Models Available for Download

[gevatter Lars]

IIRC it was mentioned in a novel that there is more then just one and you could see more in one if the WC3 cutscenes. There where about 4 ships of this class around Kilrah or at least there are 3 other ships with a shape that is very close to the dreadnought that comes into view.

....someone thinks it's a good idea to stick 'opinion' somewhere to avoid debate ....
& (In all seriousness, I honestly do mean no offense here... it's just a pet peeve I wanted to yell about. On to more interesting things...)

No offense taken, in fact you are kinda right. I tried to avoid things. Now I have to arguee, well lets see if I could put some things together.

Okay lets get back to the basics.

So from what I see we got this:
- Manual: 22km

- False colors: Was there realy a size mentioned? I remember the part that says that the Mjölnir is small enough to "hover" over one of the claw like structures or even fit between them.

- Game: Never gotten into the code or extracted the model, so I don't know what the size of the DN was but it didn't looked that big.
I think we could agree that it was not 22km long from the look of it.

- Cutscenes: Browsing through the scenes I think the ship is pretty much the same size in all the scenes.
Looking at the scene where the victory is ramming the dreadnought its pretty much obviouse that its also not 22km in size, in that scene!
Still its kinda hard to determine the size that it has as we only see a part and then you have to take into consider the angle of the shoot, etc, etc,...

So when summing it up we could have 1-4 different sized dreadnoughts.
One, when the manual is right and everything else is wrong scaled, 4 when False Colors didn't has a number but I think it did so we would have about 3 sizes.
Manual/False color sizes: 22km
Gamesize: Unknow, at least to me
Cutscene size: Unknow, at least to me

Would that be right?

 

[Dundradal]

- False colors: Was there realy a size mentioned? I remember the part that says that the Mjölnir is small enough to "hover" over one of the claw like structures or even fit between them.

It's certainly mentioned several times in several ways. The one that pops to mind the most is the description of it dwarfing Ragark's space station by quite a bit.

 

[gevatter Lars]

I meant not just comparsion but someone saying "its 22km long"
Else it would just be another "its freaking hugh" thing without a real number.

Speaking of numbers. Did anyone at some point extracted the WC3 models and placed the Victory beside the Dreadnoughts model to get an idea how large the Dreadnought was in the game.

 

[Dundradal]

I meant not just comparsion but someone saying "its 22km long"
Else it would just be another "its freaking hugh" thing without a real number.

I can't exactly recall but I do believe someone does mention it is 22km long. It might be Richards or Tolwyn....or Ragark...been a while since I've read FC.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

IIRC it was mentioned in a novel that there is more then just one and you could see more in one if the WC3 cutscenes. There where about 4 ships of this class around Kilrah or at least there are 3 other ships with a shape that is very close to the dreadnought that comes into view.

We can name three (?) of them at this point: the H'varr Kann (Thrakhath's flagship), the Vengance of Vukar Tag (from the CCG) and the Vorghath (from False Colors).

Speaking of numbers. Did anyone at some point extracted the WC3 models and placed the Victory beside the Dreadnoughts model to get an idea how large the Dreadnought was in the game.

Wing Commander III's ships aren't internally consistent... and the game divides them into three categories, anyway: fighters, capital ships and big capital ships (you'll probably notice you get different levels of camera control depending on which you're looking at). The dreadnaught model is the same length as the Behemoth (11,000 meters) and Blackmane (2,500 meters).

- False colors: Was there realy a size mentioned? I remember the part that says that the Mjölnir is small enough to "hover" over one of the claw like structures or even fit between them.

Yes, the book does explicitly say it's twenty-two kilometers long (I believe it's when the footage of the ship is first seen by Bear, but I can find it when I get home).

