Confederation at War

AD said:
Dutch, French, and German are the three official languages in Belgium. It is estimated that almost 59% of population have Dutch as their first language and that a little more than 40% have French as their first language. Only 1% of the population have German as their mother tongue.

Be that as it may...English is not in the list you provided. I fail to see how Angel could have wound up with an English accent. Perhaps she is Schizophrenic? (sp?) Afterall she is with an English accent throughout the movie but then in WC1 she decides to switch to a French accent...some people are like that.
 
As for the Concordia class, the author of the WC IV adaptation made an honest mistake in assuming that "Concordia class" meant the class of ship that the Concordia from WC2 was, which was instead the Confederation class.

That is why Blair thinks about how similar the Lexington is to the Concordia, although that wouldn't have actually been the case.

It is a minor error and easily overlooked. Authors are not perfect.
 
I think he was referring to the Princeton, which was just being finished when the UBW took control of it.
 
Hmm... I'm not sure whether I'd go as far as to consider a strategy guide canon, but since Roberts' name is on it, I'll let it go.

In the case of Wing Commander, many of the official guides provide a lot of valuable material. The Wing Commander I & II guide more than any of them - it's written in prose form and is one of the favorite 'reference' sources for later materials. Stuff from the guide shows up throughout places like the Kilrathi Saga, the movie novels and the CCG.

If you like Wing Commander novels and haven't read the first guide, give it a shot -- due to the manner in which it is written, it's basically another Wing Commander novel. (Later guides are not like this, though I'd argue that things like the character bios in the Prophecy guide are also very important.)

Skipper missiles. Their well known existence in the movie suggests the existence or development of the Strakha fighters. Whether or not Tolwyn had personal reasons for hanging Blair out to dry or not, the well documented existence of these missiles in the movie suggests that a cloaked ship threat in WC2 should have been taken VERY seriously by the other higher ups.

I guess I just don't follow.

Tolwyn's claim was that Blair was responsible for destroying the Tiger's Claw... and Blair's claim was that a fighter no one 'in the universe' knew existed was responsible. Blair is not trying to prove that the Strakha *can* exist, he is trying to prove that they *do* exist. We, the observers, already know that they can and do exist... by virtue of the fact that we see them destroying the Tiger's Claw ourselves.

I would argue that Blair is completely succesful (or his lawyer/s, rather) in arguing that they *can* exist - because, utlimately, he is convicted only of negligence. The court says that he failed in his duty in allowing the carrier to be destroyed, which seems to be a tacit admission that stealth fighters *could* exist.

Where in the movie does it use the term "meson shields"? I just watched it recently, and didn't ever notice the term being used. Actions Stations gripes are below.

"Meson shields" show up in The Confederation Handbook's Joan's Fighting Ships section. That question cuts both ways - where does the term "phase shields" show up?

See, that's bass ackwards. In the game, the Wing Commander was the leader of the mission. and the missions were assigned by Colonel Halcyon in the role of a CAG. While we could imagine that as naval doctrine changed, the term "Wing Commander" changed to mean the CAG on smaller boats, it's difficult to argue with Halcyon stating that you are the Wing Commander.

The term "Wing Commander" has always been used in both the traditional sense and to mean 'element commander'. Hence Blair is the 'Wing Commander' of Alpha Wing in the Enyo System... and then also the 'Wing Commander' of the TCS Victory fifteen years later.

The term CAG only shows up in Wing Commander Prophecy, refering to a naval officer (Cmdr. Drake) who has authority over *multiple* fighter wings. The Midway presumably has three Wing Commanders who report to the CAG.

Indeed. The "brogue put on" would be fair enough assessment if the games didn't clearly state that he was a pilot in the first game and transferred to Black Ops sometime in between.

Is this stated somewhere? It seems unlikely that Paladin would wake up one morning and suddenly be made "Chief Field Officer of Intelligence and Special Operations in the Enigma Sector" without any sort of training or experience (which literally does happen - we follow him from the Tiger's Claw back to Sol Station in Freedom Flight.

The movie's backstory, that he attended counterintelligence school years ago and has alternated between covert operations roles and flight duty, seems a lot more reasonable. The idea that Tolwyn picked him to serve in Enigma because of his experience during the Pilgrim War and in the movie seems to flow rather well.

Just because she grew up in Belgium doesn't mean that she didn't come from a French family. The games actually go out of their way to note her French accent, and intersperse her language with French words.

Touche. May I point out, however, that Stewart did make the occasional attempt to play a French role? Between the various references to the French language, homeland, and cursing, he at least came across as a Frenchman with an exceptional English accent.

I'll put these two together because someone above did a better job of explaining Belgium than I could.

In terms of actress, though, what is the more appropriate: a British actress playing a French role without pretending to have an accent... or an American playing a French role withh a very poor French accent (any of the 'voice' Angels is appropriate here - Wing Commander II, Super Wing Commander, Wing Commander Sega CD, etc.)?

Burrows isn't acting outrageously British and the related fiction (including things like the movie adaptation) continues to acknowledge that she's supposed to be Belgian... and she certainly still has a decidedly French-sounding name. (Also, my personal experience is that French people who learn English well generally wind up with a British-sounding accent, probably by virtue of proximity alone.)

Language and accent in Wing Commander is a slippery slope, anyway -- do Thrakhath and the Emperor really stand around discussing the war in English (with the slight Texas drawl that seems to belong to everyone in the universe in '67)?

1. Phase shields. If I may flip open my book to grab a quick example of the billions of times they were mentioned. Ah! Here's one:

"Have acquired phase sheild phasing," the weapons officer continued. "The weapon is locking on." (pg. 78)

From the continuity of the games, we know that phase shields weren't invented/in common use by the time we boarded the Tiger's Claw. Standard missiles were still the primary method of attacking capital ships. It wasn't until 10 years later that we see phase shields and anti-phase torpedos in common usage. Establishing their wartime usage prior to the WCII timeframe goes against the established canon. IIRC, I believe the WCII manual even mentioned their rather recent invention. (I'd check, but I loaned out my WCII deluxe years ago and never got it back. )

I agree, but I think it's just a matter of terminology rather than any sort of impossible contradiction. We see quite clearly over the years that shielding technology is constantly improving. In Wing Commander 1 you can shoot through shields... in Wing Commander 2 you can't. In Wing Commander 3 you can shoot through shields again... but by the end of Wing Commander 4, the newest ships (the Vesuvius) are again immune to gunfire. In Wing Commander Prophecy, you again need torpedoes to blast through shields... until towards the end of the game when the new plasma guns come into service, capable of causing damage to capital ships again.

Action Stations knocks this logically forward. I certainly would have liked a different term for the shields (hence my happiness over the movie's Meson Shields), but I don't think it's irreconcilable that *all* shields of are called 'phase shields'.

2. The Concordia. Having a ship of the same name is acceptable. Since she participated in a heroic engagement, it would be quite likely that her name would be permanently added to the naval registry. Common examples in wet navy history are the Enterprise, Lexington, Intrepid, Hornet, and Wasp. My problem is that the author decided to make her the first of her class. This creates a problem in the Wing Commander continuity, because it suggests that the WCIV Confed is building a carrier that's over 30 years out of date! This makes even less sense when we look at the WCIV book adaption, which portrays the Concordia class as one of the Confederation's most advanced carriers! Had the author not decided to be so "prequelish", we could have assumed that the Concordia class was commisioned after the destruction of the TCS Concordia in WCII.

While I agree with this in spirit, the actual continuity issue is based on faulty information. The Confederation isn't building a Concordia-class carrier in Wing Commander IV - according to the briefing, the TCS Princeton is "undergoing ad-hoc repairs".

