Privateer Cap ship

frostytheplebe said:
Also, what you mentioned was true about decoming ships with low survivability... i think thats why the Talon was retired... why they were sold to pirates instead of scrapped though is beyond me...
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We don't actually know anything about the Talon's service history, officially (Standoff provides a few lines of backstory for the Talon, but it's all made up by us). For all we know, it could very well have been specifically designed for the role which it serves in Priv - as a second-line Militia fighter. Of course, Standoff's explanation is equally possible, but the point is that it's all just speculation.

On the other hand, we do know that the sale of Talons to Retros and pirates is not something... you know, intentional :p. It was, according to the Priv manual, a fairly large corruption affair involving the governor of Gemini Sector. Heck, we even have a bounty-hunt mission against that governor during Priv (or was it in RF?).
 
Bandit LOAF said:
Why don't *any* of the Privateer ships appear in WC3? It takes place at the same time!
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I always assumed it was because most of the ships in WC Privateer were not warships but actually merchant vessels or Pirate ships... also the ships that were part of the Victory Carrier Group all appeared to be from the same era AKA really old. The Ajax, coventry, and Sheffield were all ships that were terribly out of date in comparison to the Exeters and Waterloos.

If what you said was true about the destroyer... then good tactics dictate that those would be on the front lines conducting raids on enemy shipping lanes and fleets, while the older ones hold back with the carriers and provide defensive support in conjuction with the fighter squadrons, and one or two of the ships do appear in the "front line" games. The Broadsword... i always held my breath when that came flying by... if it opened fire on me... i was screwed!

BTW, Loaf is each fighter squadron painted different depending on the Cap ship they fly from? I heard some talk of fighters sporting the Concordias colors. Plus the Broadsword in WC Privateer was painted closer to Victory colors then Concordia colors.
 
frostytheplebe said:
BTW, Loaf is each fighter squadron painted different depending on the Cap ship they fly from? I heard some talk of fighters sporting the Concordias colors. Plus the Broadsword in WC Privateer was painted closer to Victory colors then Concordia colors.
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I think it's more dependent on the squadron markings than the cap-ship or fleet colors. The Rapier's lighting bolt and the Broadsword's colored stripes are unique squadron markings... no other squad crafts in the fleet should have the exact same paint scheme... I think.
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One thing I never understood is the supply difficulties in having four or five different types of fighter designed for the same job at the same time, serving off of mobile platforms (starships).... presumably, if you have Arrows, Ferrets, Hornets, Epee's etc. all in service at the same time, doing the same job, I would think you would have a logistics nightmare in terms of adequately supplying parts if you are jumping all over the galaxy... your Epees get dinged up? You better hope that the next supplies you run into has Epee parts and not Hornet parts. That's the only thing that really bothered me about the whole idea of crazy old fighters being upgraded and serving contemporaneously with newer fighters.

It sounds like it would be a similar situation you'd have with keeping 1980's Ferrari's running- relatively, they are totally cheap, but only because no one can find parts for them.
 
On the other hand, we don't know how much interoperability of replacement parts there is. For all we know, a lot of the components of one model might be able to be plugged into another ship type completely.
 
Death said:
On the other hand, we don't know how much interoperability of replacement parts there is. For all we know, a lot of the components of one model might be able to be plugged into another ship type completely.
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That is a good point, and we might recall from the WC4 novel that Pliers mentions to Blair that the Rapier and T-bold use the same style wing strut, so that interchangablility is not out of the question.

Regarding the parts availability, it is more likely that carriers will largely only carry on style of light, medium, and heavy fighter at a time. This is all we see in the games, for instance the Victory only uses Arrows as it's light fighter, while the Concordia uses Epee's.

Logistically, it would make it easier because resupplying the Victory will mean sending just certain parts, and not having to worry about a bunch of diffferent fighter designs.
 
Actually, interchangeability is not only not out of the question but it is actually implied.

Think about it for a second.. ever have any trouble getting your cooling unit MK II from your tarsus to fit in your galaxy?
 
NinjaLA said:
Actually, interchangeability is not only not out of the question but it is actually implied.

Think about it for a second.. ever have any trouble getting your cooling unit MK II from your tarsus to fit in your galaxy?
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Those arent fighters, those are light transports designed to be interchangable.
 
OF course, we're talking about the 27th century, but there is no reason why those factors should have changed. I don't question the "truth" of that fact within the games, I won't dispute it as a part of the canon, but it is interesting that writers had the extra effort of making the fighters and bombers so damned old, because, otherwise, most people would assume that the Arrow, Sabre, Broadsword, Hellcat, and so on are fairly recent ships, instead of ancient machines.
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Look at the whole of the thing with fresh eyes - though *we're* flying decade-old Hellcats, there *is* a new generation of fighters entering service all the time... in WC4, for instance, Crossbows, Morningstars, Banshees, Wraiths and such are *new* - we just don't experience that directly.

BTW, Loaf is each fighter squadron painted different depending on the Cap ship they fly from? I heard some talk of fighters sporting the Concordias colors. Plus the Broadsword in WC Privateer was painted closer to Victory colors then Concordia colors.
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No, there are probably some general paint schemes based on theater of operations... and then individual markings that change from ship to ship and squadron to squadron.


