Capital Ships - Weapon Placement

[Bandit LOAF]

IIRC, Fleet Action specifically says the Kilrathi had solved the jump point size limitation problem.

 

[capi3101]

Well, that's a good counter for the one point. I suppose the Hvar'kanns were Thrakhath's ace in the hole in case the Hakaga fleet failed...but it seems out of character for him to have planned that far out in advance....

Again, off-topic.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Well, that's a good counter for the one point. I suppose the Hvar'kanns were Thrakhath's ace in the hole in case the Hakaga fleet failed...but it seems out of character for him to have planned that far out in advance....

They may be part of the same fleet; remember that the Hakagas were launched early. In fact, Fleet Action mentions a dozen large "battleships" being constructed alongside the Hakagas which aren't seen again. It's only a few months between Fleet Action and Wing Commander III, presumably construction of the Hvar'kanns started years before the Battle of Earth.

(I've never liked the idea, though, that Prince Thrakhath was especially incompetant. I know Forstchen plays this up... to the point of, groan, literally making him impotent... but I prefer the original idea that he's a great warrior and a respected leader.)

55 minutes at Queeg's movie and......that's a neg. At least, I couldn't spot anything other than the word "Classified".

We actually have all the individual WC3 cutscenes in streaming form if you ever need to check something like this: https://www.wcnews.com/holovids/wing3_index.shtml

But no, no length for the Behemoth in the wireframe.

One quote from the novel, though: "Behemoth might well have been the largest spacecraft ever constructed, certainly the largest ship to sail under Confederation colors." Which is interesting, since Blair obviously knew about the Hvar'kann-class at this point... (And in terms of this discussion about unrealistic (groan) ship lengths, remember that the Behemoth is supposed to be ridiculously large. It's, uh, sort of right there in the name. You know, like the... Paradigm! (everyone scatters.))

I do wonder if I should use the roughly five kilometer length this guy came up with. An eleven kilometer length puts the width and draught around three kilometers, and the total bounding box would be larger than that of the Tiamat. From the way the Tiamat's description is phrased in the Prophecy cluebook, it sounds like it should be the bigger ship...

I don't really read it that way -- I think that's more in terms of what it does than how big it is.

Beginning to wonder if I can do a reverse process for a guesstimate of the size of the Durango. WC4N mentions on p. 174 that Intrepid's damage control chief was too busy keeping the air from getting too toxic to "have to worry about how they're going to clean a hundred thousand cubic meters of air" - that figure's with a third of the ship gone. And then on p. 181, hawk reports the ship is "down to thirty-one front line strike craft, with seventeen obsolete models ... still in storage below-decks." That does give me at least a few numbers to try to crunch.

If the fighter complement matters, I think it maxes out at 63 at some point in the novel (including those stored below decks.)

 

[capi3101]

Okay......finally ready to get on topic here. And the first ship on the list is the Drayman.

WCPedia says the armament of the Drayman consists of 5 Dual Mount Laser Batteries and a Single Mount Laser Turret. I'm looking at the line model from Claw Marks at the moment; I'm seeing five weapon emplacements instead of six. It looks like the one atop the cargo box would have a 360 degree field of fire, and mostly the same for the ones on the dorsal and ventral of the main superstructure (those probably wouldn't be able to fire into the aft arc). WCPedia does answer a long-standing question for me, whether those protrusion fore of the engine nacelles are guns or something else; they're guns, and they look like they'd be able fire in a relatively short arc fore. Still not seeing a sixth emplacement.

Diligent would be the next craft on my list. WCPedia says it has the Single Mount Laser Turret; it looks to me like the Diligent is just a Drayman reconfigured as a tanker. It might be missing the gun on top of the cargo box (because the cargo box isn't there), but other than that it should have the same armament. Clarification on this one is probably warranted.

Venture is the next craft after that - basically all I'm seeing are the two big guns and the turrets. The Turrets look like they wouldn't clear the ship's structure aft; probably a 270 degree arc at best for them (one for port and one for starboard). Any idea where the missile tubes are supposed to be located? Would they be tubes, or more like hardpoints on a fighter?

That oughta be enough to get the discussion rolling. I've only got about a hundred craft to go through, of course....

