Bengal Carrier

Bandit LOAF said:
Don't worry about it. A few points:

* We don't know what the ships in Victory Streak (Armageddon, Kennedy, etc.) are, only that they carry some number of fighters. They could be destroyers, cruisers, light carriers, CVEs, fighter transports, bases, etc. Since the same article notes that the *Victory* was to essential to pull off the line for the competition, it seems unlikely that 60% of the fleet carrier force wasn't in the same position.

* The same applies to the TCS Liberty. The novel refers to it as having been retired with the '40 series CVs', and the intention was to suggest it was the same class as the Victory... the authors didn't know at the time that Wing Commander IV's artists would make the Lexington and the Princeton CVs 44 and 48 respectively.

* I don't *think* we know what the TCS Winterrowd was, either. It's even less of a speculative carrier than the Victory Streak ships, since it's never even mentioned in the context of carrying fighters. It's the ship where we first hear about Mandarin traitors being discovered (in SM2)... and then one of the bartender rumors is about it being destroyed by the Steltek drone in Privateer. I will look into this one, though, it's possible that the Official Guide calls it a carrier...

* Hermes and Invincible are, indeed, carriers - though we're not entirely sure what type. They're other battlegroups under Tolwyn's command in the Wing Commander III novel (they scout for the Behemoth in other systems). They're also the 'center' of the battlegroup at Freya - which means they may be shown as Yorktown-class light carriers in Wing Commander III itself. This is all well after the Battle of Terra, though, so they could also be new ships.

* The 'dubbed Lexington' ship is the carrier from 'Wing Commander Armada'. It's a Covert Ops ship which doesn't put to space until after Fleet Action.

* Copenhagen is made up, doesn't appear anywhere in the continuity.
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Ah I see. That clears things up a bit. It still seems like theres a lot of holes in the 'official' information. To be honest the games never seemed to give us a lot of background info on ship classes etc. The Wing Commander Novels help a bit but also raise other questions. Fan work complicates things even more as people attempt to fill in the gaps as best they can and invent great stories and names that seem to stick in my head. But I don't know how much of that is official.
 
So I'm trying to get my head around all of these carriers. As I understand it, the TCN utilizes 8 different classes of carriers over the course of the Wing Commander series. Am I missing any?

Bengal, Concordia Fleet Carriers, Yorktown, Confederation, Lexington, CVE (like Tarawa?), Vesuvius, Midway...
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Yes, lets see... there's the Coral Sea and Ranger class carriers which were around at the beginning of the war. There's two types of CVEs - the original transport conversions (Crete class) and then a later dedicated jeep carrier (Harrier class). There's at least one other kind of late of post-war light carrier, as Maniac finds himself assigned to the TCS Kiev after Wing Commander IV.

There's the Jutland-class CVA fom End Run... and there's also probably a carrier conversion of the Waterloo-class cruiser (TCS Gettysburg carried more than forty fighters and was considered one of the fleet carriers in End Run.) The Hades is also occasionally referred to as a carrier.
 
I don't suppose we know what the Jutland, Ranger and Coral Sea classes look like, do we?
 
Nope. They are only named in the novels/bible, not too much description.

The model that Standoff and Saga use for the Jutland is a fan creation.
 
Dundradal said:
Nope. They are only named in the novels/bible, not too much description.

The model that Standoff and Saga use for the Jutland is a fan creation.
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Ah I didn't know that. Its still a damn good model though. I love the appearance of that carrier class. It looks a lot newer and more advanced than some of the other shoebox designs.

That said I don't mind the Concordia class carrier look. I know some people don't and there are many reasons to. It looks cheap, ugly and poorly designed but from the economic point of view of that time it probably makes sense. Confed is barely keeping carrier production high enough to counter the Kilrathi's enormous rate of ship building and probably have little choice but to build cheap and economical designs that were largely developed pre-war.
And to develop a new model of carrier I think either new shipyards would have to be built or existing shipyards modified and that takes resources away from building carriers. So I guess theres a tradeoff between allocating very finite resources into infrastructure or carrier production.

It was only later on in the war I think that Confed was able to make a breakthrough in developing the Bengal Class and later on the Dreadnoughts. But the latter model was heavily flawed as well so newer carrier designs weren't necessarily successful.
 
Thunderbolt said:
It was only later on in the war I think that Confed was able to make a breakthrough in developing the Bengal Class and later on the Dreadnoughts. But the latter model was heavily flawed as well so newer carrier designs weren't necessarily successful.
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Well what about the Jutland class? That carrier looked very impressive! Its a funny thing... thats actually sort of what I pictured the Concordia as back when I first started playing WC. I started off on WC3, so I had no idea what the Concordia looked like intact. But the Jutland came pretty close to the design I had pictured.
 
Ah yes I forgot about the Jutland class. Apparently the model that is in WC standoff and Saga is a fan creation as someone mentioned above.

I don't know who made the model but it really captures the confed carrier style very nicely
 
Lynx created the Jutland design for Saga, then I made a Standoff-ized version of it for us.
 
Bengals actually predate the war as well.

I'm not sure if there is a "breakthrough" in development as well. At the start of the war most of Confed's heavy capital ships were battlewagons that mounted large amounts of plasma weapons in order to slug it out with other heavy ships.

The Confederation class is almost like both sides trying to get what they want. A large fighter carrying capacity along with heavy anti-ship weapons that can be used in a fight of the line.
 
Dundradal said:
The Confederation class is almost like both sides trying to get what they want. A large fighter carrying capacity along with heavy anti-ship weapons that can be used in a fight of the line.
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And that was largely a waste. You don't send a Carrier that takes years and proabably billions of credits to produce into dangerous combat to fight enemy capital ships no matter how well armed it is as about three torpedo hits is enough to destroy a large ship and kill thousands of crew.
The exposed flight decks and bridge in the Confederation design should be enough to make anyone want to keep those carriers well away from combat.
 
Thunderbolt said:
And that was largely a waste. You don't send a Carrier that takes years and proabably billions of credits to produce into dangerous combat to fight enemy capital ships no matter how well armed it is as about three torpedo hits is enough to destroy a large ship and kill thousands of crew.
The exposed flight decks and bridge in the Confederation design should be enough to make anyone want to keep those carriers well away from combat.
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I think the Concordia was designed to do just thought though. It is armed and shielded in such a way where it could hold its own against cruiser size vessels, as we've seen it do.

I think we counted how many known torpedo hits the Concordia had taken over its career a while back (no idea what thread it was in) and its quite a few. IIRC it takes 3 during FA, but don't quote me on it, been a while.
 
Dundradal said:
I think the Concordia was designed to do just thought though. It is armed and shielded in such a way where it could hold its own against cruiser size vessels, as we've seen it do.
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Oh for sure. But in any case one well placed torpedo hit on the flight deck or bridge is enough to do serious damage that would take months to repair. Even if the Concordia engaged a ship as small as a cruiser there is still a high element of risk involved that any senior officer would want to minimise or best avoid.
 
Oh for sure. But in any case one well placed torpedo hit on the flight deck or bridge is enough to do serious damage that would take months to repair. Even if the Concordia engaged a ship as small as a cruiser there is still a high element of risk involved that any senior officer would want to minimise or best avoid.
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During a battle the ship should have been run from its Combat Information Center, buried deep within the hull.
 
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