So when summing it up we could have 1-4 different sized dreadnoughts.
One, when the manual is right and everything else is wrong scaled, 4 when False Colors didn't has a number but I think it did so we would have about 3 sizes.
Manual/False color sizes: 22km
Gamesize: Unknow, at least to me
Cutscene size: Unknow, at least to me

The problem there is that if you adopt the 'game sizes' or the 'cutscene sizes' (which don't scale and are demonstrably immeasurable, respectively), you aren't just getting rid of the dreadnaught you happen to dislike... you're getting rid of *all* ship lengths (and you'll end up with a world that makes even less sense, with impossibly GIANT FIGHTERS and crazy tiny planets... because that's how big their 3D models are).

 

[Kuhuna]

Exactly how much is a klick, anyhow? I tried to calculate the length of Behemoth and Victory today, and came up with 23,850 klicks and 3000 klicks respectively (497 kps for @ 48 seconds and 100 kps for 30 seconds). I thought a klick was one meter, but these numbers are nowhere near the published lengths. Any ideas?

 

[Farbourne]

22 km! And they had at least 3 of them! Not to mention all the Hakagas at the Battle of Earth. Was the Kilrathi Empire that much more a production giant than Confed? ARe we talking Empire of Japan versus United States disparity? Was it all the Kilrathi slave labor? Or did the beaurocrats in the false armistice and Battle of Earth really cripple Confed's production capacity that much?

...Compared to the Kilrathi Carrier of the time, the canon dreadnought is near 24x the length, but only 3x the weight. ...

This issue of density really smells fishy. Remember, in general, volume scales with the cube of length. The dreadnought seems to have roughly the same aspect ratio as a cat carrier (i.e. it's not particularly more slender relative to its length...maybe a little, but not much). So, if that 24x number is right, that means that the dreadnaught has ~ 24^3 = 13,824X more VOLUME than a Kilrathi Carrier, roughly. If it has only 3X more mass, that means that it's about 4,600X less dense! Or, put another way, if a Kilrathi carrier is 100% of the normal density of a capital ship, the dreadnought is ~99.98% empty space and only 0.02% actual ship density. Now wonder it's practically useless!

 

[gr1mre4per]

Doesn't it fight (and quickly do in) the Ajax in the Sol mission?

IIRC the Ajax never meets the dreadnaught in any of the WC3 gameplay. I have only ever seen the dreadnaught in the final losing mission which has the Sheffield and the Coventry destroyers. They both explode before the dreadnaught appears, unless you fly manually to the nav point to glitch the script.

 

[Dyret]

Exactly how much is a klick, anyhow? I tried to calculate the length of Behemoth and Victory today, and came up with 23,850 klicks and 3000 klicks respectively (497 kps for @ 48 seconds and 100 kps for 30 seconds). I thought a klick was one meter, but these numbers are nowhere near the published lengths. Any ideas?

A klick is a kilometer.

 

[gr1mre4per]

Actually a klick is 10cms, or 0.1 meters (at least in Prophecy)

Taken from UNITS.TXT on the WCP Development CD. WCP_DEV_BACKUP\Prophecy\doc\design

 

[Kuhuna]

So in the game, Victory is 300 meters long and Behemoth is just under 2400 m. Why the disparity with the manual? Did the engine not allow larger capships, or was Origin just lazy with their measurements?

 

[Dundradal]

22 km! And they had at least 3 of them! Not to mention all the Hakagas at the Battle of Earth. Was the Kilrathi Empire that much more a production giant than Confed? ARe we talking Empire of Japan versus United States disparity? Was it all the Kilrathi slave labor? Or did the beaurocrats in the false armistice and Battle of Earth really cripple Confed's production capacity that much?

According to what we see in the novels, yes they had far more shipyards than Confed. The entire 2nd moon of Kilrah was a giant shipyard for carriers and cruisers until 2667 when they were heavily damaged. Each clan had their own yards which produced ships so they were much more abundant than in Confed. In 2667/early 68 Confed was only able to get an edge on capships because of the Tarawa raid, success at Vukar Tag and the fact that the rest of the Kilrathi carriers needed major refits. The Kilrathi still had more ships but Confeds were ready to fight opposed to the Kilrathi.