The zaniness of the "Concordia-class" name is a result of errors on both sides. The original intent was to have the Confederation-class appear in Wing Commander IV... the FMV was shot with the intention of referring to this (which would have been another continuity error, of course). For whatever reason (probably ease), going with the 'TCS Victory writ large' design worked better and that became the "Concordia-class carrier".

Action Stations, on the other hand, was written to imply that the "TCS Concordia" was the same ship which appears in Wing Commander II, End Run, Fleet Action, etc. Someone... caught this in editing and the end of the book was changed to quickly destroy the ship. Hence the incredible awkwardness of the concluding conversations -- 'maybe he'll command... *another*... Concordia... someday!'.

3. The Claw Marks account of "McAuliffe" was rather "creatively" interpreted. Not wrong per say, but paints a very different picture.

Eh, it turned a 153 word description into a complete novel -- it'd have to add something. I think we should give the book credit for going out of its way to *avoid* conflicting with/ignoring the Claw Marks description... with a scene added specifically to remind everyone that the whole 'Ches Penney/decryption' plot is happening somewhere else.

(Char limit reached -- will post second part next.)
 
4. A bad case of "prequelitis" prevades the book. Richards and Tolywn, I'm fine with that. But Kruger's dad, the Concordia, Landreich, the Prince's older brother, ad nausem, all add up to too much of "let's cram well known places and characters together into the storyline to sell more books, and damn the storyline!" Which, of course, led to the issue with the Concordia class and the phase shields.

It's supposed to be the same Kruger -- Dr. Forstchen has trouble with first names. Kruger's "history" in the opening chapters of False Colors connects the AS and FA Kruger references.

The idea that the characters all knew eachother in the pre-war era bothered me a lot until recently. "Small universe" syndrome has always been a big complaint of mine, as it pervades poorly written spinoff fiction (connecting everything ever referenced on Star Trek apparently outranks story in their novels).

That said, I grudgingly admit that in the context of Action Stations a lot of it makes sense. I read Sears' biography of General McClellan a few weeks back, and it's absolutely amazing to me how all the big military figures were connected in the fifteen years before the Civil War. Crazy stuff that seems like it'd be a horrible conceit in one of the aforementioned Star Trek novels: You have McClellan at West Point in the same class as Jackson, rooming with AP Hill... and then he goes off to fight in Mexico, where he impresses Lee at Vera Cruz... and then he scouts the frontier with Grant. And on and on. Dr. Forstchen is a Civil War historian, and I'm willing to bet that's what's going through his mind when he connects all the characters in the pre-war era.

(On the other hand, I think you're being a bit pessimistic in terms of intentions - I seriously, seriously doubt anyone has ever said "I'll buy this Wing Commander novel... but only if it has Kruger in it!")

5. The WWII parallels were cute, but pretty poorly executed, IMHO. In order for the Kilrathi to be the first to demonstrate the power of carriers, they needed to have phase shields and torpedos. But that then brings into question as to how the whole Varni and Panama scenarios were supposed to be carried out. This in turn, had to be covered over by stating that Confed had been developing torps for 12+ years, which then fell apart when they needed cat tech to make the devices actually work. In other words, the whole ball of wire just kept unravelling.

I don't think this is a story error - the novel is deliberately (and blatantly) referring to the actual set of war games in which naval aircraft proved theoretically able to destroy the Panama Canal in the early twenties. It was a real way of thinking, the refusal to give up on a fleet based around battleships; recall Gen. Mitchell, who insisted from before the first World War that aircraft would be used to destroy ships... and after he proved it could be done in 1921, he was cashiered for insubordination. The United States developed the tactics but didn't put them into use... Japan picked up those same developments and opened the war with great success.
 
Nomad Terror said:
As for the Concordia class, the author of the WC IV adaptation made an honest mistake in assuming that "Concordia class" meant the class of ship that the Concordia from WC2 was, which was instead the Confederation class.

Actually, the Concordia class was mentioned in the game as well. So we can lay most of the original blame on the WCIV authors, and partly on Roberts for not catching such a mistake. :)

Sarty said:
Sarty I think he was referring to the Princeton, which was just being finished when the UBW took control of it.

Indeed. In the game I captured a yet unnamed Concordia class carrier, then forgot about it. In the book, we captured the TCS Princeton, a highly advanced Concordia class carrier that the Black Lance had been using as their base of operations. Note that the author was quite confused as Blair actually said he knew the deck layout from his old Concordia, and that having his quarters look like Angel's brought back bad memories.

Nomad Terror said:
It is a minor error and easily overlooked. Authors are not perfect.

I agree that it could have been overlooked if the author hadn't tried to correct things in Action Stations. The most plausible explanation would be that Jane's had a bad floppy on the TCS Concordia, and that she was actually Concordia class. All the other explanations only make matters worse.
 
In terms of actress, though, what is the more appropriate: a British actress playing a French role without pretending to have an accent... or an American playing a French role withh a very poor French accent (any of the 'voice' Angels is appropriate here - Wing Commander II, Super Wing Commander, Wing Commander Sega CD, etc.)?

Not so, Peter Sellers did a fine French accent..."Is that your minkey?"

haha...classic.
 
Indeed. In the game I captured a yet unnamed Concordia class carrier, then forgot about it. In the book, we captured the TCS Princeton, a highly advanced Concordia class carrier that the Black Lance had been using as their base of operations. Note that the author was quite confused as Blair actually said he knew the deck layout from his old Concordia, and that having his quarters look like Angel's brought back bad memories.

This is more fallout from the situation I referred to above - the plan to have the "Confed carrier" in WCIV be the Confederation-class model instead of the 'Victory-like' ship. The tie-in novel was written based on scripts and concepts rather than the finished FMV shoot/final 3D sequences (which weren't available until the very end of development).
 
Bandit LOAF said:
In the case of Wing Commander, many of the official guides provide a lot of valuable material. The Wing Commander I & II guide more than any of them - it's written in prose form and is one of the favorite 'reference' sources for later materials. Stuff from the guide shows up throughout places like the Kilrathi Saga, the movie novels and the CCG.

If you like Wing Commander novels and haven't read the first guide, give it a shot -- due to the manner in which it is written, it's basically another Wing Commander novel.

Very well. I'll have to pick up a copy when I get the chance.


I guess I just don't follow.

Tolwyn's claim was that Blair was responsible for destroying the Tiger's Claw... and Blair's claim was that a fighter no one 'in the universe' knew existed was responsible. Blair is not trying to prove that the Strakha *can* exist, he is trying to prove that they *do* exist. We, the observers, already know that they can and do exist... by virtue of the fact that we see them destroying the Tiger's Claw ourselves.

I would argue that Blair is completely succesful (or his lawyer/s, rather) in arguing that they *can* exist - because, utlimately, he is convicted only of negligence. The court says that he failed in his duty in allowing the carrier to be destroyed, which seems to be a tacit admission that stealth fighters *could* exist.

One *could* look at it from that perspective, but I have my doubts. Skipper missiles didn't appear in the game until WCIII, long AFTER the fighters had been developed. Tolwyn also claimed that the board of inquiry still found Blair guilty of negligence. Had his lawyer actually been able to successfully prove that Blair's wasn't lying, then there was nothing he could have been negligent for. The TCS Tiger's Claw (what is UP with the stupid movie name "Tiger Claw", BTW?) would have been found to fail because she met with overwhelming opposition. Actual negligence would have suggested that Blair had taken explicit actions that were against his orders (perhaps not even executing his orders) which resulted in the destruction of his carrier vessel.

Besides, am I misremembering or didn't someone in the movie say something like "Thank God there are no signs of Strakhas?" Maybe that's just my imagination. :)


"Meson shields" show up in The Confederation Handbook's Joan's Fighting Ships section. That question cuts both ways - where does the term "phase shields" show up?

