Pre WC1 Fighters

J

johnhawke

Spaceman
Does anyone have any idea what some of the Pre-WC1 fighters looked like? For Example, (trident class, minotaur class, Hummer class, etc.) I've been rendering fighters for Freelancer, and was interested in makeing these ships.

If there's no cannon source, I was thinking about doing some original interpretations, but if anyone has any details it would be helpful. :)
 
You forgot the Wildcat and Hurricane from Action Stations. And no, I don't have any idea what they looked like. A good place to look would be at the WC 1 fighters themselves. Unless there was a major change in technology between the beginning of the war and the Vega Campaign (WC 1), there should be some clues in their design. Remeber, the Scimitar is a very old design, and both the Raptor and Hornet precede the game by at least a few years.

An older light fighter was probably similar to the Hornet in basic design and armament, perhaps carrying only a pair of missiles. The Scimitar is basically an evolution of the Hurricane if I remember correctly. The Raptor is a replacement of the Wildcat, though again, I don't know what it looks like.
 
Moonsword said:
You forgot the Wildcat and Hurricane from Action Stations.
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That was included in the etc. part. LOL :)

I guess you could judge fighter evolution from what WC1 fighters looked like, but than again, there aren't many similarities between WC1 and WC2 and they were only ten years apart. Go figure, huh?

The Scim info is interesting though... Maybe the Hurricane was a scim without the upper and lower wing sections... That helps cause I'm gonna be working on modelling a Scim this week. (Also doing a Dralthi Mk1)

The only thing that throws me a little is making a Pre-WC1 bomber, cause there weren't any in WC1. I guess the early Broadswords were in action at that time though. Could start there.

As far as light fighters, I don't know if you could really render something less advanced than the Hornet. It's pretty basic. I know, I just finished modelling one for Freelancer last week. (Came out quite good I might add.)

Anyway thanks for the info. If anyone has any info or suggestions, let me know. Also if anyone has a good list of all known Pre-WC1 fighters it would be helpful also.
 
Well, for Pre WC1 Bombers, there was really no point for them unless it was for anti-planet strikes.

Without a torpedo, a designated anti-ship bomber was just a target for the defensive weapons and couldn't scratch the paint on any phase shielded ship, so I would guess that the bombers from Action Stations were space to ground ones (as shown by their role) and not like the familiar Broadswords, Longbows, etc.
 
@expendable

Yeah, you're right bombers wouldn't see much action in Freelancer. I guess I'll scrap them. Probably same goes for scouts and recon ships. Although they might serve some light escort value.?. :confused:

Anyways, is the rapier in the movie the Pre-WC1 rapier? It definately doesn't hold a candle to the game rapier, and it the movies supposed to be pre Wc1 right? Also it looks to be using some sort of chaingun as it's primary weapon. I guess that could be replicated with a photon cannon which looks similar in effect.

Also anyone agree with me on the hurricane being a Scim without the upper lower wing thingys? Seems like if you gutted that an those big round ear things on the upper wing, it would look like a completely different fighter. I can only assume that the winglets and the ear things are enhancements... :confused: Anyway, if no one has evidence to the contrary, I think I'll just do that and make some other minor changes and call it a hurricane. (I hate bucking the cannon. But Origins out of business, and I the cannon died with it.)
 
I would assume so. I never read the book, but the fighters do play a major part in it. I can't imagine everytime a starfighter is mentioned is just "the Wildcat flew by."

As for the movie Rapier, it's a model I, wheras the one that comes out in the game is a Rapier II. There are a few people that know a whole lot more on the subject and the clasifications.
 
johnhawke said:
does action stations describe the fighters any?
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The only thing I cant remember is the repeated mention that the majority of the fighters were up on cinder blocks out in the MacAuliffe airfield.
 
I'm glad someone is taking a shot at a few of the pre-WC1 fighters. I think basing the earlier fighters on existing WC1 fighters is a good start (worked well for Lynx's Cutlass), but I wouldn't rely heavily on this source. These fighters are old. The Wildcat is at least 23 years old when Action Stations is taking place (from the reference that the fighters are older then the kids flying them) with the others like the Minotaur and Hurricane the same age or much older.

Expendable said:
Well, for Pre WC1 Bombers, there was really no point for them unless it was for anti-planet strikes.
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I'm pretty sure Confed picked up the torpedo pretty soon after Action Stations, which is 20 years beore WC1. Besides, you could model my favorite incarnation of the Broadsword, the WCATV version which is around circa WC1. :)

Edit: Sorry bout the color distortion :)

C-ya
 

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I was allways confused with the anti-ship-torpedo concept of post- and pre- WC1 sources and the WC1 fighter-kicks-the-shit-out-of-cap's concept....

In any case, the canon timeline places the Raptor as being used for the first time in the Enyo Engagement of 2639.

Other sources name the Hurricane as the pre-Scimitar med-fighter...and WC1 name the Scimitar so old that when it is retired in 2655, it is not a minute too soon...

I always imagened the pre-Hornet confed light fighter as being along the lines of the salthi - faster lighter and with much lighter armor and weapons load...
 
As I understand it, the Hurricane was contemporary with the Scimitar (the Scim being over fifty years old even before Action Stations). As described, the Hurricane was a trans-atmospheric fighter, designed to fight in air as well as space, whereas the Scimitar was a pure vacuum fighter. I would envision it to have similar weapons to the Scim, but less armor and more speed.
 
I wouldn't be sure about being faster. They may have made the Hornet heavier because improved thrusters were available.

If the Scimitar is that old, why isn't it in Action Stations? Oversight or research error, maybe?

