Mandarins, heroes in another timeline...

frostytheplebe

Seventh Part of the Seal
According to sources, the original script of WC3 was going to be that Confed has already lost the war against the Kilrathi and "Bluehair" was leading a resistance faction.

Isn't this how the Mandarins wanted to do things? Save Terra and the human race so they could rise up later? So by that logic, wouldn't they have been fighting along side thier one-time enemies by this point?

If thats the case, then by this time, it would seem like the Mandarins would be hailed as heroes.
 
They wouldn't be hailed as heroes by anybody, only as easily manipulated suckers by their Kilrathi masters - and probably posthumously at that.
 
One need look no further than the first episode of the Wing Commander: Academy cartoon series to find out what the kilrathi do with terran traitors when they become unuseful.
 
If thats the case, then by this time, it would seem like the Mandarins would be hailed as heroes.

European resistances of WW2 never hailed any collaborators as heroes. I doubt the view of traitors would change so drastically even after hundreds of years. If anything, the human resistance would lead witch-hunts to hurt/maim/kill traitors such as the Mandarins.
 
NinjaLA - yep. If you fail to destroy Ayer's Rock in WC2, Thrakhath does it himself...

Emperor : "My… heir. Is it true that you failed to capture a prototype of the Morningstar...
...and you also personally destroyed the main base of the Mandarins?"
Thrakhath : "The Mandarins were about to outlive their usefulness to us."
 
According to sources, the original script of WC3 was going to be that Confed has already lost the war against the Kilrathi and "Bluehair" was leading a resistance faction.

I think that's just what fans assumed once - I don't think it was ever Origin's plan.

Space point.
 
Good thing too, sounds way too "Star Wars"ish.

The whole fun of Wing Commander was two evenly matched forces going at it heavy carriers and all.
 
Good thing too, sounds way too "Star Wars"ish.

The whole fun of Wing Commander was two evenly matched forces going at it heavy carriers and all.

I wouldn't say evenly matched... By Wing Commander 3 we'd lost the Tiger's Claw and aparently w/e fleet was supporting it, the Concordia, the 6th Battle Fleet, several ships during BoT, and were facing almost certain defeat.
 
I wouldn't say evenly matched... By Wing Commander 3 we'd lost the Tiger's Claw and aparently w/e fleet was supporting it, the Concordia, the 6th Battle Fleet, several ships during BoT, and were facing almost certain defeat.
Yeah, but it wasn't like Confed didn't have heavy firepower, just not as much as they really needed.
 
I wouldn't say evenly matched... By Wing Commander 3 we'd lost the Tiger's Claw and aparently w/e fleet was supporting it, the Concordia, the 6th Battle Fleet, several ships during BoT, and were facing almost certain defeat.

Yeah, but it wasn't like Confed didn't have heavy firepower, just not as much as they really needed.

I'm not sure how evenly matched we ever really are in the games, but were it not for the false peace armistice, it was definitely possible for Confed to win the war with the forces it had. The ominous situation we find ourselves in in WC3 and all that "fluke" discussion in WC4 made it seem like the Kilrathi nearly overwhelmed us after decades of war, but through WC2 and End Run in 2668, Confed had the upper hand overall.
 
The part I've always had trouble grasping is the part where the resource strained Kilrathi, who need a false armistice to buy time to regain their supply lines, suddenly have an armada of 22km dreadnoughts capable of obliterating Earth barely a year and some change later.

not enough trouble to suspend my disbelief, mind you but just enough trouble to make me wonder.
 
Or they could have been building the dreadnaughts the whole time and just needed that extra year to bring more of them online.
 
What for? What do you think they were doing with all the ships they decommed? I'm willing to bet that they scrapped those ships quick, and used the resources to build the Hakagas.
 
The part I've always had trouble grasping is the part where the resource strained Kilrathi, who need a false armistice to buy time to regain their supply lines, suddenly have an armada of 22km dreadnoughts capable of obliterating Earth barely a year and some change later.

My guess is that these were ongoing "public" shipbuilding projects that were halted with the armistice, or that they actually existed in completion before the armistice and were put in storage. The whole point of the Hakaga project was to have something Confed didn't know about, and then goose them with it. If those dreadnoughts existed during the armistice, Confed likely had agents monitoring them along with Kilrah's other major fleet assets.
 
The part I've always had trouble grasping is the part where the resource strained Kilrathi, who need a false armistice to buy time to regain their supply lines, suddenly have an armada of 22km dreadnoughts capable of obliterating Earth barely a year and some change later.

not enough trouble to suspend my disbelief, mind you but just enough trouble to make me wonder.

The Dreadnought might be 30 times longer than the Victory, but it's barely ten times as massive. Still incredibly huge, but maybe not as difficult to build as its super length might suggest at first. It's only three times as massive as the Bhantkara.
 
The Dreadnought might be 30 times longer than the Victory, but it's barely ten times as massive. Still incredibly huge, but maybe not as difficult to build as its super length might suggest at first. It's only three times as massive as the Bhantkara.

I personally always thought the Dreadnought type ship was always somewhat over-rated. They were tough ships, but not as tough as everyone seems to give them credit. The Sivar single handedly destroyed a coloney... nice... how much of a defense did that coloney have? Then it turns around and gets shot down by a rookie pilot.

The Concordia (no disrespect intended), in all her Glory first appeared on the run from a cruiser, I'll admit I don't know the circumstances behind that, maybe they had just taken out half a fleet, and didn't have the resources to go on battling that final cruiser... but I doubt it. I remember when she was battling ships half her size, she took quite a bit of damage.

Honestly, it always seemed like the massive fleet carriers were more impressive.
 
It may be that the dreadnoughts (the multi-kilometre Kilrathi ones, I mean) were more for prestige and affecting enemy psychology/morale (similar to the Star Dreadnoughts of Star Wars). Relatively low mass spread out into a big target and relatively low firepower (for a ship that size) doesn't add up to a particularly fearsome ship to me, although I don't know how the H'varkanns perform in the novels.

As for the Concordia (I presume you mean the one from WC2, the Confederation dreadnought), she had just lost her escort and hangar bay, plus Sparks later mentions the the Concordia was perhaps one torpedo away from destruction. And although the Concordia had the PTC in her arsenal, I think Tolwyn would prefer to strike enemy capships with fighter wings and escorting destroyers rather than unnecessarily risk the Concordia.
 
Perhaps the 22-kilometre dreadnoughts were of an older design that have always existed but have never been sighted by Confed until the end of the Kilrathi war?
 
The dreadnoughts (and the Bhantkaras) were new, according to False Colors - part of Thrakhath's 'final solution' for Earth (possibly something that was planned to follow the Hakaga fleet the whole time - Thrakhath was far-sighted...)
 
I personally always thought the Dreadnought type ship was always somewhat over-rated. They were tough ships, but not as tough as everyone seems to give them credit. The Sivar single handedly destroyed a coloney... nice... how much of a defense did that coloney have? Then it turns around and gets shot down by a rookie pilot.

In FC, the characters give quite a bit of respect to the Vorgath. I forget how says it but one character mentions that even if *ALL* of ConFleet was massed in one place and attempted to take on the Vorgath, they would most likely lose. The assumption being that Vorgath was 100% ready for battle with full weapons complement.

The Sivar may have been able to nail Goddard fairly quickly with its gun, but I think the Vorgath couldn't have done the exact same job, in just a little bit more time. And look a whole hell of a lot scarier doing it as well.
 
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