Fleet Action -> Kilrathi dreadnoughts

Wedge009

Wedge009

Rogue Leader
I was just thinking (yes, I know that can be hard for some ;)) about how badly the War became in between WC2 and WC3. Fleet Action is supposed to detail how all of a sudden the Confederation is on the defensive after the relative successes of WC2 and End Run - I assume this is the summary given for 2668 in the History section of Victory Streak. How is it possible, then, for the Kilrathi to have spent so much on their special Hakaga carriers, lose (most?) of them in the Battle of Terra, and yet still have enough resources to bring their gargantuan dreadnoughts online?
 
A good question I guess I had always assumed the were built together, but rereading it does'nt mention them being built at the same time.
 
I've thought about this myself and here's the conclusion I've come to.
The Kilrathi have secret shipyards that Confed doesn't know about and has alot of them.
The Kilrathi utilize alot of slave labor and undertake a shipbuilding process at breakneck speed, no matter the cost. Think of Stalin's industrialisation programme - "We are behind the capitalist nations by 50-100 years. If we do not catch up they will crush us."
Like the Soviets the Kilrathi are suspicious of putting their faith in any one design. Therefore at any given time there are several different projects proceeding for each type (destroyer, carrier, etc) of capship .

In sum although Confed action setback the Kilrathi in 2667, they already had the infrastructure, resources and technology to rapidly make good their losses. They just needed a bit of time, hence the False Truce. Multiple programmes also explains the Hakagas and the 22km dreadnoughts.
 
How is it possible, then, for the Kilrathi to have spent so much on their special Hakaga carriers, lose (most?) of them in the Battle of Terra, and yet still have enough resources to bring their gargantuan dreadnoughts online?
Click to expand...

Fleet Action suggests that at the time of the not coincidental armistice the Kilrathi were suffering from a shortage of only certain kinds of resources (such as experienced pilots). Two circumstances in particular combined to render the Empire vulnerable at the time–first, a shortage of transports, in part due to their destruction by Confed but also due to their commitment to the construction yards for the Hakaga-class carriers, and second, the fact that a number of existing carriers were temporarily off-line for repairs or refit. And while several construction yards had previously been destroyed by Confed, others remained (since that was one of the objectives of the aborted “Operation Red Three”) and were busy. As Tolwyn summarized the advantage neutralized by the armistice–“For a brief period [roughly six months to a year] we would have, for the first time in the war, reached front line parity in terms of carrier strength and then the numbers would turn against us yet again.”

As for the Hakagas, three were destroyed (including Thrakhath’s flag ship) and two damaged at the Battle of Terra, with another seven presumably still under construction towards the end of the war.
 
you mean there were more? uh ho... big modified Ralaris...
BTW, what weapons did it have? i need 2 know for the MOD as the info is nowhere i can find on that paticular carrier type.
 
The Ralari-class is a destroyer. The Hakaga-class is a heavy carrier, 1,580 meters long, that requires more than six times the amount of material used to build “a normal fleet attack carrier”. According to Thrakhath, it carries 288 fighters in six (self-contained) bays, and sports 32 mass driver quad batteries, 32 neutron and laser batteries, and 6 gatling launch tubes for anti-torpedo defense.
 
i know i know. to me it looks like a huge ralari.

In other words, a f****** huge ship, eh? looks like trouble!
maybe i should find a better carrier for fleet action then as the claw is going to be its opposition.... *scraps hak for carrier* sorry void and schez. :(
 
Originally posted by Wedge009
How is it possible, then, for the Kilrathi to have spent so much on their special Hakaga carriers, lose (most?) of them in the Battle of Terra, and yet still have enough resources to bring their gargantuan dreadnoughts online?
Click to expand...

As you may know, I've never liked the dreadnaughts. I thought they were unrealistically large compared to the rest of the ships in the WC Unvierse. My wife of course would say, "what, you believed it all up 'til now?" Anyhow, I wonder if they are maybe not that hard to build because of what seems to be their modular nature. Just think of them as the IKEA of cap ships :) I do wonder why they weren't mentioned in Fleet Action. I can only assume the Clan Leaders already knew about them and knew they were not yet ready. I would have much prefered to face off with Hakaga carriers on the losing path to WCIII.

Has anyone (by this I mean LOAF :) ) determined what the ships on the cover of Fleet Action are. I thought that might be the cruiser the Baron was on since I didn't think the carriers got that close to Earth.
 
The dreadnaught originally may have been 2200 meters instead of 22,000m. This would explain the low mass. But weather it was a typo or not, the dreadnaught is now officially 22,000 meters as of False Colors. The ship does have an unusually low mass, though. The ship is not all bulk, but it is not really all hollow, either. Plus, the mass was mentioned as being off the scale--or something to that effect--in False Colors. Thus the mass could either be considered incorrect, or the dreadnaughts (as there are more than one) possibly are composed of very cutting edge and efficient materials. (very light weight and durable as opposed ot other ships.) Because now matter how hollow it is, there is no way a 22km ship is going to mass less than several 1km long carriers. The skeleton alone would weigh more. All ships in the WC universe are fairly lightweight. This implies that ConFed and the Kilrathi advanced in their material construction.
I'm not sure when the dreadnaughts were built. The only clue we have is in False Colors where they were describred a warship built by Thrakhath as part of his "final solution for mankind." This implies that they were possibly built aroud the same time the Hakagas. Or atleast they were part of the same design docs for next wave of warships. (Think F-22 and Commanche helicopters.)
 
While the Dreadnought (which I really love BTW, it just looks so cool) is unusually light-weight, I always found the normal Kilrathi carrier to be unusually heavy compared to the other ships (and surprisingly crappy, I was really astonished to see how FC glorified it).
 
Wasn't the carrier in FC not a standard carrier. I don't have the novel here and haven't read it in a while, but I thought it was a "supercarrier" Not sure if they meant one of the Hakaga or something else. Yeah, they did call it a "supercarrier" at least in this version of the openening chapter.

https://www.wcnews.com/fc.txt
 
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Since I never had the guts to play the losing endgames *smack*, what ship did the Victory ram? A dreadnought, was it nought?
 
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