Capital ship engagements

L

Lunitari

Spaceman
One thing I never did understand was the bouncing back and forth in the various games of how fighters tackle capital ships. In the first game you could destroy them with guns or missiles. In WC2 you needed torpedoes because of the phase-shielding. In WC3 you were back to being able to take out cap-ships with guns or missiles (a bit of a regression - I mean, how could things have changed that much between games? It reads during one of the mission briefs in WC4 that "Most capital ships can only be taken out with torpedoes," so there you go again. In Prophecy, it was the same thing....you needed torpedoes. It seems kind of bizarre to me. :confused:
 
There's really nothing bizarre about the shifting ballance between offensive and defensive equipment, though the WC games. The battle between armor and armament has been going on pretty much since J. Random Caveman first picked up an animal bone to use as a club, it's not likely to end over 600 years from now.

As for the WC4 comment, that's no more "out there" then a comment from Col Halcyon (IIRC) in the original Wing Commander, that say that you might as well pack up and go home if faced with capships without having any weapons on your missile hardpoints. Heck, even the Vesuvius is doable with just guns. You just have to shoot it from the inside, where the shielding (which is too quick to regenerate to penetrate with a single fighter's guns, as of 2673) isn't present. If you really feel like being tricky you can load up your missile hardpoints with dumbfires, and salvo-fire them inside the carrier's hangar bay.

Just be prepared to haul ass out of there, afterwards. :)
 
You didn't really engage too many capital ships in WC IV if i remember correctly. There was the Lexington, The Black Lance jamming ship, and the Vesuvius. I can't remember any others.
 
Well, I could be wrong here, as I haven't read all the literature and don't have any game manuals to hand, but I thought the official justification was that phase shielding, like energy weapons and just about every other technology was constantly evolving (like all technology today) and at different time periods certain areas of development would leapfrog others, i.e. the latest Confed phase shielding in 2669 may be resistant to Mark III Torpordoes, but not Mark IV, etc.

Cheers,


BrynS
 
ck9791 said:
You didn't really engage too many capital ships in WC IV if i remember correctly. There was the Lexington, The Black Lance jamming ship, and the Vesuvius. I can't remember any others.
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If you took the "slip past Ella" mission, you also had to face a frigate in the first wave of hostiles at Nav 1, and a cruiser in the first wave of hostiles at Nav 2. There's also a pirate frigate in both versions of Hellespont 3 (depending on whether you succeed or fail in Hellespont 2, where you tail the fleeing T-bolts at about 10,000 klicks to track them back to their base of operations).
 
Death said:
Heck, even the Vesuvius is doable with just guns. You just have to shoot it from the inside, where the shielding (which is too quick to regenerate to penetrate with a single fighter's guns, as of 2673) isn't present.
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Really!? Have you ever done that? I tried shooting at it for over 2 hours, and that was after firing torps from my Dragon fighter. I flew into the Vesuvius and shot at the hanger bay for 30 mins. or so (probably longer). Eventually I got bored, clipped the spacebar down, and left the computer. After eating dinner and doing a few chores, I returned over an hour later and my ship was STILL firing at the inside of the hanger bay. I didn't even START on the inside of the Vesuvius until it was entirely colored red on the radar screen (as a side note, I had also destroyed all of its turrests). And yes, this was on the mission where you blow up the Vesuvius, NOT the missions where it's invincible.
 
Mjr. Whoopass said:
Really!? Have you ever done that? I tried shooting at it for over 2 hours, and that was after firing torps from my Dragon fighter. I flew into the Vesuvius and shot at the hanger bay for 30 mins. or so (probably longer).
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Were you actually inside the bay, or just shooting at it from outside? You have to fly inside and set autoslide to keep from getting left behind, to make sure that the game engine doesn't rule the shots as coming from outside.

I have done it, but that was years ago.

Also, playing around with cone and starbursts is fun. Those will seriously rip up the Vesuvius from inside.
 
Death said:
If you took the "slip past Ella" mission, you also had to face a frigate in the first wave of hostiles at Nav 1, and a cruiser in the first wave of hostiles at Nav 2. There's also a pirate frigate in both versions of Hellespont 3 (depending on whether you succeed or fail in Hellespont 2, where you tail the fleeing T-bolts at about 10,000 klicks to track them back to their base of operations).
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I forgot those, I should have doublechecked the game guide before I opened my mouth. I was thinking that you engaged a lot fewer cap ships in WC IV than in III and those that I listed were the only ones i remembered.
 
