It's Absolutely Enormous! (July 19, 2011)

[Deathsnake]

The next is a critial item. The Dreadnaught. We know from the Victory Streak it is 22.000m (22km) 280.000tons and 38 Laser Turrets. Also in the Novel "False Colors" (buy mine over Amazon from a bookstore in Oregon, it's never released in german)

But on the other Side the weight are less. The Vesivuis has 240.000 tons and the Midway 200.00tons. Also the armament. 38 Laser turrets are much to less for 22km. And Tolwyn says that the Vesuvius puts the fear of god into the Kilrathi. With a 1,6km ship?

Origin itself corrected it in the Wing Commander Bible (can be downloaded here at the CIC) and its here a Superdestroyer with 2.2km. In this size the armament and the weight are compared to the Vesuvius and the Midway. But in the WC3 Cutscenes the ship is larger then 2.2 km.

I take a lot of trys to match the size of the KDN compared to the cutscene when the Victory run into the KDN. But perhaps yourself take a look:

On Pic 1. are the KDN with the Vesuvius. Its here the 2.2km Version
On Pic 3. are all 3 sizes.
On Pic 2. are now my version, what is compered to the Cutscenes. Its 4.5km long.

I take all 3 versions into my shipspackage when Last Line of Defence is done. And an instruction how you can change yourself the size whats for your computer the best and what kínd you wish to see. You fight the ship in one mission. So I put the mission then 3 times into the package.

The ship is not done yet. Turrets and subsystems are not on the model or in the table. In Last Line of Defence you see the 4,5k Version

 

[Bob McDob]

I think all this arguing over cutscenes is missing the point.

Yes, the Dreadnought isn't 22 kilometers in Wing Commander III. Was it meant to be? Who knows. (Probably you could get an accurate estimate by comparing it to the other capital ships, or at least the Behemoth, as that's how the game was scaled).

But then, really, the ship's size has no real implications in the game, does it? Nobody talks or even really seems to care about the ship's size or its relative combat merits - it's just one more in a long line of superweapons the Kilrathi have created to crush Earth, raze its cities and stomp on human skulls (which is definitely a point of the game).

Then you have False Colors:

He stared at the readout for a long time before it hit him. The mass was wrong, completely different from everything in their records on the facilities at Baka Kar. The docking complex was supposed to be large, but these figures were almost twice what they should have been. Banfeld ordered the computer to zoom in on the orbital dock so that he could study it more closely.

It took along time for the computer imaging system to interpret the sensor data well enough to comply with his request, and that wasn't right eithger. Something anomalous was out there, something that was distorting Highwayman's probes . . .

Banfeld let out an audible gasp as the computer imager finally displayed a picture based on the collected data. Something massive really was over there, docked with the orbital facility. Something that dwarfed the spidery framework of the station. It was the biggest ship Banfeld had ever seen―if it was a ship, and that's what the computer was insisting. It measured nearly twenty-two kilometers in length, bristling with hardpoints and radiating an awesome amount of energy even when it lay quiescent alongside the dock.

The Guild leader had only heard rumors about such ships, but now he was sure he was seeing the reality behind those rumors. A Kilrathi dreadnought, one of the vast and powerful warships Prince Thrakkath had ordered for the final solution to the war with Mankind.

And it was here, with Ragark's fleet.

Cold fear washed over Zachary Banfeld. He had wanted to help Ragark even the odds so that the war on the frontier might be prolonged and the Guild profit from the war. But a Kilrathi dreadnought made all the defenses of the Landreichers useless. Even their new supercarrier would be no match for such a powerful ship of war, whether they fully restored it to fighting trim or not.

When the Kilrathi smashed their way across the border, the question of Guild profits would no longer be a factor in his plans. The question would be one of Guild survival.
​

(324-325)

And again:

"My God, what a monster," someone breathed, and Geoff Tolwyn agreed. He had once thought the​

Behemoth was a truly impressive piece of machinery, but the huge bulk of the Kilrathi dreadnought was something unimaginably larger and more terrible. The huge space station and repair dock alongside was larger, but not by much . . . and space stations didn't generally fly under their own power.

