Anyone not like the books?

[Deadeye79]

many valid points but Carriers played many pivotal roles in the war not to say cruisers didnt but its simply the mechanics of their mode of warfare

 

[HammerHead]

answer part .1

with your permission, I will only relate to my statments, as I cannot answer for others...

No, absolutely not, but you would think so if you read Hesselich's posts.

Ok, It's still look like it some times

I said destroyers and cruisers that could carry fighters would reduce the importance of the carrier, not eliminate it or make it insignificant. Obviously they are important. But not as much as in WW2 where the carrier was the only ship that could carry fighters.

Really, this is pretty much common sense and impossible to argue, but a few posters are arguing that I'm wrong, because "carriers are important" -- totally irrelevant to my post.

You misunderstood me.
I think your point is wrong - Fighter carring cruisers cannot replace carrairs simply becuase carriars can swing a larger and more versatile force while coordinating them all from a central point, seeing the whole picture.

However you turn it around, using 7 cruisers, even with one serving as central command, will NOT give the same result - either you base on a limited range of fighters - as cruisers will mainly carry fighters to defend them selves - or you force some cruisers to carry fightes they usually wouldn't, like bombers (a cruiser is designed for killing cap-ships, why would it need a cap-ship killing fighter?) thus making them... well... DEDICATED CARRIARS (thus contridictring yourself)

taking a group of ships designed for one task and use them for one they were NOT designed for is tacticly wrong.

sure you can use 3 Watrloo cruisers in lou of one Concordia carrier (120 fighters intead of 96), but again you get into the dilema I previously mentioned :

Cruisers are supposed to hack and slash with enemy ships up close and personal – with grave danger of heavy or even terminal damage. Once you start using them as carriers you get into a dilemma – get close for a fire fight and risk stranding your pilots after your ship took unrepairable damage to its flight deck or have been destroyed, or staying away, thus loosing the advantages of the cruiser's heavy weapons and armor (practically becoming a dedicated carrier).
Either way you look at it – you just created a hybrid ship – that is not good enough from either roll…

so Fighter carring cruisers cannot REPLACE full fledge carriars

about your point of reducing the importance of the carrier, well in a way - it did reduce the importance of the carrier, and it didn't:

you are right that Fighter carring cruisers reduced carriers importance - you don't need to send a carriar to every hell-hole on the far side of the map.

on the other hand - when you have only 20 fleet carriers, hundreds of systems and (obviously) alot more cruisers - thats a VERY GOOD thing!

That was another issue. Why are Hakagas so superior to other smaller units that they represent a "jackhammer"? It's not even clear that a Hakaga would beat 7-8 Fralthra in a fight, let alone win overwhelmingly. Bottomline, a Hakaga is a big, heavily armored bus for ships. That's nice, but hardly a superweapon. The fighters are the real weapons, and they could be carried by smaller ships as well (destroyers, cruisers, standard carriers), which would probably be actually easier to defend due to the sheer number of them.

you make it sound like a sandbox-plastic troops combat... you forget we're streched over several million kilometers of space...

finding one-another is complicated enough. further more, however you'll position the cruisers on formation - it'll be bigger then one Hakaga, and thus will need bigger defence screen to successfully defend the formation. bigger screen = more fighters for defence, thus less fighters on the attack, thus more chance the Hakaga can eliminate the attacking fighters and keep chiping away at the cruisers to their death...
If you'll spread the cruisers a cross the system - they'll turn into seven seperate targets for the Hakaga to pick off, while each having a very small fighter group, thus being a very minor threat herself.
The cruisers real option is to charge the Hakaga together... for that they'll need to find her... and spoting 7 cruisers is easier then spoting one Hakaga - which most likely give the Hakaga the Head-start...
which is, for the reasons mention above, not good for the cruisers

Umm, why? You're doing a Hesselich here. The cruisers need more escorts than a Hakaga ... because you say so.

Well... a cruiser doesn't need more escort then a Hakaga, just one ship (compared to the Hakaga's 18) it's the COMBINED 7 CRUISERS FORMATION that need more escort ships... (also look at former paragraph)

Why? well, my intrest in military history (as well as being a former military-man my self) make me look things a certain way - based on my knowledge and expirance and base on the preformace of WC ships and fighters, on WC tactics from former games (WC2 & WC3 mainly), the obviouse parralelities between WCU and WW2, and common logic - the biger your ship group is - the more escorts you'll need.

A carrier doesnt go into a system alone and fight the entire garrison. even in WC1, when the Tigers Claw always seems to fly alone, the plot always hints you of other ships in the system, assisting the 'Claw. The only time it was done was on secret missions 1 - the 'Claw entered kilrathi space fairly alone but still had some assitance. Hell, even Tarawa had escorts on her way to kilrah.

I am NOT, however, saying I'm right and you are wrong, I'm explaing to you why my views look logic to me. I'd like to know why your convinced that you are correct...

The hangar in the cruisers and destroyers in WC3 is a tiny little hole in the back. A runway really isn't needed, you could really just push the ship overboard. It's not like it is going to fall into the ocean and sink.

The neccessity of a runway is arguable - Chris Roberts designed his universe in a way that you do need a runway.
But regarless - I specified "Taxi"ing space, not runway - you need some space on which to taxi langing damaged fighter to the rear of the hanger and taxi fresh ones to take off position - that is "Taxi"ing space

all the rest are multiplied numbers - I made all on a claculator (I tend to screw up when doing math on in my head )

 

[HammerHead]

Part 2

Ummmmmm .... this also puts *your carrier* at risk of losing all those 120 pilots based over it should I be successful. Highly likely if you've focused the majority of your fighters onto one of my ships, leaving 2 Fralthra and their 80 fighters free to smash your carrier.

well without talking about the books...
logicly speaking - if a carrier is face to face with a cruiser, she has allready lost. it doesn't matter if she'll die or not - that the cruiser got to weapons range of her means that her Intelignce network screwed up, her sensors fail to see the cruiser coming, and her bombers fail to take it out... and some more fuckups i missed...