 

[Bandit LOAF]

WCPedia says the armament of the Drayman consists of 5 Dual Mount Laser Batteries and a Single Mount Laser Turret. I'm looking at the line model from Claw Marks at the moment; I'm seeing five weapon emplacements instead of six. It looks like the one atop the cargo box would have a 360 degree field of fire, and mostly the same for the ones on the dorsal and ventral of the main superstructure (those probably wouldn't be able to fire into the aft arc). WCPedia does answer a long-standing question for me, whether those protrusion fore of the engine nacelles are guns or something else; they're guns, and they look like they'd be able fire in a relatively short arc fore. Still not seeing a sixth emplacement.

I think the single-laser turret is the weapon we see in-game.

The VDU image confirms that the extrusions on the nacelles are turrets:

Diligent would be the next craft on my list. WCPedia says it has the Single Mount Laser Turret; it looks to me like the Diligent is just a Drayman reconfigured as a tanker. It might be missing the gun on top of the cargo box (because the cargo box isn't there), but other than that it should have the same armament. Clarification on this one is probably warranted.

Here the VDU image seems to confirm your thinking: the same set of dual turrets as the Drayman but NOT one on the 'tank':

That said, the Diligent *isn't* specifically a tanker. We see Drayman tankers and Diligent transports... (actually, I think we specifically haven't seen Diligent tankers...)

(The original idea would have been to use the Diligent for the tanker missions in WC1 and the Drayman for the transport ones... but when it was cut from the game that changed. So canonically it's just a fancier looking transport that shows up later.)

Venture is the next craft after that - basically all I'm seeing are the two big guns and the turrets. The Turrets look like they wouldn't clear the ship's structure aft; probably a 270 degree arc at best for them (one for port and one for starboard). Any idea where the missile tubes are supposed to be located? Would they be tubes, or more like hardpoints on a fighter?

I imagine them being more like a fighter. Remember that the Venture was imagined as being like a bomber... before they came up with the Broadsword.

Two forward lasers and the two turrets are all there is. Except for the Johnny Greene, which has a mass driver tailgun...

 

[capi3101]

Huh. Didn't think to look at the VDUs...okay, so the dark green is hull, the light green's propulsion, red......looks like it's specifically Guns, and blue looks like it encircles the inhabitable part of the craft. Just being sure about this if they're going to be a reliable piece of information, at least for the craft from WC1/2.

I imagine them being more like a fighter. Remember that the Venture was imagined as being like a bomber... before they came up with the Broadsword.

I can see that; the way things got calculated, there's only one SC difference between the Broadsword and the Venture; the Broadsword Behemoth wound up being in the SC as the Venture (and there's no argument as to which is the stronger craft).

Two forward lasers and the two turrets are all there is.

Claw Marks says three missiles on a Venture - a Pilum and two Javelins. The ship's database and WCPedia both confirms and contradicts this - crap, I hate it when that happens......

I've been going with what's printed as my main source of information. Don't really know what to do in this case.

Well, at least I know from the VDU now that those...pontoons (I guess that's what I'll call them) slung under the Venture's wings are engine nacelles. I was wondering about those.



Alright...well, there's not a large number of Confed craft left from WC1; the Exeter and the Bengal, to be precise (assuming there's no substantial difference between the Exeter and the Gettysburg to warrant a separate discussion).

Okay....Exeter. Claw Marks says "classified", which is all kinds of not helpful. Ship Database and WCPedia say 6 Dual Mount Laser Battery, 4 Single Mount Laser Turret, 1 Triple Mount Laser Battery, and 1 Spiculum (except for one entry in WCPedia which lists only 1 Single Mount Laser Turret, which I'll chalk up to a typo on the number pad).

Alright. The location of the triple mount is so obvious it bears no discussion; it looks like it would have an over-the-shoulder arc (300 degrees, roughly) centered forward. I count five dual batteries from topside; the two forward ones are slung under the ship port and starboard and look like they would have close to a full hemisphere of arc each. The three topside over what I'll call the conning tower look like they each would cover somewhere between 135 degrees and a full hemisphere of arc along the ship's portside, starboard and aft quarters. The last of the dual batteries is amidships facing aft, and it looks like it would have a full 360 degrees of arc. Not seeing the Single Mount Lasers. Also don't see anything that's obviously a missile launcher; in the ship's prow, perhaps?

