What was Confed thinking? Are they a bunch of Morons? A What If..? thread!

gavinfoxx

Rear Admiral
NOTE: This is a repost of a thread I posted in the standoff area. I know there have been SOME, maybe a lot, of what if threads on this forum, but I haven't read any of them (I will be sure to, though! Are there any that are as thorough as mine? can someone link me to the better ones? I am sure they go wayyy back...)

Hey everyone. When I play standoff, I have a chance to fly the wing commander 2 / armada / academy / spec ops / some privateer era fighters with a relatively modern WCP engine. With this, you notice some interesting things about fighter and capship design, with lots of "What was Confed thinking??" moments. Which got me researching the Wing Commander ships... and then I wrote this

First, the guns. To me, what matters in a gun, when you actually have a decent game engine is a few things:

range
speed of projectile
low energy use
refire rate
and THEN damage...

why does this matter? In my opinion, if you have a gun that does these sorts of things, and it is in the center line of the ship, you can compensate for low damage by *simply having more of them*. To that end, neutron guns and mass drivers really really aren't that great. I would rather have four lasers in the spread of the later style arrow than a ton of mass drivers and neutron cannons. So what would make a good line of guns throughout the upgrade of the games? To me it would be something like this:

pre wc1
laser, mass driver (starting with slightly higher tech level than what we have...)

wc1
laser, neutron, mass driver (phasing out mass driver for neutron. You don't have to carry a ton of metal slugs in the ship!)

wc1secret - wc2
laser, particle, neutron (phasing out neutron for particle)

wc2 through so to armada
laser, photon (don't need much testing, is based off of laser -- phase out laser for photon), particle, tachyon (testing mostly)

wc3 era
photon, particle, tachyon, ion (testing mostly, ion isn't better than photon yet)

wc4 era (post kilrathi! new weapons development!)
photon, particle, tachyon (including new light variant), ion (phasing out photon for ion, which is now better), plasma (testing mostly)

wcp era
ion, particle, pulse particle (phasing out particle for new variant), tachyon (including light variant), heavy plasma

SO era:
ion, pulse particle, tachyon (including light variant), heavy plasma

There is no need for all this reaper, meson, etc. crap. This way you have a clear upgrade path for guns, they make sense, you don't have to worry too much about short range guns, and they didn't waste so much money on buying the latest and greatest guns that were worse than what they had...

And, for that matter... how come cap ships didnt start to use photon guns for their big turrets? Since you can upscale a laser to turret size and it is (relatively) powerful, can't you scale up a photon gun too?

Next, fighter design. Flying the Epee / Super Ferret / Early arrow / hornet / stiletto in the simulator teaches me a few interesting things.

1.) It's okay not to have armor if your ship is designed well -- if the pilot is an expert
2.) You really need ITTS
3.) Centrally located guns are KEY
4.) Fast firing guns are KEY
5.) A really maneuverable ship is very good for dodging
6.) A fast afterburner speed is really essential in surviving
7.) If you have itts, you don't REALLY need heat seeker missiles to do damage if you have a very fast ship -- dumb fires will do.
8.) Heat seekers are useless. I would rather have dumb fire than heat seeker missiles. The best missiles for dogfighting are friend or foe, imrec, and dumb fire.


So what does this say about ship design?

To me it says that they should have kept a variant of the super ferret a LOT longer. The speed is good, it is cheap, the guns are central... what I would have done would be to put two lasers on the original and super ferret designs, and keep updating it for a VERY long time. Instead of using energy intensive guns, just *add a third laser*. This gives it an upgrade path to photon and then ion cannons, which lets it be useful for a very very long time. This basically lets the basic design -- a very small, light fighter -- last all the way until the PIRANHA... after all, the Arrow didn't really surpass the Ferret in actual performance until it really got the cloak, and the ferret *IS* harder to hit... with a third bottom gun, itts, and the guns being laser / photon / ion based, it would be great. Just keep the shields upgraded and replace the durasteel with the later versions and you are golden. No need to get a “bigger and easier to hit” Arrow, really... even in the WCIV era. In fact the only ship that REALLY obviously surpasses the Ferret and remains obviously small and hard to hit (remember all the stats say the arrow is bigger than it is in Standoff) is the Piranha! Remember, the airframe of the Arrow is OLD. Just like the Ferret. Which means that you can do quite a bit with an old airframe in a light fighter.. after all, light fighters are mostly engines anyway!

Now, the Rapier. IMO, the hellcat need NEVER have existed. The rapier is faster, more maneuverable, smaller (thus harder to hit...), has an afterburner that lasts forever... look at the last set of guns that the hellcat had. Particle and Ion (the laser replacements). Hmmm. The rapier could have been viable to (maybe past) WC4! Hell, the rapier has better maneuverability than the SO TIGERSHARK!

Now let's look at the super fighters.
The medium ones: Rapier, Wraith, Vampire
The heavy ones: Morningstar, Excalibur, Bearcat, Lance/Dragon
Which of these needed to be made? If we are upgrading a Rapier as the medium space superiority fighter, there is no REAL reason to make the wraith so early (but to test reaper guns that don't exist! ... wait...), so that leaves the heavy ones. The Morningstar? If we assume that guns have been moved to be more center line, and that heavy fighters don't have a fetish for mass drivers... that leaves the sabre being more like the Morningstar in the FIRST place. So yea, the two fighters are essentially the same idea (big heavy gun torpedo carrying strike / heavy fighter), with the Morningstar being the only jump capable, can actually both fight and carry torpedoes, can actually maneuver fighter. So the morningstar? Yea. The Prophecy era ships should have carried Morningstars...or Sabres that could actually JUMP. Same difference. Since, to me, the whole idea of a heavy but non space superiority fighter is to have at least a little bit of strike capability, and be able to jump, but okay at fighting, that means that the Thunderbolt really doesn't have a reason to exist. Just keep the Morningstar!