In one of your little scenarios, you had my cruisers being spread out so far that they couldn't help each other. So your carrier's 120 fighters could go from cruiser to cruiser and overwhelm each ones 40 fighter complement one at a time. The implication, of course, is that my cruisers will sit there with their thumbs up their asses while you do this. I'm sure you thought that this would be a fairly reasonable scenario, but it makes about as much sense as my scenario where your fighters are rubber-cemented to the flight deck. It's ridiculous.

once again - the game is locating your enemy, then close to range, then successfully attack him and finally destroy him.

3 cruisers against one carrier is an abstract enough scenario for the cruisers to actually have a chance...
on reality things look a little diffrent - Fleet carriers don't stroll around alone, they have escort ships - cruisers destroyers... since the carrier is a dedicated fighter platform it's reasonable to assume that her pilots see more action, thus are better pilots... all in all, as you get into more specifics the scales tend to fall carrier's side.
This however doesn't ENSURE the carrier's victory...

Every ship might not have a hangar, but most do. Cruisers, destroyers and transports can all carry or dock fighters. In WW2, only carriers could carry fighters. So, in WC, carriers are less important. End of story.

well, you are too extreme - every ship has it's job - space environment force cruiser designers to inclued small hanger for defence fighters...It doesn't neccesserily change anything carrier's wise...

Totally a matter of interpretation, as the books make it seem very hard to destroy capships in general, while the games make it fairly easy for 1 fighter to do. Any argument on this subject is OPINION, not right or wrong. Which I'm game for -- and what I was expecting on this thread -- but not what you are doing.

I was referring specifically however to your suggestion that it would be more efficient to focus all your bombers onto the first cruiser, then the 2nd, then the 3rd. When the truth is, your bombers will crush the first cruiser, but they will take losses and damage. The depleted force will then have to go on another 30 second torpedo run -- with fighters STILL shooting at them. If any survive the 2nd cruiser, they have a third run, having taken heavier losses and more damage ... 30 seconds with fighters STILL shooting at them.

In reality it'd be much more effective to split your forces evenly among the cruisers.

In this case you are correct.
Pay attention that the difficulty in destroying cap-ships is a strong reson to keep cruisers as cap-ship-destroyers without burdening them with fighter operation demands.

1) Kilrathi seem to use Fralthra (cruiser/carriers) more than dedicated carriers (as opposed to Confed)

2) Confed seems to often refer to Fralthra as carriers

... is a contradiction. It's a semantic argument because *whatever* the word is people use to describe the Fralthra (cruiser, heavy cruiser, cruiser/carrier, light carrier, dreadnought, etc), it is NOT a ship that carries about 100 fighters and has no anti-matter guns -- which is what I was referring to (and I think that was perfectly clear) when I said carrier in (1).

you are complaning of WCU inconcistansies - well, they PISS ME OFF too

I said they CAN (correct), you said they CAN'T (incorrect). Not that they "usually don't."

yes they can carry bombers, no they won't carry them without a special reason, or why else would you need these nice big AMG's?
(also see former posts)


I just hope it's all on good spirit
(I got a feeling you got a little pissoff out there )

 

[Deadeye79]

Hammer you nailed alot right on the head my friend good show

 

[sea_monkey]

HammerHead, I basically agree with you. We really aren't seeing things that differently. A few points:

3 cruisers against one carrier is an abstract enough scenario for the cruisers to actually have a chance...
on reality things look a little diffrent - Fleet carriers don't stroll around alone, they have escort ships - cruisers destroyers... since the carrier is a dedicated fighter platform it's reasonable to assume that her pilots see more action, thus are better pilots... all in all, as you get into more specifics the scales tend to fall carrier's side.
This however doesn't ENSURE the carrier's victory...

Agree with you here, but the purpose of pitting 3 cruisers against one carrier (not the Concordia, just a heavy carrier with 120 fighters to even it out) was to compare the relative strength of a carrier and an equivalent force of smaller ships. NOT to demonstrate cruisers are better for carrying fighters -- they aren't -- but rather that a "supercarrier" like the Hakaga doesn't make much sense as a superweapon in the WC world, if a bunch of smaller ships would have been anywhere near as effective.

Well... a cruiser doesn't need more escort then a Hakaga, just one ship (compared to the Hakaga's 18) it's the COMBINED 7 CRUISERS FORMATION that need more escort ships... (also look at former paragraph) ... I am NOT, however, saying I'm right and you are wrong, I'm explaing to you why my views look logic to me. I'd like to know why your convinced that you are correct...

My take is that in WW2, since the carrier was the ONLY ship that could carry aircraft, which was the real force in the Navy, you couldn't afford to lose the carrier. So every carrier had to be surrounded by a wall of escorts to prevent enemy submarines, destroyers and bombers from getting near. This is also true in the WCU to an extent.

The thing is, if your fighter force is divided among 7 cruisers, it's not really necessary to protect the cruisers like a carrier. #1, the cruisers can take of themselves in ship to ship combat and each have formidable anti-aircraft defense. Seven of them in formation together would *shred* small waves of bombers. #2, losing one cruiser with 40 planes aboard isn't a big a deal as a carrier with 300 planes aboard. So the defensive screen doesn't need to be as strong as it would be around a carrier, IMO. But I see where you're coming from here.

