Concordia (Confederation Dreadnought) sister ships?

criticalmass

Vice Admiral
Completely unrelated to the thread trying to define the interior structure and layout of the Confederation Dreadnought for some unapparent reason, I've got another question:

Simply: Was the Concordia the only ship of that class? (Then why name a class after her?)

I've found no references in the "official" sources I have access to, but Psych's Fleet Tactics website lists some sister ships:

Ships of the Class
Name Hull Number Current Status
TCS Confederation CVS-14 LOST IN ACTION
TCS Concordia CVS-65 LOST IN ACTION
TCS Constitution CVS-66 LOST IN ACTION
TCS Alliance CVS-67 LOST IN ACTION
TCS Apocalypse CVS-68 LOST IN ACTION
TCS Armageddon CVS-69 ACTIVE DUTY

The date for the status is 2669. Is this fiction, or has there been a sister ship? If yes, what happened to it/them?

As always, thanks for your help.
 
Officially, the WC2 Concordia was the Confederation class. At a guess the "CVS-14" is based on the WC2 box art, whose Confed class ship had that hull number.

As for Fleet Tactics, while it is a pretty well-researched site, it's not official, nor does it make any claim to be so (check the site disclaimer). Using it for information is somewhat less than recommended if you're concerning yourself with the official WC universe, in most cases.
 
One thing that's clearly wrong is the status - based on our figuring, no Terran Confederation-class ships could still be in service in 2669. I believe that was a conceit made by Fleet Tactics because they wanted to have one in WC Saga.

The number of ships (6) is another 'truism', based on there being one produced per year from 2660 (five years after they were designed, per End Run, and one year before the Concordia entered service) to 2665 (when they were retired).

As Death mentioned, the TCS Terran Confederation being CVS-14 is just a guess based on the fact that we know that *one* of them is 14 - though I suppose it's the most likely guess, since 14 is before 65 and the Concordia was the second ship.
 
And also the Armaggedon is a Concordia Class, acording to LOAF's table, and not a Confederation.
 
It seems that the naming comitee got pissed off... from Concordia to armaggedon is quite a leap.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
One thing that's clearly wrong is the status - based on our figuring, no Terran Confederation-class ships could still be in service in 2669. I believe that was a conceit made by Fleet Tactics because they wanted to have one in WC Saga.
Actually, apparently he wanted a Confederation DN to still be in service for some other reason, which raises a decent point of its own.

I've never been entirely convinced that the Confederation's were no longer built after 2665. Here's a few points (in addition to psych's issue) that rattle around in my head whenever I hear that only 6 were built.

The KS manual tells that the PTC makes up the keel of the CDN, but then makes the comment that "it is too large to be mounted on any other ship in the Confederation Navy". This leads me to believe that, given half the chance, Confed would have started attaching these bad boys to everything they could, no "specially designed ship" needed, though no other ship is long enough to fit the bill.
Also, the fact that it takes 10 years to build the yards and train the personnel to build a specific carrier (per End Run), the Confederation DN would have to have been at least in the design phase since 2645, not a rushed design to carry the PTC (I don't doubt that there were many modifications made to the CDN design to house the PTC once construction began on the TCS Confederation, though).
To produce one CDN a year, there needs to be five "berths" in the yards staggered one year apart in the production schedule (to align with the TCS Confederation coming out 1 year before the TCS Concordia and matching the 5 year rule) . At the time the PTC is found to be flawed, there have been 6 vessels finished (2660-2665), but there would still have to be 4 vessels in various stages of completion. I personally doubt many admirals would scrap a 4/5 completed carrier, a year out from joining the fleet. They would also have to make similar decisions on a 3/5, 2/5, 1/5 completed carriers. Add in the fact that the infrastructure is in place to keep building these carriers (ones that are an effective design sans the PTC) at a pace of 1 a year, no lengthy retooling and such for a new or existing design, and all your left is the balance of how much capital goes into the ship and if that is better spent elsewhere.