Now what about the heavy space superiority ones? The Excalibur's raison d'etre was the cloaking device, and somewhat the gun autoaiming. Okay, I will buy that. I don't like that it was less maneuverable than the Morningstar, but we will chalk it up to being prototype new technology. What about the production version, the Bearcat? Now there is a ship! Good gun loadout except for the locations of the guns (how come NONE OF THE OTHER GAMES used Light tachyon cannons??) … but not jump capable, and didn't have an optional cloak? Um. Yea. The bearcat should definitely be jump capable, and have an optional cloak. Hello, updated Excalibur? Now... The Dragon? Oh, the Dragon. That is a cheater's ship. It is so hideously beyond what should have been capable at the time (for crying out loud, it trounces the SO black vampire in many, MANY non minor ways), I just can't see how it was made other than writer's fiat. It obviously cost a bundle too, and didn't work, since you *don't see any Lances (the non evil Dragon variants) elsewhere in the games*! So for heavy space strike, we have the Morningstar, and for heavy fighter we have the jump capable, also sometimes cloak capable Bearcat. So should the Morningstar/Sabre/whichever is used ever be really retired? I would say YES... when you can fit a few light torpedoes on a medium fighter... which happens in SO era.... which means you could fit it on a non-normally-torpedo-capable HEAVY fighter from later on (see previously mentioned Bearcat, which is superior to the Morningstar. Or at least would be with a better gun location!)

What about the medium fighters? The Rapier can't be the end all of the medium fighters... though it is certainly better than the Tigershark (just look at the maneuverability). What about the Wraith and the Vampire? Extrapolate the updated Wraith's stats via upgrades to Prophecy era... and lo and behold, it is actually a better medium fighter than the Vampire, except for the crazy SO era missiles. Huh. I can see the Wraith being a “before it's time” sort of thing that only went into full production when they actually needed a “most definitely better than the Rapier” medium fighter... which I can only see as happening in Prophecy Era. (We are, of course, assuming that it is easier and cheaper to upgrade the Rapier to actually HAVE itts rather than develop the Hellcat and then the Tigershark, which I take to be true!) So I guess research focused on “jump capable / cloak capable / torpedo capable / heavy over medium” fighters happening, with a really awesome medium fighter languishing in development hell (What do you MEAN we don't have funding for the new medium space superiority fighters??) until the Rapier's lack of armor structure ultimately matters enough that shield technology updates and better armor materials don't make up for it. So Wraith replacing the Rapier at the time of the Tigershark/Vampire. I can see that. So do you need a Vampire then? No, not really. And if you don't need a Vampire, you don't need a Panther.

So... bombers. We start with the Broadsword... which while an awesome bomber, gets SHOT DOWN quite a bit. Then there was the crossbow, which was to be on smaller ships so they would have bomber capability, and also be a little faster. It was STILL getting shot down though... So the earliest afterburner capable bomber is the Longbow. And lo and behold! It gets shot down less! Now looking at the Longbow and the Devastator, the Devastator is about the same mass, but has the big huge gun, and is more maneuverable. Otherwise... about the same. Now, to me, I think they could have KEPT the Longbow well into Prophecy as the premier heavy bomber. It would certainly have FELT more like a heavy Bomber, and they could just have added the big gun later (remember, most of the longbow is internal torpedo bays.. that means lots of empty room. Like empty room where you could put a BIG GUN). The Shrike? I can see a reason to have the Shrike – something that isn't as GIGANTIC as the Longbow, has afterburners, is more maneuverable, and can carry lots of (late model...) torpedoes. But only very, very late, after the Longbow has LONG since been the main bomber for the fleet, and they simply want to cram more bombers onto one smaller ship. But after the Broadsword, Confed should DEFINITELY have awarded the bomber design to pretty much anyone who could come up with a torpedo / jump capable bomber that can fit on smaller ships and has afterburner. Which means Longbow. Oh, before I forget. The Gladius. Ahhh, the Gladius... made to be cheap, roughly capable of doing most any job, except jumping. Okay at fighting, okay at killing capships, has torpedoes. How I would reconfigure the ship would be to put four laser, and then later photon cannons near the center of the ship, and maybe add itts... and that's about it. Even when ion cannons surpass photon cannons in power, you want a ship that is cheap and gets the job done. For missiles, you have to stay better than the centurian, so 2 ff, 2 imrec, and a torpedo or two. The only real performance need for this is for it to be, in at least a few ways, better than what civilians have. Which I guess means better than the civilian heavy fighter – the Centurian. If your gladii can stay ahead of the Centurian and continue to be able to threaten capships, you are golden. It's the ship for when you have massive budget cuts and need to buy ONE ship in bulk to serve all your needs!

Now... Big ships. Cap ships Did you know that the Vesuvius and the Midway are about the same size? Whereas the Midway favors more redundant systems with regards to the launch tubes, the Vesuvius, on the other hand, favors the more traditional but vulnerable “gigantic hanger deck”, and therefore can hold many MANY more fighters. And the Confederation class dreadnoughts – great when the gun worked, but that was rare. A failed idea. Remember, the most powerful force in Wing Commander tends to be fighters for long range power projection. And that gigantic hangar bay on the Vesuvius is awfully vulnerable... So what big ships SHOULD confed use or develop? It is understandable that they were pressing into service are tons of converted supply ships and ancient carriers. The Concordia class carriers are a sad wartime necessity. But what should they have been TRYING to do as the war ended? I think they should have pursued a strategy based on carrier strike groups. What I would have done, at the end of the war, was have a “big ship” strategy based on this:

per group:
1 carrier, lexington class
1 cruiser, either waterloo or tallahassee class
2 escort carriers, wake class (or Eagle class, what the TCS Eagle was named for... If we could ever get the stats for one. I would presume it would be as fast as a Wake... being designed from the ground up as a light Carrier!)
2 destroyers, gilgamesh class
at least 3 corvettes, venture class (including at least one electronics warfare / sensor corvette.)
at least 2 supply/transport ships

Why only two WC3 type game ships? Remember that by the end of the war, the “latest and greatest” carriers were the Jutland and Lexington classes. Of these, there is one VERY important thing to note – the Lexington class has secondary launch bays. This is a Very Good Idea. So the power projection from wing commander 3 on should have been focused on Lexington class... and I would ASSUME that the one without all the crazy modifications would probably be a bit faster than the one in Armada. Maybe 100 kps? Rather than develop a Vesuvius or Midway super carrier, they should have made dozens of these things! And note something about the Wake on down. Wake, Gilgamesh, and Venture ships all have something in common that their cousins in the same classes don't: they all go at least 240kps. Speed is HUGE, and a quick response (get there firstest with the mostest!) that might have less power is often better than a delayed response later. As far as the big ships go, I don't see many major improvements from WC2 to WC3 era big ships. The only ships that I can tell are actually BETTER is the Tallahassee class is better than the waterloo class, by virtue of being more maneuverable and having more guns. Based on my doctrine of “ships from escort carrier on down need to be fast, capable of doing their roles, and have phase shields, and that's about it.” NONE of the newer replacements work. Southampton instead of Gilgamesh? Too slow. Paradigm over Venture? Too slow (note neither has phase shields..). The new Caernaven Frigate? Too slow. Anyway, I thought the doctrine of the Midway being able to “take care of any problem it comes across” was really stupid, seeing as how it really wasn't capable of doing that, and they had to make other size ships anyway, and besides, the Vesuvius class (or hell, the LEXINGTON class. Which I mentioned earlier!) was enough of a super carrier ANYWAY... just get two of the things, damn!

