Where are WC4 weapons in prophecy?

[Earthworm]

*Originally posted by Bandit LOAF:
The Secret Ops fiction (available at secretops.com) makes clear that the Confederation is nos charged with protecting the Border Worlds. The *Landreich* is an *enemy* of the Confederation, and as thus sort of needs a military.*

Still the Prophecy guide does say that they do have a military.

*You obviously *do* care whether or not the Piranha has a jump drive -- since you're willing to offer incredibly stupid and far fetched ideas to explain why it doesn't. That's bad. If you want to argue moronic what ifs, then I note that if the Confederation has the ability to open jump points for fighters, then the Midway would have been able to recover the Wasps after jumping out system.*

Um, why are they stupid and far fetched? I don't see any reason why having a station or a capship open up the wormhole for the Piranhas is in any way less realistic than the Piranhas having a JD. You did read the novel, so you know it's posible. And again, I'm not saying that it doesen't have a jump drive.

*Replacement Shrikes jump in during the WCP demo.*

They do? In which mission?

*Furthermore, Tigersharks jump in Secret Ops, in Ella 7031.0A.*

OK.

*The Prophecy Guide says that the Midway has a crew of 7,000.*

On which page?

Carriers have the same number of pilots as they do fighters. I ask that you trust me on this, but if you'd like I can name enough Tiger's Claw pilots to prove this point.*

You can name 104 pilots on the TC?
Anyhow, according to the movie novels, as well as ER, HOTT, and some other ones, yes carriers do infact carry the same number of pilots, though I do think that the writers made a mistake there. A trained pilot is much harder to get than a fighter. So as shown in the WC3 novel with Hobes, if one fighter is damaged, or destroyed but the pilot ejects, than he can't fly untill they get new ships. That's a waste of pilots. Also, I can see something like that on small carriers like the Tarawa and Victory, especialy during a war were every carrier counts, but it's just unresnoable to do so on the larger ships especialy when there are no wars.

*Dallas' name in Prophecy is the 'official' one. This is fixed in the second edition of the Guide.*

Thank you.

*And stop with the quoting little bits. It's fucking annoying.*
Sure, why not.

[This message has been edited by Earthworm (edited March 06, 2000).]

 

[Bandit LOAF]

I'm pretty sure you missed the point of not quoting things.

Replacement Shrikes arrive with the transports.

Page 114, the Midway's bio. Buh.

Yes, I can name 104 Tiger's Claw pilots... if you'd like you may open up a new thread for it and I will do so.

You've gotten the pilots thing backwards. Fighters are just as precious as pilots... in fact, in reality carriers have *more* pilots than fighters -- allowing them to keep all fighters available all the time.




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Long live the Confederation,
Ben "Bandit" Lesnick
( loaf@wcnews.com - 302228)

The Wing Commander CIC

"You go, LOAF! Get some!" -JPG

Bombardez les Ptitard!

 

[Earthworm]

OK, I won't quote anymore.

I checked the bio and it says it is 7,000. So both sources are right.

No, there's no need for new threads. I trust you can name all 104 of them, though I just don't know where you could find all the names. There are some in FF, there are some wingman that fly around the Claw but never on your wing, and during the conversations sometimes pilots that aren't on the kill-board are mentioned, there are the Movie novels which are full of names, and of course the WC1 guide that has some new wingman on the loosing missions. Would the names from all of these add up to 104?

IMO it just seems as a complete waste of pilots. It takes four years at the academy to train a pilot, and even after that they're not realy experienced. Meanwhile, the fighters, though they cost milions of credits, can be made quite quickly.



[This message has been edited by Earthworm (edited March 06, 2000).]

 

[Raider]

Carriers have the same number of pilots as they do fighters. I ask that you trust me on this, but if you'd like I can name enough Tiger's Claw pilots to prove this point.

Aren't there extra ships in case a pilot ejects or stuff like that?