Or carry sufficient weapons to wipe out a fleet or lay waste to a planet.​

(427)

And again:

Meantime Tolwyn was performing brilliantly in​

Mjolnir ... Against the bulk of Vorghath even the supercarrier looked tiny, and the difference in maneuverability and precision of control was immediately plain. Tolwyn took the carrier in to point blank range again, maneuvering Mjolnirlike she was a destroyer rather than a carrier, and the damage to her massive opponent began to tell.​

(444)


Finally, I'd like to echo LOAF here: downscaling the dreadnought, for whatever reason, seems llike forfeiting one of the FS2 engine's great strengths: rendering really, really big capital ships. I remember a gorgeous image from Saga, years ago, of a Vesuvius in-game alongside the fully-scaled Kilrathi Hvar'kann dreadnought, and that was a sight to behold: it really put to scale the battle described in the paragraph above. I feel as though that's something missing from a lot of sci-fi these days: no scale, or if it's there, so huge as to be incomprehensibly abstract, so Stalin-arithmatic, without the "YOU ARE HERE". Putting someone in a fighter against that would definitely bring out the You-Are-Here.

 

[Deathsnake]

I agree that the scale in the book is tell the story of it. But then we have some different errors:

In the Novels Fleet Actions and Heart of the Tiger the Kilrathi uses all the resources they have for the Hakara and the fleet. Nearly 90% of the fleet attacking Earth are destroyed. And the Emperor says that the Hakara was the best ships the Kilrathi have to engage later the Mantus if they coming back. So where are the resources to build at last 4 of these giants? In the Cutscene in WC3 we see the Kilrathi fleet in orbit of Kilrah. Here you see the hulls of 4.
And we need then to change the weight and armament. 15 times more then the vesuvius means around 3.6 million tons (3.600.000). From the armament the Vesuvius has 14 AMG, 16 Mass Driver and 24 Laserturrets. The KDN with only 38 Laserturrets is outgunned. When you use the 38 Laser on the 22km ship you have a lot of "attack vectors" that are unprotected by the laserturrrets. So again here we need then 380 or more lasers. If you look in the WC History of ships, the Hakara has the most weapons on a ship. Follow by the Vesuvius. All others has less armament.

The other thing is: Performance. I have a i5 2500k and a Geforce 560 TI. Both is overclocked. So the GPU and CPU are very good. Only a i7 with 580 Geforce alone or in SLI are better. And I have only 40 fps flying around in the pics above. With 50 or more fighters and 30 Capitalships you can imagine that you play with less then 10 fps. When you hardware is less than mine the performance is going more down.

And even in the Freespace Universe the ship is bigger than anything else. The Orion (Galatea) is only 3km long, a Titan 2,5km and the "big" Colossus is 6km. Here the Storyline is interessting: It takes 20 years to build this one.

But afterall: even the 4.5m KDN will oversize 99% of the Freespace 2 ships And the 2.2km oversized all other WC ships.

Update: I've make a screen again:
I forgot before the glow-maps and on the pic are now a Bhantkara and a Wake Class. Here the Wake look more a bomber than a lightcarrier and the Bhantkara a gunboat or a corvette xD

 

[Klavs81]

I'm glad to see people are still getting mileage out of my fighters, and the KDR...

 

[Deathsnake]

I've promise I use our models ^^

When I get your Wing 1 models? ^^ *gggg*

Or have you got some models we can use for Last Line of Defence or the Wing Commander 1/2 Remake ?

 

[Bandit LOAF]

3. The players carrier: In the Novel of WC3 Paladin is joint the Victory with an Eagle Class Carrier. Its larger then the Yorktown and the newest ship Confed build. So here it is : The Eagle Class! Design by Gevatter Lars and finish by Kevin.

Paladin arrives on the TCS Eagle, which is a Harrier-class ship.

Origin itself corrected it in the Wing Commander Bible (can be downloaded here at the CIC) and its here a Superdestroyer with 2.2km.

Err, no, there's no "correction". The material from the bible you've seen is from an earlier version of the stats, not one that was changed later for some reason--look at the Victory, which is completely different. (If you're looking for some kind of document history, Victory Streak's specifications *were* updated plenty of times: for the 3DO, PSX and Kilrathi Saga re-releases between 1995 and 1997... and the dreadnaught sstayed the same.)

 

[Bandit LOAF]

A few more comments!

