Dreadnoughts, carriers and other catbox lorries

Death's Head

Spaceman
Since we have once again gotten into a stimulating discussing of Kilrathi ship lengths and sizes, I thought it would be fun to reopen discussion. First, when WC3 first came out, some expert speculated that the Kilrathi Dreadnought size just sounded too bogus. I'm sure most of us are now aware that the Manuals KS, and Victory Streak claim the length is 22km. What I never really understood was how the Kilrathi were able to build such as ship, let alone perhaps several, maybe a full eight and four. That's 12 for we apes. What puzzled me was the scenes in WC3 that showed the 'nought dwarfing carriers and cruisers but not nearly to the level it was supposed to according to "cannon sources". If you decide to play for fun once in a while and happen to go down the losing track, you will see the 'nought a few times. The first time is when a sizable fleet raids the Locanda system, second when you encounter the ship itself in proxima and third, when the Victory valiantly rams one of the monsters. according to the "scaling" visible through the game, the length of 2.2 km seems far more realistic, if not precise. I have gone through great lengths reading what I have on hand and scaling the ship according to the Excalibur I flew inside it's shields. As the scaling worked for the Victory almost EXACTLY, the same applied to the 'nought. I have been told this is impossible b/c of this reason or that reason but mostly people have said aw the game will crash. Well I can say that one nine attempts it never did. If the game didn't crash during the trench run I don't know what will crash it, except when you enter locanda and listen to Rollins carry on about the war and you enter the lift.
Then I decided that wasn't good enough, so I read into the novels a bit(I own them all). After I read Heart of the tiger I recall Blair being tractored in by a CARRIER. In WC3 Blair is tractored in by a Dreadnought. Being the military wizard I think I am I analized the definition of Dreadnought. Well the most important requirement for a ship to be a dreadnought is that it needs to have a main armament of Heavy calibur guns or turrets of the same size. Seing as how all battleships are dreadnoughts but not all dreadnoughts are battleships, I read into fleet action to see if there was something on the development of these "carriers". Sure enough in the first few pages, a new type of carrier under construction that had the several key traits, one the multiple heavy batteries of the same calibur being the primary armament, two, heavy armour plating in redundant fashion, and three, high power secondary batteries to deal with fighters and bombers. Sounded like a dreadnought possibility to me. The high number of fighters in this new carrier meant that the ship had to be huge, the size of about twice the current strike carrier was mentioned. By the time of WC3 the Bhanktara class of carriers began to appear. This ship was 920 meters long. Wow the dreadnought was unofficially 2200 meters! Hmm 1840 meters-2200 meters sounds pretty damned close to me. Ships that size, "short" distances such as those are insignificant, especially with those long arms and the unusually stretched nature of the dreadnought dwarfs the previous classes of ships. For those who say dwarfing requires a huge difference, well in mythology a dwarf is about a meter tall, and the avg man is almost two meters tall. Sounds like a huge difference to me.
Then we have the mass issue, KS tells us that dreadnought is 290,000 tons well of course most of the interior is empty that point has been well established but does it need be? all ships are mostly hollow! Let's compare something a little off topic, the Galaxy class of vessels-USS Enterprise is roughly 400,000 tones minimal-some argue the mass could be as much as 4,500,000 tons. Now that ship is not really heavily armored, but it does have heavy engines. Now we look back at dreadnought and we know it has a double or even triple hull, each heavily armoured. A ship that large with so much armour plating cannot be 22km long and be only 290,000 tones, for comparison E-D is only 641 meters long! Compared with other ships of WC, the mass becomes even more important, Vesuvius is about 1600 meters and 200,000 tons roughly, I don't remember the exact mass, but the Midway is 220,000 tons and about 1800 meters long and change. So the mass of 290,000 tones and the length of 2,200 meters seems very realistic indeed. IMHO, ships of that size are verging on the line of impracticality. A ship of this size can do only so much more than a ship half it's size. Now if we look at a length of 22,000 meters, and here comes the Vesuvius, 1600 meters, how does that ship "put the fear of god in the Kilrathi"?
BTW, I calculated the length of the Behemoth to be 6km. Someone said to me that's impossible the behemoth is 9 times as long as the Victory! Well hmm according to my math.. .the Victory is 720 meters, 720 times 9 and man, thats 6380 odd meters according to my in the head approach give or take a hundred. In the time of WCP, the Tiamat was about two miles long and the ONLY ship that even compared to it was the Behemoth, must have forgotten to mention the two kilometer dreadnought. Don't argue that the ships were scrapped becuase the Behemoth got slagged, remember?
It must be they forgot to mention the 'nought just as easily as they added a zero the the end of it's length.
Let the fireworks begin!
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The term 'discussed to death' comes to mind...

