Do we know anything about the single player storyline, or is that supposed to be kept hush hush?
What happened?
- Thread starter Kevin Caccamo
- Start date
Do we know anything about the single player storyline, or is that supposed to be kept hush hush?
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
I'm sure we'll see the script someday - but not anytime soon. It was a neat little story that would have impressed everyone here, at the very least (it would have taken a *lot* more work, as written -- it incorporated a lot of elements that weren't in the finished game... lots of types of AI fighters, capital ships, maps, etc. that were never developed.)
Farbourne
Rear Admiral
We can conjecture a few things just from the technological changes between WC1 and WC2, and from the WC2 prologue.
Initially, the Confederation had just lost the Tiger's Claw and been forced to withdraw from an offensive--their "spearhead had been broken". So it's not surprising they might have taken some time to regroup, as the Japanese did after the Battles of the Coral Sea or Midway. Meanwhile, the Kilrathi had just lost Ghorar Khar (and "years of progress"--likely a lot of war materials--when the Ghorar Khar shipyards were destroyed), which probably put a bit of a crimp on any plans they may have had for any offensives (Thrakhath says as much...his plans for conquering the Terrans "will have to wait"). So I can imagine there naturally would have been a momentary cessation in the war as the two sides regrouped, at least in Enigma.
Next, we know phase shields that made virtually all fighter-born weaponry (and apparently WC1 era capship-born weaponry) ineffective against capital ships. We don't know when these were introduced (at least I don't...LOAF?), but it was long enough before WC2 for either new capships that took advantage of the technology and that mounted AM guns to counter the technology to be designed and built, or for old capships to be retrofitted with the shields and AM guns. That's probably a minimum of many months optimistically, but more realistically at least several years. Possibly it could have even occurred soon after the end of WC1.
This alone could explain some of the suggested stalemate--building new ships or re-equipping existing ships would have taken time and quite a bit of resources, and during that time I can imagine both sides would be reluctant to overextend themselves in an offensive. Maybe both sides frantically dug in defensively and did not make much overall progress as they tried to deploy the new ships as they came available to ensure that the other side didn't make substantial gains while they tried to re-equip their entire fleet. A single phase-shielded, AM gun-equipped Ralatha or Gilgamesh could probaby take down several a fleets of Fralthi's or Exeters, since the former would have nothing to fear from fighters and its AM guns would shred the latter's relatively light armor, while the latter's fighters and probably their ship-born guns could do nothing against the phase shields.
Next, we know from the WC2 manual that torpedoes, at least ones that can penetrate phase shields, are a "relatively recent Terran innovation, that was stolen by the Kilrathi soon afterwards". Again, no idea what "relatively recent" means, but the implication that I take from this is that phase shields that protect a capship from fighter weapons were around for some time before shield-penetrating torpedoes appeared.
So for some period of time we have a situation where both sides have large numbers of fighters deployed in their fleets (from the emphasis on fighters that was in WC1), but capships that are impervious to these fighters. Only capships can hurt other capships, so it's relatively hard to knock out the enemy carriers unless you have a large fleet of your own and can manage to close with them. But this takes time. We know that transports and support vessels do not have phase shields, and hence are still vulnerable to fighters, and are extremely vulnerable in the time before you manage to engage the enemy carriers. Hence actual fleet battles occur only when slow, unwieldy capships get close together, but either side can use their large swarms of fighters to decimate the other side's supply lines, long before there is a chance to take down the enemy carriers. This suggests to me a tactical situation that strongly favors the side on defense--it's almost impossible to mount an offensive when your supply lines are so vulnerable, but quite easy to mount a defense when your supply lines are short and you are fighting near your supply centers (planets).
Hence I'm not surprised if there was a stalemate between WC1 and WC2--phase shields probably shifted the advantage in space combat in favor of whatever side was on defense, so offensives ground to a halt, and not until torpedoes allowed carrier-based fighters to strike against fleets did any kind of offensive start to pick up steam again.