What is everyone's favourite fighter

Erm, no. As we already know, cloak is ineffective against the Nephilim. Why put in an option for a cloak in the game when it makes no difference to gameplay? Actually, it would make a difference, because you are effectively disabling all your weapons!

I suppose it might seem reasonable for the Piranhas to have a cloak... then again, maybe not. I'd imagine cloaking systems to be quite expensive. The only reason why a Piranha might have a cloak is the cut in-game speech about the Nephilim seeing through cloaks. IIRC, that was supposed to be in the first mission.
 
Originally posted by Wedge009
Hey, it's just what everyone else seem to say, so I went with the flow. :) But you do accept the latter two points?
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I certainly agree that the enormous cost of the Dragons rules them out as carrier fighters. Personally, though, I would be surprised if Dragons (or rather, the latest model) do NOT exist, at least in limited numbers. To me, they are in some respects like the modern day stealth fighters - very useful in certain situations, but far too valuable for day-to-day use.

Cloaking devices are apparently ineffective against the Nephilm. They would presumeably still be effective against the Kilrathi, pirates etc. although again, equipping them on a regular carrier fighter would be uneconomical and fairly pointless.


(IIRC the real reason there are no cloaking devices is because the Prophecy engine cannot support them :) ).
 
The Vision engine "cannot" support cloaks? I find that hard to believe. More likely that it just wasn't implemented. It can't be that hard to cloak ships - WC2 managed it well enough. :) All you'd need to do is remove the fade the textures in and out and just have a flying wireframe.

I still don't think the Lance/Dragon would be in much use, even in Covert/Special Operations divisions. All stuff associated with the Black Lance is probably locked away by Confed in a maximum security facility - including the Flash-Pak and the Gen-Select bioweapon... "just in case".
 
Maybe it's "does not" support cloaks. I don't remember the details.

Anyway the advantage of the Dragon is the same thing as its disadvantage ... its M/AM engine. It is basically a mini-capship. Make sure it's fitted with errr... essentials for pilot comfort, train the pilot to reduce the use of expendibles (missiles) and it can operate anywhere, anytime, completely independent of a base.

Imagine a small squadron of Dragons loose behind enemy lines. Any lightly escorted convoy would be easy prey. While the cost of losing one would be significant, the disruption to enemy shipping would be enormous. Any ship or convoy would need to a heavy escort, no matter how far behind the front lines it is. Hunting down a handfull of cloaked ships would be practically impossible.

Other possibilities include long range reconnaisance, assassinations etc. A lot of the stuff the Black Lance was doing.

Imagine WW2 without the U-Boats.

Of course, this sort of stuff is not particularly useful during peacetime. Still, I would expect Dragon equivalents to exist, just not in large numbers.
 
Hmm, if you put it that way, it sounds like the perfect ship for a privateer... if one could ever grab one of them. :) Still, the cloaking advantage is negated in WCP/SO time, however, I'm sure the Black Lance put it to good use at the time.

Heh heh, I like that. A mini capship all to myself... :)

Originally posted by LeHah
I coulda sworn that Prophecy used the "Real Space" engine.
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You swore wrong. :)

WC Armada, WC3 and WC4 use RealSpace.
WCP/SO use Vision.
 
Whoops, was confused. Long night of shooting pool (not a strong point) and drinking beer (allowing incredible advantages in shooting said game).

Still, I find it odd that the Vision engine wouldn't be able to support something relatively simple like cloak. After all, they did write dialouge for the game that went unused, describing cloaking.
 
Heh heh heh. Is it possible that the only reason that they cut the inflight comms about cloaking is because they couldn't implement cloaking in WCP? :)
 
Yeah, the Dragon and the Centurion ARE fairly similar, apart from the cloaking and .... errr ... the billion credit price thing :)

And we know cloaking is ineffective against the Nephilm. I've seen/heard nothing that says that either the Kilrathi or Confed are capable of detecting cloaks. Conversely, I wouldn't be surprised if they COULD.

Lastly, I'm fairly certain the Vision engine cannot/does not support cloaked ships, which is WHY the dialogue is unused. I can't remember why they did not implement cloaking. Perhaps the mightly Loaf or someone else could refresh my memory.
 
I never said anything about the Centurion and the Lance/Dragon being similar - although they're probably about the same size.

With the technology from the Lance/Dragon, I'm sure Confed R&D has managed to see through cloaks by 2681.

And it's LOAF - I'm sure you've offended him by now. :)

Actually, I find it amusing that my mum's bread-making machine has a button on it called "Loaf". It just looks funny to me now. :)
 
I don't think the production crew would waste money on voice overs if they didn't know ahead of time if cloak was impossible.
 
I don't think a couple of lines would be worth that much money. The actors probably just read their lines in one go, and the sound engineers played with it afterwards. They probably just chucked everything in the TRE.
 
In the long run, not much money.

But it still seems unlikely to me that the previous engine could cloak and it's successor could not.
 
Originally posted by AzraeL


I always find it somewhat amusing when people mention public opinion as a reason why the Dragon (or Lance if you prefer) would not be used. Give it a new name and a new paint job and the public would be none the wiser. Economics and performance are valid reasons for discontinuing a fighter type. Public opinion is not.
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It is when the public elects the politicians. :) The politicians aren't going to jeopordise their chances of re-election for the sake of one fighter that costs the Earth to build and of which only a hadfull are left. And I don't think anyone in Confed would be able to continue fooling and manipulating the public that way after WC4. That was the kind of envoirnment, with a muzzled press and whole lot of government secrecy, that allowed Tolwyn and his Black Lance to flourish. As we in at the end of the TPOF novel, Confed was forced to clean house in a big way.