The Bengal - mind you, this is the version of the ship that appears in Claw Marks/WC1, not the movie - has an armament of eight dual laser turrets according to Claw Marks, a figure that WCPedia agrees with. The Ships Database adds 20 dual mount laser batteries and 40 torpedo tubes. I'm apt to ignore the torpedo tubes (no doubt added to explain how we can see the Tiger's Claw firing missiles at Venice when she's not supposed to be armed with them), but I can't deny the fact that I'm counting twenty weapons emplacements on the Claw, not eight. We've got -

1-2. Two emplacements aft, port and starboard midway along the ship's craft. Those look like they'd have about 180 degrees of fire.
3. An aft ventral placement that doesn't show up in the side profile; I can't imagine this gun having more than a 90 degree arc aft (otherwise it could shoot into the pontoons).
4-6. A cluster of three emplacements dorsal aft. These look like they would compliment one another's arcs and the only thing I see keeping them from a 360 degree arc is the conning tower.
7. A single emplacement on the dorsal aft heading amidships. Honest to God, I don't know why this gun is here other than to cover the dorsal firing arc; the way it's depicted it's aimed right into the conning tower. Probably has good, clear fields of fire to port and starboard; a situation I actually hadn't envisioned and now I'm wondering how I'm going to handle.
8-11. Four ball turrets slung to the underside of the gun pontoons near amidships. Only thing blocking the field of fire of these guns is each other.
12-15. Four turrets set on the ship's dorsal, two port and two starboard, one just aft of the conning tower and one a little forward. I'd say a good 135 degree arc for the aft turrets, close to 180 for the ones forward.
16. A turret set forward on the ventral portion of the conning toward, aimed forward. Good field of fire in a hemisphere to 270 degrees forward.
17. A forward emplacement right above the entrance to the flight deck. Probably not much more than the forward arc.
18. One on the ventral side forward of the conning tower aimed ahead, which doesn't show up in the side profile. Conning tower is in its way aft and that's about it.
19-20. Two emplacements forward port and starboard of the entrance to the flight deck midway along the ship's draft. Probably only a ninety degree arc for each.

I'm going to take a breather for note-taking here - this post is long enough as it is, I think.

 

[Ijuin]

If I have a problem with the length of any ship class in the entire WC continuity, it's the Hvar'kann-class, simply because a) they came right on the heels of the Hakagas (you know, when the Cats were thinking they could lose because too many resources were being pulled away from the war for their construction) and b) they don't seem like they'd be able to use most Akwende jump points given what's been established about them. I mean, come on, Vesuvius had to make a detour to get to Earth because it was too big - how often do you think Hvar'kann, a ship that's in the neighborhood of ten to twelve times longer than Vesuvius, would have that problem? (I could figure out the differences in lengths; I just don't feel like doing it right now).

What bothers me more is that despite being apparently an order of magnitude longer (and wider and taller) than the Vesuvius, the Hvar'kann only seems to mass three times as much--which implies a hundred-fold less solid material compared to the volume that circumscribes it. The mass of less than 400 kilotons is either a typo or it implies a vessel at most two to three times the Vesuvius' dimensions.

 

[Aginor]

That's one of the reasons why I still believe that the 22km were a typo originally. There is other data that (at least seems to) contradict it as well. But as capi3101 said, this discussion has been repeated over and over in the last 18 years or so. We won't come to any point where all of us can be happy.
The good thing is that the KDN is not alone. There are other parts of WC lore that contradict each other at least as horribly. So if you do a mod or something, use whatever you like and don't talk about it. Just please don't use 22cm for the KDN

EDIT: WHAT? 63 on the Durango? 25% more than on the Yorktown? The Yorktown is the odd one out. I think it should have around 70 fighters instead of the canonical 40.

 

[Quarto]

EDIT: WHAT? 63 on the Durango? 25% more than on the Yorktown? The Yorktown is the odd one out. I think it should have around 70 fighters instead of the canonical 40.

Why?

 

[capi3101]

Why?

Well, if I may, some folks may have a rough time with the notion that a ship designated as a heavy destroyer would have a larger fighter complement than a ship designated as a fleet carrier, especially when in all likelihood the destroyer is the smaller ship. Personally, I would take the opposite approach (and reduce the number of fighters on the Durango), but whatever works works.

(And no, I have no intention of reducing the number of fighters on the Durango for WCRPG - or raising the number on the Yorktown for that matter).

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Claw Marks says three missiles on a Venture - a Pilum and two Javelins. The ship's database and WCPedia both confirms and contradicts this - crap, I hate it when that happens......

IIRC, the Pilum is there in Wing Commander I (well, The Secret Missions) but the Javelins are not... which is where that confusion comes from. Note that in Milk Run the Johnny Greene is down to its 'last two missiles' at the start of the story, which tells us... something.