So. There is my obsessively researched, gigantic rant on how Confed could have saved lives, saved money, saved resources, without wasting time on so many super projects. I mean seriously, you dont NEED the Behemoth to destroy a planet... Standoff and Fleet Action taught us that there are many more traditional ways to do so!
 
Its. A. Game. We're not discussing the merits of using the Atom bomb on Japan here. Its not like we can see inside Confed HQ's collective mind. It doesn't exist. It was created by nerds in Austin, TX in 1990.
 
Well, yea. that doesn't mean that you can't have fun with a what if thread!

Besides, I was up late on a caffeine binge when I wrote this initially, cut me some slack!
 
That is a lot of words. I skimmed it a little.

A note on the whole Escort Carrier thing. I was under the impression the whole class was intended more as a stop-gap and convoy escort than a front-line warhorse. Why include two in a carrier group?

Also, why would a carrier group have permanently assigned transports? My general understanding of logistics is that freight lines are handled by a different command.
 
why does this matter? In my opinion, if you have a gun that does these sorts of things, and it is in the center line of the ship, you can compensate for low damage by *simply having more of them*. To that end, neutron guns and mass drivers really really aren't that great. I would rather have four lasers in the spread of the later style arrow than a ton of mass drivers and neutron cannons.

I think the fiction asks and answers this question starting with Wing Commander III; if you look at the gun descriptions in Victory Streak, it's clear that they're all being written in response to 'why do we have so many guns?'. It's not simulated in the game itself, of course, but the manual adds all sorts of caveats (ion cannons kill pilots, laser cannons aren't effective in atmospheres, the reaper cannon is best against shields, etc.) and a more complex hierarchy defining what damage actually means (it differentiates between radiation, blast and heat damage).

It's also worth considering that there's likely some technical reason that a healthy majority of the ships we fly in the games have wing-mounted cannons and that they have a particular number of gun slots. 'Just make them centerline' and 'add more guns' seem like the space fighter equivalent of "you there, hit a home run"... (Also, beyond the Bearcat, did anyone really have a problem with gun locations? And that seemed like a necessary and fun game balancing maneuver, too...)

There is no need for all this reaper, meson, etc. crap. This way you have a clear upgrade path for guns, they make sense, you don't have to worry too much about short range guns, and they didn't waste so much money on buying the latest and greatest guns that were worse than what they had...

I think that there is something of a linear upgrade path -- its just been heavily retconned since "our" basic gun trio in 1990. The Kilrathi Saga claims that the Meson Blaster, Photon Cannon, Laser Cannon and Plasma Gun are all pre-war weapons, that the Mass Driver Cannon, Neutron Gun and Particle Cannon all came into being in the 2640s/50s and then that the Ion Cannon, Reaper Cannon and Tachyon Cannon are all new in the last two years of the war. Now, obviously there have been a few modifications to that (we see Particle Cannons in an Academy episode in 2654 and Mass Driver Cannons in Action Stations in 2634), but it's a good start... and it tells a fairly reasonable narrative, ending with supposedly-Godlike Reaper Cannon and the incredibly efficient Tachyon Gun as the pinnacles of energy weapon development (both of which feature more heavily on the newest fighter designs, through WC4 and Prophecy).

I don't think weapon upgrades are so simple as always having the best gun on every fighter, though. There are plenty of reasons why "older" guns would be kept around.

- They've proven themselves, which is a bigger deal than people usually understand. Here's the computer analogy: any large office with an IT staff is still using one or two previous generations of software revisions (Windows XP, Office 2003, etc.) -- because those are the versions with a reliable amount of bugs and other failings understood. It's just a standard practice... as would be maintaining laser cannons that have worked for forty years alongside much more complex Tachyon Cannons that just came off the drawing board.

- There are working factories building them at capacity. Another big deal. You aren't going to stop production of a gun type entirely in the middle of a war to spend months/years retooling for another one; production has to overlap, and having overlapped can continue for both types.

- They share technology and likely components with other weapons. It's no coincidence that we see smaller lasers, mass drivers and neutrons as standard Marine weaponry in End Run. Think of the Army's current requirement that all vehicles, from trucks to tanks, run on be able to run on the same type of gasoline. It's a strategic thing, it's a user knowledge thing and it's a resource management thing.

- There are technical aspects beyond even the varied damage heirarchy from Wing Commander III's material discussed above; consider the manual's mention that the Photon Cannon is noteworthy because it is especially easy to maintain--that's a *huge* deal in all sorts of situations. Imagine a situation where you can realign the Photon Cannon's mirrors in half an hour but have to pull a Reaper and reconstruct it after every flight. We have that option on a fancy carrier... but that's the minority. Think of all the Black Sheep-style squadrons fighting on planets that need to turn their fighters around quickly.

- The vast majority of spaceframes weren't designed for them. If weapons are "plug and play" in Privateer then it's because those specific ships were designed to allow those options... but twenty-plus year old designs (Hellcats, Arrows, Rapiers, etc.) that came about before the Reaper or the Tachyon was a glint in a scientist's eye can't necessarily just swap out for the new technology (computer analogy -- try putting a modern processor in your 486... it's not *better* if it doesn't work).

- The hundreds of thousands (millions? more?) of ground crews supporting the fighter force are already trained on the existing weapons... retraining them for new ones isn't going to happen all at once (everybody take the week off, we're going to Reaper Cannon training, hope the Kilrathi don't attack!) -- and so a unified rollout/replacement can't happen all at once. Even once the new weapons are added to their repetoires, the old ones are still what they're most efficient at working with (and will be until they have more experience first hand).