It is true that they never actually stated what type of shields they were. The execution, however, was highly suggestive of phase shields. My only guess is that they decided to tone it down when they published Jane's.

Is this stated somewhere? It seems unlikely that Paladin would wake up one morning and suddenly be made "Chief Field Officer of Intelligence and Special Operations in the Enigma Sector" without any sort of training or experience (which literally does happen - we follow him from the Tiger's Claw back to Sol Station in Freedom Flight.

Not quite. Freedom Flight takes place about the time of Secret Missions 2. That gives at least 10 years for him to work his way through the ranks. He already was a more senior officer with a relatively high rank. (One of the original reasons for fighter pilots to fly was that they got to bypass the Naval ranks in a hurry.) That rank would have transferred even to Special Ops. I do remember him explicitly saying that he had transferred to Special Ops in WCII.

Another factor that doesn't make sense is that a Commodore would be unlikely to be flying planes for so long. According to Claw Marks, he wrote the book on the carrier's flight operations. This paragraph in particular doesn't make sense if he just came on board:

Though an effective wingleader, Taggart is especialy appreciated for whis wingman skills. He has a reputation for protectiveness when flying wing. On an average of three times a year, pranksters get to his space-craft, scrape the name "Paladin" from his cockpit and replace it with "Mother Hen"

How could he have a reputation if he just arrived as a "free trader" transferred to flight ops? And for that matter, how could he average 3 "Mother Hens" a year if he hadn't even been on flight duty for that long?

The movie's backstory, that he attended counterintelligence school years ago and has alternated between covert operations roles and flight duty, seems a lot more reasonable. The idea that Tolwyn picked him to serve in Enigma because of his experience during the Pilgrim War and in the movie seems to flow rather well.

It would flow well if we didn't already know far too much about Taggert. Free Traders don't just magically become flight officers without some serious questions being raised by the crew.


In terms of actress, though, what is the more appropriate: a British actress playing a French role without pretending to have an accent... or an American playing a French role withh a very poor French accent (any of the 'voice' Angels is appropriate here - Wing Commander II, Super Wing Commander, Wing Commander Sega CD, etc.)?

I like Maj.Striker's answer. :D

Seriously, though, it wouldn't have caused such problems if Taggert wasn't French. Remember, Claw Marks clearly states "Taggart, 45, is a native of Ares, the self-sufficient space station built in permanent orbit around the planet Venus; his parents were terraforming engineers from Wick, Scotland."

Language and accent in Wing Commander is a slippery slope, anyway -- do Thrakhath and the Emperor really stand around discussing the war in English (with the slight Texas drawl that seems to belong to everyone in the universe in '67)?

Actually, all accents in games are forgivable. In movies, far less so. Especially when you've got a Scottsman speaking French. It's called casting, and I have to say that the WC movie didn't do all that great of a job of it. :(

I agree, but I think it's just a matter of terminology rather than any sort of impossible contradiction.

So you're assuming that there were two phase shield technologies, both of which just happened to have the exact same advantages and disadvantages? That doesn't make much sense.

We see quite clearly over the years that shielding technology is constantly improving. In Wing Commander 1 you can shoot through shields... in Wing Commander 2 you can't. In Wing Commander 3 you can shoot through shields again...
Indeed. The nature of warfare is that weapons and counterweapons will constantly balance each other out. However, it is worth noting that the storyline of WCII showed that warfare was still adjusting to the invention of Phase Shields. The "main gun" (Is that the "cannon" name? Hah hah) on the Concordia was an obvious attempt to overcome the unbalance caused by the introduction of phase shields. By WC3, it was obvious that guns had become powerful enough to overcome and/or adjust to the abilities of such shields.

but by the end of Wing Commander 4, the newest ships (the Vesuvius) are again immune to gunfire.

FWIW, the Vesuvius was not an instance of development of a new shielding technology. Rather, she was such a large ship that her generators were capable of regenerating shields faster than a fighter could damage them.

In Wing Commander Prophecy, you again need torpedoes to blast through shields... until towards the end of the game when the new plasma guns come into service, capable of causing damage to capital ships again.

I'm straining to remember here, but shouldn't the "alien technology" bend come in to play here? I mean, the Nephilim designs were like none we'd ever seen before. My guess is that since neither side yet knew the other's capabilities, we were attempting to use all the force of a hammer, and none of the elegence of a nail.

Action Stations knocks this logically forward. I certainly would have liked a different term for the shields (hence my happiness over the movie's Meson Shields), but I don't think it's irreconcilable that *all* shields of are called 'phase shields'.

The torpedos needed a *phase lock*. You don't get much more irreconcilable than that.

While I agree with this in spirit, the actual continuity issue is based on faulty information. The Confederation isn't building a Concordia-class carrier in Wing Commander IV - according to the briefing, the TCS Princeton is "undergoing ad-hoc repairs"

Fine. But she's still a Concordia class carrier, and obviously not being retired after the war.

The zaniness of the "Concordia-class" name is a result of errors on both sides. The original intent was to have the Confederation-class appear in Wing Commander IV... the FMV was shot with the intention of referring to this (which would have been another continuity error, of course). For whatever reason (probably ease), going with the 'TCS Victory writ large' design worked better and that became the "Concordia-class carrier".

I think the issue was probably technical in nature. The WCIII and IV engine didn't allow for the carriers to come in too many shapes. They pretty much always had to be a solid ship with a single "flight deck" hole in the center. When the programmers saw this, they probably balked and forced a compromise. I'd be fine with saying that the unnamed carrier was supposed to be the same as the WCII Concordia (after all, we are talking about game graphics), but we still end up with the error in Jane's. My personal opinion, is that the Jane's "error" is the easiest to believe. These constant attempts to plug a leaky bucket only served to make matters worse.

Action Stations, on the other hand, was written to imply that the "TCS Concordia" was the same ship which appears in Wing Commander II, End Run, Fleet Action, etc. Someone... caught this in editing and the end of the book was changed to quickly destroy the ship. Hence the incredible awkwardness of the concluding conversations -- 'maybe he'll command... *another*... Concordia... someday!'.

Ouch. That is a *really* sucky error. Which, as I said, only goes on to make matters worse for continuity.
 
AKAImBatman said:
One *could* look at it from that perspective, but I have my doubts. Skipper missiles didn't appear in the game until WCIII, long AFTER the fighters had been developed. Tolwyn also claimed that the board of inquiry still found Blair guilty of negligence. Had his lawyer actually been able to successfully prove that Blair's wasn't lying, then there was nothing he could have been negligent for. The TCS Tiger's Claw (what is UP with the stupid movie name "Tiger Claw", BTW?) would have been found to fail because she met with overwhelming opposition. Actual negligence would have suggested that Blair had taken explicit actions that were against his orders (perhaps not even executing his orders) which resulted in the destruction of his carrier vessel.
The WC2 Manual had a section called "The Story Thus Far" or something similar, in which it relates how Blair was out on patrol by himself the day the Tiger's Claw was destroyed, and came across a flight of Strakhas, which cloaked. It goes on to say how Blair, convinced it was just a radar malfunction, went in search of them, without reporting. Thus, he's off on what many would term a ghost hunt, and not in the defensive position he was tasked with. And the Strakhas were thus able to get into range and toast the Claw. His violating orders (even if they were his own, since IIRC, he was Wing Commander of the Claw at that point) is what could have earned him the negligence charge.