In the Novels Fleet Actions and Heart of the Tiger the Kilrathi uses all the resources they have for the Hakara and the fleet. Nearly 90% of the fleet attacking Earth are destroyed. And the Emperor says that the Hakara was the best ships the Kilrathi have to engage later the Mantus if they coming back. So where are the resources to build at last 4 of these giants? In the Cutscene in WC3 we see the Kilrathi fleet in orbit of Kilrah. Here you see the hulls of 4.

We actually counted at least five recently (http://www.crius.net/zone/showthread.php?t=26316&).

The biggest problem with this problem is of course that you run into the same issue no matter how big you make the dreadnoughts--a Grand Fleet that consists of 2.2km dreadnoughts seems to conflict with Fleet Action in exactly the same way, doesn't it?

(I don't see it as a huge problem either way--the thing about the Hakagas was that they were built in secret by a single clan... without informing the others or the humans. They're going to shift the balance of power unexpectedly. The dreadnoughts, powerful as they may be, are part of the known production plans.)

And we need then to change the weight and armament. 15 times more then the vesuvius means around 3.6 million tons (3.600.000). From the armament the Vesuvius has 14 AMG, 16 Mass Driver and 24 Laserturrets. The KDN with only 38 Laserturrets is outgunned. When you use the 38 Laser on the 22km ship you have a lot of "attack vectors" that are unprotected by the laserturrrets. So again here we need then 380 or more lasers. If you look in the WC History of ships, the Hakara has the most weapons on a ship. Follow by the Vesuvius. All others has less armament.

The retcon used by all the novels is that the turrets listed in the manual are the heavy hitters--the space-to-ground, capship-to-capship weapons. You see False Colors, in particular, deal with this on the Bhantkara--it has eight large cannons and dozens of anti-ship weapons.

It is not in the Mod because it's too overpowered but it's a idea how Confeds forces can be gunned in the future beyond Prophecy.

Check out the battlecruisers in Wing Commander Arena, which are said to be a relic of the Nephilim war.

And the 2.2km oversized all other WC ships.

Not quite!

K'tithrak Mang - 2.2km
Confederation Star Base (WC2) - 2.4km
Confederation Starbase (WC3) - 2.5km
Kilrathi Starbase (WC3) - 5.2km
Behemoth - 8km

 

[ChrisReid]

Deathsnake recently set out to see just how big the 22 kilometer Hvar'kann class Kilrathi dreadnought really is. His first image renders the occasional fan theory that the 22,000 meters quoted in Victory Streak was simply a typo. A 2,200 meter version is scaled next to a 1600 meter Vesuvius class carrier in the first image. However, visual evidence in Wing Commander 3 shows a dreadnought dwarfing the TCS Victory during the game's losing end scene. The perspective is at an angle that makes it hard to make an exact comparison, but the 720 meter carrier appears to be only as large as the the tip of the Kilrathi vessel's bow. This concept is rendered in the second picture. Fortunately, there's yet a third source that corroborates the ship's size: the novel False Colors makes numerous references to the Hvar'kann's outrageous size and treats it as a major plot point. The last two images demonstrate what the ship really looks like compared to other carriers in the Wing Commander universe! Amazing!

​

He stared at the readout for a long time before it hit him. The mass was wrong, completely different from everything in their records on the facilities at Baka Kar. The docking complex was supposed to be large, but these figures were almost twice what they should have been. Banfeld ordered the computer to zoom in on the orbital dock so that he could study it more closely.

It took along time for the computer imaging system to interpret the sensor data well enough to comply with his request, and that wasn't right either. Something anomalous was out there, something that was distorting Highwayman's probes . . .

Banfeld let out an audible gasp as the computer imager finally displayed a picture based on the collected data. Something massive really was over there, docked with the orbital facility. Something that dwarfed the spidery framework of the station. It was the biggest ship Banfeld had ever seen―if it was a ship, and that's what the computer was insisting. It measured nearly twenty-two kilometers in length, bristling with hardpoints and radiating an awesome amount of energy even when it lay quiescent alongside the dock.

The Guild leader had only heard rumors about such ships, but now he was sure he was seeing the reality behind those rumors. A Kilrathi dreadnought, one of the vast and powerful warships Prince Thrakhath had ordered for the final solution to the war with Mankind.

And it was here, with Ragark's fleet.

Cold fear washed over Zachary Banfeld. He had wanted to help Ragark even the odds so that the war on the frontier might be prolonged and the Guild profit from the war. But a Kilrathi dreadnought made all the defenses of the Landreichers useless. Even their new supercarrier would be no match for such a powerful ship of war, whether they fully restored it to fighting trim or not.

