CS Tiger Claw's battlegroup?

Dean478

Rear Admiral
First off I'm not sure what to call it. The games say TCS Tiger's Claw. The movie says TCS Tiger Claw and the books/handbooks say CS Tiger Claw. :p

My main question however is regarding the non-existent escort for the Claw. I always assumed during the games that the reason we never saw the Claw or the Concordia with escorts was simply a technical hurdle. It was probably too much to have anything more than a CAP with the ship.

Come WC3 we saw the Victory escorted quite appropriately. I suppose the only thing you could pick at was how close the ships flew together. No big deal though (and better for a cinematic aspect).

However in the film (and novels) we never see the Claw with an escort. Everything she encounters (including the Concordia who had no replacement escort in WC2) always seems to have smaller ships nearby.

Is there a contextual reason for this? An oversight?
 
I think because the Tigers Claw and the Concordia have enough firepower to take out enemy capships. The Victory is a standart Carrier without firepower. So here it need escort ships.
 
I think this is good reasoning. The Tiger's Claw was a strike carrier and the Concordia was a dreadnaught, so it stands to reason they would both be more survivable in combat environments than the Victory.

But I also think there's more to this - keep in mind that at least in game (WCII) the Concordia often IS escorted - it's just the escorting ship is sometimes detached or far enough away from the carrier that she's not right on top of her. "Escorting" doesn't have to necessarily assume a certain proximity. Better to think of these as what the title of your thread says - battlegroups. The assets of a battlegroup will be deployed according to the enemy's order of battle, and that often means separation between vessels engaged in different aspects of that mission.
 
First off I'm not sure what to call it. The games say TCS Tiger's Claw. The movie says TCS Tiger Claw and the books/handbooks say CS Tiger Claw.

Heh, yeah--for whatever reason the movie *script* says CS Tiger Claw and as a result so do all the physical props (ie, the shoulder patches worn in the film) and the licensed material. I remember Peter Telep being really apologetic about this... the script said CS instead of TCS, so he had to go with that.

... but the folks actually doing the effects on the movie caught the error and went with 'TCS' for the supertitles. No idea why it wasn't fixed for Pilgrim Stars, though.

Interestingly, early Wing Commander I promotional material seems to use 'CSS' instead of TCS... and one 'CSS' slipped into the final game, with a reference to the CSS Suffolk in one of the conversations. (CSS was probably nixed because it was the real designation for Confederate States Ship...)

... also, has anyone ever noticed that Eisen's nickname for the Victory makes no sense? It's not a play on anything special to the Victory, could apply to ANY ship!

However in the film (and novels) we never see the Claw with an escort. Everything she encounters (including the Concordia who had no replacement escort in WC2) always seems to have smaller ships nearby.

Yeah, the idea was that the Tiger's Claw was a "Strike Carrier" that was capable of operating on its own, even behind enemy lines. Unlike the Victory, she has heavy weaponry that can be used for fighting other capital ships herself.

We DO see her meet up with other ships occasionally, though--especially in Super Wing Commander, where she joins a small strike force during Secret Missions 1... which you see in the various 'jumping' cutscenes (it was just an Exeter and a Diligent, IIRC.)

I think she has a destroyer escort during the Peter Telep movie tie-in novels, too.
 
Interestingly, the Confederation Handbook (movie) notes that the 'Tiger Claw' (gah!) is capable of housing & servicing a corvette-sized ship using the ventral docking bay (we see the Diligent enter this bay when it rendezvous' with the Claw). I guess that would be its 'escort'. Or at least scout.

Sadly we do not see what the movie-style Corvette might look like, other than a vague silhouette that looks suspiciously Kilrathi-esque, and is used for other representations throughout the handbook.

It's sad that the Handbook was obviously rushed - many of the images taken from the 3d models are pretty hastily cut out from the backgrounds, but it does show an incomplete model of a Fralthi that never made it into the movie.
 
Hmmmmm... Terran Confederation Ship, Tin Can Sally, TCS...

The Nickname STILL could apply to any ship in ConFed, but it makes a little more sense now
 
Dean478 said:
I always assumed during the games that the reason we never saw the Claw or the Concordia with escorts was simply a technical hurdle.

The TCS Concordia is frequently seen in the company of one of her two escorting Gilgamesh-class destroyers, the TCS William Tell, in WC2. The suggestion that the fact that the Concordia's having a battleship's armament means she doesn't need an escort is a little silly given that historical battleships themselves would usually have a destroyer group escorting them; maybe a battleship doesn't need as much of an escort as a carrier, but it still needs one. But there's a lot of strange military logic in WC1 and WC2 - for example, the Concordia doesn't seem to have a captain, just a CAG and an Admiral commanding the task group.

My suspicion is that in Freedom Flight the Claw lacks an escort because it was written by someone who had actually played the game. As for the movie, isn't it theoretically on a training cruise at the time, and theoretically light-years from any Kilrathi? Or am I munging my Academy (which I'm very familiar with) into my movie (which I'm not very familiar with at all)?
 
There are rendez-vous with exeters and ventures in WC1, but the claw always appeared powerfull enough to get in, kick ass, and get out, so "strike carrier" would be a good defenition. Also, a single fast well-armed ship is less noticeble then an entire fleet. That very fact could explain why she was alone, both in the movie, most of the game, and the first enigma-raid. Like the midway, she had lots of places to scramble her fighters from(as opposed to the concordia, victory, lexington, and Intrepid, and with the concordia they were low on recources already. But there was no room/performance for massive battles in the early game engines, or the CPU power available to do it.

And if the admiral/commodore decides to place a ship under his own command, the captain is relieved.