I just hope it's all on good spirit
(I got a feeling you got a little pissoff out there )

Not at all, actually I know its confusing because the way I quote you can't tell who wrote it, but that wasn't in response to you. It wasn't being pissed off either but just trying to make my point as directly as possible so I don't have to type it over again.

 

[sea_monkey]

Victory Streak's 'tactical situations' section describes a large multi-wing attack (eleven fighters) on an enemy light carrier and escorts, versus a two plane raid on a pair of cruisers.

(Capships being 'fictionally' harder than they are in the actual game is nothing new - from the coordinated attack on the Rathtak in Claw Marks to Halcyon's descriptions of how nigh-impossible it is to blow up a Fralthi the implication has always been that in the 'WC universe' capships aren't the easy targets they are to the gamer.)

Ok, but I hope you realize that once you recognize that there are contradictions between the games and the books, then any kind of "resolution" to such an issue is purely a matter of opinion -- not a matter of right and wrong. You think some evidence fits your argument better, I think other evidence fits mine better. I have no problem with this kind of discussion -- it's what I was expecting when I started this thread -- but we're not talking in a matter of "I'm right, you're wrong" anymore, but rather "I see where you're coming from, but it seems to me ..."

And I actually agree with you on this part. The games are limited by the technology available at the game, so it's safe to assume that in most of the missions in WC there was action going on (more wingmen, more enemy fighters), than what was being displayed.

However, a cruiser would be just as difficult to take out as a carrier, if not more difficult due to the antimatter batteries. But, just to make my argument clear, let's back up to see where this line of discussion started. Hopefully this will be the end of this topic because I think once my argument is placed together, instead of little one line bits, it's pretty inarguable.

This started from when I said the books were too carrier-centric. (1) Cruisers and destroyers can carry fighters so can take on roles that only the carrier could previously do. (2) The Kilrathi seem to employ more Fralthra/Fralthi as an assault force, leaving the carriers behind. (3) A Hakaga wouldn't really be a "superweapon" because it doesn't have some kind of massive advantage over an equivalent number of smaller ships.

So from there we got onto a discussion of how 7 Fralthra would do against a Hakaga, or 3 Waterloos would do against a heavy carrier (NOT a Concordia dreadnought) with 120 fighters.

I pointed out that, if the odds of destroying one cruiser is P, using an attacking force of X fighters, then the odds of destroying 3 cruisers with X fighters each is P*P*P. So if P is 1/2, the odds of destroying 3 cruisers is 1/8. Destroying 7 cruisers is 1/128.

So unless the odds of destroying a heavy carrier or a Hakaga with 3X or 7X number of fighters respectively is less than 1/8 or 1/128 respectively -- which is much, much less than P -- it is much riskier to concentrate your forces into one ship.

So now we are at this quote:

Okay, you're getting it: THE ODDS OF DESTROYING A CARRIER WITH 60 BOMBERS IS INCREDIBLY LOWER THAN THE ODDS OF DESTROYING A CRUISER.

Is this true? Well, not in the games obviously. In WC1 the Snakeir isn't really any tougher than the Fralthi. And in WC3, the Fralthi II is MUCH harder than a carrier because of the four anti-matter cannons.

In WWII it wasn't true either. Destroyers and cruisers were there to provide anti-aircraft fire for the carrier, which itself was relatively defenseless.

As for the Victory Streak quote -- I actually DO have a copy of Victory Streak with me. The first mission is 11 fighters against one light carrier AND two cruisers. The other is *4* fighters against two cruisers. And presumably those extra 7 fighters are mostly to deal with the light carrier's fighter complement (it's 4 light fighters and 3 heavies).

And really while I thought VS was a good manual, it's full of inconsistencies (Blair & Maniac 17 in 2654, Hobbes 13!) so I don't think it should be taken so seriously. If carrier groups were routinely getting blown up with only 11 fighters, there wouldn't be any carriers left. It doesn't fit with the books either.

So basically, it's pretty much for granted that 3 cruisers will be harder to kill than one carrier, which supports my argument that Hakagas wouldn't be some kind of superweapon, and also that cruisers reduce the importance of carriers. That's pretty hard to argue at this point in my opinion. Not that carriers don't form the backbone of the Confed fleet, just that I think Forstchen placed too much importance on them.

 

[sea_monkey]

No, I didn't - you're just avoiding the point which I reiterated: given the evidence I have already quoted, is there anything that counterindicates the existence of a large fighter force.

You brought up the supporting evidence after you asked me to prove the negative. Not that it's a big deal, and I'm not going to bother to quote everything over something so minor, but I'm not avoiding anything. The "counter-indication" is that we never see this massive fighter force at any point in any of the games (or books!).

The five carrier groups are *not* the Fralthra - because whacking three Fralthra (or one, if you want to insist that the first two don't count) doesn't reduce their numbers. You are *never* told that you're going to engage the final two carriers - it's specifically described as the "next assault wave". (Destroying the Kilrathi offensive capability forces them to retreat - it doesn't destroy their remaining two carriers).

It's not clear to me that destroying the 1st Fralthra at Olympus would somehow preclude that Fralthra from being part of the "3 carrier groups" that attacked "yesterday." I mean it might be slightly odd for Edmunds to tell you that when you killed one of them, but not as odd as Hobbes knowing in advance that the target of the final strike would be 2 Fralthra.

I still don't see why the Kilrathi would retreat in your scenario ... with at LEAST two carriers and their supporting force left, they still outnumber the depleted Olympus Station and the Concordia.