One thing I never understood is the supply difficulties in having four or five different types of fighter designed for the same job at the same time, serving off of mobile platforms (starships).... presumably, if you have Arrows, Ferrets, Hornets, Epee's etc. all in service at the same time, doing the same job, I would think you would have a logistics nightmare in terms of adequately supplying parts if you are jumping all over the galaxy... your Epees get dinged up? You better hope that the next supplies you run into has Epee parts and not Hornet parts. That's the only thing that really bothered me about the whole idea of crazy old fighters being upgraded and serving contemporaneously with newer fighters.
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They already pointed out that many designs are interchangable in terms of parts... but also consider that these ships *aren't* for the same roles. *We* ploay the game as if we have to kill everything with our little fighter, but the war effort probably isn't built around that ability.

Things like Ferrets may have five times the range of an Epee, which may be a heck of a lot easier to load for a carrier launch... or something. There's all kinds of ship-specific abilities that just won't effect how we play the game.

Those arent fighters, those are light transports designed to be interchangable.
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The Privateer classifications are 'Heavy Fighter', 'Scout', 'Gunship' and 'Ship'. :)
 
Dyret said:
Heh, how do you know what they're designed to be? :p
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I simply jumped at what i felt was an obvious conclusion, as i've never really seen fighters being customized (cept in WC4 talking to pliers). I always assumed that the privateer ships were designed to be reconfigured to perform multiple tasks: Bounty Hunting, cargo runs, etc.
 
frostytheplebe said:
Well the Raptor is a heavy fighter, the Rapier was medium... medium fighters are designed for specific tasks. They're designed to do a specific job, medium fighters arent supposed to be stronger then Heavy fighters. When the Epee came out... you wouldnt want that to be stronger then a saber.
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Certainly, but the normal progression in this kind of game is that a medium fighter has weapons, defenses, and maneuverability in between the light and heavy fighters. However, the Scimitar not only has weaker weapons, armor, and shields than the Raptor (which is ok since it's a medium fighter), but it is also SLOWER than the Raptor. The being slower than the heavier fighter is the thing that hurts it. If it were the Scimitar that cruised at 400 and the Raptor that cruised at 360 instead of the reverse, then the two would be more balanced against each other.
 
Ijuin said:
Certainly, but the normal progression in this kind of game is that a medium fighter has weapons, defenses, and maneuverability in between the light and heavy fighters. However, the Scimitar not only has weaker weapons, armor, and shields than the Raptor (which is ok since it's a medium fighter), but it is also SLOWER than the Raptor. The being slower than the heavier fighter is the thing that hurts it. If it were the Scimitar that cruised at 400 and the Raptor that cruised at 360 instead of the reverse, then the two would be more balanced against each other.
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Well, thats what sucks about getting old... theres always gonna be a younger dog that can do the job better...
 
Bandit LOAF said:
in WC4, for instance, Crossbows, Morningstars, Banshees, Wraiths and such are *new* - we just don't experience that directly.
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True, and the UBW can even manage to aquire some fighter-based tac nukes, that on WC2 were (at least to the player) exclusive to the Morningstar.

Anyhow, how old are the UBW fighters we see in the game?
 
Delance said:
True, and the UBW can even manage to aquire some fighter-based tac nukes, that on WC2 were (at least to the player) exclusive to the Morningstar.

Anyhow, how old are the UBW fighters we see in the game?
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The Mace missiles in WC4 are only available if you go to Speradon. I forget which mission there gives you the Mace however.

I think the reason we don't see every fighter mount tons of tac-nukes is because imagine a wing of fighters in combat and someone let's loose with the nuke and some of your wingmen are too close. The risk of destroying friendlies is pretty high and it probably outweighs the benefits of having basically a saturation weapon.

The UBW fighters have basically no back story. There was just a thread about this within the last month IIRC.
 
True, and the UBW can even manage to aquire some fighter-based tac nukes, that on WC2 were (at least to the player) exclusive to the Morningstar.
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The Mace is a new weapon in Special Operations 2, being tested for the first time om the Morningstar. Presumably it (eventually) made it into Confed's inventory in some for or another... you get it in WC4 by flying the 'capture the carrier' mission in Speradon.

Anyhow, how old are the UBW fighters we see in the game?
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No one knows, they have no backstory at all. The Avenger shows up on Wing Commander Academy (2654, unnamed), but that's the only appearance outside of WC4 for any of them.
 
However, it does appear that the Vindicator was the "standard jack-of-all-trades" fighter designed for militia use, and the others were more or less improvised.
 
Ijuin said:
However, it does appear that the Vindicator was the "standard jack-of-all-trades" fighter designed for militia use
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Or maybe it was an atmospheric interceptor upgraded over time. It wasn't mentioned in the novelization and there was not meaningful background text in the manual, official guide or website, so we don't know much more than that it was developed by Murphy Labs. It could have been designed for anything.
 
Dundradal said:
The Mace missiles in WC4 are only available if you go to Speradon. I forget which mission there gives you the Mace however.

I think the reason we don't see every fighter mount tons of tac-nukes is because imagine a wing of fighters in combat and someone let's loose with the nuke and some of your wingmen are too close. The risk of destroying friendlies is pretty high and it probably outweighs the benefits of having basically a saturation weapon.
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I dunno... at the speeds at which WC fighters are moving, nukes theoretically shouldn't be effective as an area weapon. I know there were times when having four of those suckers hanging off my Broadsword would have turned a tricky strike into a cakewalk. In fact, an ImRec seeker mounted to the Mace missile would've made anti-ship missions so much easier!
 
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