What Happened to the dragon

Viper61 said:
How the hell are you extrapolating length from mass? I can take something made from steel and something made from aluminum that the same size and the one made from steel will be much more massive.

C-ya

The problem is that it also assumes the Dragon is a homogenous material, of equal density and composition throughout... which is a blatantly false idea.
 
As for how they managed to fit the Dragons onto the Intrepid's flight deck along with the other fighters, in the novel, it is shown that they pretty much take up the whole flight deck to the point where they only have room to launch one at a time--to do the magnum launch in Speradon, they had to cut the gravity and let the fighters all drift out of the hangar at once.
 
I'm willing to bet that even though they said they were mothballing or scrappng the Dragons ConFleet probably kept some around. Something for their spec-ops boys to use.

Something like that would be great for anti-piracy, long range covert surveilence and the ocassional assasination-oops, "targeted killing." Criminals might not have much fear of ConFleet regulars-I mean how often can they give every civilian ship a proper escort, what with the budget cuts and such? But the thought of a Dragon decloaking on their six would be enough to make most pirats soil their flight-suits.

And he best part is you'd only have to fly a few missions, leave a couple survivors so the word gets out.

Hey, why scrap something that cost you as much as a destroyer to make? The damn thing's already paid for.
 
Ender said:
I'm willing to bet that even though they said they were mothballing or scrappng the Dragons ConFleet probably kept some around. Something for their spec-ops boys to use.

Something like that would be great for anti-piracy, long range covert surveilence and the ocassional assasination-oops, "targeted killing." Criminals might not have much fear of ConFleet regulars-I mean how often can they give every civilian ship a proper escort, what with the budget cuts and such? But the thought of a Dragon decloaking on their six would be enough to make most pirats soil their flight-suits.

And he best part is you'd only have to fly a few missions, leave a couple survivors so the word gets out.

Hey, why scrap something that cost you as much as a destroyer to make? The damn thing's already paid for.

Why do politicians scrap ANY project? Politics.

I'm not sure I'd want to be known as the 'Senator who Voted For Using Dragons' in the Confederation senate. Remember, those people whore themselves out for votes; being known as the person who kept that program active, even if it makes sense, would probably be a political death sentence.

Especially as, by the time of WCP, we've got fighters with nearly equivalent capabilities anyways (Vampires and Shrikes come to mind), thanks to the design work pioneered by the Dragon project.
 
this is why i would never be a politition, there all tards......... sure prophercy era has equivelent fighters but even there prophercy equivilents are not as good. id take a dragon over a vamp and 3 wingman anyday.

thats why i dont like political shit, it shouldnt be in games anyway especilally games based in 700 years. they shouldnt be worried about the dragons they should be worried about replacing the clocking crystals.

my god though scrapping a fleet of dragons for "political" reasons its stupid they shouldnt be worriyng about peoples veiws sometimes people dont have a clue as to what they want anyway.......i vote monarcy anyday over democracy, at least things get done and its not debated to death
 
It's actually relieving that politics as many other things are influencing things in the WC universe. That creates a more lively and "real" background of the game. In my oppinion, such things happening in the background make a game more interesting. But if you want a static universe without any interesting things happen, there are enough other games than WC that fit into this slot.

And stop talking about politics, you have apparently no clue about this subject.
 
Lynx said:
It's actually relieving that politics as many other things are influencing things in the WC universe. That creates a more lively and "real" background of the game. In my oppinion, such things happening in the background make a game more interesting. But if you want a static universe without any interesting things happen, there are enough other games than WC that fit into this slot.

And stop talking about politics, you have apparently no clue about this subject.

Remember how WC4 was ultimately a game about politics and conspiracies - Tolwyn was ready to use politics to enact the first step of a conspiracy to remake mankind, after watching politicians screw around for decades and nearly kill Earth through the False Armistice.

First they fucked around (on screen) in Action Stations, by letting the Kilrathi get away with raiding Confed colonies for YEARS. They were short of carriers, their fighters were outdated, and they had no ability to defend their borders because a military was expensive and politicians would have rather used than money to line their own pockets rather than provide for the defense of their constituents.

Next they blamed the military for lack of progress in the war, due to a lack of carriers and other equipment, despite having voted down any appropriations to build shipyards. Admiral Banbridge commented bitterly on that in Fleet Action, which itself was driven by politics - the ambitions of Jamison and others led to the raid by the Hakaga fleet which devastated a dozen Inner World colonies along with God knows how many outer world ones. The Fleet (already reduced in numbers because shipyards couldn't keep up with losses) was cut in half during the few months of peacetime, and if it wasn't for maneuvering on the parts of the JCS and the Landreich, Earth would've been a smoking, irradiated ruin.

False Colors: Confed let the Kilrathi get away with virtual murder, because they didn't want to interfere too much with Kilrathi affairs... despite the fact that some Kilrathi were raiding again, and indeed suppressed such knowledge, and may have done so even without Belisaurius.


In WC4, they were manipulated almost into starting a civil war, because Tolwyn knew what buttons to push, and because they wanted to look good for their poor populace, due to the wartime economy collapsing.

