Ships of the Black Lance

N

Nep Parth

Spaceman
Since reading the WC4 novel, I've been a bit curious of the technology used by the Black Lance, specifically.

What ships, bases and support craft did the Black Lance, exclusively (excluding the craft used by the Intrepid), use? What were the statistics of these craft, and how did they vary/differ from their Confederation contemporaries/counterparts?

Besides that, what innovations in technology did the Black Lance utilize? How were they improvements over the Confed technology of the time?
 
IIRC, the only new bits of technology that the Black Lance had at their disposal were Lances and the Flashpaks. All other ships that the BL used, like the Black Hellcats, were slightly upgraded Black Ops versions of the fighters used by ConFleet.
 
Seems to me that the BL basically just got suped up versions of Confed's newest things, and maybe a perk here or there. Other than the bases and things that they used I don't think they had very superior equipment. (Except that their flagship was the Vessuvius, and it seemed the St. Helens was kinda the one for the basic Confed/BW forces.) That seemed about it to me.

Although I am thinking of something from that game now, and when you bring down the jamming system, I forget what system that field was in, does it seem wierd to anyone that the starbase in front of the Intrepid appeared? I can understand if it was cloaked from the sensors, just seemed to me that their they knew the Intrepid was there and should have launched an assault (they weren't affected by the jamming) or that jamming gave them a damn good cloaking device! I would expect it was just hidden from sensors, but that makes me wonder why they didn't attack the Intrepid earlier.
 
Yep, it seemed that the Dragons and the Flashpaks were the only real improved hardware the Black Lance had, cept for the jamming equipment. Had there been more time, the St. Helens would have been equal to the Vesuvius, but wasnt completed as it should have been. (reference to WCIV)

RFB
 
The Black Lance was pretty large. In the one bad ending where Tolywn sends the fleet to Earth, we see a good many ships. So i'm sure a bunch of the ships were tweaked to hell. I would imagine the BL wouldn't have the same safety specs and such as Confed would. The Lance might be able to jack up the efficiency of their guns with a slight risk of overloading. Things like that.
 
The Project had plenty of ships... including --

"Black" Hellcats, Arrows and Lances... and standard model Longbows, Excaliburs, Banshees and Avengers.

They had a few special capships, too -- including the base at Axius, the cloaked base at Peleus and the cloakable transport...
 
I don't remember the Black Lance having Excals. IIRC, the Excal wasn't put into mass production until after the Black Lance incident. But then again, this wouldn't be the first time I was wrong. :)
 
No, Excals were in production circa WC4... and the Black Lance hired mercenaries to fly them (at Peleus).
 
Originally posted by Greywolf
I don't remember the Black Lance having Excals. IIRC, the Excal wasn't put into mass production until after the Black Lance incident. But then again, this wouldn't be the first time I was wrong. :)
Click to expand...

The Excaliburs encountered in Peleus were owned by the Project. The pilots (like Bean, the barfly from Nephele, where Maniac and Blair met) were hired by the Project, but weren't of the Project.
 
Originally posted by Ladiesman^
The Black Lance was pretty large. In the one bad ending where Tolywn sends the fleet to Earth, we see a good many ships.
Click to expand...
I believe they're mostly Confed ships (we see a few Concordia carriers, IIRC) since Tolwyn had convinced Confed to go to war against the BWU.
 
Originally posted by Skyfire
(...)
Although I am thinking of something from that game now, and when you bring down the jamming system, I forget what system that field was in, does it seem wierd to anyone that the starbase in front of the Intrepid appeared? I can understand if it was cloaked from the sensors, just seemed to me that their they knew the Intrepid was there and should have launched an assault (they weren't affected by the jamming) or that jamming gave them a damn good cloaking device! I would expect it was just hidden from sensors, but that makes me wonder why they didn't attack the Intrepid earlier.
Click to expand...
Yes, it seemed a bit strange to me as well. Especially that it appears as if Tolwyn was alone on that station. But, wait, wasn't the sation abandoned or sth...?
 
Were these devices developed under Confed or the Black Lance? Or were these devices sort of a combination of Confeds research, and taken by the Black Lance and further developed?
The devices in question would be the following:

The cloak at the base
The jamming equipment
The Flashpak
The Dragon/Lance fighters
The bio-weapons (canisters)
The Axius superbase

RFB
 
From what I could tell...

... the BL equipment was, for the most part, just outgrowths of Confederation Black Ops projects. Examples include the Vesuvius' armor (immune to Flash-Paks), Flash-Paks (taken from a Kilrathi program to develop light ship-killers), the Dragon fighters (extension of the Excalibur program), the jammer ships and cloaks for bases, and the GE program (Seether and company). The only really 'new' things were perhaps the bioconvergence weapons used on Telamon. Outside of that, just about everything else (Hellcats, etc) were merely applications of war-era Confed Black Ops programs, taken to their completion.
 
It's all just a development of black ops stuff -- heck, it *is* black ops stuff.

The cloaks were just a larger version of the existing Blackfish device... the Lance was a spinoff of the Excalibur program... the FlashPak was just another weapon... the Axius base existed during the war. Dr. Brody developed the bio-weapons... and so forth.
 
Originally posted by Wedge009
Originally posted by Ladiesman^
The Black Lance was pretty large. In the one bad ending where Tolywn sends the fleet to Earth, we see a good many ships.
Click to expand...
I believe they're mostly Confed ships (we see a few Concordia carriers, IIRC) since Tolwyn had convinced Confed to go to war against the BWU.
Click to expand...

But when you see all those ships, isn't he heading for Earth? I don't think he could have conviced Confed to invade Earth...

Although, wouldn't Tolywn and some of the other higherups be able to move around resources and such? So Tolywn could have just pretty much assigned a nice heafty amount of soldiers to the Project and they wouldn't have even really known what they were doing. Just give some orders along the lines "Go destroy that ship!", when they ask why, just say "Classified". What are the soldiers gonna do, say no?

I personally think the Project was much larger than any one had thought even after it was over. I'd bet there are plenty of command types still in Confed who were part of the project but never caught. Maybe some of them are still members of the Project. I'd love to see a new novel, game, something about a small resurgance of the Black Lance. But the thing is they aren't like they were before, parading around in black uniforms and special ships. They're more like the Mandarins or Pilgrims, tearing Confed apart the inside for their own gain. You couldn't know if you could trust someone, or if they would stab you in the back.
 
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