Action Stations Concordia...

mustanger

Rear Admiral
Out of curiosity, do we have any idea if this Concordia is the namesake of the Concordia-class carrier, or is it simply not established? I have always pictured it as looking like the Lexington.
 
Out of curiosity, do we have any idea if this Concordia is the namesake of the Concordia-class carrier, or is it simply not established? I have always pictured it as looking like the Lexington.

I don't think she's ever been explicitly established as the first ship of the Concordia-class, but it would make sense given what we know of Confederation history. Specifically, that the Yorktown-class - to which Victory belongs - is a pre-war design would suggest that craft of the same general design were in use during the period for Confederation carrier craft, at least in terms of overall shape and proportions. Lexington is known to be a member of the Concordia-class, and she does look an awful lot like Victory. This same phenomenon is present in the current day - though there are differences between the Enterprise-, Nimitz- and Gerald R. Ford-classes of aircraft carrier in the US Navy, you'd have to be a carrier buff to know them. Otherwise, they pretty much look alike.
 
Yes, the TCS Concordia in Action Stations is the first ship of the Concordia-class, which is supposed to be the 'standard' carrier further down the line. It was said to be the newest type at the time of the novel.

The original plan was for the ship in the book to be the Wing Commander 2 Concordia... that's why it dies off screen unexpectedly at the end of the book, and why the speech to Tolwyn about how he might commander 'another' Concordia someday seems so odd. They also changed the short description of the hull from green to white to match the ship in WC4...
 
Talking of Action Stations (since I'm reading it at the moment):
Someone mentions the Ranger class (in one of the first chapters). Does he mean Yorktown and used Ranger because Yorktown didn't exist in 1998 or are both canonical and Ranger is just some other old class from before the war?
Sometimes I find it hard to see whether something is canon in the books or if Forstchen just got something wrong...
 
Both are canonical - the Confederation has lots of carrier designs despite having fairly few actual carriers. This makes a certain amount of sense given that the pre-war TCN was a battleship navy, not believing that fighter-based weapons systems that could penetrate capship phase shielding were possible (we'll just skip over how Paladin has to dredge the term "battleship" up from "ancient nautical history" on p.168 of Fleet Action, a remark Forstchen clearly forgot about writing when he came to do Action Stations ), so the amount of time that probably passed between the construction of each pre-war carrier would likely make it sensible for major design revisions to be incorporated quite frequently; many carriers may be the only ship of their class. The original assignment of the Victory to the Ranger-class was based on Action Stations, but that can't be correct because the Rangers are CVs and the Victory is a CVL. Yorktown was picked out of a hat (OK, it was the next USN carrier launched after Ranger) for the Victory in Star*Soldier.
 
Talking of Action Stations (since I'm reading it at the moment):
Someone mentions the Ranger class (in one of the first chapters). Does he mean Yorktown and used Ranger because Yorktown didn't exist in 1998 or are both canonical and Ranger is just some other old class from before the war?
Sometimes I find it hard to see whether something is canon in the books or if Forstchen just got something wrong...

Ah, it's actually the other way around: fans chose the name Ranger BECAUSE it was something mentioned in Action Stations. So what you're reading is actually where it came from in the first place!
 
Speaking of which, was the TCS Lexington from WC4N a Concordia-class or a Confederation-class?

Lexington is first cited as Concordia-class in the WC4 game. The only Confederation-class ship we ever see in the games is Concordia (from WC2/3, which is ostensibly the third Confed ship to bear the name), though the movie also identifies Olympus as a ship of the Confederation-class if I'm not mistaken.
 
Lexington is first cited as Concordia-class in the WC4 game. The only Confederation-class ship we ever see in the games is Concordia (from WC2/3, which is ostensibly the third Confed ship to bear the name), though the movie also identifies Olympus as a ship of the Confederation-class if I'm not mistaken.

The movie novel identifies both the movie Concordia and the Olympus (in the bit at the end) as Confederation-class ships... because it was written before the movie itself was finished. Peter Telep literally had a list of ship names and then researched them based on their appearances in the games. The following novels switch both ships back to being Concordia-class supercruisers.
 
Sometimes i think Terran ship classes and names are chosen with the sole purpose of confusing Kilrathi intelligence.
Or maybe the Confederation finance department.
"Sure we'll let you build a new light carrier. What, it's a dreadnought?!"
 
Sometimes i think Terran ship classes and names are chosen with the sole purpose of confusing Kilrathi intelligence.
Or maybe the Confederation finance department.
"Sure we'll let you build a new light carrier. What, it's a dreadnought?!"
You're not from the UK by any chance, are you? :) Because that's exactly the story of how the British started building airplane-carrying cruisers (or whatever it is they were called) instead of carriers.
 
Flying-Deck Cruisers is what the USN called them or are you talking just about mounting float planes for scouting/spotting?
 
Quarto said:
the British started building airplane-carrying cruisers (or whatever it is they were called) instead of carriers

And the first through-deck cruiser was even given a battlecruiser name - Invincible - to add to the charade (after the Falklands when carriers were suddenly in vogue again the second and third ships of the class got carrier names). Of course, every time anybody uses the abbreviation CV they're really talking about an aircraft carrying cruiser, CV meaning "Cruiser, aViation" (because CA was taken for "Cruiser, Armoured").

And yes, as far as I'm aware this was purely politics, with "aircraft carriers" being considered too expensive for Britain in the 1970s.​
 
The russians also do that IIRC, they call their carriers "heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser"
 
Flying-Deck Cruisers is what the USN called them or are you talking just about mounting float planes for scouting/spotting?
No, I mean in the post-war period, in the age of jet aviation. Ilanin basically describes what I was referring to. And the reason, exactly as he writes, is political - the government essentially declared that the Royal Navy would never build more carriers because they are too expensive. This kind of short-sightedness was a huge problem for the Royal Navy, who squirmed as much as they could to retain their power-projection capabilities. It goes without saying, had the Royal Navy caved and just did what the government really wanted, we wouldn't be talking about the Falklands any more. This, incidentally, has the potential to make the upcoming couple of years potentially very interesting, with the Royal Navy now truly carrier-less, the Argentinians increasingly militant again, and the Democrat-led US openly hostile to the UK's interests in the Falklands...

The russians also do that IIRC, they call their carriers "heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser"
Yep, but I think the Russians actually did build their ships to be more like aircraft-carrying cruisers than carriers - i.e., they have much better armament and limited aircraft carrying capacity. Possibly shorter range, as well - the Russians never really relied on sea power, and they simply didn't want to invest in real carriers (and wisely so: Russia is a land power).
 
Heh, German engineers called their first attempt at an assault rifle "maschinenkarabiner" (machine-carbine) to circumvent hitler's "rifles for long range, SMGs for short range AND NOTHING ELSE"-doctrine. Later models were called "maschinenpistole" (submachinegun), disregarding caliber, weapon size and purpose at all. Funnily, even later it was designated "sturmgewehr", a term allegedly created by hitler himself. Even funnier, today's term "assault rifle" is derived from that word.
Oh you could SO make a soap opera based on military engineering history.
 
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