Not seeing the Single Mount Lasers. Also don't see anything that's obviously a missile launcher; in the ship's prow, perhaps?

This is the same game vs. manual issue as with the Drayman. The single-mount laser turret and the lone missile are what the game *actually* gives the Exeter, versus all the heavier turrets you see on the VDU and in the manual.

The Bengal - mind you, this is the version of the ship that appears in Claw Marks/WC1, not the movie - has an armament of eight dual laser turrets according to Claw Marks, a figure that WCPedia agrees with. The Ships Database adds 20 dual mount laser batteries and 40 torpedo tubes. I'm apt to ignore the torpedo tubes (no doubt added to explain how we can see the Tiger's Claw firing missiles at Venice when she's not supposed to be armed with them), but I can't deny the fact that I'm counting twenty weapons emplacements on the Claw, not eight. We've got -

The Bengal is a headache. Wait a few days, I'm going to run through the new Academy DVDs this weekend and hopefully get a better turret count with placement information for her.

What bothers me more is that despite being apparently an order of magnitude longer (and wider and taller) than the Vesuvius, the Hvar'kann only seems to mass three times as much--which implies a hundred-fold less solid material compared to the volume that circumscribes it. The mass of less than 400 kilotons is either a typo or it implies a vessel at most two to three times the Vesuvius' dimensions.

I think this is coming from two places:

- Unlike weapons, length, armor, etc., mass has absolutely no impact on gameplay. So every time you see it it's just a made up number created as flavor text. The Hvar'kann is by no means the strangest massed ship in Wing Commander...

- The Vesuvius' mass explicitly /doesn't/ come from one writer filling out an entire game worth of comparative flavor data... it's something mentioned in passing in the novelization.

That's one of the reasons why I still believe that the 22km were a typo originally. There is other data that (at least seems to) contradict it as well. But as capi3101 said, this discussion has been repeated over and over in the last 18 years or so. We won't come to any point where all of us can be happy.
The good thing is that the KDN is not alone. There are other parts of WC lore that contradict each other at least as horribly. So if you do a mod or something, use whatever you like and don't talk about it. Just please don't use 22cm for the KDN

The thing about believing there's an error is that there's a burden of proof there.

In all honesty, we now have SO MUCH material about Wing Commander III's development that it's just... almost impossible that it's a typo.

- The initial text description of the dreadnaught provided for the artists describes Thrakhath's flagship as being "ten miles long." That alone seems pretty damning.

- I own *37* different versions of Victory Streak... different ports, printings and languages. And no two are alike. The manual changed over time, with little errors being corrected, text added and removed, specifications updated to match the actual game where that was possible. Some of them, like the Kilrathi Saga version, are even clearly retyped by hand rather than edited from an earlier document (because they introduce a mess of common typos.) And with the exception of the Japanese Windows 95 standalone version (which lacks the capital ship listings entirely) EVERY SINGLE ONE has a 22 kilometer dreadnaught.

- In addition, we also now have months of Quark backup files of Victory Streak from 1994. We've literally looked at half a dozen different versions of the manual and watched the editing process happen. You can see specifications (including ship lengths!) change back and forth, you can see ships be removed from the game entirely... but through the whole process there's a 22 kilometer dreadnaught.

- The /game engine itself/ is specifically built in such a way that three scales of ships are treated differently, fighters, capital ships and big capital ships. If the dreadnaught were supposed to be two carriers end to end then this wouldn't be necessary at all. The game was literally built to support a particular set of ships being HUGE (and of course this was a talking point at the time--look how cool it is to fly down the sides of these miles-long ships...)

- And that's borne out in the cutscenes. When you see the original artist posing his ship in the way he intended without any sort of flight engine limitation... it's /never/ three Victories long.

Now all that said, sit back and ask yourself: why would I ever need it to be a *typo* specifically? Isn't it enough just for you to personally not like the design? Someone else doesn't have to have made a mistake. They just need to have had a different idea than one you like.

Remember: not everyone involved in Wing Commander III was trying to create a 'realistic' (whatever that means) world for us to play in. Specifically: no one was doing that. They were telling one specific story... and I just a little thought about it tells you what the purpose of the unbelievably giant dreadnaught was. Thrakhath is supposed to seem invincible. He has a flagship that's both bigger and scarier looking than the Behemoth. The whole point of the Hvar'kann in establishing shots is to show how enormous and threatening the Kilrathi now are. When you have to fight it it's because you've gotten to a point where it's impossible to even win the game. The point was never to come up with "what would the REAL talking space cat prince fly around in," it was to have an impact on the player.