 

[Nob Akimoto]

Not like a modern day example would help, but usually there's about 1.2-1.3 times the number of pilots than there are planes. One reason obviously being that a pilot isn't going to be available to fly 24 hours a day. Technically it would be more efficient, as you could have more fighters on patrol at once, and it would also allow for easier "Magnum" launches. You would have more pilots on duty hence allowing for higher combat efficiency(waking up pilots and tossing them in fighters is a bad idea ) as well as allowing pilots and crews to cycle in and out during a fleet action(raising survival rates).

The situations depicted in WC seem to be more or less rare, with pilots cross-flying between fighter types(in reality letting pilots fly multiple types would be horridly inefficient and would require far more training time, which is something they didn't have in war situations) , only reason why Blair would be able to choose fighter types in 3-4 was because he was the CAG errrm Wing Commander. They're actually required to fly between squadrons(or should be anyway).

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"I hope you make it, Tarkington. Just don't pull the handle till after we've hit. Promise me."
"I'm behind you all the way CAG..."
-Captain Jacob Lee "Coolhand" Grafton, and Lieutenant Robert "Toad" Tarkington, Final Flight

 

[Quarto]

Meanwhile, the fighters, though they cost milions of credits, can be made quite quickly.

Yes, particularly when you've jumped in behind enemy lines, and have been cut off from the usual supply routes

.

 

[Earthworm]

Yes, particularly when you've jumped in behind enemy lines, and have been cut off from the usual supply routes

.

Except that when you jumped behind the enemy lines, if your carrier carried more fighters than pilots, you wouldn’t need to get new fighters.

 

[Quarto]

Yeah, but you'd have all those fighters sitting on the flight deck and gathering dust

. When you're behind enemy lines and short of pilots... well, a heavily escorted shuttle can still get through. But a transport with fighters? No chance. Why, you'd essentially have to use another carrier to bring the fighters in. And Confed did not, at any given point, have all that many carriers to spare. Even now, the emphasis is on big rather than many.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

I mean... what's better, being under attack by a hundred enemy fighters and knowing that each of your 30 pilots can survive blowing up three times or knowing that you can launch 90 fighters at once?

 

[Quarto]

Actually, it's even worse than that. If you're under attack by a hundred enemy fighters, then the chances of your thirty pilots getting back to the carrier to pick up another one of the fighters are somewhere between "not bloody likely" and "none".

 

[Nob Akimoto]

Yeah and as I said logistical reasons too.

I'd rather be better off knowing I can keep 40 fighters in the air(or rather in space) with appropriately rested pilots, rather than let my pilots have a couple of their own "personal" fighters to use and only getting 10 pilots per shift. Continuious use of the same pilots for outrageous amounts of time also sorta wear down their effectiveness.

Look at Weaver in Quarto's stories for example. He's a wreck, yet they don't have any spare pilots hence the need for him to keep flying even though he's incredibly strained both physically and mentally. Not exactly good for morale or for general performance...

I guess the Cerberus was sorta screwed if they were caught when Casey and co were sleeping, seeing as they always sortied all the pilots at once, and didn't seem to have a backup roster that flew different shifts.

[This message has been edited by Nob Akimoto (edited March 07, 2000).]

 

[Death's Head]

I don't know. Cerberus seems to have adequate sensors, the ships could be readied while the pilots were kicked out of the bunks by the CO before the bombers get too close.

I could be wrong.

 

[Earthworm]

LOAF, That's a very good point.

OK, maybe not that much more fighters, but IMO at least one fifth (from the total number of pilots) of fighters should be held in reserve. So if there are 40 pilots, there should be at least 48 fighters.

Now, what about the Midway? If it has 252 pilots, than each of the squadrons would have to have 84 pilots.


Quarto, you're missing the point. I mean that if your fighter is damaged, on the next mission you'll have a ship to fly in. In the WC3 novel Hobes's T-bolt was heavily damaged, and he had to sit in the next mission because he didn't have a ship. If they had fighters in reserve, there wouldn't be problems like that.