- Like the United States, the Confederation is a capitalist state whose weapons purchasing is subject to lobbying on the part of the weapons manufacturers themselves. We see this in the Wing Commander IV novelization, with Paulsen's family's weapons consortium being the manufacturer and the force behind the adoption of new mass drivers.

- Expanding on that point, *unlike* the United States, military-grade space guns are commodities on the civilian market (in Privateer). Even if the military isn't buying Neutron Guns at a particular time, the company that makes them is still doing so as a brand more than as a single point in the scientific development of the gun.

- Deflating on that point, *cost*! The uniformly superior Tachyon Cannon costs *twenty times* as much as the Laser Cannon -- try getting a budget through Congress that swaps out every gun in the military with one that's twenty times as expensive all at once.

- Finally, gameplay. The guns are changed for the same reason the ships are changed... because players demand new material. The single laser might technically be the most effective gun in the world and perfect at everything, but a game where it's all you fire would be pretty darned dull.

And, for that matter... how come cap ships didnt start to use photon guns for their big turrets? Since you can upscale a laser to turret size and it is (relatively) powerful, can't you scale up a photon gun too?

This seems like the opposite of what you're arguing in favor of previously, though: adding complexity (more guns for one role).

1.) It's okay not to have armor if your ship is designed well -- if the pilot is an expert

And how many of our wingmen over the years qualify as experts:)? And they're supposed to be the best of the best!

3.) Centrally located guns are KEY

I love Standoff, but it was unnecessarily goofy about gun placement. If you didn't have a problem hitting things with a Hornet in Wing Commander I, there's no canonical difficulty.

To me it says that they should have kept a variant of the super ferret a LOT longer. The speed is good, it is cheap, the guns are central... what I would have done would be to put two lasers on the original and super ferret designs, and keep updating it for a VERY long time. Instead of using energy intensive guns, just *add a third laser*. This gives it an upgrade path to photon and then ion cannons, which lets it be useful for a very very long time. This basically lets the basic design -- a very small, light fighter -- last all the way until the PIRANHA... after all, the Arrow didn't really surpass the Ferret in actual performance until it really got the cloak, and the ferret *IS* harder to hit... with a third bottom gun, itts, and the guns being laser / photon / ion based, it would be great. Just keep the shields upgraded and replace the durasteel with the later versions and you are golden. No need to get a “bigger and easier to hit” Arrow, really... even in the WCIV era. In fact the only ship that REALLY obviously surpasses the Ferret and remains obviously small and hard to hit (remember all the stats say the arrow is bigger than it is in Standoff) is the Piranha! Remember, the airframe of the Arrow is OLD. Just like the Ferret. Which means that you can do quite a bit with an old airframe in a light fighter.. after all, light fighters are mostly engines anyway!

Now, the Rapier. IMO, the hellcat need NEVER have existed. The rapier is faster, more maneuverable, smaller (thus harder to hit...), has an afterburner that lasts forever... look at the last set of guns that the hellcat had. Particle and Ion (the laser replacements). Hmmm. The rapier could have been viable to (maybe past) WC4! Hell, the rapier has better maneuverability than the SO TIGERSHARK!

The basic problem with all of this is that we just don't *know* 1) how old these ships are or 2) when they were retired. It's certainly possible that there's a modern variant of the Super Ferret flying around today.

(As for the Rapier, of course it was viable past WC4 -- we're still flying them in Arena!)



Which of these needed to be made? If we are upgrading a Rapier as the medium space superiority fighter, there is no REAL reason to make the wraith so early (but to test reaper guns that don't exist! ... wait...), so that leaves the heavy ones. The Morningstar? If we assume that guns have been moved to be more center line, and that heavy fighters don't have a fetish for mass drivers... that leaves the sabre being more like the Morningstar in the FIRST place. So yea, the two fighters are essentially the same idea (big heavy gun torpedo carrying strike / heavy fighter), with the Morningstar being the only jump capable, can actually both fight and carry torpedoes, can actually maneuver fighter. So the morningstar? Yea. The Prophecy era ships should have carried Morningstars...or Sabres that could actually JUMP. Same difference. Since, to me, the whole idea of a heavy but non space superiority fighter is to have at least a little bit of strike capability, and be able to jump, but okay at fighting, that means that the Thunderbolt really doesn't have a reason to exist. Just keep the Morningstar!

There was a jump capable Sabre, we see it in Fleet Action at one point.

The Wraith was certainly to premiere several new technologies (Reaper Cannons, Leech Missiles)... but it was also especially important because of its speed--it was the fastest fighter in the known universe when it was first built.

Now what about the heavy space superiority ones? The Excalibur's raison d'etre was the cloaking device, and somewhat the gun autoaiming. Okay, I will buy that. I don't like that it was less maneuverable than the Morningstar, but we will chalk it up to being prototype new technology. What about the production version, the Bearcat? Now there is a ship! Good gun loadout except for the locations of the guns (how come NONE OF THE OTHER GAMES used Light tachyon cannons??) … but not jump capable, and didn't have an optional cloak? Um. Yea. The bearcat should definitely be jump capable, and have an optional cloak. Hello, updated Excalibur? Now... The Dragon? Oh, the Dragon. That is a cheater's ship. It is so hideously beyond what should have been capable at the time (for crying out loud, it trounces the SO black vampire in many, MANY non minor ways), I just can't see how it was made other than writer's fiat. It obviously cost a bundle too, and didn't work, since you *don't see any Lances (the non evil Dragon variants) elsewhere in the games*! So for heavy space strike, we have the Morningstar, and for heavy fighter we have the jump capable, also sometimes cloak capable Bearcat. So should the Morningstar/Sabre/whichever is used ever be really retired? I would say YES... when you can fit a few light torpedoes on a medium fighter... which happens in SO era.... which means you could fit it on a non-normally-torpedo-capable HEAVY fighter from later on (see previously mentioned Bearcat, which is superior to the Morningstar. Or at least would be with a better gun location!)

I think the point of the Bearcat was that it was a very pure pilot's ship -- no fancy additions and instead very maneuverable and elegant.