I suppose a second alternative would revolve around his not reporting the Strakha encounter in the first place. I imagine there's a regulation somewhere that would be about "If you encounter something new and unexpected which may represent a threat to yourself/your vessel, report ASAP". He decided it was just a radar malfunction, and didn't report it. Thus, he violated standing orders for all pilots, and earned himself the negligence charge.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
It's supposed to be the same Kruger -- Dr. Forstchen has trouble with first names. Kruger's "history" in the opening chapters of False Colors connects the AS and FA Kruger references.

*Groan* He should have picked up his own books. :rolleyes:


That said, I grudgingly admit that in the context of Action Stations a lot of it makes sense. I read Sears' biography of General McClellan a few weeks back, and it's absolutely amazing to me how all the big military figures were connected in the fifteen years before the Civil War. Crazy stuff that seems like it'd be a horrible conceit in one of the aforementioned Star Trek novels: You have McClellan at West Point in the same class as Jackson, rooming with AP Hill... and then he goes off to fight in Mexico, where he impresses Lee at Vera Cruz... and then he scouts the frontier with Grant. And on and on. Dr. Forstchen is a Civil War historian, and I'm willing to bet that's what's going through his mind when he connects all the characters in the pre-war era.

There are even more modern examples of this. However, they tend to stem from how small an individual field is. As a programmer, people can mention some famous other programmer's name and I can say "Yeah, I just talked with him a week ago." I don't find this at all odd because we all gather in similar forumns.

But MHO is that Dr. Forstchen went a bit too far in Action Stations. Why did they go to Landreich? The story doesn't really give that good of an explanation other than that they needed to meet "Hans". (*groan*) I would have found it far more plausible to see the characters perform their repspective lives, then have various breif encounters with each other. It would have also helped open up the theater a bit to give a better overall feel for the pending war. Instead, we're terminally focused on "Hans" (*groan*), Tolywn, and Richards all sharing the same tin can.

The fact that Dr. Forstchen had intended the AS Concordia to be the same as the WCII Concordia suggests that he is not tremendously familiar with Naval warfare vs. land warfare. His insistence on calling what are rightfully cruisers, "battlewagons" only serves to underscore that point. Not to mention Tolywn's promotion at the end of the book. While a command position of a small force is common for green officers in the army, it is (to the best of my knowledge) NOT common in the Navy. They tend not to like having officers-who-are-so-green-that-they-aren't-even-an-ensign commanding key vessels. *If* they were to give him a command, it's far more likely that they'd give him something similar more similar to a cutter. i.e. Like the Swift Boats of Vietnam. But if they really wanted him on the fast track to promotion, they probably would have made him a junior tac officer or something.

Which brings up another gripe I have about AS. What's with the Tolywn love fest? Beyond his insult to the senator, Tolywn *didn't do anything exceptional*. He kept his head down, did what he was told, and properly interpreted orders. He did show courage under fire, but he also lost two fighters due to his inexeperience at deck landings. Granted, the first one may have been unavoidable, but the second one certainly wasn't. I would think that a commanding officer would be tremendously sensitive to the fact that he could either be acting incredibly brave or incredibly stupid.

Even if you assume the former, what command experience did he demonstrate? He was fresh out of the academy! The only thing he commanded was the tidiness of his bunk! This makes comments like "He'll make a fine commander one day" out of place. Ergo, the "prequelitis" of this book only gets more and more annoying.


I don't think this is a story error - the novel is deliberately (and blatantly) referring to the actual set of war games in which naval aircraft proved theoretically able to destroy the Panama Canal in the early twenties. It was a real way of thinking, the refusal to give up on a fleet based around battleships; recall Gen. Mitchell, who insisted from before the first World War that aircraft would be used to destroy ships... and after he proved it could be done in 1921, he was cashiered for insubordination. The United States developed the tactics but didn't put them into use... Japan picked up those same developments and opened the war with great success.

I didn't say it was an error. I said it was poorly executed. Mitchell was court marshalled for his criticism of the loss of the Shenandoah. (Airships were seen as toys by the admiralty, and were not developed to any great degree.) However, the US *DID* have torpedo bombers prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor. The wargames that happened just prior to the war helped establish the doctrine that would later be used to defeat the Japanese at Midway. (The US had batteships forward and carriers in the rear, while the Japanese deployed the traditional scouting formation of carriers forward, and battleships in the rear.)

Dr. Forstchen's parallel in the book instead suggests that there was zero usefulness of warplanes in fleet enagements, and that the Kilrathi had been the first to come up with a way of making them useful. The problem with this parallel is that in that case, large strike carriers shouldn't exist. Since planes would only be useful for scouting and air defense, very small carrriers should be the only ones in service. And the coordinated Varni attack still makes no sense.
 
AKAImBatman said:
One *could* look at it from that perspective, but I have my doubts. Skipper missiles didn't appear in the game until WCIII, long AFTER the fighters had been developed.

Thrakhath ordered the destruction of the stealth production facility on Gorah Khar following the rebellion there (I'm not positive on the year either in 2650s or 2660s). I believe it's described at the beginning of WC2 although I might be (and probably am since the length of time it's been since I've been able to play) wrong. The destruction of this facility set back kilrathi stealth production as it was the main plant. That's why there is no mention or sightings of stealths until 10 years after the TC's destruction.

It is true that they never actually stated what type of shields they were. The execution, however, was highly suggestive of phase shields. My only guess is that they decided to tone it down when they published Jane's.

The word phase shields is a very broad term. There is nothing that says meson shields are not a type of phase shields. From what little we know of shield technology, phase shields operate by modulating the frequency the operate at, the "phase," torpedos get around this by acquiring the shield phasing pattern and counter it so that it can pass harmlessly through it.

Many a threads have been started about guns/missiles/shields and how the technologies have evolved in WC. Not wanting to go into the same discussion again, the evolution of shields and weapons makes a good deal of sense. AS starts off at a point when shield tech is better than gun/missile tech. By WC1 this has been reveresed and those weapons now damage capships. All capships mount phase shields of one type or another, it is just a matter that some are able to stop certain weapons while the others can not. Also, this only matters when the weapons are designed to pass through the shields, weapons like early plasma (AS era) weapons and the like were designed to bash down shielding, while AMGs (WC2) bypass shields and cause direct hull damage.


Not quite. Freedom Flight takes place about the time of Secret Missions 2. That gives at least 10 years for him to work his way through the ranks. He already was a more senior officer with a relatively high rank. (One of the original reasons for fighter pilots to fly was that they got to bypass the Naval ranks in a hurry.) That rank would have transferred even to Special Ops. I do remember him explicitly saying that he had transferred to Special Ops in WCII.

How could he have a reputation if he just arrived as a "free trader" transferred to flight ops? And for that matter, how could he average 3 "Mother Hens" a year if he hadn't even been on flight duty for that long?

You are forgetting one of the main things about covert ops. Just because someone tells you certain things does not mean that they are true. Case in point, Vance Richards, a much bigger spook than Paladin, often took on the rank of a lower officer when serving on combat vessels, I believe it's FA where they mention the storires of some of his exploits, I believe related by Paladin even (been too long so forgive my memory, I'm sure LOAF or someone else can correct the errors).
Also, considering how Vance got into the special ops field, it would not be to far fetched to think that a similar thing happend to Paladin, afterall Paladin ends up doing the same thing to Blair in SO1+2.


It would flow well if we didn't already know far too much about Taggert. Free Traders don't just magically become flight officers without some serious questions being raised by the crew.

I'm not sure the exact quote the marine commander in ER says (AH it's be so long I can see his name but not remember it! Something with a G or M...or I might be thinking of the captain of the Tarawas escort...little help from my fellow wingnuts please!) but the juiciest gossip travels the fastest, some times seemingly faster than burst signals. Rumors about Paladin would start and spread quick, some possibly started by him to keep people off balance while he did what he had to.


