Excalibur's "special tricks"...

Max Gene

Spaceman
Obviously the Excal was meant to be the do all, end all ship, and I loved flying it.

But why was it so hard to get the guns to move a little for the ITTS until then, and why wasn't that done for ALL confed fighters in the future? Sure would've made things simple.

What was so special about it being a atmosphere ship as well as space? We'd been in space awhile- surely it shouldn't have been too hard so long as you don't mount lasers, which would defract.

(Yes, Halcyon commented that a missile near atmosphere would blow my ship in SM2. But surely the problem would've been solved long before that.)

Cloaking, I have little problem with- I can see why we took so long there, since the heads of ConFleet didn't believe in its powers until after WC2 and these things take time.

Love the Excal, but we should've had them sooner, in my opinion.
 
Swiveling guns: A gun mounted on a swivel is generally less protected than one that is fixed in place, since it has to be fully outside of the hull, or else be enclosed by a (to a fighter) bulky turret. This makes non-turreted swivel guns more vulnerable to being blown off by enemy fire (not simulated in WC3).

Atmosphere: Most ships can enter atmosphere, but not all are efficient in both atmosphere and vacuum. For example, the WC4 Banshee is a highly non-aerodynamic shape, and as such would have to rely on its shields (with their larger cross-section and hence higher air resistance) to protect against aerodynamic forces. The Excalibur is not the ONLY ship suited for atmospheric flight--we have seen Scimitars (WCA), Rapiers (End Run), and Hellcats and Vindicators (WC4) fighting in atmosphere as well. It was just a game design decision that had players not being allowed to choose to fly a Hellcat instead of an Excalibur on non-Temblor planetary missions.

On missiles in atmosphere: In air or water (or underground), an explosion generates a shock wave in the surrounding medium which multiplies its destructive force. As such, any given missile would inflict more damage in atmosphere than in vacuum, and spacecraft designed to survive a missile hit in vacuum would not necessarily be able to take the shock wave in atmosphere.
 
Obviously the Excal was meant to be the do all, end all ship, and I loved flying it.

But why was it so hard to get the guns to move a little for the ITTS until then, and why wasn't that done for ALL confed fighters in the future? Sure would've made things simple.
.

Because if in Prophecy all the ships were just as uber as the Excaliber it would make the game balence rather different and people would probably complain about autoaiming, if every ship had it.

Ed
 
Also the autoaiming feature could be expansive. If just a few fighters have it its not costing so much. Also it would most likely be a quite delicate piece of hardware so maintaince could become a problem if there isn't a steady stream of the right hardware.
Its like "Why aren't all planes that are build today stealthfighters?" They are expansive and not all the dutys they do might require stealth so why give it to them?
 
The autoaiming guns on the Excal made it just barely possible to play through the game on my old machine while being swarmed with fast moving Ekapshis. Because WC3 wouldn't run right for some reason, the only two craft that were flyable were the Arrow (which handled like a medium), and the Excalibur (which handled like a Devastator). The Hellcat and Thunderbolt could simply not be maneuvered in a dogfight, and I could only eject if I found myself in one. Luckily, the game could still be beaten using only Arrows and Excaliburs.

Funny though that WC4 played just fine on the same computer.
 
(Yes, Halcyon commented that a missile near atmosphere would blow my ship in SM2. But surely the problem would've been solved long before that.)

I think this was just the particular fighters available on the 'Claw at the time... we've seen Rapier IIs and Scimitars both fly in atmospheres since then (WCATV and End Run respectively.) It would be an odd thing to say, otherwise -- one doubts that F/A-18 squadron commanders make a habit of occasinally reminding their highly trained pilots that they can't fly underwater.

Cloaking, I have little problem with- I can see why we took so long there, since the heads of ConFleet didn't believe in its powers until after WC2 and these things take time.

It actually wasn't very long - the discovery of the Strakha is less than two years before the Excalibur is premiered. Note that the (first) Excaliburs carried a Shroud Device rather than a full visual cloak...

Funny though that WC4 played just fine on the same computer.

WC4 is the rare Origin game that *didn't* require a massive system update. The programmers spent the year optimizing Wing Commander III's engine rather than adding massive changes.

