ships of the type.)

 

[JasonRocZ]

Hmm interesting enough that's for sure...What would you suggest the designation be Bob?

 

[ELTEE]

There are always other options also - you could go the battlecruiser route, for example. Use the letter designations CB. Add an S to the end to keep some semblance to the continuity. Call it CBS-5 or something. Who's to say a battlecruiser can't have a fighter complement?

Remember too, if Confed follows US Naval practice, numbers are reserved even if ships are cancelled in the design phase. There could be all kinds of skipped or missing numbers - nothing to fret about! For example, who remembers the famous carrier bearing CVA-58? Not many. The United States was cancelled by Congress, but the number remains for ever.

 

[Bob McDob]

Hmm interesting enough that's for sure...What would you suggest the designation be Bob?

Well, I wasn't trying to prove a point so much as try to lay out everything possible. My personal preference, though, is for the "carrier-line sequence" theory - the problem here is that we don't know how many Vesuviuses were actually built. Johnny Guentzel, developer of Secret Ops, once laid out a list that included eight or ten, but that was never made official, and I can't find it now. That doesn't even go to say that the Vesuvius was, if I recall, intended to be the new "fleet carrier", the workhorse of the fleet - which means that a lot more were probably built afterwards (which goes nothing to say of other types of carriers - it could be anywhere from twenty to over a hundred.)

Given that, it's probably safer to invent a new designation for this type of ship and give it that - I'd shy away from an "XX-01" number, simply because, Prophecy notwithstanding, I'm not very fond of the "first of the line as white horse" story. It also, as LOAF pointed out earlier, implies that the Confederation did not build any ships of this type during the Second War - by what little we know, a comparitively desperate situation where anything and everything was put into action. Something, maybe in the twenties, seems like a safe number.

(None of this even touches on the Behemoth, which I'm not sure was even given a formal designation that we know of and has nothing in common with the Concordia 65 save that they both are built around large guns; or the movie Concordia, a supercruiser, and the Arena Indomitable, a battlecruiser, two ships with the most in common but which also lack numerical designators.)

 

[JasonRocZ]

I only ask Bob because you seem to know alot of the designation of the dreadnoughts and carriers and the like... all good information, that's for sure. What about a designation as CDS?

 

[Bob McDob]

I only ask Bob because you seem to know alot of the designation of the dreadnoughts and carriers and the like... all good information, that's for sure. What about a designation as CDS?

The "C" in the US system (look it up) signifies "Cruiser", even when applied to Carriers (I had once thought a rare exception was made there), and the "S" already stands for Dreadnought - so what you have (I'm assuming the "D" is for Dreadnought" basically says "Cruiser Dreadnought Dreadnought."

Put literally:

CL = Cruiser, Light
CA = Cruiser, Heavy (the A comes from a time when "armored cruisers" were the big guns in the cruiser force)
CV = Cruiser, aViation (since the A already stands for heavy cruisers - the designation used for carrier, of course)
CC = Battlecruiser/[strike]Heavy[/strike] Cruiser (this designation was never used in real life, as the only ships so designated, the Lexingtons, were finished as Carriers; in Wing Commander, the CC is used for the Waterloo cruisers - another indication that American Navy does not always equal Confederation Navy)

CB = "Large Cruiser" (basically a battlecruiser, as the name suggests - the euphemism "Large Cruiser" was used because the battlecruiser name had reached a low ebb with the destruction of the "super-battlecruiser" Hood in a manner apparently similar to the way the three Royal Navy battlecruisers had exploded at Jutland.)

There are other possibilities, but the ones that immedietely come to mind sound like bad jokes - "BBS", and the potentially confusing "CSS". Either CBS (which is potentially fodder for another bad pun, though perhaps not as much), CCS, or a completely different designation (rearranging the letters is another option - CSB?).

 

[JasonRocZ]

Actually CSB doesn't sound that bad.......haha BBS I remember BBS....I also remember Compuserve ... Well all this information is actually really great to know. I'm a big WC fan but again I learn something new every day. I could always stick with a CV designation, I'm just not hear to offend anyone really, I want to make fans happy with a design but at the same time be as accurate as I can, to an extent. This is actually pretty good help. Also I revamped the model up a little bit at home I changed the color a bit to a different hue and also change the front shape a bit, and haven't had to time to get it here to the office to upload a few screenshots but you guys may have some more opinions thoughts etc....as to where the ship should go at some time tomorrow, probably in the morning...EST. Thank you very much bob I will probably go with a CV or a CSB....it's probably the only difficulty in the WC community is making ships that aren't part of the continuity I'm sure everyone understands what I mean, check the Buccaneer, the Charon, etc....