Yeah, that'd go over well. Say, a huge Kilrathi fleet that we don't think we can stop has broken through our lines and is dispatching line squadrons to wipe out individual planets. You colonial garrisons on the planets they're attacking don't really need your fighter squadrons for anything, do you?

(Olympus' garrison wipes out three Kilrathi carrier groups... that's pretty impressive. )

What, Confed forces are going to mutiny and not respond to orders? I mean you can write this stuff in to fill the gaps -- point being we see several starbases in the games and books and we never see hundreds of fighters being launched from them. Not to say they couldn't carry them, or that SOME bases don't. But if we're talking tens or hundreds of thousands of fighters, you would expect something like 200-300 fighters per colony (assuming around 300 colonies).

The BoE scrambles up a few hundred fighters total, just seems like there would have been a lot more if the neighbors all had hundreds each to spare.

Pretty sure Olympus specifically states they lost like 20 fighters and they were done too ... Which by the way doesn't support your point well if it only took 20 fighters to kill three carriers and their escorts.

Doesn't necessarily make for a good backstory, though - especially when you're leading to another game where you have to essentially be written into the same position (losing the war!). They took drastic measures to make that work in WC2 and in WC3 they pretty much ignored everything else alltogether... I prefer the middle ground, with someone establishing a 'history' with which to base future products on (this, incidentally, is what 'canon' means...)

I liked what they did with both WC2 and WC3. WC2 they put ten years between the games and the plot surrounded events that had happened in there (the Tiger's Claw disaster). You only needed to finish on the winning path of WC1&SMs for it to make sense (and pretend your wingmen ejected.)

WC3 is my personal favorite of the series. The script doesn't assume ANYTHING about what happened in the past 4 years. That is left to your imagination. All that's important to the plot of WC3 is stuff that happened to every player: Angel, Tolwyn and Hobbes. The beginning is a little dry as a result but after that it picks up.

It always appeared Confed was losing the war, so I didn't think that was at all a stretch. If *one pilot* doesn't fly well in Vega or Enigma, it's implied the war is lost from there. And the winning ending in WC2 isn't a dominating victory -- it was a sneak attack on the sector HQ, the Kilrathi fleet was relatively untouched. And if you take SO2 or the books into account to an extent, those both provide some backstory for how things have turned bad. Add in the Concordia ...

 

[Nemesis]

Why post *anything*? I saw some issues and was wondering if anyone else saw the same things, and what they thought of it.

Except that your curiosity should have been satisfied many, many posts ago. Indeed, having learned what many thought, you’re now arguing over what they think. And my question to you is: Why? You’ve made it clear you either don’t accept or don’t give the same weight to certain sources of WC canon as others do. Nor are you willing to respect others’ points when they are based on those sources. (I note, in regard to the books, your analogy to the Bible and atheism.)

So what gives? Is it that what you’re really about is not merely to state your own rejection of these sources, but to try to get others to agree with you? If so, that clearly contradicts one of (though not the only one of) your earlier statements that “it's up to the imagination of the player to make sense of everything”. Unless, of course, by “player” you really meant only you. (I further note your interesting claim that you believe your argument to be “pretty inarguable”.)

I don't really follow you here, as I don't see the connection between living/dead and resolving inconsistencies? What am I doing if not trying to resolve inconsistencies.

But your “resolution” is either to discount or dismiss some of the sources of canon, and that’s not a resolution any of us you’re arguing with will ever accept, and one of the reasons is because that would doom WC to stagnation, which is the “connection” you’re missing. Most of us want to see WC continue in the form of future games, books, etc. We want to see its history grow and to that end, among others, are prepared to accept as true any and all new facts such future sources present, regardless of any inconsistencies thereby also created, but as to which we take great pleasure in trying to “smooth over”, and for the same reason, namely to see WC’s history enriched. (We also recognize, however, that only EA/Origin can have the last word on such matters.)

You, on the other hand, have made it clear you’re not likely to get much satisfaction from that. (In that vein, you’ve even stated you don’t expect “too many more quality products”.) So for you, WC is pretty much old news. You’ve settled on what you think is “true” about WC, you’ve conceived of your own form of “canon”, and you appear to be happy with that. Which is fine. But your conception won’t likely grow into anything more.

For the rest of us, that’s not good enough.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

You brought up the supporting evidence after you asked me to prove the negative. Not that it's a big deal, and I'm not going to bother to quote everything over something so minor, but I'm not avoiding anything. The "counter-indication" is that we never see this massive fighter force at any point in any of the games (or books!).

So, just to make it clear, despite the fact that the games, novels and manuals all reference this fighter force in some manner, the fact that you don't specifically see it means that it doesn't exist? And there's a debate about proving negatives. ?

(We do see massive fighter forces in the books - at McAuliffe in Action Stations, at the Landreich in several later books, at Earth in Fleet Action...)

It's not clear to me that destroying the 1st Fralthra at Olympus would somehow preclude that Fralthra from being part of the "3 carrier groups" that attacked "yesterday." I mean it might be slightly odd for Edmunds to tell you that when you killed one of them, but not as odd as Hobbes knowing in advance that the target of the final strike would be 2 Fralthra.

I still don't see why the Kilrathi would retreat in your scenario ... with at LEAST two carriers and their supporting force left, they still outnumber the depleted Olympus Station and the Concordia.

Actually, Hobbes says 'the Fralthra' - which makes sense, as he knew the force attacking the base would be ships of the line rather than carriers themselves.

There's no indication that the carriers have any support ships left... PlayerCharacter had personally been involved in attacks against five Fralthra by that point. It's also quite possible that they no longer have an effective force of offensive fighters - having lost their bombers in the previous attacks on Olympus. Then, of course, there's the fact that the entire attack was just a feint to draw attention away from the Deneb offensive rather than a serious attempt to take Ghorah Khar...