Most of all, there's no real contradiction here. We aren't being told the dreadnaught is 2 kilometers long in one novel and that it's 22 kilometers long in the hint book. At the end of the day no matter what the history is, the 22 km is not only part of the canon but it's a part of the canon that has been explicitly reinforced by False Colors (and S*S?) since it was originally printed. This is entirely a case of some fans feeling weird about the one way something is because it contradicts /something they imagined on their own/. So why can't we just say THAT?

EDIT: WHAT? 63 on the Durango? 25% more than on the Yorktown? The Yorktown is the odd one out. I think it should have around 70 fighters instead of the canonical 40.

I don't think history bears this out at all. Remember that the Victory is explicitly a *light carrier*... and like a real light carrier it's slightly smaller than a standard carrier and carries less than half as many planes. (World War II equivalent: a 190m/11,000 tonne Independance-class light carrier carried 34 planes versus a 230m/19,000 tonne Yorktown-class carrier which carried 90.) And really what would be the point, otherwise? You don't WANT a world where every carrier is essentially exactly the same. (And walk through Wing Commander III's plot in your head... is there any time where the story fell apart in any way because the Victory didn't have 30 more fighters?)

The DURANGO is the odd one out here, because it's a single, special case... a disorganized, situational one-off example. Nothing about the Intrepid was standard in any way... it wasn't even an actual carrier! Those 63 planes weren't an organized air wing attempting to meet some specification or a proper doctrine, they were a hodgepodge of random obsolete designs (many kept in storage below decks) that desperate air crews would piece together with spit and glue to get flying as mission requirements called for them.

 

[Aginor]

Ok, I can live with that explanation for the Durango. Its normal fighter complement might be around 20-30 and the BW guys just fit more into it than it originally could carry.
It's just that if destroyers and cruisers carry as many fighters as a carrier I fail to see how it could make sense to build such a carrier. I mean: The Waterloo also has as many fighters as the Yorktown. It is just.... strange. The Yorktown is badly armored, at least two (smaller? and better armored) ships carry as many fighters as the Yorktown and so on. I don't understand the reason why it exists. It is poorly armored, slow, poorly armed and doesn't even carry that many fighters.
As for your WW2 example: Of course there were carriers with more and such with less fighters. But if they had had a cruiser or a destroyer that could carry as many fighters as one of these I doubt they would have used that carrier class.

As for the dreadnought: LALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU LALALALA. (JK, explanation below)
*sigh* I guess you have a point there. I just... still don't like it. I think I prefer the verdict "error" over "poor design" because I love Wing Commander . I just don't want to believe they did something that... over the top for no reason other than "Harhar, Thrakhath got the longest dick ship". With that armor and weapons and fighter complement it would be exactly as badass and dangerous and cool and frightening at "just" 2 or 4 or 6 km length (like ingame where it isn't that big, but still huge), but it would lack that ridiculous size where you can fit whole capships into its hangar bay and the laser turrets on the middle of the ship can't even shoot at something near the engines because it is too far away.

 

[AD]

YAY! Screenshot time...

Like LOAF mentioned, it's obvious what the intention is... The ship in the first shot is a transport I guess very similar to the ones flashpacked in WC4. It's easier to make out in motion. But it is obviously dwarfed by Thrakhath's ship. It's the smaller circle in the second shot.

The other ship in the second shot appears to be a Ralarrad (again easier to see in motion) which comes in at 450 meter, and is also dwarfed by the dreadnought.

 

[capi3101]

IIRC, the Pilum is there in Wing Commander I (well, The Secret Missions) but the Javelins are not... which is where that confusion comes from. Note that in Milk Run the Johnny Greene is down to its 'last two missiles' at the start of the story, which tells us... something.

Hmm...okay. Perhaps a single missile tube would be in order for the Venture for WCRPG.

This is the same game vs. manual issue as with the Drayman. The single-mount laser turret and the lone missile are what the game *actually* gives the Exeter, versus all the heavier turrets you see on the VDU and in the manual.

I may just go ahead and go with what's apparent in the image; one gun and one missile just seems, well, boring to me.

The Bengal is a headache. Wait a few days, I'm going to run through the new Academy DVDs this weekend and hopefully get a better turret count with placement information for her.