When the Kilrathi smashed their way across the border, the question of Guild profits would no longer be a factor in his plans. The question would be one of Guild survival.

--
Original update published on July 19, 2011

 

[Sylvester]

Holy hell - the Hvar'Kann could literally eat any other capital ship in the game. The forward docking bay looks big enough that even the Vesuvius could fit inside it. Well done with these renderings - finally shows just how massive these things were.

 

[Deathsnake]

ähm ^^ Its not rendering. This is the Ingame Grafic from Wing Commander Saga Prologue.

I just hide the HUD for a better pic. In my Mod Last Line of Defence you fight against the KDN.

Turrets are still missing, but in the Front the 4 Plasma Cannons work.

 

[Gagarin]

And thus was born the strategy of parking a destroyer inside the ship and blowing it apart.

 

[Klavs81]

which makes every single one of those windows in my texture map about 30 meters high apiece.

My KDR model was never intended to be scaled up that large, but nice work anyway!

 

[Deathsnake]

I scale it with the latest PCS Construction Suite. First was the scale from Klavs Model. For the 22km it's factor 10 times. And for the 4,5 it's factor 2.

My fighter was a Thunderbolt when I make the shots. It fit in one of the windows from the size.

 

[Farbourne]

I'm still not buying 22 km. The whole mass issue scuttles things.

Mass scales roughly with the cube of length, for ships with similar aspect ratios. If the Vesuvius is 1.6 km and 240,000 tonnes, then a 22 km ship with roughly the same density should be about 2,600 times more massive...or about 624,000,000 tones. That's 624 MILLION tonnes, not the listed 240 thousand tonnes.

Now, I'll admit that the dreadnought is less compact than the Vesuvius. Say by a factor of 2 (I don't think it's that high, but let's go with it for the sake of argument). Maybe also it's actual "structure" is much less dense than the Vesuvius...maybe it has paper thin armor, and massive empty spots all though it's interior that we can't see. That's a stupid way to design a warship, but let's assume we get another factor of 10 times less density.

That still means the mass should be about 31 MILLION tonnes, or about 130 times more massive than a Vesuvius.

Think of the implications of that. That means that one dreadnought takes the amount of durasteel/whatever material that it would take to build at least 130 Vesuvius class supercarriers, and that's assuming a stupidly low density (which would imply that the dreadnought would have practically zero armor). So one would include the war materials of tens of FLEETS.

On the other hand, if we take the 280,000 tonnes number as correct, that means the density of the dreadnought is actually 0.00045 times that of a Vesuvius. So the Kilrathi have found a way to lightweight their warships by a factor of over 2000. Lightweighting a spacecraft, or aircraft, by, say, 30% is a hugely big deal technologically, and would be game changing as far as what it represents. Relative to the stone age, we've only managed to lightweight engineering materials by a factor of 10-100 for the same strength, and only then if you go to very advanced composite materials. For the dreadnought to be 22 km long and only weight 280,000 tonnes, they'd need to lightweight by over 2000 times relative to the materials technology in the Vesuvius. Basically, if someone had that kind of material science, they're way way way ahead of Earth and Confed would have lost the war anyway because the Kilrathi would have unveiled things like body armor completly flexible and impervious to everything weighing mere ounces, starship armor capable of stopping anything, space elevators, etc.

Of course, assuming they didn't have this amazing material science technology, the dreadnought would be the flimsiest thing ever built, if it even could exist at all. Incidentally, if a ship of "ordinary density" like the Victory were to ram a large structure like that with a significantly reduced density, at space combat speeds, it would rip through it like a bullet going through cottage cheese.

In short, either the mass or the length has got to be a typo.

My own completely non-canonical suggestion is to treat 22 km as a unit screw up, not a typo. 22,000 ft, instead of 22,000 m, is about 6.7 km. That would be a ship roughly sized correctly for the WC3 cutscene, would only be 73 times more massive than the Vesuvius (or, if we apply that assumed knockdown factor of 20, about 3.7 times more massive), and would still be the biggest thing one encounters in the WC universe short of the Behemoth.

 

[JasonRocZ]

Maybe they screwed up on the cutscene..Who knows. I'm voting for 2200 meters 280,000 tonnes, For realist purposes Who's with me?