The Lance argument doesn't make sense, since obviously we *do* use it and it *does* work. Just because we don't see any on the Midway or the Cerberus doesn't mean they aren't around (or indicate that they are). (Hell, it doesn't even mean there isn't a squadron on the Midway -- we go through all of Prophecy without seeing her Thunderbolts...).

Now... Big ships. Cap ships Did you know that the Vesuvius and the Midway are about the same size? Whereas the Midway favors more redundant systems with regards to the launch tubes, the Vesuvius, on the other hand, favors the more traditional but vulnerable “gigantic hanger deck”, and therefore can hold many MANY more fighters. And the Confederation class dreadnoughts – great when the gun worked, but that was rare. A failed idea. Remember, the most powerful force in Wing Commander tends to be fighters for long range power projection. And that gigantic hangar bay on the Vesuvius is awfully vulnerable... So what big ships SHOULD confed use or develop? It is understandable that they were pressing into service are tons of converted supply ships and ancient carriers. The Concordia class carriers are a sad wartime necessity. But what should they have been TRYING to do as the war ended? I think they should have pursued a strategy based on carrier strike groups. What I would have done, at the end of the war, was have a “big ship” strategy based on this:

It's worth noting that we don't really know what the deal with the Phase Transit Cannon is -- just that they stopped building them due to unspecified problems in 2665 (Kilrathi Saga manual). The Concordia certainly never had any problem firing hers. (And of course they were necessary from a perceived tactical standpoint, countering the Kilrathi Mass Accelerator Gun).

per group:
1 carrier, lexington class
1 cruiser, either waterloo or tallahassee class
2 escort carriers, wake class (or Eagle class, what the TCS Eagle was named for... If we could ever get the stats for one. I would presume it would be as fast as a Wake... being designed from the ground up as a light Carrier!)
2 destroyers, gilgamesh class
at least 3 corvettes, venture class (including at least one electronics warfare / sensor corvette.)
at least 2 supply/transport ships

We don't have an absolute class name for what the Eagle was, but Star*Soldier certainly implies (and was intended to) that it was a Harrier-class CVE.

Why only two WC3 type game ships? Remember that by the end of the war, the “latest and greatest” carriers were the Jutland and Lexington classes. Of these, there is one VERY important thing to note – the Lexington class has secondary launch bays. This is a Very Good Idea. So the power projection from wing commander 3 on should have been focused on Lexington class... and I would ASSUME that the one without all the crazy modifications would probably be a bit faster than the one in Armada. Maybe 100 kps? Rather than develop a Vesuvius or Midway super carrier, they should have made dozens of these things! And note something about the Wake on down. Wake, Gilgamesh, and Venture ships all have something in common that their cousins in the same classes don't: they all go at least 240kps. Speed is HUGE, and a quick response (get there firstest with the mostest!) that might have less power is often better than a delayed response later. As far as the big ships go, I don't see many major improvements from WC2 to WC3 era big ships. The only ships that I can tell are actually BETTER is the Tallahassee class is better than the waterloo class, by virtue of being more maneuverable and having more guns. Based on my doctrine of “ships from escort carrier on down need to be fast, capable of doing their roles, and have phase shields, and that's about it.” NONE of the newer replacements work. Southampton instead of Gilgamesh? Too slow. Paradigm over Venture? Too slow (note neither has phase shields..). The new Caernaven Frigate? Too slow. Anyway, I thought the doctrine of the Midway being able to “take care of any problem it comes across” was really stupid, seeing as how it really wasn't capable of doing that, and they had to make other size ships anyway, and besides, the Vesuvius class (or hell, the LEXINGTON class. Which I mentioned earlier!) was enough of a super carrier ANYWAY... just get two of the things, damn!

Ehh, a lot of this material on carrier classes is fanon; it'd be very hard to find any evidence, anywhere that the Confederation's primary carriers were the Jutland and the Lexington.

- The 'Lexington class' comes from Wing Commander Armada; it is assumed to be new since we see the TCS Lexington herself in that game. That's all we know.

- The 'Jutland class' comes from the unpublished series bible, which used it for the name given to a carrier conversion of the Waterloo class cruisers (so as to explain why the Gettysburg was considered a major carrier in End Run). It wasn't even a canonical designation until 2007, when it appeared in Star*Soldier in a brief mention that confirmed it was indeed the Waterloo conversion.

Its. A. Game. We're not discussing the merits of using the Atom bomb on Japan here. Its not like we can see inside Confed HQ's collective mind. It doesn't exist. It was created by nerds in Austin, TX in 1990.

Oh, good, a plea for rationality from someone whose signature tells us he's a space admiral. Seriously, arguing about Wing Commander's crazy minutae is basically all we do here... you're in no position to tell someone not to.
 
Wow guys! Thanks for the informative and thoughtful replies! I haven't read them *fully* yet, but I will get to it ASAP!
 
I love Standoff, but it was unnecessarily goofy about gun placement. If you didn't have a problem hitting things with a Hornet in Wing Commander I, there's no canonical difficulty.
You're right, it was more a technical problem than a canonical feel. To our defence I'd point out that I've done some tweeking to the ships for Ep4's release, bringing the bullets exit points as close to the center of the ship as I could before it started looking silly ("laser don't come out from the model's guns, but from the center of the wings !")
 
Well, that seems like reasonable evidence that sometimes there are technical barriers to putting the guns in the middle of the ship. :)
 
Bandit LOAF said:
Oh, good, a plea for rationality from someone whose signature tells us he's a space admiral. Seriously, arguing about Wing Commander's crazy minutae is basically all we do here... you're in no position to tell someone not to.

Yeah....that was stupid for me to say....I apologize.
 
Okay. So I am reading this:

http://wingcommander.by.ru/VS/Streak33.html

Which has more canonical info on the guns. So I see a few things... Laser and Photon cannons PROBABLY shouldn't be used in deep space, and Particle cannons CAN'T be used in atmosphere, and neither can Meson cannons. So that leaves as the "cheap" atmo guns... neutron, mass drivers, and ion cannons... gee the hellcat loadout makes more sense now!

... ekapshi use meson guns. woohoo internal consistancy! And vindicators use lasers, so I guess lasers / photons are supposed to have reduced RANGE in atmo??

Hmmm. That makes things more difficult. Do we know which of the fighters are supposed to be atmospheric capable?
 