(Space Point)
 
Excellent points- I love coming here simply because of these discussions.

OK, the swiveling guns makes sense as far as expense- and while I can see perfectly well why people would complain over how they would change gameplay, I was wondering if there was a canon explanation. I guess I have one now.

Cloaking timeline- well, I didn't mean why it took so long after finding out about the cloaking device so much as us taking so long to reverse-engineer them after their initial inception, if that makes any sense. Probably was a stupid point to bring up :p.

While I had gathered that just about any ship _should_ be able to handle atmosphere outside combat, I had just been mainly wondering what it was that was special about the Excalibur's ability. So while all my original questions are pretty much answered, this brings up a new one- why weren't missile damages higher in atmosphere than in space in WC3? Obviously there's no baseline on the ekapshi since they were atmosphere only, but shouldn't they be frying my excal at least a little quicker?

*goes off to create "excalibur gripes" thread, then realizes only complaint is the armor*
 
OK, the swiveling guns makes sense as far as expense- and while I can see perfectly well why people would complain over how they would change gameplay, I was wondering if there was a canon explanation. I guess I have one now.

There's not really a canonical explanation - just unsupported theories. Maybe they required too much maintenance or they broke down too quickly in the field... (I only point that out because 'X weapon was too expensive' is what people come up with for *everything*...)

While I had gathered that just about any ship _should_ be able to handle atmosphere outside combat, I had just been mainly wondering what it was that was special about the Excalibur's ability. So while all my original questions are pretty much answered, this brings up a new one- why weren't missile damages higher in atmosphere than in space in WC3? Obviously there's no baseline on the ekapshi since they were atmosphere only, but shouldn't they be frying my excal at least a little quicker?

My understanding from how Halcyon phrases his statement is that once a fighter *is* "equipped for planetary overpressure" then there's no problem with missiles.

*goes off to create "excalibur gripes" thread, then realizes only complaint is the armor*

They have *armor*?!
 
Don't forget the Ferret (WC2) in your list of fighters we see flying in an atmosphere. :>

It flies in atmosphere, but that doesn't mean that it is efficient at dogfighting in atmosphere. It might be relatively sluggish or underpowered in air compared to other fighters.
 
It flies in atmosphere, but that doesn't mean that it is efficient at dogfighting in atmosphere. It might be relatively sluggish or underpowered in air compared to other fighters.

It's a tiny tiny ship build around an engine (and a rather large one - see the pictures, also, it flies at 500 KPS, being one of the fastest fighters in the game). How underpowered can it be?
 
It flies in atmosphere, but that doesn't mean that it is efficient at dogfighting in atmosphere. It might be relatively sluggish or underpowered in air compared to other fighters.

We see Ferrets fight in the atmosphere in End Run.
 
Again, they CAN, but that doesn't mean that they are the best at it.

Circumstances change for every fighter that goes from space to atmosphere. Thus w/e disadvantage it has, the other fighters will have too. That being said... there are atmospheric fighters that probably don't face those difficulties.
 
Again, they CAN, but that doesn't mean that they are the best at it.

That's a pretty hollow argument, since it isn't supported by anything, ever other than the fan desire to make some fighters more special than others. Ferrets do a perfectly fine job of fighting in the atmosphere in the attack on Vukar Tag - there's no indication that they're in any way handicapped, and to insist that they must be is odd.
 
Don't forget the Ferret (WC2) in your list of fighters we see flying in an atmosphere. :>

We see many different fighters flying in atmospheres at different points in Wing Commander. A better list might be fighters or fighters in certain situations that we know can't fly planet-side for whatever reason.

I also think it'd be fantastic if some future game or product showed Ekapshi flying in space.
 
Though it doesn't outright say that it's the case, the WC3 novel described them as atmospheric fighters, which hints that they probably can't fly in space.
 
There's no air in space.

But there's an air in space museum.

(McGruff is correct, Ekapshi have been described as atmospheric fighters in the continuity.)
 
So I'd seen. But I just realized- the shockwaves with missiles aren't a problem in space due to no air, right? So how the HECK did my Excal get sent flying due to the Kilrah shockwave at the end?
 
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