An additional (albiet very light-weight) note is also the design of WC4. Apparently, the Lexington and the Princeton were originally planned to be CDN's before game engine limitations forced the "big Ranger" Concordia solution. At least in the WC4 designers minds (and anyone who just read the WC4N and didn't play the game :) ), there can exist CDN's well beyond 2669 :).

Hell, for all we know, they may have built two berths a year apart(giving the proper 5 years between known carriers), meaning only 3 CDN's left the yard before the fault in the PTC was found. Basically, its more of a big question mark to me than an actual number. Six is about as good a guess as any, though, with the facts at hand, I personally can't really rule out any others. :)

C-ya
 
Actually, apparently he wanted a Confederation DN to still be in service for some other reason, which raises a decent point of its own.

That's a pretty lousy "proof". The fact that an unidentified graphic of a dreadnaught could be a picture of a ship that was in service until a few months earlier is referenced in the novel does not in any way indicate that Confed is hiding secret carriers.

(It's also a fairly strange effort to make, given how much Psych hated the Heart of the Tiger novel. I guess you'd know better than I do whether or not the "TCS Armageddon" is in Saga, though.)

The KS manual tells that the PTC makes up the keel of the CDN, but then makes the comment that "it is too large to be mounted on any other ship in the Confederation Navy". This leads me to believe that, given half the chance, Confed would have started attaching these bad boys to everything they could, no "specially designed ship" needed, though no other ship is long enough to fit the bill.
Also, the fact that it takes 10 years to build the yards and train the personnel to build a specific carrier (per End Run), the Confederation DN would have to have been at least in the design phase since 2645, not a rushed design to carry the PTC (I don't doubt that there were many modifications made to the CDN design to house the PTC once construction began on the TCS Confederation, though).
To produce one CDN a year, there needs to be five "berths" in the yards staggered one year apart in the production schedule (to align with the TCS Confederation coming out 1 year before the TCS Concordia and matching the 5 year rule) . At the time the PTC is found to be flawed, there have been 6 vessels finished (2660-2665), but there would still have to be 4 vessels in various stages of completion. I personally doubt many admirals would scrap a 4/5 completed carrier, a year out from joining the fleet. They would also have to make similar decisions on a 3/5, 2/5, 1/5 completed carriers. Add in the fact that the infrastructure is in place to keep building these carriers (ones that are an effective design sans the PTC) at a pace of 1 a year, no lengthy retooling and such for a new or existing design, and all your left is the balance of how much capital goes into the ship and if that is better spent elsewhere.

The problem with this claim is that it assumes that the Phase Transit Cannon problem was discovered in 2665 rather than years earlier. It seems highly unlikely to me that this is the case. Given that the problem was serious enough to force production of the weapon cancelled alltogether, it seems impossible to me that it would go for half a decade without being noticed. It is just as likely (and more fitting with the numbers for carrier strength we are given in the novels!) that the problem was discovered in the early sixties and that the last of the carriers already in production entered service in 2665.

An additional (albiet very light-weight) note is also the design of WC4. Apparently, the Lexington and the Princeton were originally planned to be CDN's before game engine limitations forced the "big Ranger" Concordia solution. At least in the WC4 designers minds (and anyone who just read the WC4N and didn't play the game ), there can exist CDN's well beyond 2669 .

As I've pointed out before, the extent to which this is true has been wildly exaggerated by fan projects eager to latch onto an excuse to alter continuity. It was something that was considered very early in development, not the last minute, game altering substitution that everyone seems to claim. Along the lines of "It'd be cool if we could do this, lets see if it's possible. Oh, it'd take a lot of work, lets do something else." I sincerely regret ever telling anyone the story in the first place.

Hell, for all we know, they may have built two berths a year apart(giving the proper 5 years between known carriers), meaning only 3 CDN's left the yard before the fault in the PTC was found. Basically, its more of a big question mark to me than an actual number. Six is about as good a guess as any, though, with the facts at hand, I personally can't really rule out any others.