I did manage to snag the lo-res episodes y'all had up at CIC a few months (years?) ago; it didn't look to me like the weapons emplacements were any clearer in any of the exterior shots of the Claw. But I'll go ahead and wait; I'm out of town this weekend as it is and probably won't get much time to work on the game as it is.

Been looking ahead. Am not looking forward to having to explain the crummy armament on the bulk of those WC2 ships...

 

[Ijuin]

It's just that if destroyers and cruisers carry as many fighters as a carrier I fail to see how it could make sense to build such a carrier. I mean: The Waterloo also has as many fighters as the Yorktown. It is just.... strange. The Yorktown is badly armored, at least two (smaller? and better armored) ships carry as many fighters as the Yorktown and so on. I don't understand the reason why it exists. It is poorly armored, slow, poorly armed and doesn't even carry that many fighters.
As for your WW2 example: Of course there were carriers with more and such with less fighters. But if they had had a cruiser or a destroyer that could carry as many fighters as one of these I doubt they would have used that carrier class.

IIRC, the Victory is explicitly so out-of-date that it would have been retired if Confed were not so desperate to have any functional carriers that they could get. The main reason for Tolwyn packing her with the best officers under his command was because, despite all of her inferiority as a carrier, she was the best that he could spare for the Behemoth escort duty.

IIRC, the Pilum is there in Wing Commander I (well, The Secret Missions) but the Javelins are not... which is where that confusion comes from. Note that in Milk Run the Johnny Greene is down to its 'last two missiles' at the start of the story, which tells us... something.

The use of the phrasing "last two" does seem to imply that two is clearly less than half of the full missile complement, if not greatly less.

As for the Hvar'kann's numbers, given the agreement of the various sources on the size, I would say that it's the mass that is incorrect, and somebody dropped 2-3 zeroes on the mass figure.

 

[Quarto]

In addition, we also now have months of Quark backup files of Victory Streak from 1994. We've literally looked at half a dozen different versions of the manual and watched the editing process happen. You can see specifications (including ship lengths!) change back and forth, you can see ships be removed from the game entirely... but through the whole process there's a 22 kilometer dreadnaught.

Whoa, whoa, hold it! Ships being removed from the game entirely? Tell us more!

It's just that if destroyers and cruisers carry as many fighters as a carrier I fail to see how it could make sense to build such a carrier. I mean: The Waterloo also has as many fighters as the Yorktown. It is just.... strange. The Yorktown is badly armored, at least two (smaller? and better armored) ships carry as many fighters as the Yorktown and so on. I don't understand the reason why it exists. It is poorly armored, slow, poorly armed and doesn't even carry that many fighters.
As for your WW2 example: Of course there were carriers with more and such with less fighters. But if they had had a cruiser or a destroyer that could carry as many fighters as one of these I doubt they would have used that carrier class.

Well, first up, we do not know anything about the Intrepid's original fighter compliment - you know, back when it was a destroyer. I'm pretty sure we're told in the novel that the hangar bay is something that was added on top of the ship (well, under it, to be specific), and not a part of the original design. I think the fact that the Intrepid has 63 fighters should be taken as an indication of just how extensive the modifications were - that it's not just a heavy destroyer any more. And of course, once you take into consideration how that fighter compliment really looks, it's not so impressive, either.

The Yorktown, of course, is an old design, so it conforms to different standards. But there's more to it than that. People keep making the erroneous assumption that the number of aircraft onboard is the be-all, end-all indication of a carrier's capabilities. This is utterly not true, however. Just think about all the factors that affect a carrier's potential utility and value:
- How much space does it have for fighter ordnance and fuel? A cruiser might carry as many fighters as a carrier... but can it restock those fighters with missiles and fuel again and again and again as a carrier would? Or are they more of an "ace in the hole", to use once or twice?
- How many pilots does the ship carry? Again, a cruiser might carry as many fighters as a carrier, but nobody said it has enough pilots for all of them. It may be that for a Waterloo, it's more economical to carry forty fighters for ten pilots, than to carry ten fighters for ten pilots and rely on a constant stream of replacement parts to keep them flying.
- How much space is there for all the ancillary staff? As near as I can understand, on the Victory, every fighter had its own maintenance crew. You send out forty fighters, they return, and they are all being rearmed, repaired and refuelled at once. A cruiser might have as many fighters, but does it have maintenance crews for all of them, or just a small crew that takes days or weeks to restore the entire fighter compliment to readiness?
- How about command & control? Do you have space onboard for a decent flight control team, capable of tracking forty fighters at once, retaining contact with all of them, and so on?