What, Confed forces are going to mutiny and not respond to orders? I mean you can write this stuff in to fill the gaps -- point being we see several starbases in the games and books and we never see hundreds of fighters being launched from them. Not to say they couldn't carry them, or that SOME bases don't. But if we're talking tens or hundreds of thousands of fighters, you would expect something like 200-300 fighters per colony (assuming around 300 colonies).

No one is going to order them to abandon their homeworlds in the first place (even were it possible to shuttle fighters to Earth) because it doesn't make any strategic sense. We know from the novel that the Kilrathi are dispatching forces to the inner worlds to torch strategic resources - giving up the defenses of 300 worlds to protect Earth (even if it were possible, which without carriers it is not) doesn't float. I understand the romanticism you've assigned to saving Earth (... and that topic is discussed in the movie novels, actually), but it's not something that would overrule the ultimate survival of humanity.

Pretty sure Olympus specifically states they lost like 20 fighters and they were done too ... Which by the way doesn't support your point well if it only took 20 fighters to kill three carriers and their escorts.

The specific line is: Three of those five Kilrathi carrier groups attacked yesterday, we lost fourteen pilots in the first wave. Several notes:

* This was a 'base defense' mission, just like the one youBlaircetera fly the next day. These fighters weren't lost flying against enemy carriers - they were lost fighting enemy cruisers/line warships and bombers (and bomber escorts).

* This is in no way indicitive of how many fighters were involved. Fourteen pilots were lost (possibly more fighters) - which is a heck of a lot compared to any of the action we've ever seen in any of the player missions.

I liked what they did with both WC2 and WC3. WC2 they put ten years between the games and the plot surrounded events that had happened in there (the Tiger's Claw disaster). You only needed to finish on the winning path of WC1&SMs for it to make sense (and pretend your wingmen ejected.)

WC3 is my personal favorite of the series. The script doesn't assume ANYTHING about what happened in the past 4 years. That is left to your imagination. All that's important to the plot of WC3 is stuff that happened to every player: Angel, Tolwyn and Hobbes. The beginning is a little dry as a result but after that it picks up.

It always appeared Confed was losing the war, so I didn't think that was at all a stretch. If *one pilot* doesn't fly well in Vega or Enigma, it's implied the war is lost from there. And the winning ending in WC2 isn't a dominating victory -- it was a sneak attack on the sector HQ, the Kilrathi fleet was relatively untouched. And if you take SO2 or the books into account to an extent, those both provide some backstory for how things have turned bad. Add in the Concordia ...

That's interesting, because this runs fairly opposite my personal feeling regarding WC3 (and 4). The fact that they 'restarted' the series and no longer referred to earlier games (or anything really 'in universe' - you talk with Maniac and Rachel rather than about tactics for destroying Dralthi) never sat well with me.

(Oh, grak, didn't realize the one on top was for me too. Appended.)

However, a cruiser would be just as difficult to take out as a carrier, if not more difficult due to the antimatter batteries. But, just to make my argument clear, let's back up to see where this line of discussion started. Hopefully this will be the end of this topic because I think once my argument is placed together, instead of little one line bits, it's pretty inarguable.

This started from when I said the books were too carrier-centric. (1) Cruisers and destroyers can carry fighters so can take on roles that only the carrier could previously do. (2) The Kilrathi seem to employ more Fralthra/Fralthi as an assault force, leaving the carriers behind. (3) A Hakaga wouldn't really be a "superweapon" because it doesn't have some kind of massive advantage over an equivalent number of smaller ships.

So from there we got onto a discussion of how 7 Fralthra would do against a Hakaga, or 3 Waterloos would do against a heavy carrier (NOT a Concordia dreadnought) with 120 fighters.

I pointed out that, if the odds of destroying one cruiser is P, using an attacking force of X fighters, then the odds of destroying 3 cruisers with X fighters each is P*P*P. So if P is 1/2, the odds of destroying 3 cruisers is 1/8. Destroying 7 cruisers is 1/128.

So unless the odds of destroying a heavy carrier or a Hakaga with 3X or 7X number of fighters respectively is less than 1/8 or 1/128 respectively -- which is much, much less than P -- it is much riskier to concentrate your forces into one ship.

So now we are at this quote:

Okay, you're getting it: THE ODDS OF DESTROYING A CARRIER WITH 60 BOMBERS IS INCREDIBLY LOWER THAN THE ODDS OF DESTROYING A CRUISER.

Is this true? Well, not in the games obviously. In WC1 the Snakeir isn't really any tougher than the Fralthi. And in WC3, the Fralthi II is MUCH harder than a carrier because of the four anti-matter cannons.

In WWII it wasn't true either. Destroyers and cruisers were there to provide anti-aircraft fire for the carrier, which itself was relatively defenseless.

As for the Victory Streak quote -- I actually DO have a copy of Victory Streak with me. The first mission is 11 fighters against one light carrier AND two cruisers. The other is *4* fighters against two cruisers. And presumably those extra 7 fighters are mostly to deal with the light carrier's fighter complement (it's 4 light fighters and 3 heavies).

And really while I thought VS was a good manual, it's full of inconsistencies (Blair & Maniac 17 in 2654, Hobbes 13!) so I don't think it should be taken so seriously. If carrier groups were routinely getting blown up with only 11 fighters, there wouldn't be any carriers left. It doesn't fit with the books either.