The 'six' is the lower limit - it's entirely possible that there were ten yards or fifteen yards or a million yards. The issue is that whatever the number produced, they can't be around in 2669. If there were a hundred of them, then a hundred of them must have been destroyed in the mid sixties.
 
The 'six' is the lower limit - it's entirely possible that there were ten yards or fifteen yards or a million yards. The issue is that whatever the number produced, they can't be around in 2669. If there were a hundred of them, then a hundred of them must have been destroyed in the mid sixties.

Well reading this thread I am a bit confused why you are so sure that all terran confederation class ships must have been destroyed by the mid sixties. Since I have not done that much research on this to my understanding it's all about the TCS Armaggedon and that we do not no for sure what class this ship was so it could - in theory - be a terran confederation dreadnought (or a concordia, or a ranger or an escort carrier) or did I miss an argument? :confused:

The number of ships (6) is another 'truism', based on there being one produced per year from 2660 (five years after they were designed, per End Run, and one year before the Concordia entered service) to 2665 (when they were retired).

Where is it mentioned that they were retired in 2665? Also even with a war running, a five year production run for a major ship class seems a bit short even with a non-functional PTC (which didn't see much action anyway in battles or so it seems)

Thanks in advance for clearing things up a bit :)

Regards Atekimogus
 
The Kilrathi Saga manual is where the retirement date comes from. The Armageddon can't be a Terran Confederation-class ship because it enters service in 2669.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
That's a pretty lousy "proof". The fact that an unidentified graphic of a dreadnaught could be a picture of a ship that was in service until a few months earlier is referenced in the novel does not in any way indicate that Confed is hiding secret carriers.
I didn't enter it as "proof", none of what I went into is "proof". They are points to consider to counter the assumption that the Confederation was retired along with the PTC. This one just happens to be psych's. I don't think we can "prove" that the Confederation was retired with the PTC, either. We have no source to my knowledge that states the Concordia was the last of her line.
Bandit LOAF said:
The problem with this claim is that it assumes that the Phase Transit Cannon problem was discovered in 2665 rather than years earlier. It seems highly unlikely to me that this is the case. Given that the problem was serious enough to force production of the weapon cancelled alltogether, it seems impossible to me that it would go for half a decade without being noticed. It is just as likely (and more fitting with the numbers for carrier strength we are given in the novels!) that the problem was discovered in the early sixties and that the last of the carriers already in production entered service in 2665.
The fault probably wasn't discovered in 2665, the KS attributes the decomissioning of the PTC to "continual problems". These could very well have been known bugs since the very first DN rolled off the assembly line that they thought they could squash. Given the actual retirement date, though, it seems they finally gave up on the idea in 2665.
About the novel carrier strengths, you have quite a few carriers in your list that have "unknown" as their class. Thanks to the known "half the fleet" being destroyed in the past year in end run (and I think the Armada manual), you have 8 carriers that are lost the year after the PTC was retired, no idea to their class. Many that you have painstakenly tracked back are destroyed in the same year they are built. You even have two that survive beyond 2669. I don't follow how the continued production of the CDN is not "fitting with the numbers for carrier strength we are given in the novels".
Bandit LOAF said:
As I've pointed out before, the extent to which this is true has been wildly exaggerated by fan projects eager to latch onto an excuse to alter continuity. It was something that was considered very early in development, not the last minute, game altering substitution that everyone seems to claim. Along the lines of "It'd be cool if we could do this, lets see if it's possible. Oh, it'd take a lot of work, lets do something else." I sincerely regret ever telling anyone the story in the first place.
Its a good thing you did. Otherwise, we would just have a huge, unexplainable 'WTF!' when it comes to the WC4N and the WC4 game telling of the story.
Bandit LOAF said:
The 'six' is the lower limit - it's entirely possible that there were ten yards or fifteen yards or a million yards. The issue is that whatever the number produced, they can't be around in 2669. If there were a hundred of them, then a hundred of them must have been destroyed in the mid sixties.
How is six the lower limit? To my knowledge, all we know is that the Concordia was launched in 2661 under a different class name. Therefore you have to assume the TCS confederation was built sometime before that. To make everything fit with the novels (5 years production for a carrier) and the confiscation of the remains of the PAG, that means that the PTC had to be mounted on a carrier already about to be constructed and that the TCS confederation had to come out the year before the concordia.
Given that our available information and assumptions at a minimum gives 2 construction yards, as proposed earlier, the minimum could be 3 CDN's(2660, 2661, and 2665).

