A question for the techheads - The Banshee

H

HammerHead

Rear Admiral
And By Banshee I mean the WC-Armada Confed Heavy-Fighter-Bomber Banshee :
(Edit: and not the kilrathi looking, UBW, "look, I'm almost a Jalthi, only need neutrons", Light-Fighter Banshee)

1. What do we know about it, aside from the obvious, stated in the Armada manual.

2. Is it really 43 meters long?! I'ts alittle wider then it's length, creating a rather cubersome fighter (especialy compared with other bombers), and it's cockpit comes out HUGE! enough to claim it has a flight crew of two sitting side by side (like in the A-6 Intruder or F-111). Assuming it is 43 meters long, is this assumption plausiable?

3. The Banshee bomber was only mention in armada - and never again. Now, taking into consideration the fact, the according to Armada, the Lexington left right after BoT for a hunt for Kilrah through uncharted space IIRC, what is the take on the Banshee:
Was it a Hi-tech ultra bomber that it's price tag caused confed to give it up, using cheeper bombers?
OR
Was it a cheep low capability bomber used as a close-the-gap sollution to cover the losses until LongBow production can catch on? (And as soon it did, the remaining Banshees where transfered to local defense units and planetoid gurards).
 
43 meters is a really crazy size. nothing that big can be called a fighter or fighter/bomber. That is almost as big as a B-52.
 
...which is another reason to asume it has a flight crew of two.
That way it adds up - a long range, jump capable heavy fighter-bomber or maybe a mini corvette - perfect to planatery garrisons - unables then to handle and keep persuit of retreating pirate forces which include the occational capital ship.
Only problem is: it might sound logical, but its not whats stated in the manual.

so, is 28-32 meters make sense? (even at this size, the cockpit is big enough for two).

Anyway, I'm more interested in the third part: Will it be found on planatery garrisons, or is it a fleet-only, one-time ship?
 
All the craft in Armada seemed weird to me. Acadamy gave a size of 16m for the Wraith, Armada gave it 35m (I think) and much the same for the Jrathek. That's a pretty hefty increase....
 
Fighter sizes have always been kinda screwy in WC, at least up to WC4. That the game engines before WCP's didn't properly scale fighters to capships anyway minimized the necessity for getting tiny details like that right.

Oh, and the "gap-filler for Longbow" isn't really applicable, anyway. We know that Longbows existed in some form at least back to 2654, where they're seen in the WC Academy cartoon (though only in one episode, IIRC, and the Broadsword was the main bomber of that time, again per WCA(tv)).
 
Also, 43 metres isn't exactly unprecedented... the Dragon lists as 40, the Longbow at 38, and the Broadsword, which is even wider for the length and probably almost as wide as the Banshee, at 36 (in an era of miniature fighters, and with only one crew plus gunners)
 
Still my question remains - will it be found in planatery garrisons or was it a one-time ship built spcifically for the Lex's mission to hunt kilrah?

If it wasn't a "gap-filler for Longbow", how about they where produce together until confleet decided to drop the Banshee and go solo with the LongBow.
 
Howdy all!

Good topic - the fighters introduced in Wing Commander Armada are often forgotten when dealing with Wing Commander's contiuity on a whole.

We know from the 'Gauntlet' storyline to Armada that the Banshee is a new fighter. There's a mission where you escort the Lexington's first element of Banshees to the ship. This storyline is concurrent with the events of Privateer, so we know that the Banshee is actually one of the *newest* war era fighters (in fact, of the known fighters, only the Excalibur is newer -- and it comes online mere months later).

That said, keep in mind that the Banshee is actually a *heavy fighter* rather than a bomber. It fills the same role as the Sabre or the Thunderbolt VII rather than the Longbow. It only has a pair of torpedoes, compared to Confed and Kilrathi bombers which carry four to six of the weapons.

(Edit: in terms of length, it's very hard to say - the fighters *aren't* the sizes listed in the manuals... because we see Blair stand next to a Lance, and it's clearly not 40 meters long. On the other hand, they're the only numbers we have -- making up new ones would probably prove fruitless. So, lets just say that the Banshee is always longer than other Confed fighters (and hence much wider)... but that we should take the actual length with a grain of salt compared to 'real world' things.)
 
I was expecting you to take notice, and as always you never fail ;)

So to sum it up:
It is 38-43 meters long (longer then anything else but...), and it's a new fighter so it actually been used in parallel with the Thunderbolt...
and I can only assume it is considered less effective and there for rated as 2nd line. (but it doesn't have to be true)
 
Armada ships really are forgotten in continuity, aren't they? I think that perhaps a lot of the WC community views Armada as they might view Privateer 2. Now I don't know how much that holds - but I find it interesting that the style of Armada is so different from the others. However - I can clearly see that it does hold an interim place between WC2 and WC3. Including the introduction of the Arrow and bringing the Dralthi back into the fray.

Overall - I always enjoyed Armada. The strategy part could be pretty fun if you had another person to play against, too. And of course - head to head dogfighting.
 
I loved Armada, when I was at boarding school it gave me a chance to beat everyone time and again on the weekends ;)
 
I hated the Armada Arrow - it was too damn fast and way under armed.
took me hours just to pass the first mission of the guantlet - and I never passed the second.
 
Well, I'm going for final - I'm setting my Banshee's length on 39m - keeping it bigger then any other WC fighter craft, and yet more reasonable then the Armada setting of 43m.
 