By WCP, we see Paladin having to fight to keep funding to the military going, including the construction of new ships, because politicians don't want to see 'unnecessary' spending in the military because 'there's peace now'... right on the eve of an alien invasion, which parallels the initial Kilrathi response to human contact.

Man, doesn't THAT look familiar? :D
 
Ya just look at the US after the cold war ended. Instant 2/3 cut. Navy went from 900 ships to 300. Deployments rose 50% though. Taxing what was left to the breaking point hence all the accidents weve seen in recent years.
 
Okay, with the length thing all I'm doing is taking the mass and changing it to the length. No calculations, nothing. It is my belief that the designers gave the Doc writers the ingame legths of the fighters and then there was a mix up.

The sizes in WC:SO seem to bear this out.

Look at the Excal compared to the Vamp, they're about the same size. The Vamp is what, just shy of 17.5 metres.

The alternative to getting the documentation wrong is that the game is wrong. Now we have no proof other than printed statistics for the sizes of the WC3-4 fighters.

If you look at the cockpits you can see that they'ed be too big, in relation to the pilot. The whole cocpit would just be a big buble with the pilot sat in it. Now I don't know about you but to me the cockpits in WC3 looked pretty cramped.

40m is a huge target. Lets make a comparrison:

In Star Wars Hammil can walk under the wing of an X-Wing just ducking slightly. An X-Wing is 12.5m long. Now the landing gear on both SW and WC fighters looks to be the same sort of size, in relation to the fighter its mounted on, that is.

So in WC Hobbes should be able to stand under a fighter, if they're that big.

Also, note when Flash climbs out of the Excal, the fighter dosen't dwarf him.

Like I say, if you had a 40m fighter you'd go back to the drawing board, 20m is a really fat target, 40m is suicide.

Here's another thing, the WC shuttle, we frequently see people sat in the shuttle cockpit. The cockpit is about the same size as a Passenger aircraft and its a pretty big part of the whole ship. I'd estimate the whole WC3 shuttle at 20m, no more.

Yet those things are a lot bigger than Hellcats, about a quarter longer. That would make the Hellcat about 15m.

The Hellcat's mass is 14 tonnes.

You see where I'm going.

As to why the Dragon was scrapped, same reason the British had to drop the old 762mm SLR rifle.
 
i have no idea why the british dropped it novels and ingame details say the dragon is 40 meters thats what it says, thast what it is, no matter what u or any other person says about weight size ratio.

also remember 40 meters doesnt mean much when it can munever at a rate of a ship half its size and can travel faster then alot of light fighters. it has enough fire power to take out any cap ship by itself.....even the vesuviouse as was alrdy prooved. cap ships are overrated replace em with a fleet of dragons and undefeatable u will be.

the reason i dont understandm polotics is because its the most boarting fucker of a subject ever studied or forced to learn by ppl. beside what i do know is democracy never seems to work right, ppl will always complain that things arnt right a tight monarchy works betetr at least some1 wise rules then. not a dictatorshiop, but a choice when ppl have rights but 1 person who knows best makes the desisions.

thats how england prospered so long
 
you cannot extract length from mass. An m1 abrams is 72 tonnes(Costamary system) yet it is 30ft long or roughly 10 meters while a tomcat is 20 tonnes and is 20 meters long. It involves density of the metal used. Titanium is less dense than steal therfor if an aircraft is made from it will be on the order of 50% less massive. They obviously have even better metals and composites lessining the mass as well. 40 meters is more than exceptable for a space fighter. It is only double the size of current fighters. As you say it looks crampted in the cocpit well it probably is. Just like it is crampted in modern fighters cocpits even though they have doubled and trippled in size compared to fighters in WW2.
 
the funny thing is that 40meters is acceptable yet if u saw a 10 meter wave at the beach u could die by getting dunkled, i just cant get over hw big 40 meters is
 
There is a big differance between high and lenth as well. I ve surfed plenty of waves that were longer than 40 meters but they were about 6-8 ft high. Nobody is saying the dragon stands 40meters from deck to intakes we are saying it is 40 meters from nose to tail. And what you said about 20meters being a big target both modern F-15 and F-14s as well as SU-27s are that long. The MIG-31 is 80ft if i remember correctly. I still havent seen any of the above lost in air to air combat.
 
still........ thats 1 long fighter.

but while i agree that polotics is a big part in wc4 i do think that mabey not all the ppl would let it be known that dragons were the fighters responsible for the bombings on talamon.

so if ignorance is bliss for them then dragons are still around, after all the bearcat still is
 
The bearcat wasn't designed exclusivly for the Black Lance. The Dragon was. That's the point. Also it's able to use the flashpack, which never saw the light of day after WC4. It can deploy bioweapons, which are don't go over well with the people paying for the military. And it was used exclusively by a group of people genetically bred for killing anyone inferior to Tolwyn's idea of a perfect soldier. This is why it wasn't continued IMO. It had a lot of bells and whistles that were BANNED (I remember it being said in WC4 or one of the novels that Bio/Chem warefare was prohibited).

I don't see how it would be strictly political to destroy craft which were not only capable of using banned weapons, but designed explicitly for that purpose. It seems more like a moral discision of a peoples to not even let their commanders have that option in the first place.
 
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