Concordia Concept Borrows Bengal Look (March 28, 2006)

ChrisReid

ChrisReid

Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
This model might look like an average Concordia class ship at first glance, but there's one key difference. The bright and well-lit flight deck helps to illuminate a more open runway inspired by a Bengal Carrier or Confederation Dreadnought. It's a pretty neat look for a relatively minor alteration, and a more appropriate green texture helps to complement the design. If you'd like to see more, look no further than Standoff. Modeler Eder was concerned that the modification was slightly different than the established design, but the neat ship makes an appearance as the TCS Verdun in Episode 3.



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Original update published on March 28, 2006
 
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It was a nice surprise on the game to see the open concordia. One thing I don't understand is what's the purpose of all those open runways on WC1/2.
 
Nice, nice and triple nice... The open runways were for... mmm... allowing easy enemy bombing?
 
Runways do the same thing in Wing Commander that they do in real life. A closed runway is just a tiny tube doorway that a pilot has to aim for. An open structure allows for much more flexible and easier fighter recovery. It's not always necessary because of the ACLS, but obviously there have been many situations where a runway has been useful. The space underneath is used for storage, maintenance bays or whatever, so you're just essentially painting guides for ships to land with. The structure is going to be there whether the lines are painted or not, so I don't really see there being any correlation with how difficult it is to bomb a ship.
 
I think that he means that without a protective covering, the runway is susceptible to getting damaged by enemy attack more easily.
 
Fighters need that much space to land? The bays of the Midway and the Cerberus look tiny compared with those long WC2 ones. And it looks like they don't need that much space for take-off, I remember those take off animations on WC2 with the fighters using just a fraction of the Concordia's one. And the landing animations of WC1 shows that the fighters actually fly over most of it. Well, maybe that's optimal condition and it would have a reason on other situations not covered by those.
 
I think the WC Movie illustrates very well the purpose of the long open flight decks - they give damaged fighters space to crash-land without blowing the whole ship sky-high (the interior flight deck is a fairly flammable environment - fuel lines, missile racks, loaded fighters, et cetera... there's a reason why a single suicidal cat could put a ship's flight deck entirely out of action). Remember in WC4, when the Intrepid's crew was trying to control the fire on the flight deck? And as for the Midway and Cerberus, the hangar bay where you land on those ships is completely cut off from the rest of the ship, so this problem doesn't exist there.

(though it does make me wonder - it's undoubtedly safer for a crash-landing fighter to skid to a halt on an exposed landing strip than to crash into the wall at the end of a tiny hangar bay... so how did the pilots feel about this particular innovation on the Midway?)
 
The crash-land on the WC movie ended badly, they simply moved the debris outside the ships without any attempts to save the pilot. Because if you are stuck outside where there's atmosphere, to make it gets really harder. I'm not sure about the Midway, but maybe they have different tech there. Because not only the pilots would be in trouble, but the entier carrier, since an accident could rander one landing bay innoperative.
 
Delance said:
The crash-land on the WC movie ended badly, they simply moved the debris outside the ships without any attempts to save the pilot. Because if you are stuck outside where there's atmosphere, to make it gets really harder. I'm not sure about the Midway, but maybe they have different tech there. Because not only the pilots would be in trouble, but the entier carrier, since an accident could rander one landing bay innoperative.
Click to expand...

Had she only skidded I'm sure she would have lived. As it was, she hit the end of the Claw head on and flipped end over end. Most likely she didn't survive the crash. As it was, she didn't respond over the radio either though she may have been unconscious.

Either way, pushing the wreckage out of the way was necessary because other fighters needed to quickly refuel or they may have been stranded vulnerably out where the enemy could take shots at them. Some have questioned the likelyhood of them waiting so long before refueling. But don't forget that they aborted their first objectives and had to make their way back to the claw before engaging the enemy. And half way through a dogfight with a Dralthi on your tail is *not* the time to refuel.

Angel had to make the descision whether to risk precious time waiting for a rescue team to put on pressure suits and go out there and either try and drag the thing back into the hangar where it might, in the pressence of real air, ignite, or send out the space-jaws-of-life and spend an hour or two cutting open the rapier, after which they *still* need to push the wreckage off the deck.
 
Morality aside, it makes the open decks a particulary creepy place to land on, since everyone might be tempted to simply dump you into the void in case of an accident, where if you crash inside the carrier they are more likely to try to get you out alive.
 