So you're assuming that there were two phase shield technologies, both of which just happened to have the exact same advantages and disadvantages? That doesn't make much sense.

See explanation above.

Indeed. The nature of warfare is that weapons and counterweapons will constantly balance each other out. However, it is worth noting that the storyline of WCII showed that warfare was still adjusting to the invention of Phase Shields. The "main gun" (Is that the "cannon" name? Hah hah) on the Concordia was an obvious attempt to overcome the unbalance caused by the introduction of phase shields. By WC3, it was obvious that guns had become powerful enough to overcome and/or adjust to the abilities of such shields.

In WC2 new phasing (?) technology had allowed shields to become impervious again to guns and missiles. The PTC is a toned down version of the Sivar's gravitron weapon, it is not a reply to new phase shielding, it is merely a new heavy weapon.

I'm not sure if I agree with the idea of guns becoming more powerful. It would seem maybe more likely that gun technology has found away to beat the phasing of the shields.


The torpedos needed a *phase lock*. You don't get much more irreconcilable than that.

Which is the frequency at which the shields are operating at. If you haven't read the other novels besides AS, you may want to as they all supply a good deal of info on phase shields and torpedos


Fine. But she's still a Concordia class carrier, and obviously not being retired after the war.

If you had just fought an almost 40 year long war would you decomission your fleet carriers? In 2669 Confed had precious few heavy carriers and in the 4/5 years between WC3 and WC4, it is not surprising that confed would keep her few fleet carriers operational. Since the lessons of the kilrathi war one would hope that confed learned it's lesson not to be caught without a good sized carrier fleet should another enemy arise.
 
AKAImBatman said:
But MHO is that Dr. Forstchen went a bit too far in Action Stations. Why did they go to Landreich? The story doesn't really give that good of an explanation other than that they needed to meet "Hans". (*groan*) I would have found it far more plausible to see the characters perform their repspective lives, then have various breif encounters with each other. It would have also helped open up the theater a bit to give a better overall feel for the pending war. Instead, we're terminally focused on "Hans" (*groan*), Tolywn, and Richards all sharing the same tin can.

The Landreich had been more in contact with the kilrathi than confed. Terrans and kilrathi had been trading even before confed and the kats made official contact according to some. By placing three people who will become very important to the war and future together at this early impass, it is not only interesting, but also makes sense. In FA Tolwyn and Richards use their contact with Kruger to get the Free Corps mission going and again in FC when both return to the Landreich to aid Kruger. These three men are to a degree forever connected.

Not to mention Tolywn's promotion at the end of the book. While a command position of a small force is common for green officers in the army, it is (to the best of my knowledge) NOT common in the Navy. They tend not to like having officers-who-are-so-green-that-they-aren't-even-an-ensign commanding key vessels. *If* they were to give him a command, it's far more likely that they'd give him something similar more similar to a cutter. i.e. Like the Swift Boats of Vietnam. But if they really wanted him on the fast track to promotion, they probably would have made him a junior tac officer or something.

Do you realize how many navy personnel were killed at McAuliffe? How many died on their ships or trying to get to them (think of the dead in the skyhook alone!). It's not to shocking then to think that Tolwyn would be given that much responsiblity. He has to be, there are few experienced officers that can fill those slots. Tolwyn proved himself, even though he was green and hadn't even finished all his flight training.

Which brings up another gripe I have about AS. What's with the Tolywn love fest? Beyond his insult to the senator, Tolywn *didn't do anything exceptional*. He kept his head down, did what he was told, and properly interpreted orders. He did show courage under fire, but he also lost two fighters due to his inexeperience at deck landings. Granted, the first one may have been unavoidable, but the second one certainly wasn't. I would think that a commanding officer would be tremendously sensitive to the fact that he could either be acting incredibly brave or incredibly stupid.

That's exactly why Turner wanted him. Tolwyn's talk with Senator Moore sent him on a fast track to nowhere until Turner butted in. Tolwyn was perfect for what Turner needed. Towlyn's flight perfomance is a different matter, he had not finished his sim training or even sat in a real wildcat. Let's cut him slack and again, Confed needed anyone who could fly that day, no matter how green, most pilots were probably dead or injured in the initial assault.

Even if you assume the former, what command experience did he demonstrate? He was fresh out of the academy! The only thing he commanded was the tidiness of his bunk! This makes comments like "He'll make a fine commander one day" out of place. Ergo, the "prequelitis" of this book only gets more and more annoying.

Is it surprising that an older more experienced officer sees something in a young man that tells him that one day he will do great things? Turner is an experienced officer, he probably has developed a good ability to judge people and their potential.
 
AKAImBatman said:
My problem is that the author decided to make her the first of her class. This creates a problem in the Wing Commander continuity, because it suggests that the WCIV Confed is building a carrier that's over 30 years out of date!

That's a load of Rubbish

The U.S.S. Defiant in Deep Space Nine, is the first ship of her class. Yet, there was a Consitution-Class U.S.S. Defiant in the Orignial Series.

There's another example in Star Trek, the U.S.S. Constellation was Constellation-Class, yet there was a Consitution-Class, U.S.S. Constellation in the Original Series
 
One *could* look at it from that perspective, but I have my doubts. Skipper missiles didn't appear in the game until WCIII, long AFTER the fighters had been developed. Tolwyn also claimed that the board of inquiry still found Blair guilty of negligence. Had his lawyer actually been able to successfully prove that Blair's wasn't lying, then there was nothing he could have been negligent for. The TCS Tiger's Claw (what is UP with the stupid movie name "Tiger Claw", BTW?) would have been found to fail because she met with overwhelming opposition. Actual negligence would have suggested that Blair had taken explicit actions that were against his orders (perhaps not even executing his orders) which resulted in the destruction of his carrier vessel.

Blair was convicted of negligence because it was his job to defend the Tiger's Claw -- which he failed to do, whether he was defending it against Strakha, an ordinary attack or his own treason. It was a case of 'we couldn't nail him for what we wanted, but we can get him for this...'. (Someone above explained the 'story so far' blurb -- there's also a much more detailed telling of the Claw's destruction in the WC1/2 Guide).

"Tiger's Claw" became "Tiger Claw" slowly across various drafts of the script - it was probably corrected to that initially because it makes better gramatical sense (as would 'tiger's claws' -- they went for simplicity). Linguistically, it's pretty much the same word... you'd have trouble telling them apart vocally.

In terms of Skipper missile, take this as you will, but Eisen actually claims that 'the Kilrathi are testing a new type of cloaked missile'. It seems to me (though perhaps I am under the influence of the Handbook's Skipper history) that developing a cloaked missile (that uncloaks to lock) would be a lot simpler than an invisible fighter.

Besides, am I misremembering or didn't someone in the movie say something like "Thank God there are no signs of Strakhas?" Maybe that's just my imagination.

You are misremembering -- the movie support materials (adaptation, handbook) intentionally suggest the opposite - that the Kilrathi are years from developing a stealth fighter. (They also further suggest the Tolwyn conspiracy theory introduced in Super Wing Commander.)

It is true that they never actually stated what type of shields they were. The execution, however, was highly suggestive of phase shields. My only guess is that they decided to tone it down when they published Jane's.

Like most of the promotional material, the handbook was published shortly before the movie was released. (And was, incidentally, written by the same group that did all the game manuals and official guides...).

Not quite. Freedom Flight takes place about the time of Secret Missions 2. That gives at least 10 years for him to work his way through the ranks. He already was a more senior officer with a relatively high rank. (One of the original reasons for fighter pilots to fly was that they got to bypass the Naval ranks in a hurry.) That rank would have transferred even to Special Ops. I do remember him explicitly saying that he had transferred to Special Ops in WCII.

