Question about the stats.

A ship doesen't necesarly have to be aerodynamic to be able to fly in atmosphere. We know the Tarawa can land on a planet, the 'Claw can, the Kilrathi carrier, cruiser and destroyer from WC3 loosing ending are in Earth's atmosphere.... So we know that at least some capships can. Also, if a capship can fly in the atmosphere, than you'd think that it would be capable of landing on a planet.
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A good soldier is not the one who die for his country, it's the one who makes his enemy die for his.
Gen. Patton
 
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Aerodynamics have little affect in WC... Avengers can fly in the atmosphere
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(WCA). And yes, I mean that most capital ships can land in atmospheres. Hell, Fralthra are *built* in an atmosphere.

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Long live the Confederation,
Ben "Bandit" Lesnick
( loaf@wcnews.com - 302228)

The Wing Commander CIC

"You go, LOAF! Get some!" -JPG
 
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I doubt any ship with a strut pod on the centerline or near that point would easily tip over.

Besides that, many ships like the dreadnought and ships with long wings would sag in planetary gravity. ships like tarawa are less likely to do so because their designs are much more rigid.

A kamekh could land for instance, but the wings would likely bend or collapse from supporting the weight of the hull. The tiger's claw could land it it had a special docking facility, otherwise landing on com/sensor array could be rather damaging.

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Don't look conspicuous-it draws fire.
 
Oh so everyone reads my X-wing comment and ignores the rest.....figures.

Anyway did WC ships have something like a "repulsorlift"? Otherwise no matter how powerful a ship's drives are, I doubt they would be able to keep a ship alift for long...(especially seeing how non aerodynamic many are)
 
It's depressing how you've got an answer for everything, LOAF
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. It's even more depressing how the answer usually involves something along the lines of "physics are ignored in WC". But hell, if I wanted a game with real physics, I wouldna be here, would I
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? All right, so where does it say that Fralthra are built planetside?

Unrelated question: Could you tell me when the Jrathek first came into service (I know we first saw it in Academy, but I don't have that one). As in, what date, where - if possible, and anything else about it (except the stats... I've got those).

Earthworm: Atmospheric flight does not necessarily mean atmospheric landing. A lot of those ships have little thingies sticking out all over the place, and would indeed break half of them while landing.

Nob: We read your comments... But there wasn't much to reply to in them.
 
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WC ships *do* have Star Wars esque 'repulsors', according to the Authorized (not the official) WC3 Guide. This goes with the physics comment, too
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End Run details the location of a Kilrathi Cruiser Construction Facility.

The Jrathek appears in Academy (2668), but it is *not* in service then -- it's just a simulation based on the projected enemy ship. The fighter enters service (limited) in 2669.



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Long live the Confederation,
Ben "Bandit" Lesnick
( loaf@wcnews.com - 302228)

The Wing Commander CIC

"You go, LOAF! Get some!" -JPG
 
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Has anyone considered the possibility of cap ships having some sort of landing gear that is retracted during flight
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?
Even the Voyager can go planetside without rolling over (although THAT would be a sight I'd like to see!
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No one will hear your cry of death in the void of space


[This message has been edited by Nighthawk (edited February 18, 2000).]
 
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When you say limited, does that mean only onboard the Shiraak? Dang. It's one of my favourite Killie ships. I wish it had appeared more often. But then, it probably wouldn't have looked very good in WC 3, since its shape would've been messed up completely.
 
umm Say quick unrelated question....why were all the fighters in Armada so much faster than in previous games(I mean jeez the Arrow was what? 795KPS at top speed?) was it to provide variety or what's the "canon" reason for it?(just seems odd how the "arrowII" in WC3 is a lot slower than it's earlier counterpart).

Back to whatever topic this thread has become
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. I sorta doubt capships would WANT to land planetside unless for emergencies or to dock at a special installation, considering they're mostly built for space combat. It'd be like using an aircraft as a land roving vehicle, it'll get you places, but not quickly nor efficiently. Drop ships and the like would be more useful for that.

