Fleet Battles...

Iceyl86

Spaceman
One thing that I didnt like in WC... theres a raging war going on... yet you never take part in ANY massive endor style fleet battles... you just go mission to mission... one cap ship here and there... COME ON!!! I specialize in knocking out large capital ships, I love it in the big fleet battles, I take a light bomber in, knock out the command ship, sending the enemy fleet into disary (not as easy as it sounds), the go back to my ship, rearm, and take out any carriers or battleships (depending on the game), basically by the time I'm done the enemy fleet is little more then a vast array of cruisers, destroyers and smaller ships... heh! The only issue is, THEY DO NOT HAVE NE OF THE IN THE WC series!
 
Iceyl86 said:
One thing that I didnt like in WC... theres a raging war going on... yet you never take part in ANY massive endor style fleet battles... you just go mission to mission... one cap ship here and there... COME ON!!! I specialize in knocking out large capital ships, I love it in the big fleet battles, I take a light bomber in, knock out the command ship, sending the enemy fleet into disary (not as easy as it sounds), the go back to my ship, rearm, and take out any carriers or battleships (depending on the game), basically by the time I'm done the enemy fleet is little more then a vast array of cruisers, destroyers and smaller ships... heh! The only issue is, THEY DO NOT HAVE NE OF THE IN THE WC series!

Damn, you complain a lot...
I think it's because of engine limitations, mostly... Hopefully we'll see some "fleet action" in SAGA!:D
 
Not true!

Many fleet battles are implied. But also WC2/3/4 all have capship battles. The third mission of Orsini in WC3, a corvette and a transport go at it.

And Remember, the idea is that pretty much fighter warfare reigned supreme. If there was a large formation of enemy warships, they had better separate before they get creamed by the airwings of just a couple of carriers.
 
Blame technology for that. There is several battles like this in Prophecy and Wing Commander 2 really tried.
It's just a matter of what the game itself can physically do. Those battles did exist though.
 
The 3DO port of WC3 has some fun capship battles -- in the Tamayo scramble mission, destroyer escorts attack the Victory!

Still, the problem is that cap ship battles are impressive once or twice... and we've seen them on occasion -- but watching two battleships slug it out isn't necessarily a fun thing to do when *playing* a game.
 
Brings back memories of the Concordia blowing ships to smithereens in WC2. That always made me smile. Also there's that ridiculously easy mission in WC3 where you escort the Victory's destroyer escort to hunt down some big cats. If you want an insane capship mission you could always go for the impossible to win losing storyline mission in WC3 against the Kilrathi dreadnaught. Really when you consider how valuable fleet carriers are in the Wing Commander universe it makes sense that there's not a lot of massive bloody and risky fleet actions, I mean just look at the mess that was left over after massive battles like McAuliffe and the Battle of Earth. Both were victories but both were also disasters. Even Vukar Tag was pretty costly although temporarily crippling to the Kilrathi. I guess the point I'm going for is all out fleet battles are avoided because they're putting all your eggs into one basket.

In any case there's some pretty impressive looking capship slugfests in Starlancer, the only problem I had in that game was (except for one special circumstance) you were unable to take them on by yourself. Though I guess that gave them an excuse to have the big ships get up close and personal with each other on occasion. I hear the Freespace series has some interesting capship battles but I was too lazy to ever get into them.
 
Starlancer was cool for the most part. The only problem was that in the capship fights the Carriers went in to a hot area completely relying on fighter support and half the time they would get damaged or fraged. What they should of done was sent in the fighters first to establish space superiority then come in to deliver the knockout blow.
 
Standoff is/will have several missions in which Confed capships go up against Kilrathi capships (including Hakaga carriers). Episode 4 will portray the Battle of Sirius, and Episode 5 will portray the Battle of Terra.
 
WC2 has great capship action. They fight with big guns that work, unlike other WC games. On WC1, WC3 and WC4 capships have no working big guns, and on WCP and WCSO they are not very useful.
 
WC3 and WC4 both have AMGs. They are just modeled differently. The old AMG was a large, purely Anti-Ship pulse. The new AMG was a rapid firing dual-purpose stream.
 
