Difference in stats

Farbourne

Farbourne

Rear Admiral
Had a quick question that I hoped someone could answer.

I'm working on a little WC-related project, and it involves knowing the statistics for the WC1-era ships. However, different sources seem to give conflicting numbers in some cases. In particular, the shield and armor ratings, and also the missile loadouts, seem to disagree between Claw Marks and stats that are listed as "in-game", in the CIC ships database, and also the WCPedia. For example, Claw Marks lists the Hornet's shields and armor as being 3 cm all around, but the ships database claims that in the game it is 4 cm all around, and WCPedia agrees with that. There are disagreements with the Scimitar and Rapier as well, and some of the missile loadouts for the Kilrathi ships...

Which source supercedes which? In other words, what is the correct source if I want the "canon" stats.

Should I assume that whoever wrote the WCPedia entries was knowledgable about which set of stats was canon, or does Claw Marks, as Origin-distributed printed media, trump what the programmers actually put in the game (or what we think they put in the game)?
 
Farbourne said:
Which source supercedes which? In other words, what is the correct source if I want the "canon" stats.
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Generally what was in the game is the correct info. Manual information was typically incorrect as they were working with pre-release (beta or even alpha) information.
 
Farbourne said:
H

Should I assume that whoever wrote the WCPedia entries was knowledgable about which set of stats was canon, or does Claw Marks, as Origin-distributed printed media, trump what the programmers actually put in the game (or what we think they put in the game)?
Click to expand...

Not necessarily, the eventual goal of WCPedia is to include all those different stats in a manner that makes it useful to the end user like yourself.

As it stands now, it might be best just to discuss those ships you are unsure of.
 
Dundradal said:
Not necessarily, the eventual goal of WCPedia is to include all those different stats in a manner that makes it useful to the end user like yourself.

As it stands now, it might be best just to discuss those ships you are unsure of.
Click to expand...

All right. The old Ships database does indeed break things out by "in-game" versus "Claw Marks", but the WCPedia entries seem to sometimes follow one and sometimes the other, so I wasn't sure which was canon.

Here are the discrepancies I've run into:

* Hornet: Thickness of all shields and armor (4 versus 3)
* Rapier II: Thickness of shields (8.5 versus 7) and armor (6.5/5/5.5 versus 5/3/4)
* Scimitar: Thickness of shields (6/5 versus 4/4) and armor (8.5/6.5/8 versus 6/5/6)
* Gratha: Thickness of shields (10/9.5 versus 11/10) and armor (14/10/12 veruss 15/10/14)
* Gratha: Missile loadout (2 HS, 1 IR, 3 M versus 3 HS, 1 IR, 2 M)
* Gratha: Roll rate (14 versus 6)
* Jalthi: Guns (4 L, 2 N versus 3 L, 3N)
* Jalthi: Missile loadout (1 HS, 1 FF versus 1 HS, 2 FF)
* Jalthi: Maneuverability increased across the board (7 versus 5)

The first set of values I've listed are the values listed as the "WC1" values in the ships database, and (usually) the WCPedia entry; the second set are from Claw Marks.

If the first set really are what was in the game, then I would assume they are canon?

The effect of these changes is subtle, but significant. All the Confed ships except for the Raptor get a boost in armor and shields, and the Gratha takes a corresponding hit. Also, both the Grath and Jalthi lose missiles, and the Jalthi loses a bit of firepower. On the other hand, both become more maneuverable. I wonder if the Claw Marks values were the original intended values, but the playtesters decided the game was just too darned hard (obviously, no-one from the Standoff team was involved in the making of WC1 :) ), so they gave the player a bit more of an edge.

Of course the other effects of the differences are that:

(1) Hunter becomes a liar (or at least an exaggerator) when he says, underneath the shields, the Rapier is no tougher than a Hornet. That may have originally been true, but if these changes are right, then the Rapier is significantly tougher. It never felt that way, though.

(2) The Scimitar is a much better looking ship. It's total defenses (shields and armor) are comparable to a Rapier, and almost as good as a Raptor.

Thoughts on which set of numbers is "right"?
 
As someone already said, a lot of the data in Claw Marks is wrong.

If you can't figure it out, try to use a corresponding "ship editor" tool on WC1 to look them up, in the download section of the CIC you can find such tools.
 
OK, slight problem. The ship viewer/editor available on the CIC Download page is apparently for 16-bit OS's, and I'm running Windows 7. I can't seem to get it to run. It won't run under DosBox (it claims it is not DOS compatible), and it doesn't work under Win95 compatibilty mode... I guess I should post this question under the Tech Support forum?
 
That's all probably true, and it probably requires an update by HCl himself, who is rather busy these days.
 
it definitely works fine for me in dosbox - worth noting btw that it doesnt work with some wc.exe's notably the 297kb one, but i have a version with a 295 kb exe (not sure of the difference!) and the joystick patch works fine too!
 
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