Oh well. BTW what was Confed's rationale for building Concordia class carriers after the advent of the Bengal and Confederation classes? Was it simply due to the fact that they were "against the wall" and that the Concordias could be built quicker than the strike carriers or dreadnaughts?(BTW this is just asking a conjectural question based off the comment that all "fleet carriers" are Concordias). Or was there a special reason why Confederation class dreadnaughts and Bengal class Strike carriers never caught on as main stream ships(Other than "engine" reasons in the games. The WC4 engine probably couldn't handle something like the Confed or Bengal, and hope to have them look decent at an acceptable frame rate...) like the destruction of their main shipyards or something? Just curious.(As the Concordia class seem to be far inferior ships in everything from firepower, to fighter compliment to armor.)

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"I hope you make it, Tarkington. Just don't pull the handle till after we've hit. Promise me."
"I'm behind you all the way CAG..."
-Captain Jacob Lee "Coolhand" Grafton, and Lieutenant Robert "Toad" Tarkington, Final Flight
 
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hi there!
just to mention this:
any kind of nihilating-gravity-device, which was talked about here, is not necessarily ignorating physics. there are tests in which a half-conducting material is lowering the gravity above of it....
(this is not from me, but i heard of various experiments trying to verify this up to now "not seriously reproduceable" experiment, although this doesnnot sound like a scientific experiment to me, which has to be reproduceable...)
 
I don't know about the "canon" reason, but note that Armada is not really that much earlier than WC 3. The Lexington (provided that it is the special heavy carrier mentioned in the timeline) leaves Goddard Transfer Station on 2669.011, while Blair comes aboard the Victory around 2669.220. And I think that the Arrows (and all other ships onboard the Lexington) were experimental variants of existing designs (only the Banshee and the Phantom are totally new/unused in other WCs). Note that the Armada Arrow carries much less armament than the WC 3 Arrow (and compare their weights... incredible difference. I don't know how they cut it down so much). Maybe that explains its speed.

I agree about Capships not wanting to actually land. Why waste the time?

The Confederation class would probably have been quite costly because of the PTC, and since the PTC was retired in 2665 (though the TCS Concordia used it in 2667
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), they became kinda useless. I remember somebody saying that the Concordia Class is actually based on the Confederation Class, with the PTC removed and the flight deck covered?
I don't know about the Bengals though. Maybe they too, were too costly? Of course, all those are just "canon" excuses to cover up the fact that the WC 3 polygon engine couldn't handle the designs
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, and the strange urge that the designers have to put us on a different ship every game.
 
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Good topic...

The Concordia class carriers exist for one simple reason -- they were there first. In a universe where it takes five years to set up a carrier construction facility, the ability of the Confederation to pop out a new Concordia every year is a godsend.

As for the Jrathek, I don't mean just on the Shiraak... just that it never entered full service, since we won the war that year -- like the Vatari. Furthermore, if it looked good in Armada it could have looked good in Wing III, since the Armada engine was the proto-WC3 engine.

The fighters in Armada are so much quicker due to their lower weights and missile loads. I mean the Arrow has like two Darts, total.

Confederation class ships never caught on because their PTC's had the nasty habit of blowing up, and production was ceased in '65. Note that there are at least a dozen Bengals known...

The Concordia and Tiger's Claw both had nice straight lines, so they could have been done in the WC3/4 engine...

The Banshee and Phantom may be further variants of SWC ships...
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The Arrow in Armada may well be the early Arrow seen on WCA, too... which would explain its horrible loadout.

Capships will land on a planet because that's where they can take on supplies and be repaired -- the shipyards on both the moons of Earth and Kilrah are good examples
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The Concordia class carriers are not offshoots of the Confederation class ships... since they existed some 20 years before
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Long live the Confederation,
Ben "Bandit" Lesnick
( loaf@wcnews.com - 302228)

The Wing Commander CIC

"You go, LOAF! Get some!" -JPG
 
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Hey, at least I got some of those right
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What's the Vatari? Is it a fighter that only appears in books, or something like that?

