I just think you're drawing too much from too little information
. How many times do we see frigates in the WC universe? How many times do we see them performing the task that you think they are designed to perform? Generally, frigates are so poorly defined at this point, that almost any concept can be true, but nothing can be confirmed as being reasonably verified.
Of course, this is the case for almost all capship classes in the WC universe. No one ever really tells us what a dreadnought, destroyer, corvette or cruiser actually does. We only learn about this through examples of actual usage. The only ships we really do know a little about, in terms of stated theory rather than visible practice, are the various carriers. Even then, there are vague spots - what's a heavy carrier? How is a light carrier different from an escort carrier? Is a supercarrier a separate class with its own doctrines of usage, or is it simply a really big fleet carrier?
By the way: yes, when I refer to real-life equivalents, I mean WWII. It's always been clear that Wing Commander draws almost everything from WWII, and really only started moving beyond WWII in Prophecy, which
kinda looks a little towards the present day.
Getting back to the frigates - we really have no information on how they are armed. Remember, there has always been a large discrepancy between the armament information specifically stated in various Joan's updates & other Joan's-like sources, and the information that we get when we put everything together from all sources. Take the Bengal class, for example - according to Joan's, it carries 8 dual laser turrets and nothing else. But just looking at the darned picture, we can see about twenty turrets altogether. Worse still, we can see that some are different sizes - even if they are all lasers, is it not reasonable to assume that a bigger caliber laser will cause more damage than a small caliber? That's just the manual... when we get into the game, we see the next discrepancy: the Tiger's Claw fires a different colour beam
at a planet. Maybe those green things are still lasers, but if they're being fired at a planet, I'd say they probably do a little more damage than usual.
...Then we get to the Academy cartoon, and good luck working out if the turrets seen there match up with the game. Finally, we have the Movie, which retroactively adds...
forty torpedo tubes! Suddenly, the Tiger's Claw becomes capable of
destroying any other capital ship in a single salvo. But there's more! Because in the meantime, there had been a number of books, which added a bunch more weapons to other ships. If we hear about other capships having a large number of small point-defense turrets, isn't it reasonable to assume the Bengals also carry them?
What it all comes down to is that the manuals usually reflect the game. They don't tell us about all the weapons a capship has, only about the weapons we, the players, will see. Wing Commander 1 had a limit of eight weapons per ship - so, that's all the Tiger's Claw had in the manual and in-game. But even the original game was willing to add more on top of that.
So, when it comes to frigates, what can we tell about their armament? All we have is an unknown and poorly armed frigate mentioned in the WC3 manual, which, as LOAF pointed out, is not necessarily the same as the Caernaven frigates seen in WC4. If we do assume that it's the same ship, we'll have a noticeable discrepancy, because in WC4, the ship has more turrets than the WC3 manual reveals. Worse still, it carries
fighters (with no visible hangar or launcher!), and it seems to have two missile launchers (at least, judging from the pictures - I don't remember if they were used in-game). Here's a few things we
don't know, but which are possible:
- The Caernaven class frigate may have a capship missile launcher.
- The Caernaven class frigate may have torpedo tubes (maybe even a sizable number of them).
- Other known (more appropriately: unknown) classes of frigates may carry more turrets, missiles, or fighters - or they might carry less. Who knows?
All in all, we can't determine either way what a frigate is supposed to do and how it is armed. At the same time, it goes without saying, this openness makes like easier for modding, you can add more information about an existing or new frigate type without worrying too much about being contradicted. We in Standoff did add a Kilrathi frigate (the Targu II class - which, very noticeably, did not get "canonised" in the Arena manual), and I did actually make it into something similar that you're proposing. It was a fast capship with strong anti-fighter armaments, the kind you may see escorting a convoy or providing picket defenses ahead of a fleet. It was also based on a transport hull, which was meant to imply that the ship can be used as a fast transport. But it was also used to pursue and attack the Firekka, firing torpedoes - so it was capable of taking on smaller capships, too, and in a bigger "wolfpack", presumably the Targu II class could take on a big capship, although they would risk heavy losses. None of this, however, is based on anything we see in official sources - at best, we can say that the Targu II class doesn't contradict any sources.