In short - there are many good reasons to have dedicated carriers. The stats we have for ships in the WC universe are woefully incomplete. We know very little about them, and ultimately, to judge that a Waterloo is a better ship than a Yorktown based on the fact that it has the same fighter compliment *and* the capabilities of a cruiser - that's missing the point. I don't doubt the Waterloo is a better cruiser than the Yorktown, but I would imagine the Yorktown does have some advantages as a dedicated carrier.

As for the Hvar'kann's numbers, given the agreement of the various sources on the size, I would say that it's the mass that is incorrect, and somebody dropped 2-3 zeroes on the mass figure.

Yeah. Funnily enough, though, all those people who insist that the dreadnought's length is not appropriate for its mass, always insist that it's the length that must be wrong, not the mass.

 

[Aginor]

Yeah. Funnily enough, though, all those people who insist that the dreadnought's length is not appropriate for its mass, always insist that it's the length that must be wrong, not the mass.

That's because the mass wouldn't be too far off compared to other ships.

As I said before, from a certain point of view it makes sense. For me it is mainly that I refuse to accept that Origin did something that... bad. It must be an error. If I tell myself that they didn't want to design it that badly it is easier to accept than if I know that they didn't do it accidentally but indeed thought it was a good idea (which it isn't IMO).

 

[Quarto]

That's because the mass wouldn't be too far off compared to other ships.

On the contrary - for a 22km ship, the mass is clearly very far off compared to other ships .

As I said before, from a certain point of view it makes sense. For me it is mainly that I refuse to accept that Origin did something that... bad. It must be an error. If I tell myself that they didn't want to design it that badly it is easier to accept than if I know that they didn't do it accidentally but indeed thought it was a good idea (which it isn't IMO).

But this is pure self-denial. You actually lie to yourself to justify your views. It's made eminently clear that the dreadnought was indeed meant to be 22km long. It was meant to be huge and invincible. It was meant to stand apart from other ships by a degree of magnitude - that's why it's not a few hundred meters longer (as you would have it) than other ships, nor twice as big, but ten times as big. To nail across the idea that no matter what ships the player can defeat single-handedly, this one is beyond all hope.

Look at the scene where the Victory makes her suicide run against the Kilrathi dreadnought. It is absolutely beyond all shadow of doubt that the dreadnought is indeed incomparably huge compared to the Victory... and it is similarly beyond all doubt that this is exactly what was intended. That at the level of script, the writers wanted the dreadnought to be so huge that we see the Victory's suicide run as a futile and desperate gesture. If the dreadnought were 2 kilometres long, the Victory would have to be the size of a corvette - otherwise, what's the point?

Now, to be clear - I don't like the dreadnought. I think, ironically, that the dreadnought is exactly something the fans would design. A fanboy's wet dream - oh yeah? Well, my character has a ship is ten times as big as yours! If it were in WC1 or WC2, it would be nothing short of awful. But Wing Commander 3 is very specific. It is a game all about scale, where everything is meant to be huge and epic. Confed is in the biggest heap of trouble *ever*. They pull out the biggest gun in the *universe*. The Kilrathi destroy it, and now it is time for Blair's biggest mission *ever*, where he will destroy his biggest target *ever*. For the first time *ever*, someone will single-handedly destroy a planet. In this context, only two things could work for the Kilrathi on the losing path. One is an incredibly huge fleet, the biggest fleet *ever*. But the most the engine could handle would be half a dozen capships. It would work on the losing path, where you only see, not fight, the Kilrathi fleet, but fighting the Kilrathi on the losing path would be a joke. We just wouldn't understand why Blair couldn't once again single-handedly turn the tide. So, being unable to pit the player against the biggest fleet *ever*, they went for the logical alternative - the biggest ship *ever*. Even then, there is a problem, in that the game engine just can't support a ship of that size (or, more likely, it can't support the amount of textures needed to make such a ship look good). But at least with the cutscenes, the intended size gets across, and knowing the intended size, you understand immediately why the ship, unlike any other Kilrathi capships, takes half an hour to destroy. Visually, it's also important - if you're going to be showing the Kilrathi fleet against the backdrop of a planet, it's an incredibly long shot. The dreadnought really, really needs to be ten times as big as usual, so that the Kilrathi fleet doesn't look like a bunch of little specs.

All in all, in the context of WC3, the dreadnought just makes too much sense to be bad. Whether we like it or not, it's exactly what was needed for the story.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Ok, I can live with that explanation for the Durango. Its normal fighter complement might be around 20-30 and the BW guys just fit more into it than it originally could carry.