A few notes in reply.
<UL TYPE=SQUARE>
<LI>I don't think there's any evidence that the Kilrathi built as many as *12*. We see a few in the Kilrah-fleet scene (although some of these may not be dreadnoughts -- it's possible that those further back are simply the similar looking carriers, destroyers or scouts seen in the Wing Commander Academy animated series). We have specific evidence that at least *three* were built.
<LI>Canon has two n's, not three.
<LI>Note that the 'mistakes' in Victory Streak were fixed in the Kilrathi Saga manual -- things like Bloodmist's clan and Flint's homeworld that people complained about were changed... the stats for the dreadnought were not.
<LI>It has been explained numberous times that Wing Commander III's 3D engine did not allow ships to be shown in their full size.
<LI>The Hvar Kann was a dreadnought, not a carrier. This is stated several times in HoTT, even though it is called both.
<LI>False Colors specifically states that the Behemoth is smaller than the Vorgrath, and that the Vorgrath is 22km long.
<LI>Here is the definition of the dreadnought: dreadnought \Dread"nought`\, n. 1. A British battleship, completed in 1906 -- 1907, having an armament consisting of ten 12-inch guns, and of twenty-four 12-pound quick-fire guns for protection against torpedo boats. This was the first battleship of the type characterized by a main armament of big guns all of the same caliber. She has a displacement of 17,900 tons at load draft, and a speed of 21 knots per hour. (Note that every, very little of this applies to WC).
<LI>The carriers in Fleet Action are Hakaga class heavy carriers, and to *NOT* have guns of the same calibur -- they are armed with mass drivers *and* neutrons. The dreadnought in WCIII *does* have all of its offensive guns of the same calibur.
<LI>The Hakagas exact length is given in the novel, somewhere around 1800 meters.
<LI>All ships are *not* mostly hollow in the sense that the dreadnoughts are. The dreadnoughts have no decks and such at their center, they are simply large framework type things.
<LI>We do not know that the dreadnought has a double or triple hull.
<LI>The tonnage issue answers your own question --- how do the Kilrathi build such a ship?
<LI>The length of the Behemoth is 11 km, canon.
</UL>


[This message has been edited by Bandit LOAF (edited January 25, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by Bandit LOAF (edited January 25, 2000).]
 