 

[JasonRocZ]

oh BTW does anyone know the largest texture size that can be used in the game from Prophecy/ Secret Ops...I've used 1024x1024 but has anyone used 2048x2048?

 

[ELTEE]

I think these days, the US CB (Alaska class) is indeed classified as a battlecruiser. Our Lexington class friends (CC), though they never made it to join the party, still officially occupy those number designations. (Too bad at least one wasn't completed as originally planned - the design would have yielded an interesting ship, though I certainly concede that for the most part, the philosophy behind Admiral Fisher's idea was flawed.)

Maybe you should utilize the "C" designation with a different letter combination. "G", for example, is used for guided missile equiped vessels, i.e. CG-47. Since you have created the ship, explore some other designations. The neat thing here is that you can mix and play with a few different concepts.

BTW - any other thought to my torpedo or capship missile idea?

 

[JasonRocZ]

Well Actually Eltee I plan on having some sort of torpedoes on this ship. There's 2 tubes toward the front of the ship, which are in black n grey that you can see. I plan on having those 2 as torpedoe hardpoints. I'm not really sure how it would work in the vision engine as far as code but I'll check it out.

 

[JasonRocZ]

Actually a esignation of "CB" isn't a bad idea.... Maybe CB-04

 

[Jason_Ryock]

Well Actually Eltee I plan on having some sort of torpedoes on this ship. There's 2 tubes toward the front of the ship, which are in black n grey that you can see. I plan on having those 2 as torpedoe hardpoints. I'm not really sure how it would work in the vision engine as far as code but I'll check it out.

You should talk to the standoff guys. There are some real problems with capship-to-capship combat.

IIRC, when capships fire weapons at other capships, they aim for the hull component? Or the center box? Something like that. So they don't damage components - which as we all know, is the way to kill a capship in the Vision engine.

They had some work arounds for this, at one time. I think they were using invisible meshes to soak the damage and take the hits in the final mission in Unknown Enemy. It's possible they've developed something new for Standoff, but like I said originally, you'd have to ask.

The standard fair in WC games has been to use capship missiles in a controlled (scripted) event. The enemy shows up and capship missiles start spawning for the enemy ship - when they reach it, the enemy ship spontaneously explodes via a scripted event. At least that's how I remember it working in WCP and WCSO. This is slightly unfair to the player, as letting even one capship missile get through results in a mission defeat.

I believe there are some related incidents in WCIII that someone may be able to expand upon - IIRC towards the end of the game you are escorting a destroyer on a series of strikes...or maybe the destroyer is escorting you. Actually, I think I have that wrong. I think you show up at a nav point and a Confed Destroyer is nailing a Cat one. I think I remember there being capship missiles there, or torpedoes, but I'm probably wrong.

At any rate, in the WCIII engine it's entirely possible to blow the crap out of an enemy destroyer with just your cannons on your fighter, which I think is how that fight ended for me, anyway.

 

[Bob McDob]

A couple other ideas for ship names: instead of the traditional battles and mythological figures, go for a little-used, descriptive noun, like Ericsson did when he named the USS Monitor (as in "this ship will monitor and check the actions of the enemy." Pendelum came to mind - swinging the "pendelum of war" in favor.

Another idea, slightly borrowing Dundradal's idea, is to pick names of systems or quadrants - Ise and Fuso are names of provinces. It's not an idea that seems to have received a lot of attention, strangely, and there are a few Asian names if you're so inclined.

 

[JasonRocZ]

Here's some new screenshots that I promised from the other day just haven't been able to get to posting ....But I changed the color of the beast... tell me which color hue you like...the battleship grey color of all previous posts or a slightly different color as shown. Also note the fuselage shape towards the front of the ship has been upgraded a bit so it wasn't so narrow.

 

[JasonRocZ]

BTW Voting ends friday!!!

 

[JasonRocZ]

I added a little bit of detail to the CV-yadayadayada and got a great idea from Howie Days model on the engines!!! Check it out guys... The 3rd image shows the front and I managed to make those launch tubes a little more detail and figured that maybe the tubes would be opened via some type of motor which you can see in blue.. with caps that are actually real life sewer caps