Another factor that doesn't make sense is that a Commodore would be unlikely to be flying planes for so long. According to Claw Marks, he wrote the book on the carrier's flight operations. This paragraph in particular doesn't make sense if he just came on board:

Though an effective wingleader, Taggart is especialy appreciated for whis wingman skills. He has a reputation for protectiveness when flying wing. On an average of three times a year, pranksters get to his space-craft, scrape the name "Paladin" from his cockpit and replace it with "Mother Hen"

How could he have a reputation if he just arrived as a "free trader" transferred to flight ops? And for that matter, how could he average 3 "Mother Hens" a year if he hadn't even been on flight duty for that long?

It would flow well if we didn't already know far too much about Taggert. Free Traders don't just magically become flight officers without some serious questions being raised by the crew.

That isn't anyone's backstory for Paladin, though. He's certainly been flying for years. I was working on one of those 'pull together' backstory articles for the Paladin thread, and I think I can outline his career:

2627 - Graduates University of Cairo. Attends Space Forces OCS, Flight School and Counterintelligence School
2629-31 - Comissioned, flies fighters (with Shotglass) off the TCS Horus for two years.
2631-35 - Pilgrim War, works as a covert operative.
2635-37 - Flies fighters on the front lines.
2637-41 - Flies recon for Exploratory Services. Captured in 2638, escapes in 2641.
2642-54 - Flies combat missions, including at least one tour onboard the Tiger's Claw in 2649.
2654 - Tolwyn, citing Taggart's covert ops experience, his knowledge of Pilgrim Culture and his familiarity with Kilrathi language asks him to serve with Naval Intelligence to help investigate rumors of a Pilgrim/Kilrathi relationship. He serves in this capacity for less than three months (.056-.130).
2654-55 - Serves as a squadron commander onboard the Tiger's Claw.
2655-56 - "Retires" from active duty at the behest of Tolwyn, who wants him to work with Special Operations in the Enigma Sector. In his first mission (of sorts), he preserves the treaty with Firekka by rescuing prisoners taken during the Kilrathi retreat.
2656-57 - Paired with Ralgha nar Hhallas, Taggart provides Confederation logistial support to the rebellion on Gorah Khar.
2657-67 - Continues to serve as a spy in the Enigma Sector, gathering information on Kilrathi movements.
2668 - Events of Fleet Action.
2668-69 - Makes the General list, made commander of Covert Operations.

Etc. My understanding of the commodore rank in the movie is that it's something he's been given specifically by Tolwyn (a brevet rank?) so he can order around individual naval assets in the Vega Sector.

Seriously, though, it wouldn't have caused such problems if Taggert wasn't French. Remember, Claw Marks clearly states "Taggart, 45, is a native of Ares, the self-sufficient space station built in permanent orbit around the planet Venus; his parents were terraforming engineers from Wick, Scotland."

I don't think that's a definitive source for whether or not he really has a Scottish accent, though (particularly if it's a put on - that's hardly something Claw Marks would know or be able to reveal). I certainly think that in a case where the Wing Commander IV adaptation states it isn't real, that this isn't enough to contradict that.

Actually, all accents in games are forgivable. In movies, far less so. Especially when you've got a Scottsman speaking French. It's called casting, and I have to say that the WC movie didn't do all that great of a job of it.

Well, forgive me for asking the obvious question, but why is that? Shouldn't games, designed with a more loyal fanbase in mind, be *more* responsible for continuity than movies made to appeal to the general public?

I've got to disagree in terms of casting - in my mind, that's one of the few things the Wing Commander movie did a very good job of. The young American rookies contrasting a very international cast of veterans was a very cool technique. Would I rather Paladin didn't have a French accent? Sure... though Tcheky Karyo is a very good actor, and accent withstanding did a great job of the role.

So you're assuming that there were two phase shield technologies, both of which just happened to have the exact same advantages and disadvantages? That doesn't make much sense.

and

The torpedos needed a *phase lock*. You don't get much more irreconcilable than that.

My assumption, based on AS, Wing Commander II and particularly the Wing Commander III adaptation's use of the term in relation to fighter technology is that 'phase shields' is a term which can refer to any type of shielding. Every class of shielding is based on the same principle, and regardless of whether or not the current level of guns can penetrate them, torpedoes lock onto their phase signature in order to skip through them. (That is to say, a torpedo fired at a Ralari in 2654 will obtain a phase lock just as it would a Ralatha in 2665.)

The "phase shields" in Wing Commander II represent a new, better iteration of this same technology... and the Mark III and Mark IV torpedoes of that era represent a better response to it. The same thing applies eight years later in Wing Commander IV forward. (The Midway's "phase shields" are a new, better interation of Wing Commander II's technology... and the torpedoes of 2681 represent a similar advance.)

FWIW, the Vesuvius was not an instance of development of a new shielding technology. Rather, she was such a large ship that her generators were capable of regenerating shields faster than a fighter could damage them.

I don't think anything like that is ever stated -- note that a Kilrathi dreadnought (WC3) of a similar tonnage *can* be damaged by guns. The Vesuvius is supposed to have the latest in shield and armor technologies, which is used to explain why you have to fly inside the bay to flash-pak her.

I'm straining to remember here, but shouldn't the "alien technology" bend come in to play here? I mean, the Nephilim designs were like none we'd ever seen before. My guess is that since neither side yet knew the other's capabilities, we were attempting to use all the force of a hammer, and none of the elegence of a nail.

It'd be a reasonable explanation -- except the same technology shift applies to the human and Kilrathi designs in the game as well. You can't gun down a Pelican or a Fralthi II.
 
Fine. But she's still a Concordia class carrier, and obviously not being retired after the war.

I'm not clear on where the requirement that Concordia-class carriers be retired after the war comes from. Consider the modern carrier fleet -- the Enterprise is now 45 years old (and will remain in service for almost another decade). The Nimitz-class carriers are still being produced thirty years after the original design. Having a ship *design* that's thirty years old (not the ship herself, mind you) doesn't seem bad at all.

I think the issue was probably technical in nature. The WCIII and IV engine didn't allow for the carriers to come in too many shapes. They pretty much always had to be a solid ship with a single "flight deck" hole in the center. When the programmers saw this, they probably balked and forced a compromise. I'd be fine with saying that the unnamed carrier was supposed to be the same as the WCII Concordia (after all, we are talking about game graphics), but we still end up with the error in Jane's. My personal opinion, is that the Jane's "error" is the easiest to believe. These constant attempts to plug a leaky bucket only served to make matters worse.

My bet would have to be that it was a time issue - remember that Wing Commander IV had an amazingly short development cycle (less than twelve months). I'm sure that given sufficient development time the RealSpace engine could display the Confederation-class ship (after all, "must take off and land in a tube" is hardly an engine requirement when you take into account all the other flight games that used the same 3D engine... Wing Commander Armada, Strike Commander, Pacific Strike and Wings of Glory.) Ultimately, it would just have lead to arguments about things like why they referred to the Confederation-class as Concordia-class and why the two seen in Wing Commander IV had such atypical names.

I don't quite understand what you mean by an error in Janes, though. Are you suggesting that the Confederation-class and the Concordia-class are one and the same? That doesn't really fit well, because the Confederation-class has a very unique backstory -- the product of a rush attempt to equal the Kilrathi Proton Accelerator Gun (Sivar) technology, the Confederation-class entered service in 2660 and was built for only five years before irreconcilable issues with their central Phase Transit Cannons were discovered.

I think the simplest explanation is the obvious one - Concordia-class carriers were Confed's standard fleet carriers throughout the war... and the Confederation-class is something else.