Somewhere in that book, there's a mention of Confederation bombers. Maybe a light model, but there are definitely torpedoes in the Confed arsenal. It's possible that the reason there wasn't a heavy bomber in the game is that the fighter weapons of the time had been adjusted to be more effective against shields. Phase shields were introduced in the late 2650's and early 2660's, necessitating a return to the heavy bomber concept. Just an idea.
 
Moonsword said:
If the Scimitar is that old, why isn't it in Action Stations? Oversight or research error, maybe?

Somewhere in that book, there's a mention of Confederation bombers. Maybe a light model, but there are definitely torpedoes in the Confed arsenal. It's possible that the reason there wasn't a heavy bomber in the game is that the fighter weapons of the time had been adjusted to be more effective against shields. Phase shields were introduced in the late 2650's and early 2660's, necessitating a return to the heavy bomber concept. Just an idea.
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As noted before, the Scimitar is a pure-vacuum fighter - most of the ships we saw during the McAuliffe Ambush were the trans-atmospheric ones (Wildcat, Hurricane) or the light ones based on the carriers since that's all fighters were supposed to do at the time. About the only other mention for fighter usage was as a platform for space-to-ground bombardment, since capships don't go into atmosphere very well and you could use missiles and bombs on ground installations.

And from what I recall of Action Stations, they don't have torpedo bombers for antiship purposes - torpedoes exist only on the Kilrathi side, at least until Confed pulls some out of the wreckage of several ships, or those that survived the Ambush, ones that didn't detonate due to the high failure rate of torps at that time. The one they talked about pulling out of the Concordia's side was undetonated because the person who made it put in the triggering mechanism backwards, effectively sabotaging it.

The only time that 'bombers' were used on capships by Confed was during a fleet training exercise where the Red Team used fighters carrying simulated anti-ship weapons to down the Blue Team's battleship fleet. The judges ultimately ruled this a failure, since fighter-portable capship-killers did not exist. Unfortunately, nobody had told Confed that the Kilrathi had captured torpedo technology from their most recent set of conquered enemies.

Phase Shields were around for centuries before Action Stations - that's why battleships existed and were the best platform for capship battles.
 
The concordia was saved because a slave somewhere in the kilrathi empire put the firing mechanism in backwards....looks fine on a scan, but prevents detontation.
 
HammerHead said:
I was allways confused with the anti-ship-torpedo concept of post- and pre- WC1 sources and the WC1 fighter-kicks-the-shit-out-of-cap's concept...
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Not really too tough. After the advent of the ship-killing torpedo in Action Stations, the superiority of weapons and shields seems to seesaw. During and directly after AS, shields of capships were superior to normal fighter weapons, requiring torpedoes to kill capital ships. During WC1, the seesaw has tipped towards weapon superiority, where normal fighter weapons can harm a capital ship. During WC2, shield tech again has taken over and only torpedoes can penetrate phase shields. By WC3, weapons technology has tipped the seesaw in the other direction. In WC4, we actually see the transition taking place. Most capital ships can still be harmed by fighter weaponry, but the new Vesuvius cannot. In WCP, we see the opposite transition. It looks like in the interim between WC4 and P (if you follow the seesaw) that shields have been superior to weapons. Now Confed has a fighter based weapon that can penetrate shielding (plasma cannon), its just so large and energy hungry at this point it can;t be mounted on a normal fighter. Anyway you look at it, whichever end of the seesaw your on . . . having a huge warhead strapped to your fighter seems to be the easiest and quickest way to kill a capship. :D
Anyway, I also see another trend. In times when fighter weaponry can penetrate capship shielding, the fighters are much larger in comparison to their torpedo-dependent bretheren from the opposite end of the seesaw. This isn't the official line, but I tend to think that for the weapons to have enough power to punch through capship shielding, they need the 'generator/powerplant' space. In the times that shield tech improves beyond this point, there really is no reason to fly that large of a target in a dogfight, so the fighters are smaller. Anyway, just an observation.

Haesslich said:
As noted before, the Scimitar is a pure-vacuum fighter . . .
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Not if you subscribe to WCATV ;). I'm sure I'm about to hear the "missile explosion overpressure" comment Halcyon makes in WC1 or its add-ons. We just have to assume that the Scim can be configured in some way for atmospheric flight.

If you are wanting to see some other discussions/listings of pre-WC1 tech, just search for it on the forums. I came up with this little jewel.

C-ya
 
Hey thanks everyone for the great info. I'm still hitting a wall on what these ships actually look like. Does anyone care to speculate on what they look like? I know theres no cannon source on this, but I suppose general opinion is the best we can come up with.

I know a few things.

(1) The hurricane is the contemporary of the Scim, so it must bear some resemblance.

(2) The Hornet is a light fighter from the same era as most Pre WC1 fighters, so other might bear a superficial resemblance to it. Just like the Ferret, Epee, and Talon all share similar looks. (Upslung wings and slender cockpits)

Based on this info I could probably get a decent start. Anyone care to offer up any other opinions?
 
There's no real guidelines to modeling pre-WC1 ships - even near-contemporaries like the Scim' and Rapier I look totally different, and none of the WC1 ships look terribly similar. About the only things they have in common are wings and vertical stabilizers (and the Scimitar lacks even those). Most of them have two engines, and none of them are overly ornate.

(BTW, "cannon" is spelled canon.)
 
I have heard the shield/weapon seesaw idea before and I can't say that it entirely makes sense. Say you've got a WC2 era capship that is impervious to the fighter mounted guns of the day. According to theory, by WC3 the guns have advanced to the point where they will now cut through the ship's phase shields. If this were the case, wouldn't the new super mass drivers etc. now punch through one side of an enemy fighter and out the other? If gun power was to increase drastically enough to overcome the power plant of a battleship, how could fighter based defenses possibly keep up?
 
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