WC4 question

Bearcats seem like an unneccessary development considering in 2669 we just got the excalibur which is able to handle itself in any situation. I didn't mind flying them in WC4 and on some missions they can be quite fun. I mean come on now 4 tachyons never did me wrong...
 
Dundradal said:
Bearcats seem like an unneccessary development considering in 2669 we just got the excalibur which is able to handle itself in any situation. I didn't mind flying them in WC4 and on some missions they can be quite fun. I mean come on now 4 tachyons never did me wrong...
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If you want an in-universe answer, it could be the logical step toward the post-war, specialized WCP fighters. The Excal is a heavy fighter/medium strike craft. The Bearcat is a lighter, faster (though more heavily armored thanks to post war refinements) pure air superiority dogfighter (I tend to think it probably replaced the Hellcats and Arrows for a while before the Piranha and Panther came online - comparable to the host of short lived jet fighters the US produced in the late 50's/early 60's before the advent of the 'modern' long-lived fighter jets)

C-ya
 
Dundradal said:
Bearcats seem like an unneccessary development considering in 2669 we just got the excalibur which is able to handle itself in any situation. I didn't mind flying them in WC4 and on some missions they can be quite fun. I mean come on now 4 tachyons never did me wrong...
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The Excalibur is from the Special Ops budget, as Tolwyn said in the WC4 novel. Shady and covert, and all of that black-ops stuff. I'm betting that Tolwyn kept most of the Excaliburs to himself after the War, using it to develop the Dragons (which the Excals are the prototypes for) and to give to people loyal to "The Project".

The Bearcat is 100% apple-pie-and-fourth-of-July, developed by the legitimate people of BuWeaps and BuShips as a regular "deck fighter".
 
By WCSO, however, the Excalibur is a pretty much common ship, and there's not a lot of Bearcats around, so it appear the former is the one that got into mass production.
 
Delance said:
By WCSO, however, the Excalibur is a pretty much common ship, and there's not a lot of Bearcats around, so it appear the former is the one that got into mass production.
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Also a good point, which can be explained by the fact that something happened concerning its production after WC4 and before SO. Afterall, it is a period of 8 years.
 
Eh, the Excaliburs (and T-Bolts) we see in Secret Ops belong to second tier and Home Defense units... it's certainly possible that Bearcats, which do seem to embody the modern 'pure space superiority' design concept, are still serving with front line units.
 
I'm with LOAF - All we ever see in SO are second echelon units, and the brand new Midway. Between these two there is an entire galaxy of Space Force to fill.
 
We see excals in WC4 at several points as well. Although they are not as common as other ships. I would agree that at some point the excal must of had some kind of mass production run.
 
I don't see why the Excalibur wouldn't be mass produced... we see them throughout Secret Ops.
 
If memory serves, didn't the Bearcat employ a new type of ion engine, which proved to be unreliable (similar story as with the Morningstar project)? I don't have the novel here to confirm, but I seem to recall something of that nature.

All I know, is that the Bearcat was fast, agile, and packed a punch. It's only real downside was that its light Tachyons were placed far out on the wingtips, which made bringing all four to bear on a target at close range all but impossible. But it's a fun ship in which to fly and fight.
 
That was the Aces Club "for the love of God stop writing about Bearcat pilots" explanation. :) Bearcats don't show up in the WCIV novel (or anywhere else, after WCIV).
 
Oh, well, okay. Knew I heard it somewhere. :)

Still a very nice craft to fly. Shame it didn't hang around longer in the later games.
 
Yeah, it was a lot of fun to fly - looked beautiful, too.

(I was looking through the WCIV bug report the other day, and found a playtester complaining that the guns were too far apart... some other team member replied saying it was supposed to be that way.)
 
That's interesting cuz I used to kind of think the same thing. All the guns are mounted almost at the end of the wingtips and aren't angled in so that they intersect in front of the fighter. Sometimes a skinny fighter could actually roll through the salvos.
 
When you think of it, considering that the Bearcat had auto-tracking systems, it would have been reasonable to put the light tachyons at the wingtips, so it'll have the widest "fields of fire" that the rotating gymbals can lock on to. Which means a larger area for the guns to track and shoot at.
 
The auto targeting (which you can turn off) plus the strange gun mount makes it hard to hit fighters. It's not precise, what it should be. I don’t know, I think the Vindicator or the Excalibur were more challenging opponents on WC4.
 
I actually hated the Bearcat. I mean, it was no Hellcat V but I just had no fun flying her.
 
I always just buzzing around in the bearcat, it was one of the more fun ships to fly in WC...
 
Why would the Excal be in the second-rate units while the Bearcat was in the first-rate ones? even though the Excal is less focused and more general-pupose, it was still stronger than the 'Cat overall.
 
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