I know that Armada used the proto-WC3 engine, but there are some differences. I'm no expert on 3D game engines... it just looks to me like the fighters in Armada have more rounded shapes... having just taken another look at the Jrathek (the pic you have in the Ships 'Base is so damned small), I guess that it could be done... But why do Armada ships look so much better than WC 3?
Merde, but I do not understand those two
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There are still Bengals out there? Didn't somebody say something about Confed having like three carriers after BoT? Or have I been hearing things again?
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The 'Claw and the Concordia also had a lot of details which would've had to be simplified. While they could be done (HCl's conversion of the 'Claw to WCP proves that), they just wouldn't look the same.

The SWS ships were actually WC 1 ships (same names, same stats, just different looks... much different).

I'd think starbases would be much better for supplies (but admittedly not repairs; though that could also be done).

Finally, the Concordia carriers... I'm not even touching this one
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. I wish I could remember where I heard the "offshoot" thing, so I could yell at the person who said it
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.
 
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The Vatari was a new Kilrathi heavy fighter that was to enter service at the very end of the war & serve off the Hakaga class ships.

A close examination of the Jrathek or any other rounded Armada ships (use the ship viewer in Armada) will reveal that it is very non-rounded. Armada was done in a lower resolution than WCIII, and this fact apparently becomes more apparent when you raise the res -- so they went with onlny definately straight lines.

There are still Bengals. The three carriers after the Battle of Terra are because the fleet had been taken offline after the armistice -- not because they'd been destroyed.

The 'Claw had very, very little detail
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HCl's conversion is sucky because Wizzy did the model instead of someone competant
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The reference to the SWC ships was, of course, because the Banshee and Phantom share 3D models with them. And for the record, they *do* have different stats.
 
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It's actually quite neat how they "cheat" to make the ships look better
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. When you first look at some of those ships, you could almost swear they're rounded.

For no particular reason, is the Kipling still around?

When you say the SWC ships had different stats, do you mean they had different stats to the Banshee and the Phantom (a fact which I have never disputed), or than the original WC ships? Because I (vaguely) remember looking at the SWC manual, and the stats were the same... I think... but then, the manual was in French. All those lessons of French in high school, and I still only understood the numbers
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We don't know what happened to the Kipling.

I meant that the stats between the SWC Rapier and the WC1 Rapier are different, similarly for the rest of the WC1 ships. It's usually a matter of a greater number of missiles. I don't have my SWC manual in Austin yet, so I can't quote exactly at this time.



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Long live the Confederation,
Ben "Bandit" Lesnick
( loaf@wcnews.com - 302228)

The Wing Commander CIC

"You go, LOAF! Get some!" -JPG
 
What I don't get is why did Confed retire the PTC because of failures?

Concordia shot at four ships that I know of and all that happened was the reactor was slightly damaged, not an issue until it is fired again while the damage exists.

Concordia even blasted two Fralthra within five minutes. My opinion is they didn't want to put a large ship like that in WC3, with a reasonable amount of detail, and having it shoot off that PTC would cost money with SFX. Besides that, the loss of at least four Confederations made them very uncommon, since several might be guarding Earth.

It is possible that they just wanted to save money using a high-detail ship model they already had, the Ranger, and gave it different paint.

I wonder what the mass of Concordias is. Confederation is 73000 and rangers are 28000.
Perhaps between 28000 and 50000?


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Don't look conspicuous-it draws fire.
 
"What I don't get is why did Confed retire the PTC because of failures?"

Confed retired the PTC because of failurs
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But they didn't *retire* all Confederation class ships, they just stopped producing more.

I don't see why such a weapon would cost any money to show with SFX -- since almost everything was 3D (and in-game it's just hand done stuff). The plot of WC3 just didn't involve the PTC.

And to note, they already had a high detail Concordia model. All the WC2 ships were done in full 3D and then turned into bitmaps later.
 
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Those are completely different concepts... the PTC didn't work in concept. It's not that it's getting damaged and not working, it's that the PTC itself has a design flaw... consider it like taking a car to the gas station with a flat tire.

If it's just been damaged (like you mentioned above) I can say "Give me a new tire, please" and they do and I'm fine.

But I can't go to the gas station and go "Please give me tires that make the car fly", because there's no such thing. Which is akin to making the PTC automatically work.

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Long live the Confederation,
Ben "Bandit" Lesnick
( loaf@wcnews.com - 302228)

The Wing Commander CIC

"You go, LOAF! Get some!" -JPG
 
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