What makes 2669 the magic number? As mentioned earlier, from your research, there are two carriers of unknown class operating after that date that could be anything.
Speaking of which, why is it that the Saratoga is the only other surviving carrier of the BoT (along with the Concordia, since 5 of 7 are destroyed in FA)? I haven't come across a resource that would suggest it was the one to survive rather than the Leyte Gulf or (IIRC) the Ark Royal.

C-ya
 
When one thinks about how long it takes to develop a new carrier or other large surface naval vessel, the cost of development, and the cost of the special production facilities to build one, I find it hard to believe that Confed would just give up on the class entirely because of a faulty main gun. It has been stated in canon sources that the Confederation-class Dreadnought could carry a complement of 120 fighters and was equipped with 8 AMGs.

Is it possible that Confed would continue to build Confederation-class ships post 2665 without the PT-cannon. This would undoubtedly increase internal volume for more fighters, more AMGs, command and control facilities, medical bays, troops, etc., without the PT-cannon, the Concordia and her sisters would be big, slow, and heavily armed carriers. Without anything heavier than cruiser grade weaponry (AMG guns), there would be no logical way that these ships would retain their dreadnought status.

This may explain why in 2666-2669 the TCS Concordia had the hull number CVS-65 and not DN-15 or BDN-15 or even BB-15 (with the assumption that 14 was the TCS Confederation).

Perhaps this would satisfy both the novels and the WC2 manual in which "Fleet Action" clearly refers to the Concordia as a carrier, and the manual clearly refers to the Confederation-class as dreadnoughts.
 
The PTC was integrated into the design of the Confederation class, and formed the basis of that design's keel ("Joan's Fighting Ships", WC2 manual). Simply "don't include it" won't cut it, as the design is built for the stresses of carrying and firing the PTC, and redesigning for a PTC-less Confederation could easily be more expensive than just starting from scratch with a new design. Cost would also make installing but not using the PTC not a likely option. Warships in general don't really have the luxury of carrying around "dead" mass/volume.
 
I didn't enter it as "proof", none of what I went into is "proof". They are points to consider to counter the assumption that the Confederation was retired along with the PTC. This one just happens to be psych's. I don't think we can "prove" that the Confederation was retired with the PTC, either. We have no source to my knowledge that states the Concordia was the last of her line.

Except "they may have shown a picture of one!" really isn't a point to consider unless we're collecting evidence of the extreme and nonsensical lengths you're willing to go through for the sake of having a ship somewhere it doesn't belong in the timeline. The picture is not specifically of a Terran Confederation-class ship... and even if it were, its mere presence wouldn't contradict a thing.

("Blair stopped. The ship the Behemoth was being compared to in size was a mystery to him! There hadn't been anything like it in the Confederation's inventory for nearly four months! If he could think back that long, perhaps he could remember that both he and the man persenting the chart to him had last served on that class of ship together. But that couldn't have anything to do with this! How could he trust the people working on the last ditch effort to save mankind if their size comparison chart hadn't been properly updated to account for recent war losses for some reason?!")

The fault probably wasn't discovered in 2665, the KS attributes the decomissioning of the PTC to "continual problems". These could very well have been known bugs since the very first DN rolled off the assembly line that they thought they could squash. Given the actual retirement date, though, it seems they finally gave up on the idea in 2665.

Well, there you go. There's something fundamentally different about "late 2665". We know that it's not when the problem was first discovered and we know that the change wasn't a removal of the existing weapons from service (since the Concordia uses her weapon repeatedly after that point). The only other thing I can think of is that 2665 is the point after which they are no longer produced.