Best, Raptor
 
A few rats in the house, eh?

I don't think the Lance/Dragon costs that much to build - it's not exactly a Super Star Destroyer.
 
Anything requiring micro-miniturization will be expensive to produce, as in the case of the dragon's engines. It could be that in the wcp/so era, this has been made easier/less expensive, but i agree that the dragon would not make a good carrier fighter. More like a B2, other planes could get the job done just as well, and for a lower cost.
 
Maybe not, but building them would still take funding appropriations, contracts to manufacturers, all the rest of the work that goes with a fighter building program. All of which would increase the chances of a media leak, and a very embarassing scandal for the government. After all the trouble it went to convince the public that Bellisarius and the Black Lance were anunfortunate result of the war, rather than being typical of the way Confed operates, that kind of shadow program could severely hurt the government in domestic elections, and cause diplomatic ructions with smaller human nations that would just be relearning to trust Confed again.

Besides, why go with such a politically risky option when you have Excaliburs, which also mount M/AM engines, are steakth capabale, and have more than enough firepower to pound any Kilrathi or pirate shipping? As the fighter that won the war, it would be a much easier sell both domestically and internationally than the Dragon would be.

Best, Raptor
 
Originally posted by Wedge009
I never said anything about the Centurion and the Lance/Dragon being similar - although they're probably about the same size.
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No, but I did. They're both heavy fighters, both have unlimited afterburn, etc. Of course the Dragon is generations ahead, but it is state-of-the-art military technology, while the Centurian ... well ... isn't. I was just agreeing with your comment that the Dragon would make an awesome privateer.



With the technology from the Lance/Dragon, I'm sure Confed R&D has managed to see through cloaks by 2681.
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I don't figure how you got that. Just 'cos the Dragon had a cloak doesn't mean they can see through it. While resources would naturally be assigned to working out how to detect cloaked ships, other resources would also be assigned to developing a better cloak. Just because we've developed sonar doesn't mean we stop trying to build better submarines. It really just depends who is leading the race at the time.



Originally posted by Raptor
It is when the public elects the politicians. :) The politicians aren't going to jeopordise their chances of re-election for the sake of one fighter that costs the Earth to build and of which only a hadfull are left. And I don't think anyone in Confed would be able to continue fooling and manipulating the public that way after WC4. That was the kind of envoirnment, with a muzzled press and whole lot of government secrecy, that allowed Tolwyn and his Black Lance to flourish. As we in at the end of the TPOF novel, Confed was forced to clean house in a big way.
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Name me one type of war-vessel, be it a ship, plane, tank etc., that has been abandoned because of public opinion. We haven't banned bombers, because a B-29 dropped a nuke on Hiroshima. We haven't banned tanks, because they were used by the Nazis in WW2. Whether or not Dragon-equivalent fighters exist by the Prophecy era has nothing to do with public opinion. They won't be called Dragons, they may not even look much like Dragons, but their existence will depend on economic and strategic grounds, not the opinions of a fickle public that won't even know or care if they exist.
 
I agree with azreal.

I'd like to know why it is assumed confed can see through cloaks now.

Also, I agree with him on the topic of politics and ship design. The nazis used V2 rockets during WW2 to bombard england in attacks meant mostly to instill fear.

After the war, we did not simply abandon rockets because they were supposedly "bad". We took them, refined them, and now we have guided missiles that can hit within meters, and sometimes centimeters of a target for the exact opposite reason the nazis used V2s.
 
The two of you seem to be working under the assumption that there is such a general class as a "Dragon type" vessal, just like there are general classes such as tanks, rockets, bombers or whatever, and that any craft designed to operate that way would be a Dragon type fighter.

That doesn't work for the simple reason that the Dragon is a specific fighter class, not a general vehicle type. You didn't see the Allies using Messerchmitt 262s or King Tiger tanks operationally, do you? They may have copied some of the technology, but they don't use those vehicles. Those fighters and tanks that used the techology didn't become "262 type" or "King Tiger type."

Not only that, there is the fact that most of the technology used by the Dragon wasn't unique to that design. Things such as M/AM engines or human fighter cloaking were pioneered on the Excalibur (and the Kilrathi had cloaking long before that), fighters launching torpedoes is hardly unheard of, and even the Flashpak is possibly derieved from a weapon the Kilrathi developed for their Strakhas (page 90, TPOF novel.)

In short, there is nothing about the Dragon that creates a new class and special class, any more than the Excalibur created a new class of "planet destroying fighter." There might well be fighters raound that use the same technology as the Dragons, but they won't be "Dragon class" fighters, rather unique fighters in their own right. And seeing as most of the technology predated the Dragon (which was after all, developed with Confed resources and Confed know-how), it would be hard to even claim that these new fighters were derieved from the Dragon.

PS: I'm not sure what the fuss is about whether COnfed can see through cloaks in 2681 is about. The important thing is that the *Nephilim* can, which pretty much negates any advantage cloaking fighters have operationally.

Best, Raptor
 
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