From academy, they placed the movie in the timeline between the first episode(where they end with orders to be transferred to the Tiger's claw), and the second(when they are there and get lost on their way to the briefing room). But this would contradict some of the dialogue in the movie.
 
It's sad that the Handbook was obviously rushed - many of the images taken from the 3d models are pretty hastily cut out from the backgrounds, but it does show an incomplete model of a Fralthi that never made it into the movie.

It's actually the movie that was rushed--the special effects were way over budget and deadline... to the point that resources that were earmarked for StarLancer were being used to finish the movie. And of course the Handbook had to go to print months before the film was finished... so they couldn't include the final renderings.

The Fralthi DOES appear in the film, though; it's the ship that fights the broadside with the Tiger Claw towards the end: http://outlander.solsector.net/vid_files/Kilrathi_Capships/cruiser3.jpg

(Two models were cut from the film, the Salthi and the Krant. They're listed in the Handbook because they were in the script and it was hoped they'd be done... but no such luck. I'm really curious what they would have looked like, although the fact that no art has surfaced to date does suggest maybe they were dropped early on.)

The Nickname STILL could apply to any ship in ConFed, but it makes a little more sense now

Yeah that took me years to realize too--and it's weird, like some writer thought 'TCS' was only part of the Victory's name. Which is odd.

But there's a lot of strange military logic in WC1 and WC2 - for example, the Concordia doesn't seem to have a captain, just a CAG and an Admiral commanding the task group.

Tolwyn is her captain--in his speech at the start of Fleet Action he mentions the "seven years I've been in command" of her. (Interestingly, the Concordia in the movie was a different ship in the same situation--Tolwyn's 14th Fleet flag--and she *did* have a separate captain. He's mentined only in passing (and his name is Dwight.) Given Tolwyn's history on the Tiger's Claw and the Victory, though, you can see how an original captain might not have been long for this world...

My suspicion is that in Freedom Flight the Claw lacks an escort because it was written by someone who had actually played the game. As for the movie, isn't it theoretically on a training cruise at the time, and theoretically light-years from any Kilrathi? Or am I munging my Academy (which I'm very familiar with) into my movie (which I'm not very familiar with at all)?

You are mixing up the two--Academy was the training patrol in a safe sector, the movie was a battle-weary ship that had been on the front lines too long.

As for Freedom Flight--remember that she wasn't there to fight in the first place... she was the honor guard for the Diplomtic Corps, essentially to allow the crew to stand down after Thor's Hammer. (And she *was* operating with TCS Austin... and multiple Diplomtic Corps Exeters...)

There are rendez-vous with exeters and ventures in WC1, but the claw always appeared powerfull enough to get in, kick ass, and get out, so "strike carrier" would be a good defenition. Also, a single fast well-armed ship is less noticeble then an entire fleet. That very fact could explain why she was alone, both in the movie, most of the game, and the first enigma-raid. Like the midway, she had lots of places to scramble her fighters from(as opposed to the concordia, victory, lexington, and Intrepid, and with the concordia they were low on recources already. But there was no room/performance for massive battles in the early game engines, or the CPU power available to do it.

Wing Commander I is interesting because if you play it enough you do eventually figure out the 'big story' that's lost on a casual player. You put together what the Kilrathi are doing, how the Confederation is pushing back and so on... and you do get a bigger picture of the fleet working together on occasion (like when the Tiger's Claw will join a particular siege.)
 
Wow, this generated a nice discussion. :)

I think because the Tigers Claw and the Concordia have enough firepower to take out enemy capships. The Victory is a standart Carrier without firepower. So here it need escort ships.

Definitely and when you read the specs you sometimes wonder how the Claw for example, even has the room to hold all those torpedo bays. But it does make sense that she'd need a large fighter escort to prevent enemy fighters from shooting down those torpedoes. Obviously they won't have the absolute fire power like Concordia's guns (which in turn lacks a fighter compliment?).

But I also think there's more to this - keep in mind that at least in game (WCII) the Concordia often IS escorted - it's just the escorting ship is sometimes detached or far enough away from the carrier that she's not right on top of her. "Escorting" doesn't have to necessarily assume a certain proximity. Better to think of these as what the title of your thread says - battlegroups. The assets of a battlegroup will be deployed according to the enemy's order of battle, and that often means separation between vessels engaged in different aspects of that mission.

Very true, that makes a lot of sense.

Interestingly, the Confederation Handbook (movie) notes that the 'Tiger Claw' (gah!) is capable of housing & servicing a corvette-sized ship using the ventral docking bay (we see the Diligent enter this bay when it rendezvous' with the Claw). I guess that would be its 'escort'. Or at least scout.

I also wonder if the corvette was already onboard as well?
 
Definitely and when you read the specs you sometimes wonder how the Claw for example, even has the room to hold all those torpedo bays.

Just take a look inside! :) https://cdn.wcnews.com/newestshots/full/FINTigerClaw2.jpg

I don't think the Handbook meant to suggest that the Tiger's Claw *had* a little corvette, just that it was capable of supporting one... as a means to explain where the Diligent goes in the movie.
 
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The suggestion that the fact that the Concordia's having a battleship's armament means she doesn't need an escort is a little silly given that historical battleships themselves would usually have a destroyer group escorting them

I think rather than armor here we should instead focus on fighter complement. Concordia then, in that instance, would be considered more of a carrier than a battleship designed for close in combat so the purpose of armor differs a bit. Carriers often DID operate alone or with minimal escort in an AO depending on available resources or the specific operation to which they were attached.

Interestingly, in WWII, our battleships often became the favored escorts since their AA weaponry was so formidable and they had the speed to keep up with the "fast carriers."
 
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