Delance said:
Morality aside, it makes the open decks a particulary creepy place to land on, since everyone might be tempted to simply dump you into the void in case of an accident, where if you crash inside the carrier they are more likely to try to get you out alive.
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Or you crash and die instantly, in which case you get a ship instead of a coffin.:)
 
Delance said:
Morality aside, it makes the open decks a particulary creepy place to land on, since everyone might be tempted to simply dump you into the void in case of an accident, where if you crash inside the carrier they are more likely to try to get you out alive.
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Well, I'm sure it's not a great consolation that instead of being dumped from an open deck, you crashed on a closed deck and killed everyone there.

(also, the fact that Rosie was killed doesn't mean her body wasn't ultimately recovered. There's no reason why, after all those fighters were refuelled, someone couldn't have gone back out there and tractored her Rapier in)
 
Quarto said:
(also, the fact that Rosie was killed doesn't mean her body wasn't ultimately recovered. There's no reason why, after all those fighters were refuelled, someone couldn't have gone back out there and tractored her Rapier in)
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Actually there is.
The TigerClaw had to get underway as quickly as possible since it had been found out by the Kilrahti fleet. Open space was no longer safe and the carrier had to run over to a moon and hide inside an impact crater.
 
All this talk assumes that a fighter can't simply slow down to, say, 10 magical WC units and just plop down the ship... Just like we did in WC3. Heck, you can just stop in front of the carrier's deck opening and let it scoop you. Wing Commander fighters are able to VTOL, just like a hellicopter or an empty harrier, or even the F-35.

Landing on current carriers is hard because you have to be slow enough without being TOO slow. Some fighters actually stall over the deck and fall into it a couple of meters...

The whole "ww2 in space" metaphor can be carried too far, sometimes. As far as we can see in the games, flying the ships, there is no big need for all this takeoff/landing drama.

EDIT: And BTW, loved the design, very pretty.
 
Edfilho said:
All this talk assumes that a fighter can't simply slow down to, say, 10 magical WC units and just plop down the ship... Just like we did in WC3. Heck, you can just stop in front of the carrier's deck opening and let it scoop you. Wing Commander fighters are able to VTOL, just like a hellicopter or an empty harrier, or even the F-35.
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Of course, you might not be able to do that if your ship is damaged. Additionally, landing in WC is not necessarily as simple as the games make it seem. There is gravity on board the carriers - indeed, gravity seems to extend even outside of the hull, because otherwise they wouldn't have been able to push Rosie's ship off the deck. Then there's a bunch of other factors to consider - you may for example be trying to land in a hurry as the carrier prepares to jump out, and so on.

Marc said:
Actually there is.
The TigerClaw had to get underway as quickly as possible since it had been found out by the Kilrahti fleet. Open space was no longer safe and the carrier had to run over to a moon and hide inside an impact crater.
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...Which would be an issue, if the Tiger's Claw was actually faster than a Rapier.
 
Delance said:
Morality aside, it makes the open decks a particulary creepy place to land on, since everyone might be tempted to simply dump you into the void in case of an accident, where if you crash inside the carrier they are more likely to try to get you out alive.
Click to expand...

As Quarto and others pointed out, were there no runway, Rosie's ship could easily have created a substantial number of casualties and damage inside the Tiger's Claw hangar. Note that they specifically did not push Rosie's fighter off into the void. It went into a recovery area on the side of the runway.

Edfilho said:
All this talk assumes that a fighter can't simply slow down to, say, 10 magical WC units and just plop down the ship... Just like we did in WC3. Heck, you can just stop in front of the carrier's deck opening and let it scoop you. Wing Commander fighters are able to VTOL, just like a hellicopter or an empty harrier, or even the F-35.

Landing on current carriers is hard because you have to be slow enough without being TOO slow. Some fighters actually stall over the deck and fall into it a couple of meters...

The whole "ww2 in space" metaphor can be carried too far, sometimes. As far as we can see in the games, flying the ships, there is no big need for all this takeoff/landing drama.
Click to expand...

That's looking at it kind of backwards. Landing sequences in things like the movie show us that bringing a ship to a halt is not always the simplified painless process that we are presented with in the games. This isn't a "WW2 in space/movie" thing at all. In the novels, game dialogue and other places we're told about harrowing landings that other pilots pull off.
 
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