And lets address the long in fandom idea that there should be a 'later' version of the Terran Confederation-class that simply doesn't mount the gun. The famous quote is that "This weapon actually forms the keel of the new Terran Confederation-class dreadnought;". Dictionary.com tells me that the keel is "The principal structural member of a ship, running lengthwise along the center line from bow to stern, to which the frames are attached." The keel is the first part of the ship to be layed down, upon which the rest of the structure is based. The indication to me (and to forteen years of fan discussion) is that the idea behind the Terran Confederation-class is that the ship is *based around* the weapon (and that this is unusual, hence the 'actually').

Admittably, I am probably biased against this because of the sheer stupidity to which it has been used as an excuse in the past (the Aces Club had their Confederation III-class super-carriers or somesuch). It is theoretically possible that the Confederation could have redesigned the ship around a new keel and built them in that manner -- but there is no indication anywhere that this has happened.

To say that because it is theoretically possible that a new carrier class can be added to the mix simply from a technical point of view is absolutely not a reason to do so, particularly at the one point in the continuity when the specific number of carriers is most strictly scrutinized.

We should also take into account intent in a manner much more important than the idea that the WCIV team thought about reusing the model: the Kilrathi Saga manual's addition of a reference exists specifically to remove the "super" technology from Wing Commander II from service. It is an answer to fans who asked where Confed's amazing dreadnaughts and one-shot guns went between WC2 and WC3... and since it was given in good faith in direct response to a variation on this very debate, it seems inappropriate to then create excuses for why it should be ignored.

About the novel carrier strengths, you have quite a few carriers in your list that have "unknown" as their class. Thanks to the known "half the fleet" being destroyed in the past year in end run (and I think the Armada manual), you have 8 carriers that are lost the year after the PTC was retired, no idea to their class. Many that you have painstakenly tracked back are destroyed in the same year they are built. You even have two that survive beyond 2669. I don't follow how the continued production of the CDN is not "fitting with the numbers for carrier strength we are given in the novels".

The novels and manuals provide a series of specific numbers for carriers and for losses around this time. In general, as you'll notice, the "Unknown" refers to the idea that there were several specific carriers the year before - and that we don't know which one of them should be removed from the list. For example, the "Unknown" listed at the Battle of Earth is so given because a carrier of unknown class was destroyed in the set before - but that "uknown" carrier came from a list of known ship classes -- it was *either* a Lexington-class, a Jutland-class or a Concordia-class. Since we don't know which was lost, we don't know which was still around the next year. That's where the unknown comes from, not an inability to identify active classes in the first place.

How is six the lower limit? To my knowledge, all we know is that the Concordia was launched in 2661 under a different class name. Therefore you have to assume the TCS confederation was built sometime before that. To make everything fit with the novels (5 years production for a carrier) and the confiscation of the remains of the PAG, that means that the PTC had to be mounted on a carrier already about to be constructed and that the TCS confederation had to come out the year before the concordia.
Given that our available information and assumptions at a minimum gives 2 construction yards, as proposed earlier, the minimum could be 3 CDN's(2660, 2661, and 2665).

I will give you this, three is an equally reasonable lower bound. The original idea was to imply that they were being built in the same yards as the Bengal-class and Midway-class ships, and were inheriting their production schedule. It's equally possible that there are two carrier yards somewhere else that built the Terran Confederation-class, and that they built only three ships.

(I disagree about the 'already about to be constructed' reference - the 'forms the keel' reference seems to indicate that the PTC is an essential element of the design rather than something that was thrown in at the last moment. Rather, it seems to me that it would have been a rush job to counter the percieved threat of future Sivar-class ships, which is what resulted in the ships being retired in the first place.)

What makes 2669 the magic number? As mentioned earlier, from your research, there are two carriers of unknown class operating after that date that could be anything.