Can't figure out how to edit my post..
In the most recent post, change
*in deep space
to
*in atmosphere

Unless you're a mod or admin you only have two hours to edit your posts. Usually a quick read over of a post will catch anything that stands out with the added bonus that it affords the poster a moment of pause in which to reflect on any potentially stupid or abusive posts.

THis isn't specifically about you though, it's just a good habit for everyone to review their posts after they make them. Up until the two hour limit an edit button should appear on the lower right of your post.
 
I think the fiction asks and answers this question starting with Wing Commander III; if you look at the gun descriptions in Victory Streak, it's clear that they're all being written in response to 'why do we have so many guns?'. It's not simulated in the game itself, of course, but the manual adds all sorts of caveats (ion cannons kill pilots, laser cannons aren't effective in atmospheres, the reaper cannon is best against shields, etc.) and a more complex hierarchy defining what damage actually means (it differentiates between radiation, blast and heat damage).

Okay, I looked at the info, and as near as I can tell, the main thing that this says is this: ion developed into reaper to combat shields because of the refire rate, photon is pulsed laser, photon and laser refract in atmosphere, meson and particle don't work AT ALL in atmosphere (even though in the game Meson cannons fired from atmospheric craft..), and that's about it!

It's also worth considering that there's likely some technical reason that a healthy majority of the ships we fly in the games have wing-mounted cannons and that they have a particular number of gun slots. 'Just make them centerline' and 'add more guns' seem like the space fighter equivalent of "you there, hit a home run"... (Also, beyond the Bearcat, did anyone really have a problem with gun locations? And that seemed like a necessary and fun game balancing maneuver, too...)

Okay, it maybe was a game balancing maneuver, but if you really have to, you can add a gun pod to the side of the fuselage! They do that in real life... if it is a completely space based fighter, you don't even have to worry about aerodynamics! I don't believe that it is as big a deal as you maintain.

I think that there is something of a linear upgrade path -- its just been heavily retconned since "our" basic gun trio in 1990. The Kilrathi Saga claims that the Meson Blaster, Photon Cannon, Laser Cannon and Plasma Gun are all pre-war weapons, that the Mass Driver Cannon, Neutron Gun and Particle Cannon all came into being in the 2640s/50s and then that the Ion Cannon, Reaper Cannon and Tachyon Cannon are all new in the last two years of the war. Now, obviously there have been a few modifications to that (we see Particle Cannons in an Academy episode in 2654 and Mass Driver Cannons in Action Stations in 2634), but it's a good start... and it tells a fairly reasonable narrative, ending with supposedly-Godlike Reaper Cannon and the incredibly efficient Tachyon Gun as the pinnacles of energy weapon development (both of which feature more heavily on the newest fighter designs, through WC4 and Prophecy).

Okay. If Meson blaster, Photon, Laser, and Plasma gun are all pre-war weapons... then by the time of privateer/wc3-level guns, the "upgraded" photon or meson guns should have largely replaced lasers as much as possible, as they are, in most ways, BETTER than a standard laser (they even fire quickly). And if they are prewar weapons -- hell the old version of the photon gun was even POPULAR -- then there is no reason that you shouldn't see photon guns (which is a pulse laser, basically...) all over the place. They are easy to maintain, just a little more expensive than lasers, and by all accounts, quite a bit better! And I think we really need to decide if Meson SHOULD have been atmospheric capable or not... if it was, and it didn't have the light based refraction problems of the photon and laser... it basically is the *longest range atmospheric gun since before the war*! It only gets eclipsed by the ion cannon! That is HUGE! As far as particle cannon, I believe it is one of the "best" space based weapons... period. From the time it was invented all the way through -- that is why you see it so common in fighters of all ages, I really think they should have kept it as much as possible.

I don't think weapon upgrades are so simple as always having the best gun on every fighter, though. There are plenty of reasons why "older" guns would be kept around.

The thing is, lots of these guns that I like are actually pretty damn old. See Particle cannon. And even if photon isn't that old, once it is invented as a "refinement of the laser", I strongly think it should've at least replaced mass drivers!

- They've proven themselves, which is a bigger deal than people usually understand. Here's the computer analogy: any large office with an IT staff is still using one or two previous generations of software revisions (Windows XP, Office 2003, etc.) -- because those are the versions with a reliable amount of bugs and other failings understood. It's just a standard practice... as would be maintaining laser cannons that have worked for forty years alongside much more complex Tachyon Cannons that just came off the drawing board.

Again, see photon cannon and particle cannon. I would be perfectly happy if photon cannons were used pretty much throughout the war!

- There are working factories building them at capacity. Another big deal. You aren't going to stop production of a gun type entirely in the middle of a war to spend months/years retooling for another one; production has to overlap, and having overlapped can continue for both types.

Well, okay... but they obviously retooled the factories to completely replace with FIGHTERS, so I don't see retooling factories to make guns being that big of an issue. What they seemed to have issues with was retooling to make different kinds of capital ships, especially carriers! Which was why they seem to be using lots of old carriers all the time!

- They share technology and likely components with other weapons. It's no coincidence that we see smaller lasers, mass drivers and neutrons as standard Marine weaponry in End Run. Think of the Army's current requirement that all vehicles, from trucks to tanks, run on be able to run on the same type of gasoline. It's a strategic thing, it's a user knowledge thing and it's a resource management thing.

Well, is it just me or does that mean that they should be focusing on primarily energy weapons? Yea, okay, a mass driver is an electric coilgun, but you still need the slugs. For most of the particle weapons, don't you just strip particles off of a small piece of matter and fling it through whatever sort of particle accelerator the gun is using? That seems to be what all of the (neutron, tachyon, particle, meson, ion) guns do, right? The main difference being "what particles you use" and "what you do with the particles in the gun"?


- There are technical aspects beyond even the varied damage heirarchy from Wing Commander III's material discussed above; consider the manual's mention that the Photon Cannon is noteworthy because it is especially easy to maintain--that's a *huge* deal in all sorts of situations. Imagine a situation where you can realign the Photon Cannon's mirrors in half an hour but have to pull a Reaper and reconstruct it after every flight. We have that option on a fancy carrier... but that's the minority. Think of all the Black Sheep-style squadrons fighting on planets that need to turn their fighters around quickly.