Ouch. That is a *really* sucky error. Which, as I said, only goes on to make matters worse for continuity.

It's not really an error, because it was corrected. Also, in all fairness, Action Stations makes no pretense of considering the Concordia 'Concordia-class'. It's just as likely, I suppose, that the intent is for it to be Ark Royal-class... but the community generally likes the simplest answer, which means there were only *three* ships named Concordia during the war instead of four.

*Groan* He should have picked up his own books.

Agreed - it's much more of a problem in some of his other stuff (the Lost Regiment series, in particular).

But MHO is that Dr. Forstchen went a bit too far in Action Stations. Why did they go to Landreich? The story doesn't really give that good of an explanation other than that they needed to meet "Hans". (*groan*) I would have found it far more plausible to see the characters perform their repspective lives, then have various breif encounters with each other. It would have also helped open up the theater a bit to give a better overall feel for the pending war. Instead, we're terminally focused on "Hans" (*groan*), Tolywn, and Richards all sharing the same tin can.

They went to the Landreich because there was an open border with the Kilrathi there - the Landreichers had no qualms about trading with Kilrathi merchants.

I think the reason they didn't open up the theater is specifically because the novel was trying to be respectful to the actual timeline -- which, of course, states that the war was declared by the Confederation several months *before* McAuliffe.

The fact that Dr. Forstchen had intended the AS Concordia to be the same as the WCII Concordia suggests that he is not tremendously familiar with Naval warfare vs. land warfare. His insistence on calling what are rightfully cruisers, "battlewagons" only serves to underscore that point. Not to mention Tolywn's promotion at the end of the book. While a command position of a small force is common for green officers in the army, it is (to the best of my knowledge) NOT common in the Navy. They tend not to like having officers-who-are-so-green-that-they-aren't-even-an-ensign commanding key vessels. *If* they were to give him a command, it's far more likely that they'd give him something similar more similar to a cutter. i.e. Like the Swift Boats of Vietnam. But if they really wanted him on the fast track to promotion, they probably would have made him a junior tac officer or something.

In all fairness, the original game does this to - it refers to all ships of the line (Exeter destroyers, Fralthi cruisers, etc.) as "battleships". I think the "battlewagons" were supposed to be the space equivalent of World War II battleships -- heavy warships with big plasma weapons, that are distinct from the cruisers we see later in the games.

... and promotions during the war certainly came quickly. Blair went from Second Lieutenant to Colonel in, what, less than a year and a half?

I don't think he was assigned a key vessel - they say he'll probably command a frigate. They're the weakest of the warships in terms of Wing Commander, and perhaps akin to the cutters you're referencing -- as things like corvettes are treated as the equivalent of strategic bombers.

Which brings up another gripe I have about AS. What's with the Tolywn love fest? Beyond his insult to the senator, Tolywn *didn't do anything exceptional*. He kept his head down, did what he was told, and properly interpreted orders. He did show courage under fire, but he also lost two fighters due to his inexeperience at deck landings. Granted, the first one may have been unavoidable, but the second one certainly wasn't. I would think that a commanding officer would be tremendously sensitive to the fact that he could either be acting incredibly brave or incredibly stupid.

Dr. Forstchen loved the Tolwyn character and was extremely unhappy about his treatment in Wing Commander IV. I generally agree with this line of thought. Tolwyn as the commanding officer who doesn't like you and isn't impressed by your achievements was a neat character... the fact that the Wing Commander IV script somehow decided that "he doesn't like us" should naturally evolve into "he is secretly Space Hitler" was a waste. Don't like *Blair*? Well, you must be *evil*! Action Stations was the 'response' to the Wing Commander IV story.

Even if you assume the former, what command experience did he demonstrate? He was fresh out of the academy! The only thing he commanded was the tidiness of his bunk! This makes comments like "He'll make a fine commander one day" out of place. Ergo, the "prequelitis" of this book only gets more and more annoying.

I don't think this is too much of a stretch -- Tolwyn graduated at the top of his class from the Academy and was already (for whatever reason) on the fast track for promotion.
 
Dundradal said:
Thrakhath ordered the destruction of the stealth production facility on Gorah Khar following the rebellion there (I'm not positive on the year either in 2650s or 2660s). I believe it's described at the beginning of WC2 although I might be (and probably am since the length of time it's been since I've been able to play) wrong. The destruction of this facility set back kilrathi stealth production as it was the main plant. That's why there is no mention or sightings of stealths until 10 years after the TC's destruction.

But the skipper missiles would have existed in the WCII timeframe, since the production facilities had been rebuilt elsewhere.


The word phase shields is a very broad term. There is nothing that says meson shields are not a type of phase shields. From what little we know of shield technology, phase shields operate by modulating the frequency the operate at, the "phase," torpedos get around this by acquiring the shield phasing pattern and counter it so that it can pass harmlessly through it.

Which is exactly what the author claims the torpedos do in AS. With LOAF's information about the Concordia mistake firmly in hand, I can make a case that the author just didn't know any better and backported phase sheilds by accident. This lack of research is shoddy by any standards, especially when doing a prequel. That being said, this book was made at one of the more disorganized times for Origin, and thus it's no surprise that things slipped through the cracks.


You are forgetting one of the main things about covert ops. Just because someone tells you certain things does not mean that they are true. Case in point, Vance Richards, a much bigger spook than Paladin, often took on the rank of a lower officer when serving on combat vessels, I believe it's FA where they mention the storires of some of his exploits, I believe related by Paladin even (been too long so forgive my memory, I'm sure LOAF or someone else can correct the errors).
Also, considering how Vance got into the special ops field, it would not be to far fetched to think that a similar thing happend to Paladin, afterall Paladin ends up doing the same thing to Blair in SO1+2.

Which is exactly my point. Everything indicates that he was a true blue Major on flight status, and not a Commodore in disguise. If he was drafted into Special Ops on and off, that would be believable. WCM, however, portrays him on the other side of the fence, as a long-time special ops agent who was in a position to disavow ties with the Confederation. (Usually a good idea if the agent were ever to get captured.)

In WC2 new phasing (?) technology had allowed shields to become impervious again to guns and missiles. The PTC is a toned down version of the Sivar's gravitron weapon, it is not a reply to new phase shielding, it is merely a new heavy weapon.

A new heavy weapon that was mounted as a reply to phase shielding. :D

I'm not sure if I agree with the idea of guns becoming more powerful. It would seem maybe more likely that gun technology has found away to beat the phasing of the shields.

It's a certainty that new, high powered fighter weapons entered service around the WC3 time frame. However, I would tend to agree that fighters probably had some sort of compensator for the phase shields.

Which is the frequency at which the shields are operating at. If you haven't read the other novels besides AS, you may want to as they all supply a good deal of info on phase shields and torpedos

I have read all the books (although, admittedly, it has been a while for some of them). The phase shield theory is fine, but continuity seriously hurts from pretending they existed in the AS timeframe.

If you had just fought an almost 40 year long war would you decomission your fleet carriers?

Yes? A 30-40 year old wartime hull is lucky to be holding together, much less in operation. If you look at the WWII ships, you'll find that nearly all early war carriers (including the British fleet!) were either decommisioned or converted into training facilities after the war. That's despite the fact that assets like the Enterprise and the Indomitable were still in fighting condition. The commisioning of the Vesuvius class only underscores the point by showing that Confed is putting its resources into new carriers, not old ones.

In 2669 Confed had precious few heavy carriers and in the 4/5 years between WC3 and WC4, it is not surprising that confed would keep her few fleet carriers operational. Since the lessons of the kilrathi war one would hope that confed learned it's lesson not to be caught without a good sized carrier fleet should another enemy arise.