So basically, it's pretty much for granted that 3 cruisers will be harder to kill than one carrier, which supports my argument that Hakagas wouldn't be some kind of superweapon, and also that cruisers reduce the importance of carriers. That's pretty hard to argue at this point in my opinion. Not that carriers don't form the backbone of the Confed fleet, just that I think Forstchen placed too much importance on them.

To step even further back, the entire debate is rediculous because none of the scenarios make sense and will ultimately prove pointless. A carrier will never exist without escort ships, because it's reletively defenseless... and escort ships will never supplant carriers because they can't carry the same offensive air wing. The Hakaga is a superweapon because it's a better carrier, and its escorts (the 'battleships') are superweapons because they're better cruisers. The Hakagas (and their support fleets) are important because it changes the balance of the war. Regular carriers are important because they maintain that balance.

This seems to be exactly the same as it is in 'reality' - carriers need cruisers, cruisers need carriers... but carriers are far more precious and no one is talking about scrapping them. (And yes, modern line ships do carry light air wings - helicopters or VTOL aircraft... for the same purpose as the cruisers in Wing Commander, recon and defense).

(Aside: I see no problem with Hobbes being 13 in WC1. Cats != furry people - makes complete sense for a race of genetically adapted warriors to reach adulthood very quickly.)

 

[Edfilho]

The HAkaga is super because it can carry and deploy more fighters than any other carrier, while being able to keep launching them even after losing FIVE flight decks. The concordia was defenseless in the begining of WC2 because it had only on flight deck (two "runways", but one flight deck) which was FUBARed. Not only that, but the HAkagas carried a hell lot more deffensive firepower.

And say that a cruiser carries the X number of fighters needed to protect it, if you have 7 cruisers, you'll need 7X fighters. A carrier that can carry 7X fighters needs a lot less than this 7X fighters to protect itself, leaving a lot more fighters free to engage.

Your points are analogous to saying that ONE guy would be alot more wise to carry 5 six-guns instead of one SMG with 30 bullets.

Regarding the fact that you consider books, games and manuals NOT canon... That is not a valid point. Origin stated that everything that happened in those works happened in the WCU. Deal with it. It would be impossible to debate the WCU without this fact.

 

[Viper61]

That's 700 to 1100 kills in a year (by 7 pilots). That's a crapload.

I leave for a week and look what happens . Seems alot of good points/counterpoints have been raised and debated, but one jumped out at me in my quick scanning of the discussion that seemed to have been dropped. 700 to 1100 kills in a single year is 2 to 3 per day. I seriously hope that our heroes (7 in total) can rack up 3 kills a day between all of them. Even Blair in all his rusty WC3N glory racked up 2 or 3 kills in his first patrol, IIRC.

C-ya

 

[Fenris Ulven]

I like the small carriers that are fast and can go behind enemys line.

 

[HammerHead]

Agree with you here, but the purpose of pitting 3 cruisers against one carrier (not the Concordia, just a heavy carrier with 120 fighters to even it out) was to compare the relative strength of a carrier and an equivalent force of smaller ships. NOT to demonstrate cruisers are better for carrying fighters -- they aren't -- but rather that a "supercarrier" like the Hakaga doesn't make much sense as a superweapon in the WC world, if a bunch of smaller ships would have been anywhere near as effective.

I ment the Concordia-class fleet carriers (96 fighters, and no anti-cap-ship weapons) and not the TCS Concordia - Confederation-class dreadnought (120 fighters and a Horde of anti-cap-ship weapons.
Point is that 3 Waterloo cruisers carry more fighters - they still lack the operational capabilities of a full-fledge dedicated carrier.

the thing is, if your fighter force is divided among 7 cruisers, it's not really necessary to protect the cruisers like a carrier. #1, the cruisers can take of themselves in ship to ship combat and each have formidable anti-aircraft defense. Seven of them in formation together would *shred* small waves of bombers. #2, losing one cruiser with 40 planes aboard isn't a big a deal as a carrier with 300 planes aboard. So the defensive screen doesn't need to be as strong as it would be around a carrier, IMO. But I see where you're coming from here.

I have notice you kept doing a statistical analysis for the chances of kill one Hakaga in comparisent to the 7 Fralthra's.
Your calculations may be right, but I think you are wrong... somehow the maths adds up, but the idea does not.
When you need something defended, there are two basic factors:
Size\number of defended assetes - the larger it is, the harder it is to defend.
Size\number of defending assets - be them fighters of escort ships - the more you have the better you can defend your target.

in our case we have an identical number of fighters, but a much larger force of ships, spread across a larger patch of space - however you turn it a round... it is the only logical conclution.

even your statment that "Seven of them in formation together would *shred* small waves of bombers." - that means they'll have to be arranged so they maximaize fireing arcs, and be very close to keep all guns in effective range - 5000m approx. range for AAA guns, 7 cruisers, 550m long and approx. 300m wing span - both high and wide - each. under these data - if you put the ships to far they won't cover each other, put them on close formation - you risk collision.

Also - the Hakaga is a superweapon for a simple reason - it was MORE then anything on the time it was built - bigger, better armored, better armed, three times the fighters load, it overcome the jump-size limit....etc.

To step even further back, the entire debate is rediculous because none of the scenarios make sense and will ultimately prove pointless. A carrier will never exist without escort ships, because it's reletively defenseless... and escort ships will never supplant carriers because they can't carry the same offensive air wing. The Hakaga is a superweapon because it's a better carrier, and its escorts (the 'battleships') are superweapons because they're better cruisers. The Hakagas (and their support fleets) are important because it changes the balance of the war. Regular carriers are important because they maintain that balance.