I would be perfectly happy if they used photon cannons all the time! They should replace lasers with them even!

- The vast majority of spaceframes weren't designed for them. If weapons are "plug and play" in Privateer then it's because those specific ships were designed to allow those options... but twenty-plus year old designs (Hellcats, Arrows, Rapiers, etc.) that came about before the Reaper or the Tachyon was a glint in a scientist's eye can't necessarily just swap out for the new technology (computer analogy -- try putting a modern processor in your 486... it's not *better* if it doesn't work).

Yea I believe the civilian ships in Privateer were overpowered compared to the military ones... but old designs should still be able to use particle guns! And I think you should see lots of focus on putting 3, four particle guns on all the "deep space only, and a bit old" fighters -- all you really need to do is upgrade the power plants some to power them...

- The hundreds of thousands (millions? more?) of ground crews supporting the fighter force are already trained on the existing weapons... retraining them for new ones isn't going to happen all at once (everybody take the week off, we're going to Reaper Cannon training, hope the Kilrathi don't attack!) -- and so a unified rollout/replacement can't happen all at once. Even once the new weapons are added to their repetoires, the old ones are still what they're most efficient at working with (and will be until they have more experience first hand).

Note I didn't put the reaper cannon in my post. I don't think it serves a purpose. Ion cannon? Yea, sure, it is the first long range atmospheric gun. Reaper cannon? Okay, it is an advanced ion cannon... but if you need an atmospheric supergun for a really advanced fighter... just use tachyons?

- Like the United States, the Confederation is a capitalist state whose weapons purchasing is subject to lobbying on the part of the weapons manufacturers themselves. We see this in the Wing Commander IV novelization, with Paulsen's family's weapons consortium being the manufacturer and the force behind the adoption of new mass drivers.

Okay I can see this. I can even see it making sense that they would've kept mass driver factories going on long after they were obsolete... but there probably should've been some more forces going against keeping them being used (the fighter jocks would probably have been like, "the new photon cannons are cheaper, just as easy to maintain, go further in space, use less energy, the projectile moves faster, go just as far in atmosphere, have a faster refire rate, dont require you to tens of thousands of tiny slugs in your ship... why are we still using mass drivers?"

- Expanding on that point, *unlike* the United States, military-grade space guns are commodities on the civilian market (in Privateer). Even if the military isn't buying Neutron Guns at a particular time, the company that makes them is still doing so as a brand more than as a single point in the scientific development of the gun.

To me this says that confed should have been focusing on energy weapons as much as possible, and ditched mass drivers.


- Deflating on that point, *cost*! The uniformly superior Tachyon Cannon costs *twenty times* as much as the Laser Cannon -- try getting a budget through Congress that swaps out every gun in the military with one that's twenty times as expensive all at once.

Which is why I think you should see more particle cannons yes?

- Finally, gameplay. The guns are changed for the same reason the ships are changed... because players demand new material. The single laser might technically be the most effective gun in the world and perfect at everything, but a game where it's all you fire would be pretty darned dull.

Well, okay, they could have done this with a line of evolution that makes sense though! The whole "laser replaced by photon all over, and replaced by ion on frontline fighters, or anything that is made to go in atmosphere", "particle used as main good gun for space superiority, and tachyon for superfighters, especially the ones that go in atmosphere" ... what gets me is that you see a really GOOD gun and really CRAPPY guns on the same fighter! You should never see ion and laser on the same fighter, if you can put ions on a fighter, COMPLETELY upgrade it to ion!

This seems like the opposite of what you're arguing in favor of previously, though: adding complexity (more guns for one role).

And how many of our wingmen over the years qualify as experts:)? And they're supposed to be the best of the best!

No comment.

I love Standoff, but it was unnecessarily goofy about gun placement. If you didn't have a problem hitting things with a Hornet in Wing Commander I, there's no canonical difficulty.

I think they edited this.


The basic problem with all of this is that we just don't *know* 1) how old these ships are or 2) when they were retired. It's certainly possible that there's a modern variant of the Super Ferret flying around today.

(As for the Rapier, of course it was viable past WC4 -- we're still flying them in Arena!)
I don't consider Arena completely canonical... it was reverent to the past games, and obviously made by someone who loved them, but it still doesn't feel right.


There was a jump capable Sabre, we see it in Fleet Action at one point.

The Wraith was certainly to premiere several new technologies (Reaper Cannons, Leech Missiles)... but it was also especially important because of its speed--it was the fastest fighter in the known universe when it was first built.

Which is why I think you should have seen it instead of the Vampire! IMO, it is better than the vampire! The Wraith and Bearcat are the two top tier superfighters in the game, and I believe they should be treated as such!

I think the point of the Bearcat was that it was a very pure pilot's ship -- no fancy additions and instead very maneuverable and elegant.

The Lance argument doesn't make sense, since obviously we *do* use it and it *does* work. Just because we don't see any on the Midway or the Cerberus doesn't mean they aren't around (or indicate that they are). (Hell, it doesn't even mean there isn't a squadron on the Midway -- we go through all of Prophecy without seeing her Thunderbolts...).

Well okay. I do think they are too easy to hit with that fat ass, and aren't maneuverable enough for a superfighter, instead relying on MEGA OVERPOWERED shields that reaaallllyyy shouldn't have been possible. I still think it is a cheater's ship! If anything, the only big "features" for a heavy superfighter to differentiate it from a medium superfighter should be: jump drive, maximum range, maybe regenerating afterburner fuel. So the two heavy FIGHTERS should be one that has a jump drive, range, strike/torpedo capability (coughmorningstarcough), and when you get torpedos that can fit on the other space superiority fighter (bearcat), it is time to retire the morningstar, as its raison d'etre -- a fast heavy fighter that can carry torpedoes and still fight -- no longer exists.

It's worth noting that we don't really know what the deal with the Phase Transit Cannon is -- just that they stopped building them due to unspecified problems in 2665 (Kilrathi Saga manual). The Concordia certainly never had any problem firing hers. (And of course they were necessary from a perceived tactical standpoint, countering the Kilrathi Mass Accelerator Gun).

I thought it was always a hit and miss thing? No one ever WANTED to fire the PTC, because it had a big chance of really damaging the ship, right?