Because we can follow the chart and tell that of the ships in service in 2665, only two were still around in 2669 - the TCS Concordia and the TCS Liberty. The unknowns at this point all refer to ships which entered service after this time... and the classes of the Concordia and the Liberty are known (well, we could debate the Liberty, but we can very easily prove that it is not a Terran Confederation-class ship).
 
Death said:
The PTC was integrated into the design of the Confederation class, and formed the basis of that design's keel ("Joan's Fighting Ships", WC2 manual). Simply "don't include it" won't cut it, as the design is built for the stresses of carrying and firing the PTC, and redesigning for a PTC-less Confederation could easily be more expensive than just starting from scratch with a new design. Cost would also make installing but not using the PTC not a likely option. Warships in general don't really have the luxury of carrying around "dead" mass/volume.

I agree. I believe the Lexington-class of 2668 was exactly that. Unfortunately, to design, build, test, and deploy a new carrier would take years (not to mention getting funding from the government for the project). In the interim, Confed would still need new carriers. So even if Confederation-class ships were launched as essentially floating hulls with a fighter wing, it would mean something was being built.

I am not sure that I subscribe so much to the theory that Concordia-class Carriers (the 2633/34 models) were massed produced throughout the war. The Lexington in WC4 was supposed to be a Confederation-class ship, but due to moddeling problems, that didn't come to fruition.

Also, if you analyze Confed and Kilrathi ship comparisons throughout the war, you will notice that their statistics are nearly identical. This would well represent a 35-year arms and technology race. The Kilrathi ships are usually slightly larger with a greater amount of firepower. I would assume that Confed balances this with a slightly greater technology in detection, ECCM, and shield recharge rates.

In the Victory Streak manual we have listings for various capships...
Confed Destroyer- Length: 490 meters, 9 turreted weapons (Laser, Flak, AMG, etc...)
Kilrathi Light Destroyer- Length: 450 meters, 8 turreted weapons
Kilrathi Heavy Destroyer- Length: 530 meters, 13 turreted weapons
and
Confed Cruiser- Length: 530 meters, 12 turreted weapons
Kilrathi Cruiser- Length: 550 meters, 15 turreted weapons

There is a listing for Light Carrier (which may include both of the Ranger and Concordia classes. Both ships utilize the CV designation and not CVL or CVA).
Length: 720 meters, 11 turreted weapons
But, there is no listing for a heavy carrier or CVS (perhaps this denotes Strike Carrier, or perhaps it doesn't. Either way it is definately separate from the CVs)
The Kilrathi Heavy Carrier was 920 meters, and had 8 turreted weapons.

The Kilrathi Heavy Carrier may have been a competitor to the Confederation-class which in this case was slightly larger and had more weapons points, but had far less mass (survivability) and protection. Again, common trade off features in an arms race.

The new fleet carriers from the WC4 novel, like the 800-meter TCS Princeton were most likely intended to be Lexington-class. Only in the WC4 game do we hear of the "Concordia-class" reference for the CV48 in the Speradon missions. The CV48 is never identified in the game as the new carrier Princeton, it is just assumed. The CV44 and CV48 penant numbers are very close to the TCS Victory CV40 which entered service sometime during the first year of the war (as established by some of Capt. Eisen's dialogue in WC3). Also, the TCS Concordia entered service in the year of the McAuliffe ambush in 2634 and would probably aslo have a similar penant number (perhaps CV38 or CV39).

Separating the Confederation-class CVS, and the Jutland-class CVA (in my opinion, the Jutland was a reconfigured Waterloo-class Cruiser) we are left with the Concordia-class Carriers dominating the CV40-50 range and the Lexington dominating the CV60 range. Then would eventually come the Vesuvius CV70.
This could be what Forstchen meant when he said that all 40-series carriers (Ranger and Concordia-classes built in the 30s) were decommissioned after the war.

The Lexington-class Heavy Carrier was built to most likely eventually replace the Confed Heavy Carrier of the day, the Confederation-class.
 
Back
Top