Project Hari (Hakagas) was a long term investment by Thrakhath. They were started years before as Thrakhath built whole new ship yards deep in Hari space. It strained the Empire greatly to do this (one reason the other carriers were in need of refit is that the supplies weren't making it to the front). At BoT Thrakhath only had 5 Hakagas out of the full fleet of 12. The remaining 7 should have been ready by 2669 for his 2nd attempt on Earth.

 

[mustanger]

Doesn't it fight (and quickly do in) the Ajax in the Sol mission?

While it is really neither here nor there, didn't it fight the Coventry and Sheffield? Looks like I might have to lose WC3 again .

EDIT: Nevermind, gr1mre4per beat me to it.

It would be nice to have a history on these ships, because if it takes 5 years (I believe) to build a standard Fleet Carrier, how long does it take to build one of these things?

Maybe they aren't that great because by the time they are done, they are old technology

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Was the Kilrathi Empire that much more a production giant than Confed? ARe we talking Empire of Japan versus United States disparity? Was it all the Kilrathi slave labor? Or did the beaurocrats in the false armistice and Battle of Earth really cripple Confed's production capacity that much?

Yes, I think the general idea was that the Kilrathi built *more* ships while the Confederation had a technological edge in most areas.

We don't know much about the dreadnaughts, save that the novels claim they were built as Thrakhath's "Final Solution" to the Terrans. At what point he decided they were necessary is unknown, but it does seem like it must have been years before Wing Commander III.

Maybe they aren't that great because by the time they are done, they are old technology

This is one of those things that's probably true but also universally true so it doesn't really matter; your cutting edge science is always showing up X number of years after it's discovered, across the board.

Exactly how much is a klick, anyhow? I tried to calculate the length of Behemoth and Victory today, and came up with 23,850 klicks and 3000 klicks respectively (497 kps for @ 48 seconds and 100 kps for 30 seconds). I thought a klick was one meter, but these numbers are nowhere near the published lengths. Any ideas?

Actually a klick is 10cms, or 0.1 meters (at least in Prophecy)

"Klick" is (real) military slang for kilometer.

The only game which scales its ships 'correctly' is Wing Commander Prophecy - and even then they're only scaled relative to each other, not to the nav point distances. You can use the game engine to find out how many 'units' long the Midway is and then measure others correctly based on its published length... but that's as much as you can do (and none of this works in earlier games).

 

[Jason_Ryock]

The only game which scales its ships 'correctly' is Wing Commander Prophecy - and even then they're only scaled relative to each other, not to the nav point distances. You can use the game engine to find out how many 'units' long the Midway is and then measure others correctly based on its published length... but that's as much as you can do (and none of this works in earlier games).

Have you looked at MED at all to see if it will enable something similar? I know some of the 'circle' distances on the capital ships are pretty hard. You could - hypothetically- use MED to create missions with realistic distances, but I'm not sure that would really make the game very much more enjoyable.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Have you looked at MED at all to see if it will enable something similar? I know some of the 'circle' distances on the capital ships are pretty hard. You could - hypothetically- use MED to create missions with realistic distances, but I'm not sure that would really make the game very much more enjoyable.

It's not so much that the distances in Prophecy are wrong as it is that they don't let you measure spacecraft correctly. It makes sense for a patrol to cover tens of thousands of kilometers (space is big!). The issue is that you can then fly past the Midway at 100 kilometers per second... and have it take a minute. The Midway just isn't 6,000 kilometers long.

(Don't tell SpaceBattles!)

Wing Commander I and II actually get around this fairly painlessly -- ships you're targeting have their distances measured in meters while nav points are measured in kilometers. Presumably this is what it means when it says speeds are measured in Kilometers per Second 'relative'.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

I took a look at False Colors; the 22 kilometer length is mentioned on pages 325 and 373 (and likely elsewhere). There's also a part where Tolwyn notes that it's "unimaginably" larger than the Behemoth.

In general, it's pretty clear throughout that the Vorghath isn't an especially big warship... it's an *impossibly* large warship.