The usual procedure is to mothball a ship just in case it is needed for active service. The ship will then be either reactivated at a later date, or sold for scrap when sufficient replacements exist. Either way, it's doubtful that the BW would attempt to capture a 30+ year old hull. They may be scrapping, but the gain of a carrier older than those of the BWN would hardly make up for the cost of risking one of the few carrier assets they do have.
 
TopGun said:
That's a load of Rubbish

The U.S.S. Defiant in Deep Space Nine, is the first ship of her class. Yet, there was a Consitution-Class U.S.S. Defiant in the Orignial Series.

There's another example in Star Trek, the U.S.S. Constellation was Constellation-Class, yet there was a Consitution-Class, U.S.S. Constellation in the Original Series

*Ahem*. Go research what makes a class of ship. Then realize that we are referring to a *class* of carrier called "Concordia" which is *not* the name of the vessel we are capturing. Then take foot, insert in mouth. :D

Unless, that is, you're telling us that DS9 happened before TOS?
 
Bandit LOAF said:
I'm not clear on where the requirement that Concordia-class carriers be retired after the war comes from. Consider the modern carrier fleet -- the Enterprise is now 45 years old (and will remain in service for almost another decade). The Nimitz-class carriers are still being produced thirty years after the original design. Having a ship *design* that's thirty years old (not the ship herself, mind you) doesn't seem bad at all.

Ah, but there is a difference. The modern Enterprise is a peace-time carrier. As such, her design is intended to last about 25 years between each major overhaul and technology refit. The Enterprise CV-6 was a top-of-the-line wartime carrier which was immediately decommissioned after WWII despite a slew of decorations to her name. (Not the least of which was "The Fighten'est Ship in the Fleet!" :))

Another point is that the Nimtz class carrier is distinct from the Enterprise class carrier. The Nimitz was a refinement to the Enterprise design that didn't enter service until ten years after the Enterprise. In many ways, the Enterprise 65 can be likened to the Vesuvius or Midway supercarriers.


My bet would have to be that it was a time issue - remember that Wing Commander IV had an amazingly short development cycle (less than twelve months). I'm sure that given sufficient development time the RealSpace engine could display the Confederation-class ship (after all, "must take off and land in a tube" is hardly an engine requirement when you take into account all the other flight games that used the same 3D engine... Wing Commander Armada, Strike Commander, Pacific Strike and Wings of Glory.) Ultimately, it would just have lead to arguments about things like why they referred to the Confederation-class as Concordia-class and why the two seen in Wing Commander IV had such atypical names.

I also believe it *could* have been added. But as you said, they had a short development cycle that demanded as much recycling as possilble. The developers probably gave an estimate of something like two months to add a dual deck carrier, so the idea was scaled back. It still shouldn't have been Concordia class. :)

I don't quite understand what you mean by an error in Janes, though. Are you suggesting that the Confederation-class and the Concordia-class are one and the same?

Yes. I'm pointing out that there is another method of interpreting the error.

That doesn't really fit well, because the Confederation-class has a very unique backstory -- the product of a rush attempt to equal the Kilrathi Proton Accelerator Gun (Sivar) technology, the Confederation-class entered service in 2660 and was built for only five years before irreconcilable issues with their central Phase Transit Cannons were discovered.

How many references were there to the name Confederation, though? Also the Concordia class was a very powerful carrier despite its relatively small size and difficulties with its PTC cannon. They may have continued production of the ships, minus the cannon. It would certainly parallel well with the Essex class, which had a semi-spin off class, the Ticonderoga.

I think the simplest explanation is the obvious one - Concordia-class carriers were Confed's standard fleet carriers throughout the war... and the Confederation-class is something else.

That just doesn't sit well with me, though. 30-40 years of technological progess is 30-40 years. Considering that the AS Concordia's class had never been tested in battle against the Kilrathi, I find it hard to believe that they would continue to produce the same exact class. It's far more likely that they'd make massive changes in response to their field use (paralleling the Yorktown -> Essex evolution) and thus result in a brand new class of ship.

It's not really an error, because it was corrected. Also, in all fairness, Action Stations makes no pretense of considering the Concordia 'Concordia-class'. It's just as likely, I suppose, that the intent is for it to be Ark Royal-class... but the community generally likes the simplest answer, which means there were only *three* ships named Concordia during the war instead of four.

Is it too late to vote for Ark Royal class? I'd happily accept another Concordia out there somewhere, if that's what it took to rid ourselves of the silliness of using 30 year old carrier designs.

In all fairness, the original game does this to - it refers to all ships of the line (Exeter destroyers, Fralthi cruisers, etc.) as "battleships". I think the "battlewagons" were supposed to be the space equivalent of World War II battleships -- heavy warships with big plasma weapons, that are distinct from the cruisers we see later in the games.

In even more fairness to the game, "battleship" has long been used as a generic term for ships of the line. In the original use of the term, only frigates and sloops failed to meet the definition. Concepts like destroyers and cruisers came around long after the term battleship was in common use.

... and promotions during the war certainly came quickly. Blair went from Second Lieutenant to Colonel in, what, less than a year and a half?

He was demoted after the whole Tiger's Claw incident, and then held back for ten years. When the Navy decides to correct its mistakes, it usually does a pretty good job of it. (e.g. The numerous rewards and recognition given post-humously to General Mitchell.)

That being said, promotions usually do come quickly during war. However, it still isn't naval tradition to promote someone to a command position when they have a lack of *any* sort of command experience. It's not because the officer isn't capable, but rather because he can't have any real-world concept of what he's doing yet. He needs a chance to earn the respect necessary for command.

I don't think he was assigned a key vessel - they say he'll probably command a frigate. They're the weakest of the warships in terms of Wing Commander, and perhaps akin to the cutters you're referencing -- as things like corvettes are treated as the equivalent of strategic bombers.

Ehh... I dunno. A Frigate is still rather massive and bound to have a reasonable large crew. They should assign him to something with an extremely small crew. Even so, my understanding is that is NOT a fast track to a large command.

Dr. Forstchen loved the Tolwyn character and was extremely unhappy about his treatment in Wing Commander IV. I generally agree with this line of thought. Tolwyn as the commanding officer who doesn't like you and isn't impressed by your achievements was a neat character... the fact that the Wing Commander IV script somehow decided that "he doesn't like us" should naturally evolve into "he is secretly Space Hitler" was a waste. Don't like *Blair*? Well, you must be *evil*! Action Stations was the 'response' to the Wing Commander IV story.

I feel his pain. But what was done, was done, and compouding the problems didn't make them any better. I found his treatment of Tolwyn in "False Colors" to be far more flattering than AS.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
That said, I grudgingly admit that in the context of Action Stations a lot of it makes sense. I read Sears' biography of General McClellan a few weeks back, and it's absolutely amazing to me how all the big military figures were connected in the fifteen years before the Civil War. Crazy stuff that seems like it'd be a horrible conceit in one of the aforementioned Star Trek novels: You have McClellan at West Point in the same class as Jackson, rooming with AP Hill... and then he goes off to fight in Mexico, where he impresses Lee at Vera Cruz... and then he scouts the frontier with Grant. And on and on. Dr. Forstchen is a Civil War historian, and I'm willing to bet that's what's going through his mind when he connects all the characters in the pre-war era.
Yep. It's not a surprise that important military figures are connected. There's one thing that always bothered me, though - Banbridge. He's already the Chief of Staff in 2634, which means he's at least forty or so (IIRC, Action Stations mentions how long ago his own graduation was, though I don't remember)... and that just begs the question, how old is he in 2668? And how is it that he's back in the Chief of Staff position again? Since it's established on a few occasions that human lifespans aren't that much longer in the 27th century, that one's a bit of an issue.
 
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