This seems to be exactly the same as it is in 'reality' - carriers need cruisers, cruisers need carriers... but carriers are far more precious and no one is talking about scrapping them. (And yes, modern line ships do carry light air wings - helicopters or VTOL aircraft... for the same purpose as the cruisers in Wing Commander, recon and defense).

Wel, this was my whole point. A squaron of cruisers can carry the same number of fighters and can or cannot defend them selves but the whole point of the carriar is the she is the focal point for a squadron of warships with a certain amout of capanilities - capabilities that a squadron of 3 (or 7 if you want to compare to a Hakaga squadron) cruisers simply does not have. Now if you'll give the three cruisers the big squadron around them - you have no reason to use 3 cruisers when you can use one carrier.

My take is that in WW2, since the carrier was the ONLY ship that could carry aircraft, which was the real force in the Navy, you couldn't afford to lose the carrier. So every carrier had to be surrounded by a wall of escorts to prevent enemy submarines, destroyers and bombers from getting near. This is also true in the WCU to an extent.

You need to understand that when writing about the future we are limited to what we know today. very few writers have manage to really invent the future. Babylon 5 and starwars both resemble the age of WW1 and the begining of WW2 when fighters were gaining the ability to kill naval ships, but the majority of ships sunked were still in ship to ship naval combat (the Bismark was disabled by a single Swordfish, but was sunked by British ships. the Grafshpei was sunk of the coast of Argentina buy a brithish cruiser squadron... and so on). StarTrek ressembales the start of the iron-clad age when, when ships were exploring the earth, and it was all about who had the bigger gun, the better armor, and who could manuver to a better firing postion. Wing commander is about WW2. That's why cruisers will remain cruisers and carriers will remain carriers.

 

[sea_monkey]

Except that your curiosity should have been satisfied many, many posts ago. Indeed, having learned what many thought, you’re now arguing over what they think. And my question to you is: Why? You’ve made it clear you either don’t accept or don’t give the same weight to certain sources of WC canon as others do.

LOL, *why* are you asking my intentions? Shouldn't your curiousity have been satisfied when I gave you my answer the first time. Maybe I like some healthy discussion about a game I like. Why do you care?

I still don't see how trying to resolve inconsistencies "my" way = the death of WC, but "your" way of pretending contradictions aren't contradictions = life.

So, just to make it clear, despite the fact that the games, novels and manuals all reference this fighter force in some manner, the fact that you don't specifically see it means that it doesn't exist? And there's a debate about proving negatives. ?

A fighter force is referenced, but nothing like the 100,000 fighter force (300 per colony) that you are talking about. We see some fighters scramble at Earth, the heart of the Confederation, but nowhere else -- not Gwynedd, Pembroke, Ghorah Khar, or Blackmane. You can suggest that they did but nothing in games mentions hundreds of fighters rallying to protect the Concordia in the beginning of WC2.

I never read Action Stations but from what I hear I'd probably like that book the least.

This was a 'base defense' mission, just like the one youBlaircetera fly the next day. These fighters weren't lost flying against enemy carriers - they were lost fighting enemy cruisers/line warships and bombers (and bomber escorts).

* This is in no way indicitive of how many fighters were involved. Fourteen pilots were lost (possibly more fighters) - which is a heck of a lot compared to any of the action we've ever seen in any of the player missions.

If they didn't kill the carriers, then there were still five carriers left in Ghorah Khar vs. the depleted Olympus and the Concordia. Makes no sense whatsoever for them to retreat, feint or no feint. With those odds they could take Deneb AND Ghorah Khar AND kill the Concordia in one battle. And if they DID kill the 3 carriers, then Olympus traded 14 pilots for three carriers and their escorts -- pretty ridiculous.

I mean you can argue that they were, in fact, referring to heavy carriers the whole time. It's just that everything makes a ton more sense if they were referring to Fralthra the whole time.

That's interesting, because this runs fairly opposite my personal feeling regarding WC3 (and 4). The fact that they 'restarted' the series and no longer referred to earlier games (or anything really 'in universe' - you talk with Maniac and Rachel rather than about tactics for destroying Dralthi) never sat well with me.

From what I can tell, the main guy in charge of WC2, Stephen Beeman, had nothing to do with WC3, which explains the sudden shift in the nature of the cutscenes. In WC2 the cutscenes frequently involved 3-4 characters if not more, allowing their personalities to bounce off each other, which was great. In WC3 that rarely happened. Talking about tactics started dying in SM1, which was fine with me because they always gave bad advice ("save your missiles for the big ships!").

The live action in WC3 just made everything more believeable for me. While I loved WC2's cutscenes, the Kilrathi were a joke in that game. In 3, they were actually kind of scary.

To step even further back, the entire debate is rediculous because none of the scenarios make sense and will ultimately prove pointless.

The entire debate is ridiculous because we're discussing fictional object vs. fictional object. But aside from that, I can't think of any other way to compare two things then to pit them directly against each other, or each against the same force (60 bombers for instance).

Seems alot of good points/counterpoints have been raised and debated, but one jumped out at me in my quick scanning of the discussion that seemed to have been dropped. 700 to 1100 kills in a single year is 2 to 3 per day. I seriously hope that our heroes (7 in total) can rack up 3 kills a day between all of them.

But you don't fight every day. Sometimes you wouldn't see a bogie for weeks. Besides, if we are taking the books at face value, then the odds are even and the Kilrathi are killing 2-3 pilots on the Tiger's Claw a day as well. That means ... the 97 or whatever other pilots on the Claw are dying every month. I suppose that isn't completely inconsistent with a line from End Run, but it strikes me as being more than a little bit ridiculous. Especially since so many pilots survive 10+ years of combat.