It's more that there simply is no normal where this particular ship is concerned. Whatever an ordinary Durango was might not even carry fighters at all. Intrepid is an entirely special case, a desperate carrier conversion operating at a very unusual moment in time.

It's just that if destroyers and cruisers carry as many fighters as a carrier I fail to see how it could make sense to build such a carrier. I mean: The Waterloo also has as many fighters as the Yorktown. It is just.... strange. The Yorktown is badly armored, at least two (smaller? and better armored) ships carry as many fighters as the Yorktown and so on. I don't understand the reason why it exists. It is poorly armored, slow, poorly armed and doesn't even carry that many fighters.

As for your WW2 example: Of course there were carriers with more and such with less fighters. But if they had had a cruiser or a destroyer that could carry as many fighters as one of these I doubt they would have used that carrier class.

- With apologize to Baron Jukaga, simple numbers DON'T tell the full story. The Waterloo carries forty fighters, yes... forty tiny Ferrets and Epees. Unlike the Waterloo or even the CVEs, the Yorktown carries full sized bombers. That's THE difference when it comes to doctrine: carriers are precious because of their striking ability and not because they can put up an impressive amount of CAP. This likely manifests itself in other ways, too: the additional, dedicated space on a carrier likely means room for larger air crews, more munitions, an improved launch rate and so on... things that a ship of the line can't match because it's using less space for a different job.

- The Yorktown is almost certainly the oldest of the ships you mentioned. It's a design that predates the war by many years and was built in an era where carrier operations meant something else entirely. At the turn of the 27th century, when they were in their prime, carriers were essentially support ships which provided reconnaissance patrols and air-to-ground strike craft. Destroyer and cruiser designs contemporary with the Victory likely didn't carry fighters at all... they were dedicated to raw striking power.

- Not everything has to be the best one of its kind. Why did the US Navy build those light carriers in World War II, when far superior fleet carriers already existed? Lots of good reasons: they could be constructed far more quickly at yards not being used for larger ships, they could be put in place more quickly... and they were just plain cheaper. (Similarly: do you drive a car? Is it, therefore, the SINGLE BEST CAR IN THE WORLD? Of course not - you could get a car that's more fuel efficient or that has some social cachet or that carries more people or any of a dozen other things... and you settled for the car you have for any number of good reasons.)

Like LOAF mentioned, it's obvious what the intention is... The ship in the first shot is a transport I guess very similar to the ones flashpacked in WC4. It's easier to make out in motion. But it is obviously dwarfed by Thrakhath's ship. It's the smaller circle in the second shot.

These screenshots are also a great primer on the dangers of judging size based on perspective. The transport looks small in the first screenshot, but not /that small/... but then it gets further from the camera and closer to the dreadnaught and it's suddenly a speck.

The triangle transports are an interesting mystery. They appear in cutscenes in (in Wing Commander 3 and 4!) and the in-engine in many pre-release screenshots... but they're nowhere to be found in the finished game (which is intersting in and of itself, since there are a number of unused ships floating around on the CDs.) They're even the art used for transports in the Wing Commander CCG! They do return in the 3DO version as the standard transport, with the 'latticework' ship being the tankers you disable during the Behemoth arc. Also, they're just darned cool looking ships... while the ones in the finished games just aren't that interesting.

I may just go ahead and go with what's apparent in the image; one gun and one missile just seems, well, boring to me.

Well, yeah, as I said over in the... Paradigm thread... the idea has always been that the guns in the game aren't the full armament that capital ships "really" have.

Whoa, whoa, hold it! Ships being removed from the game entirely? Tell us more!

Earlier versions of Victory Streak include specifications for a Confederation heavy carrier (don't... tell... Psych.) Here's an update we did about them: https://www.wcnews.com/news/2011/08/11/raiders-of-the-lost-manuals-part-2

I did manage to snag the lo-res episodes y'all had up at CIC a few months (years?) ago; it didn't look to me like the weapons emplacements were any clearer in any of the exterior shots of the Claw. But I'll go ahead and wait; I'm out of town this weekend as it is and probably won't get much time to work on the game as it is.

There are just /more/ of them. It's fairly consistent through the show, but there are a few scenes where you get extra turrets you've never seen before.

 

[Red Baron]

So... the Kilrathi Dreadnought is really 22,000 km long? Well if all the manual revisions say so...