 

[NinjaLA]

if you are going to contest something.. instead of the cutscene supported official size... you could contest the ship density instead.. even hollow it *should* be heavier. But really, its pretty awesome and crazy to have a 22km ship to intimidate the heck out of you and your excalibur.

 

[Deathsnake]

Btw. not only the Wing Commander Universe has the prob with the size. The Executer Super Star Destroyer from Star Wars is changing nearly every year the size. 1998 it was 8km (we see the size in Balance of Power addon for X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter) then it was 12, then 15, then 17 and atm its 19,9km (official Star Wars Page)

But we can discuss this with the weight.

Here some stats:

Vesuvius
1600m , 240.000tons
Midway
1800m, 200.000ton (larger but less massiv)
KDN
22.000.000m, 280.000tons
Star Base Wing 3
2500m, 650.000tons
Supply Depot (Kilrathi)
1600m, 602.000 tons

I changed the size several times to get the WC3 Lose scene. With the 4.5km its fit.

But on the other side a question: Tolwyn says that the Vesuvius put the fear of god into the Kilrahti. 22km vs 1.6km? But on the other side:

Vesuvius:
14 AMG, 24 Laser, 16 Mass Driver
Midway
24 Laser, 6 Ion Cannon
KDN
38 Laser
(Sources WC Games Handbooks)

Here another question: What is the station from the Victory Streak: 5.200m ; 722.000tons? We didn't see it ingame. Is it the station from WC4?

 

[Bandit LOAF]

I'm still not buying 22 km. The whole mass issue scuttles things.

False Colors makes it pretty clear that it's supposed to be 22 kilometers... so the "mass issue" would seem to better indicate that the MASS is wrong.

Btw. not only the Wing Commander Universe has the prob with the size. The Executer Super Star Destroyer from Star Wars is changing nearly every year the size. 1998 it was 8km (we see the size in Balance of Power addon for X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter) then it was 12, then 15, then 17 and atm its 19,9km (official Star Wars Page)

I think they're different issues. The problem with Wing Commander is that the length is crazy large... but it's *consistent* in every canonical source and goes on to be a plot point in one of the novels.

The Star Wars problem is that Star Wars fans are morons who decided to make a game out of convincing each other they had the biggest possible ship for some reason.

Here another question: What is the station from the Victory Streak: 5.200m ; 722.000tons? We didn't see it ingame. Is it the station from WC4?

No it's something that was dropped from the game.

 

[Deathsnake]

The Star Wars problem is that Star Wars fans are morons who decided to make a game out of convincing each other they had the biggest possible ship for some reason.

You mean like this ? ^^

Here I have 2 new pics for you:
1. all capitalships I use in LLoD. For a better framerate the Behemout is 4km and the KDN 4,5km. As I say in the LLOD Threat I put in the 22km version also in with a guide how do you can change the model if you like to see the bigger version (but then need a good PC i5 or i7)
2. the same pic again but with the HUD on.

 

[Bob McDob]

False Colors makes it pretty clear that it's supposed to be 22 kilometers... so the "mass issue" would seem to better indicate that the MASS is wrong.

Which I would think False Colors would corroborate:

The holo-image showed a man in a sick bay bed, breathing with considerable difficulty and speaking in a ragged, throaty voice. Zachary Banfeld didn't look much like a ruthless pilot, Bondarevsky thought. More like the frightened survivor of a disaster.

Apparently that's just what he was.

“Will you repeat that last statement, please?” The voice off-camera belonged to Max Kruger. “How big was this ship?”

“Best estimate was twenty-two kiometers long," Banfeld said. “Mass was right off the scale. It was huge, Kruger! Huge! And it must have had thirty energy batteries. Turrets everywhere!”

“A dreadnought.” It was strange to have Kevin Tolwyn's voice interjecting the comment on the recording, while he sat beside Bondarevsky and stared down at the table in silence.
​

(373, emphasis added)


So, either Banfeld's scale only displays up to six digits or that thing is a whole lot more massive than Victory Streak thinks.

You mean like this ? ^^

The best thing about that image is that it spawned that fanfiction ridiculing its grotesque enormous size.

That's a lovely shot there. Have you tried bringing the Behemoth up to full eight-kilometer scale and seeing what kind of frame rates you get?