We don't have an absolute class name for what the Eagle was, but Star*Soldier certainly implies (and was intended to) that it was a Harrier-class CVE.

Do we have ANY information of the capabilities of this class?? The reason I put secondary carriers in my info is that, well, the eggs and basket thing, and also the ability to move something that holds fighters quickly where it needs to go!



Ehh, a lot of this material on carrier classes is fanon; it'd be very hard to find any evidence, anywhere that the Confederation's primary carriers were the Jutland and the Lexington.

- The 'Lexington class' comes from Wing Commander Armada; it is assumed to be new since we see the TCS Lexington herself in that game. That's all we know.

- The 'Jutland class' comes from the unpublished series bible, which used it for the name given to a carrier conversion of the Waterloo class cruisers (so as to explain why the Gettysburg was considered a major carrier in End Run). It wasn't even a canonical designation until 2007, when it appeared in Star*Soldier in a brief mention that confirmed it was indeed the Waterloo conversion.

Ahhh okay. That makes sense. So the lexington class is the newest pre Big V carrier? And it has the secondary bays? Yea, that is good enough! And the Waterloo was already capable of carrying SOME fighters, the Jutland version just made it carry more? Okay, I like that then. Waterloo is a fine, fast ship, and keeping the enemy guessing for which is a cruiser version and which is a carrier version is, IMO, a good thing! There should be more of both!
 
Okay, it maybe was a game balancing maneuver, but if you really have to, you can add a gun pod to the side of the fuselage! They do that in real life... if it is a completely space based fighter, you don't even have to worry about aerodynamics! I don't believe that it is as big a deal as you maintain.

Real world gun pods use ammunition and have a minimal power draw. Wing Commander energy weapons consume no ammunition, but instead suck up a lot of energy. Basic Wing Commander math: consider a Centurion firing two fusion cannons versus one firing four. The power consumption isn't just different in that it burns twice as much, but also that the power pool (capacitors?) aren't recharging twice as fast either. I also recall some sharing going on between shield recharge and gun recharge as well, but that's probably my fuzzy memory.

So just throwing on a pair of gun pods may increase a fighter's first-salvo damage output, but it will decrease its sustained fire capabilities and probably its shield defenses.

Then there's also issues that aren't around in the game engine but definitely exist in the fiction such as the added mass, the impact of higher local electronic "noise" on the systems, as well as implementing and standardizing a modular weapons system that may very well not be used by most pilots or in most circumstances.
 
Real world gun pods use ammunition and have a minimal power draw. Wing Commander energy weapons consume no ammunition, but instead suck up a lot of energy. Basic Wing Commander math: consider a Centurion firing two fusion cannons versus one firing four. The power consumption isn't just different in that it burns twice as much, but also that the power pool (capacitors?) aren't recharging twice as fast either. I also recall some sharing going on between shield recharge and gun recharge as well, but that's probably my fuzzy memory.

So just throwing on a pair of gun pods may increase a fighter's first-salvo damage output, but it will decrease its sustained fire capabilities and probably its shield defenses.

Then there's also issues that aren't around in the game engine but definitely exist in the fiction such as the added mass, the impact of higher local electronic "noise" on the systems, as well as implementing and standardizing a modular weapons system that may very well not be used by most pilots or in most circumstances.

All I was saying was for gun pods to get guns closer to the centerline... I am perfectly fine with two high quality / high energy use guns, or four medium quality / low energy use guns, as long as they are all near the centerline.
 
I hate to bring it up again, but arena (especially star*soldier) is the very definition of canon, whether you like it or not. so your theory on why it is not canon enough for you is totally irrelevant.

The confed spent most of the war on the ropes. they didn't do a lot of fighter retooling, regardless of what you think you noticed. they also didn't do a bunch of weapon retooling. They were hurting. constantly.
 
I hate to bring it up again, but arena (especially star*soldier) is the very definition of canon, whether you like it or not. so your theory on why it is not canon enough for you is totally irrelevant.

The confed spent most of the war on the ropes. they didn't do a lot of fighter retooling, regardless of what you think you noticed. they also didn't do a bunch of weapon retooling. They were hurting. constantly.

Okay okay....

Lets say we take Arena as Canon.

What does it tell us then? It tells us that Broadswords can eventually have afterburners. That Rapier II's and Arrows and Broadswords can fight in the Nephilim-era. That eventually pretty much every ship can be jump capable. Meson Blaster remains a late-era gun. That after Ion cannons made the laser pretty much obsolete on the Midway, there are still people using lasers effectively. Afterburner velocity goes down as late modifications are added to spaceframes. Mines are VERY relevant. Late model tractor beams can be used offensively. The dragon STILL has the most shields (gyah!). Am I missing anything?
 
Okay okay....

Lets say we take Arena as Canon.

What does it tell us then? It tells us that Broadswords can eventually have afterburners. That Rapier II's and Arrows and Broadswords can fight in the Nephilim-era. That eventually pretty much every ship can be jump capable. Meson Blaster remains a late-era gun. That after Ion cannons made the laser pretty much obsolete on the Midway, there are still people using lasers effectively. Afterburner velocity goes down as late modifications are added to spaceframes. Mines are VERY relevant. Late model tractor beams can be used offensively. The dragon STILL has the most shields (gyah!). Am I missing anything?

And S*S tells us Maniac can actually write a book. :p
 
not only can (and do) early era fighters fight against the Nephilim, the timeline hints that everyone in the confederation got burned by the bugs. Unlike the Kilrathi war which was mostly about battle fronts, the Nephil strategy seems to have been swarm and overwhelm. so even mothballed fighters on frontier worlds probably saw more action than they ever wanted to.

Arena tells you that no space frame is totally obsolete, and like privateer, can take upgrades, like armor weapons and (yes) jump engines. It also hints that more than just Gemini is a frontier now. Arena doesn't really tell you what the dragon is up to in the future. maybe it is still a mainstay fighter, maybe it was impractical for some reason, it doesn't matter.

It's pretty obvious that centerline weapons are more useful for making contact with enemy fighters. so instead of assuming that the confed is full of total morons who can't think (oh gee.. I bet if we shoot AT the enemy, it'll hit them more often!) and try assuming for a second that there is some technical limitation that prevents every single ship from turning into a god-mode superfighter.

would it really be very fun if every single fighter flew and reacted exactly the same for all situations?
 
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