It is 38-43 meters long (longer then anything else but...), and it's a new fighter so it actually been used in parallel with the Thunderbolt...
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I'm not sure where you're getting 38 meters -- five meters doesn't make a lot of difference, however you break it off. My point was that 43 meters (or 38 meters) is really really long compared to the size of a person or a 'real' airplane -- an F-16 is, what, 15 meters long?

and I can only assume it is considered less effective and there for rated as 2nd line. (but it doesn't have to be true)
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I don't see why that would be true -- it's *newer* than the 'bolt... we just never get a chance to see Banshees in service.

Armada ships really are forgotten in continuity, aren't they? I think that perhaps a lot of the WC community views Armada as they might view Privateer 2. Now I don't know how much that holds - but I find it interesting that the style of Armada is so different from the others. However - I can clearly see that it does hold an interim place between WC2 and WC3. Including the introduction of the Arrow and bringing the Dralthi back into the fray.
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I think people just forget that Armada has a place in the timeline - it's release was overshadowed by Wing Commander III. It's hard to say that the style is really *different*... since the majority of Armada's ship art are reused from two earlier games.
 
Well, the TU-160 Blackjack, the biggest bad ass nowadays, is about 54m long. it is trully huge, with a crew of 4. The B-52 is 48.5 m long... 43 meters for the Gladius is crazy, even more if you consider how wide it is. It is not just a matter of comparing different techs, but such a monster wouldn't fit inside a carrier. if it was 25m long, it would already be quite big.

BTW, the F-16 is 15m as LOAF said. today's fighters are a lot larger than older ones, but it would be crasy to assume that they will grow indefinitely :)

Maybe they confused meters and feet. 43 feet equals 13m, which is a reasonable length, considering how the banshee is a lot wider than longer.
 
I set my model's length on 39m, and it's dimention are 39m length, 47m wide, and 11m high.
If the length is 43m, the width is 53m and hight is 15m. in meters the diffrences look small, but the fighter occupies quite considrebly less volume.

Compare to a person, I think the it should be 28-32m in length, which will make it on par with other heavy fighters, and in general more "logicaly" correct.
But as you said: "lets just say that the Banshee is always longer than other Confed fighters" so... it's longer then the longest (LongBow - 38m)
 
Compare to a person, I think the it should be 28-32m in length, which will make it on par with other heavy fighters, and in general more "logicaly" correct.
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No, because the size problem is universal. None of the ships in Wing Commander (aside from those in Prophecy and arguably Wing Commander II) are the 'right' length. The Hellcat we see Blair climb into in Wing Commander III isn't 27 meters long.

We can use the numbers in the manuals for comparison to other fighters: the Banshee will always be... 63%(?) longer than that Hellcat, whatever length is ultimately determined for either fighter. It's not a matter of scaling the Banshee back so it's the same length as other fighters for some reason - it's a matter of every single length in the continuity being wrong in the same way.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
it's a matter of every single length in the continuity being wrong in the same way.
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But every manual (except prophcy and WCII) is wrong in it's own way.
Based on the rather safe assumption that the WC2 manual is accurate one can easily use the Rapier WC1/WC2 ratio (dicussed repeatedly in other threads) to rescall all WC1 fighters to reasnable proportions.
(with the Raptor coming up at 28.5m which might still be alittle oversized but: A. it's alot more logical then 36m and B. It's a Heavy SPACE fighter after all...)

The point is that 43m for a Banshee is no less illogical then a 27m Hellcat - that I would agree, BUT, unlike the Rapier-ratio that serves as a translator between WC1 and WC2, we have no reffrence point to compare it to.

rescalling the model to another set of parrameter is a two-mouse-clicks issue, the problem is scalling it right.

As I was writing I had an idea pop to my head:
WC academy (the game) manual, continue to measure fighters in the more "reasonable" WC2 numbers. It specifies the Wraith as 16m.
Armada manual put it at 35m - and after a short calculation:
Armada confed lengths:
Arrow: 8.3m
Phantom: 18.3m
Wraith: 16m
Gladius: 16.5m
Banshee: 19.7m
These numbers however comeout alittle short.
But the Kilrathi Jrathek is measured as 20m at academy and 35m at Aramada, so the number are:
Arrow: 10.3
Phantom: 22.85m
Wraith: 20m (or 16m - size already known from other source ;) )
Gladius: 20.5m
Banshee: 24.6m
These numbers are better.

Also, If we'll take one set of these numbers (I'm leaning toward the second) we can also "translate" WC3 and WC4, based on the approx. Arrow size.
 
HammerHead said:
These numbers are better.
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Better that what, exactly? I think the first set of numbers you created was fine - an 8.3 metre Arrow doesn't seem at all unreasonable.

But - and this is the heart of the problem, IMO - whichever you may prefer, both sets of numbers are equally reasonable and equally wrong, because it is clear that, based on the Jrathek and Wraith example, Armada's rescaling of ships is not even internally consistent, let alone consistent with any other game. No matter what numbers we come up with, they'll still be wrong.

...And there's something else to consider, too - how accurate were the WC2 numbers? Judging from the cutscene shots, the Rapier II seems to be only slightly bigger than your average WWII fighter... and that would mean it's still at least 5 metres bigger than it should be. The same question applies for WCP, of course - is there any reason to believe the ships are the right size there, given that we hardly ever see any shots with humans that could be used for size comparison?
 
Has anyone tried scaling Blair to a cockpit, then going with relative sizes from that? We've got good ones from WC3, and a couple really good ones from WC2. Working from those should be easy enough, as I think there are either direct or indirect links to everywhere in the continuity.
 
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