[This message has been edited by Earthworm (edited March 07, 2000).]

 

[Earthworm]

DH, if the Cerberus has the same kind of sensors like the fighters do (and I'm prety sure it has better ones) than there would be no problems with detecting the enemy (unless it's cloacked, or a stealth ship). When I played SO few months ago, I was realy fu**** up because of the extreme sensor range on the ships. I aoutopiloted from a navpoint after completing my objectives, before the next wave of enemy fighters arrived, and before I got to the Cerberus I was thrown out of autopilot, and about 1,000,000 klicks away there were at least 12 Squids heading straight for me on their boosters. I couldn't get back the the Cerberus, and it would take hours before I got to those Squids, so I just used a cheat and destroyed all those bugs. It's nice to see so many ships exploading all at once.

 

[Death's Head]

Yeah I know exactly what you mean. Where you in a ship with autoslide? Go full burn and read a chapter in one of the novels.

I got stuck having detected squids when I was fiddling with screenshots many a time. Restart mission works really well.

I know that cheat-never cared to use it. Maybe I will sometime when I feel like blowing things up, or my wingmen get killed off and I need to take on four or five DRs and half a dozen Mantas with a few Barracudas and a dozen or so Skates.

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A wingmen is essential; they give the enemy something else to shoot at.
A turret is essential; it gives you something else to shoot with.

 

[Quarto]

Nob: Hey, you read my story

? Why no comments

?

Quarto, you're missing the point. I mean that if your fighter is damaged, on the next mission you'll have a ship to fly in. In the WC3 novel Hobes's T-bolt was heavily damaged, and he had to sit in the next mission because he didn't have a ship. If they had fighters in reserve, there wouldn't be problems like that.

No, you're missing my point, Earthworm

. At the risk of being politically incorrect, pilots are cheap. Grab a kid, throw him into the Academy, and out comes a pilot. And even if 80% of the kids in the Academy fail their final exams... well, given the size of the Confederation, you still get a lot of pilots. You have to pay them a salary of course, but it's not as much as a fighter (in WC1, Col. Halcyon said something about a hundred million credits. I think that's ninety-nine million too much, but even one million is still a lot). During the war, Confed was having trouble with fighter shortages; I don't think this would have changed so much in ten years, particularly given all the budget cuts.

 

[Earthworm]

It was the mission where I had to take out the turrets on a carrier so my wing and I could destroy it in the next mission. I was in a Vampire, so I could autoslide. However, I would be able to read all of my novels before I would get close enough to fire a missile.

I could have used autoslide, but there were few problems. I was almost out of AB fuel, can't dogfight without that. My wingman were already out of fuel, and were about 150,000 klicks behind me, so unless I want to take on a dozen fighters by myself I would have to travel at the standard speed. Oh, and I was almost out of missiles.

I don't usualy use cheats, but I just didn't feel like replaying the mission just because the game let me auto from there.

 

[Death's Head]

I see. Use Restart Mission

Well at least you're honest. Some people will use cheats and say "that mission oh I beat that in five minutes". Often they aren't even on the higher skill levels.

 

[Earthworm]

I see. Use Restart Mission

He he, to bad ther's no option to save inside the mission like in I-war.

Would be better than replaying a tough mission if the game crashes, or if you just have to go somewhere.

 

[Death]

No, you're missing my point, Earthworm

. At the risk of being politically incorrect, pilots are cheap. Grab a kid, throw him into the Academy, and out comes a pilot.

At least in today's military, training for a pilot can run up into millions of dollars, to the point of being a good chunk of the price of a new fighter. Pilots also take time to train; far longer than it takes to manufacture another craft for that pilot to fly (even with "90-day Wonder" type training programs, which wasn't the case in the kat war, though the possibility was mentioned in the novels somewhere).

Besides, those little elves in back can make up more ships, but can't do anything about creating more pilots.

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SubCrid Death
Official Net.Nazi, LOAF's Merry Guild