What's this I hear about the Behemoth being 11 km long where did that come from(canon source)? Well of course false colors made the dreadnought out to be HUGE, it was written after the length was given. Woould someone get origin to tell us which parts are mistakes and which aren't? What do you mea framework thingies? Are you suggesting the cats swing from ropes hanging off the hull to get from one section to the next? the ship needs to have some sort of level/deck layout becuase it carries fighters, and to support troops. I don't see how the cats can just lean against the hull off duty or have shelves connected to the hull for rest? BTW, what else is there to talk about? Nothing new is known to be on the way for certain and well not everyone is commited to the site so I for one do not hear everything that has been discussed hear, in fact I left for about six months because there was nothing to talk about. I would speculate that none of the novels are canon sources because writers are permitted, if not forced to improvise on technical details and take the liberty to change things for dramatic reasons. Besides something as long as the dreadnought 2.2 km or 22 km, requires far more structural reinforcement than a shell and it's skeletal frame, epecially with torpedoes and heavy energy blasts. Like I said only the primary weaponry needs to be of the same calibur. Dreadnoughts usually have two types, large antiship batteries and Antifighter batteries. When the Kilrathi boat opens up there are weapons of different types, which are evident by different sized turrets and more than one color of beams. True, a large amount of space is empty, but a lot of spaces are filled to some extent by fighter bays, hollow but filled with something like fuel, ammunition, and fighters, utility craft and much more, and ship systems like sheild generators, power units, batteries, computers and everything else critical to a ship's survival. Just becuase the ship is large, doesn't mean it doesn't have decks-look at the Death Star it has thousands of decks!
Where does this empty framework notion come from? This I have to read.

[This message has been edited by Death's Head (edited January 25, 2000).]
 
Origin themselves wouldn't know.
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Untill Prophecy, all ships weren't to scale, so you can fly around them as long as you want to, it won't prove anything. The Dreadnought is 22km long. We only have three cannon sources on that. Victory Streak, KS manual and False Colors, and they all say that that is it's length. So the Dreadnought is 22km long. About it's mass, the Dreadnought is like a skeleton, it has many empty spaces between it's sections, a ship like Midway don't.

LOAF- where did you get that the Behemoth is 11km long? I never seen a confirmed length of the Behemoth.

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A good soldier is not the one who die for his country, it's the one who makes his enemy die for his.
Gen. Patton
 
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When it comes to issues like these just believe the manual. It's simpler & better than arguing. Anyways LOAF's mention of 'framework' is quite simple. Look at the dreadnought. It's not a slab of a ship like the Concordia. It has 4 arms reaching far forward of the main structure. If you fly through it you will find that the main structure is hollow. Also remember that all we have is the length. We don't know how high or wide the ship is. It could turn out to be quite narrow - not likely though. As for the mass keep in mind that the Kilrathi utilize different alloys than Starfleet. Their alloys might actually be lighter in comparison with other metals.
How did the Kilrathi build the dreadnought? Well how did the Confederation build the Behemoth? If you have the technology, the resources & determination you can build anything. Tolwyn stated that the Behemoth took 10yrs to be developed & built so it makes sense that the dreadnought took a comparable amount of time to be constructed. Also considering that the Kilrathi tend to sustain higher losses (conjecture which I observed from the game) it makes sens that they would devote the resources to build several dreadnoughts. Further conjecture indicates that the Kilrathi were preparing to face a previous enemy, the Mantu, again. If so by this time the Kilrathi would have demonized the Mantu to the point where they would have felt that big ship were necessary. After all if you had to face the Devil wouldn't you want a big ass ship with 22km worth of AMGs & lasers?

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Politician to Reporters: "The first cabinet meeting of the year proved to be very productive...We managed to get through most of the ministers' holiday photos."
The Politician by David Fletcher.
 
Not if I can build something tougher with better armament. I would sooner fly and/or build defiants than a romulan warbird type ships becuase, for one with the defiant you can take on ships more than 16 times it's size. It's far cheaper to opperate, run, and crew, while deadly in war, while serving adequetly in peace. I know a hell of a lot more about ST ships and races than WC. Romulans build ships like the huge warbird as a statement of mililtary power and prestige, part of the reason they build them so large is that they hope size is enough to scare opponents into avoiding a fight, thereby reducing the need for a larger number of smaller ships.
 
But of course ST doesen't have anything to do with WC, so I don't know why do you use it as an example. And how do we know how strong the Dreadnought realy is? We know it has lots of guns, and heavy shielding but we never saw it in a battle. And if you're refering to the Behemoth as being smaller with better armament, the Behemoth was an oversized gun. It didn't have a flight deck, didn't have any guns (it would if they would finish it though) it only had little space for the crew. I don't understand why they decided to build the Behemoth instead of super carriers like the Hakaga class.