Standoff is/will have several missions in which Confed capships go up against Kilrathi capships (including Hakaga carriers). Episode 4 will portray the Battle of Sirius, and Episode 5 will portray the Battle of Terra.

After playing episode one and two I am looking for forward to the remaining episodes. Battle of Terra...god I would love to see a CGI movie of that!!
 
Prophecy has a pretty good capship battle in which Dallas bites the dust.
 
Dragon1 said:
WC3 and WC4 both have AMGs. They are just modeled differently. The old AMG was a large, purely Anti-Ship pulse. The new AMG was a rapid firing dual-purpose stream.

The old AMG was a BIG BALL of destruction, the next one was a slightly larger white turret fire.

LeHah said:
Prophecy has a pretty good capship battle in which Dallas bites the dust.

Yeah but big guns are almost useless because they have to hit specific targets like bridge and engines to even have some effect because of the game engine.
 
As others have mentioned, while WC did a very good job of making you feel like you were in a much bigger battle than was portrayed (it is one of the aspects I most admired about it), the actual number of ships in a given conflict remained pretty small. One of the things that we are trying to do in WC Saga (as wished by Dyret) is actually give you the full-blown experience of full carrier groups (or hunter groups of various ships) going at each other. Many of these missions are just being refined now, and will be included in the full release. I've played a few of them, and I don't think you'll be disappointed.

If you want to get a flavor for it, download the Babylon Project from HLP, download the demo campain (I think it's called "Reflections" in the unofficial downloads part of the page) to "Heat 'em Up" (an upcoming full campain). There is a mission in there where an EA fleet takes on a Dilgar fleet. It's a cap-ship slugfest with fighters running Wild Weasel and missile interdiction. It's a real challenge, but it will give you a taste of what's coming.

By the way, I can't wait for those Standoff battles in Chapters 4 and 5!
 
Dragon1 said:
Not true!

Many fleet battles are implied. But also WC2/3/4 all have capship battles. The third mission of Orsini in WC3, a corvette and a transport go at it.

And Remember, the idea is that pretty much fighter warfare reigned supreme. If there was a large formation of enemy warships, they had better separate before they get creamed by the airwings of just a couple of carriers.
Yeah that damn Transport stole corvette kill
 
But again, even in the large WC universe, I think massed fleet battles were probably pretty rare.

Remember, a sinlge Longbow torpedo bomber had the firepower to take down most cruiser type ships. This didn't mean that a single bomber usually could, but a coordinated strike with just a handful of bombers would render most small groups of capships dead. Large fleet formations coming up against a single Concordia class Carrier's air wing of 96 fighters (minus those held back for CAP) would be vulnerable.

Now, it has been mentioned that the early years of the war were far more chaotic. The Kilrathi would launch near- suicide attacks on Confed battle groups. This could have been the era of larger scale fleet engagements.

The 2669 period, I just don't see as a massive scale battle period.
 
Fleet battles would only be fun if you were driving one of the capships. Just look at Freespace 2's "My ship is bigger than your ship!!!111!eleven" missions if you want an idea of how mind numbingly unentertaining it can be.
 
I don't know if maneuvering at a snail's pace and operating a bunch of turrets would rate as a fun video game.
 
The trick in fleet battles, from a gameplay point of view, is to give the player something realistic and yet sufficiently important to do during the battle (torpedo runs, taking out cap ship missiles, disarming enemy cap ships, etc...). For those citing FS2 battles, usually the important point was intercepting bombers or taking out heavy beam turrets on cap ships.

As far as what WC Saga will offer in the line of fleet battles, I will say I find it thrilling to be caught in the middle of a hot dogfight, weaving between capital ships and dodging torrents of fire coming from all directions. I'm not saying that Saga is all fleet action battles (Dragon was correct in saying that this was probably not realistic for the time frame), but the player will be present at serveral critical points where it all hits the fan.

For those who are skeptical, I think I can understand where you are coming from. I'd just say give it a chance when the full release comes out. You can make your judgment from there.
 
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