Death said:
There's really nothing bizarre about the shifting ballance between offensive and defensive equipment, though the WC games. The battle between armor and armament has been going on pretty much since J. Random Caveman first picked up an animal bone to use as a club, it's not likely to end over 600 years from now.
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The best example of the constant contest between armor & guns was in Prophecy, where you couldn't destroy capships without torps EXCEPT for 1 gun on the newest bombers: the Heavy Plasma Cannon on the Devastator (that was an awesome weapon! :eek: )
 
Death said:
Were you actually inside the bay, or just shooting at it from outside? You have to fly inside and set autoslide to keep from getting left behind, to make sure that the game engine doesn't rule the shots as coming from outside.

I have done it, but that was years ago.
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Yeah, I was inside and right in the middle. When I returned to the computer, it was still inside and shooting at the hull from the same spot on the inside of the ship. It was on the nightmare setting, so I don't know if that has anything to do with it. I was also using the Dragon fighter with full guns armed, so it's possible a different ship or gun set might work too. After a couple hours of shooting, I even tried ramming the Vesuvius to no effect. The easiest way is to load full torps and dumbfires onto the Avenger, tell your wingmen to attack the Vesuvius and unload everything you have. After it's destroyed, you can simply autopilot back to land on the Intrepid.
 
Mjr. Whoopass said:
Yeah, I was inside and right in the middle. When I returned to the computer, it was still inside and shooting at the hull from the same spot on the inside of the ship. It was on the nightmare setting, so I don't know if that has anything to do with it. I was also using the Dragon fighter with full guns armed, so it's possible a different ship or gun set might work too. After a couple hours of shooting, I even tried ramming the Vesuvius to no effect. The easiest way is to load full torps and dumbfires onto the Avenger, tell your wingmen to attack the Vesuvius and unload everything you have. After it's destroyed, you can simply autopilot back to land on the Intrepid.
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Ditto, I did exactly the same thing only the game was on the default difficulty level. The Vesuvius can't be taken out with guns alone even from the inside.
 
Lunitari said:
Well, that depends on how much of a sicko you are.
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The lesser of two evils comes into play here, since using the flashpak on the Vesuvius implies that you opted *not* to use it aginst the Ella superbase and kill the civillians. So yeah, it is more fun to FP the Vesuvius (unless you like the Black Lance "winning" ending.) If I had to go against the Ves w/o the Pak I'd take Mace missiles instead of torps; they're not as fun to use as in SO2 nor as powerful but they still dish out some good damage.

As far as the guns vs. phase shields debate, what always bewildered me was how the Kamekh in WC2, one of the two games requiring torps for capship destruction, had phase shields but could actually be taken down with guns, and IIRC, the Gilgamesh-class Confederation destroyer at that time actually had *thinner* Phase Shields but, like most of the other capships, was impervious to fighter-mounted guns. I know corvettes are smaller and weaker than destroyers, but # of cm thick is # of cm thick.
 
What always confused me is how would Capships fight in Wc1? Would they just broadside each other with their laser turrets?
 
My memory is a little cloudy but I don't think there are any capship battles in WC1. If there were though they would use whatever weapons they had to destroy each other.\
 
Capship weapons seemed near useless in the kilrathi saga version of WC1. They were much more lethal on the SNES, but I don't know about the original PC WC1 as I have never played it. I could literally sit there shooting at them on the KS version and they barely even tickle the shields of my fighter. With this in mind, I don't know how they would have a hope in hell of dishing out any kind of damage to other capships. It would be like two snails having a wrestling match. This made everything except a carrier or transport pointless since without an escort, just about any kilrathi ship was nothing but cannon fodder.
 
IIRC there are NO capship battles in WC1.

It's been awhile since I played the originial WC1, but I know in KS many capships (including the Snakeir so-called "attack carrier") just sits there w/o firing a single flak shot, waiting to be plucked outta space. The Ralari and Fralthi do fire salvos, but I think they're the only ones.
 
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