Penguin- Starfleet?

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A good soldier is not the one who die for his country, it's the one who makes his enemy die for his.
Gen. Patton


[This message has been edited by Earthworm (edited January 25, 2000).]
 
Uh....what's a "cannon" source?



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"He has warrior spirit. It will be the death of him." Prince Thrakhath - End Run
 
you better change that spelling before an administrator sees it. Canon. It is supposedly an indisputable source of data on something that has no relevance whatsoever
 
The comparison is size versus size. The point being you sure don't need a big ship to to the same job a a smaller one that is better equiped. As I recall the behemoth was not compared but it would not be too much trouble to refit the behemoth with a full wing, or more if it is really 11km long. I still want to know why this is a canon length. If it is canon why is it not in the encyclopedia or have I mist that too?
 
Oh no! I better go correct it now, or I'll be baned!

Of course it's canon. What encyclopedia?!

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A good soldier is not the one who die for his country, it's the one who makes his enemy die for his.
Gen. Patton
 
The encyclopedia section is here, but the thing itself was never released. I gues LOAF doesen't have much time. (can't blame him, something like that would take a lot of time)

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A good soldier is not the one who die for his country, it's the one who makes his enemy die for his.
Gen. Patton
 
Yeah but what I meant to say was the ship's database. I would like to know since the behemoth is 11km long why is it not in the database if it's so canon and my question remains: How can a 1.6 km Vesuvius put the fear of god into a crew of a 22km dreadnought?
 
Don't know why they didn't put it there.

The Vesuvius would put the fear of got into the Cats. Maybe not the ones on the Dreadnought, but the Vesuvius was about the size of the Hakaga class carriers, which were VERY powerfull.

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A good soldier is not the one who die for his country, it's the one who makes his enemy die for his.
Gen. Patton
 
Unfortunately, I don't know UBB code... it'd be nice if html were on
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I guess I could turn it on, but I'm a lazy, lazy man.

Re: canon/cannon -- it's just one of those annoying spelling errors that happens a lot. You people take corrections WAY too seriously... granted it'd be wrong to critisize (sic) someone for spelling errors, but I don't think there's any convention against correcting people in a polite manner. No one has ever banned or even threated-to-be-banned for spelling. As for the term, it's commonly used in regards to Science Fiction as what is considered by the license holder to be 'official'. The term is biblical in origin, IIRC.

Re: mass. I think some other people have already explained it in this thread -- but just look at the dreadnought model... it's a series of several large square tubes around an empty space. It *is* also fairly thin (compared to its length).

Re: The Behemoth's length hasn't been officially stated, but any WC3 era notes from Origin state the 11km length. For the reasons behind the Behemoth, read False Colors.

Re: Star Trek. Stop talking about Star Trek! It's completely different. The Kilrathi build needlessly large ships like the Hakaga, Bhantkara and dreadnought because their culture is into power projection.

Re: The Encyclopedia... it's still in the works, but the fact that my computer recently died and that I've just started college is delaying it a bit
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Long live the Confederation,
Ben "Bandit" Lesnick
(loaf@wcnews.com - 302228)

The Wing Commander CIC
http://www.wcnews.com

"You go, LOAF! Get some!" -JPG
 
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Any predictions on when it could be finished? Could you just give the stuff you already have?

And I did read FC, but wouldn't it be better if they build more carriers? Not even super carriers, just standard fleet carriers.

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A good soldier is not the one who die for his country, it's the one who makes his enemy die for his.
Gen. Patton


[This message has been edited by Earthworm (edited January 25, 2000).]
 
The reason the behemoth was put into action in haste was because Tolwyn needed to get it operational and end the war before the belisaurus group could take action against the confed government.

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"I'm putting you back in the cockpit Colonel, where you will be reunited with an old friend, the thrill of battle!"
-Tolwyn to Blair WC IV
 
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