Size\number of defended assetes - the larger it is, the harder it is to defend.

It's not that simple. Here, look at like Napster. One big file sharing thing. Easy to take down. Now look at the various peer-to-peer file sharing networks out there. Very difficult to stop because they are distributed. My argument is that the Fralthra/Waterloos need less defense because you can afford to lose a few of them without losing the battle, and the risk of losing all of them is less. You can't afford to lose the Hakaga.

Also - the Hakaga is a superweapon for a simple reason - it was MORE then anything on the time it was built - bigger, better armored, better armed, three times the fighters load, it overcome the jump-size limit....etc.

Well, we're back to square one again. Why is having all this in one ship so much better than in a few smaller ships (7 Fralthra, 3 heavy carriers)?

I kinda feel like Marti DeBergi in "This is Spinal Tap" ... "Why don't you just make the speakers go up to 10 and make 10 louder?"

....

"These go to 11."

 

[Mekt-Hakkikt]

(...) but the majority of ships sunked were still in ship to ship naval combat (the Bismark was disabled by a single Swordfish, but was sunked by British ships. the Grafshpei was sunk of the coast of Argentina buy a brithish cruiser squadron... and so on)(...)

Sorry to interrupt but AFAIK both the Bismarck and Graf Spee were sunk by their own crew.

 

[Nemesis]

LOL, *why* are you asking my intentions? Shouldn't your curiousity have been satisfied when I gave you my answer the first time.

But you haven’t answered the question at all. Still, I’m happy to keep trying until you do. How’s this: Do you want people here to reject EA/Origin as the sole source of WC canon?

Maybe I like some healthy discussion about a game I like. Why do you care?

I care because it doesn’t strike me as a particularly “healthy’ discussion given your premises about canon. And to say you like the game is, at best, a half-truth, since there’s obviously so much about it that you don’t like or respect. In any event, to carry on a discussion in which you refuse to credit certain sources of canon can hardly amount to much more than an exercise in incommensurability.

Care to comment? Or do you concede the point?

I still don't see how trying to resolve inconsistencies "my" way = the death of WC . . .

Because dismissing the novels and discounting the games to varying degrees clearly chops away at what WC is, making it progressively less than it was and can be. At the very least, that’s stagnation, and at most, atrophy.

. . .but "your" way of pretending contradictions aren't contradictions = life.

Pretending? Please explain.

 

[Bob McDob]

Sorry to interrupt but AFAIK both the Bismarck and Graf Spee were sunk by their own crew.

Graf Spee was scuttled by her captain, Bismarck sunk by two torpedo from HMS Dorsetshire, but the latter was already in a bad way after being pounded by King George V and Rodney.

(Aside: I see no problem with Hobbes being 13 in WC1. Cats != furry people - makes complete sense for a race of genetically adapted warriors to reach adulthood very quickly.)

Doesn't Action Stations say something about Kilrathi reaching maturity faster than humans?

 

[BarFly]

Hello,

I lost my family and my job because of this, invested blood, sweat and tears and now you tell me it's a game, just a game?

 

[Viper61]

But you don't fight every day. Sometimes you wouldn't see a bogie for weeks. Besides, if we are taking the books at face value, then the odds are even and the Kilrathi are killing 2-3 pilots on the Tiger's Claw a day as well. That means ... the 97 or whatever other pilots on the Claw are dying every month. I suppose that isn't completely inconsistent with a line from End Run, but it strikes me as being more than a little bit ridiculous. Especially since so many pilots survive 10+ years of combat.

Why wouldn't you fight everyday? The TC was in the Vega sector for a large portion of WC1, a highly contested frontline of the war for years. Then in SM1, the TC is sent behind enemy lines. In SM2, we are thrown into a situation where we are basically the only carrier around when a whole Kilrathi Fleet shows up. I can't think of any reason why our heroes wouldn't go on at least 1 flight a day (while they were on a tour), be it a patrol, CAP, escort, strike, etc. Plus, if only say 2 of our 7 pilots go out on a mission per day, what WC source would tell you that they wouldn't average at least 2 kills per sortie in the situations above (frontline of the war, behind enemy lines, facing a whole fleet)? I also surmise it would also be a feast/famine type situation. You go for a week of hard combat, racking up maybe 1 or 2 kills per sortie, per pilot. Then a week of travelling, repair, etc . . . it would just average out to 2-3 per day, you don't have to actually kill 2-3 per day.
And why would you assume it was the same ship that all these pilots are dying on? The TC killed pilots from carriers, cruisers, destroyers, system defense squadrons, etc in this year long campaign to rack up the kill rate they did. Why would you then assign the same attrition rate to just 1 ship, the Tigers Claw?
Out of the 9 pilots we see out of WC1, I think only 7 of them survive (6 if you count Spirits death) . . . Maverick because he was relegated to backwoods duty, Maniac because he became a test pilot, Paladin because he retired. That means only 4 may have been combat pilots throughout the entire 10 years. Plus, we already seemed to establish that these pilots are the cream of the crop . . . not just regular combat pilots (they are major characters, after all ), we see very little of the pilots other than our 7, much less of them getting blown out of space.

C-ya

 

[Mekt-Hakkikt]

Graf Spee was scuttled by her captain, Bismarck sunk by two torpedo from HMS Dorsetshire, but the latter was already in a bad way after being pounded by King George V and Rodney.
(...)

Hmm, according to the new documentary that James Cameron did (visiting the wreck), the version of the Bismarck being sunk by her own crew seems the most probable. The first english site I found with that is here but I could provide links to some German sites .

Though no doubt, Bismarck was pounded by th British ships.

(But we shouldn't hijack this thread.)