What's the most powerful Confed cap ship?

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Originally posted by TC
No they aren't, since we are given an energy output that at first looks (I don't feel like doing any extra research on this point :) ) seems to be impossible by todays technology. Therefore it must be a technology we don't currently have access to.

TC
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Well, yes. The energy release that we're talking about, whether an exajoule or 1E20 exajoules, is quite beyond the technological capacity of 21st century Earth.

The problem is that any of these so-called "elegant" solutions would in fact take far more energy than simply blowing the planet apart. But this is to be expected: "elegant" work-arounds usually take a lot more effort than the direct approach. For a wartime effort, I suspect that either Tolwyn misspoke or it was a "dialogue oops," because it's both easier and more energy-efficient to destroy outright the planet than play around.
 
Read the novels. Tolwyn was so very horribly immersed in the project that there's no way in hell he'd mess up on a stat like that.

TC
 
Originally posted by Dragon
Some people like "real science Facts" too much IMHO.
Perhaps they dont use any of the "unreal" weapons in the game.....
Next comes the T-Bomb science angle......
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Oh, I love the T-Bomb mission. Even though I know it's an utterly unfeasible way to destroy a planet (to wit, seismic reactions are insufficient to disrupt the structure of an entire planet, even one as tectonically unstable as Kilrah, though the T-Bomb probably could have completely collapsed Kilrathi civilization), the skill implicit in piloting your Excalibur through the canyon on Kilrah is great, and it's a thrilling ride.

Sometime science has to take a backseat to enjoyment, but at the same time, I don't understand why people are adverse to INCREASING the overall capabilities of the Confederation ;). After all, 1E38 joules is more than one quadrillion times more powerful than 1E18 joules (Tolwyn's statement in the Behemoth briefing).
 
Originally posted by TC
Read the novels. Tolwyn was so very horribly immersed in the project that there's no way in hell he'd mess up on a stat like that.

TC
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Then either he deliberately misspoke, in order to confound possible spies, or the dialogue was simply written incorrectly (not without precedent, witness the nanojoules-for-gigajoules error in the Victory Streak manual).
 
Or, as you admitted was possible, they are capable of doing what is currently impossible. This is quite believable. Think of how our destructive capability has increased (for an equivilant input) since the 1400s :)

TC
 
JMS and other scifi writers have a good motto, never let scientific reality get in the way of a good plot. In other words, toss realism if it takes the fun out of the story. Otherwise we'd end up with space battles with all the excitement of 2001.
 
Overall, the Wing Commander universe appears to use modern (i.e. post-WWII) naval tactics, with fighters and long-range-weapon capital ships forming the main line of combat, compared to Star Wars, which uses World War I era battleship tactics for the bulk of fighting, and Star Trek, which uses ancient, Roman-era naval tactics.

The Confederation frigates, while extremely fragile in a gunnery confrontation, are ideal platforms for beyond-cannon-range capital ship missiles (as seen in Wing Commander IV, where a Confederation frigate menaces Border Worlds transport ships from extreme range, requiring fighter interdiction).
 
Originally posted by Dragon
and that is a destroyer, not a frigate that lauches the Cap missiles.
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I could have sworn it was a frigate launching the CAP missiles, with the destroyer present to protect it from hostile capital ships.
 
Caernaven Class frigates were designed to fill many jobs, I belive that one was being use to carrie the fighters.
I played WC IV some time ago and since one of my disc is damage (a scrach in it) I cannot say that for sure but I remenber going after that destroyer because he was launching the Cap missiles.
 
Originally posted by Dragon
Caernaven Class frigates were designed to fill many jobs, I belive that one was being use to carrie the fighters.
I played WC IV some time ago and since one of my disc is damage (a scrach in it) I cannot say that for sure but I remenber going after that destroyer because he was launching the Cap missiles.
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IIRC, the two reasons for taking out the destroyer were:

(a) Its firepower would prevent you from making effective torp runs on the frigate, and

(b) if it's not dead, it can close to gun range with the transports and take them out by itself. After all, they're just armed with a single anti-fighter gun each, it's not like they're going to be a big threat to a fully-armed warship.
 
Iceburg: I must agree with you on all your points, but just as a point don't we *know* that matter/anti-matter reactions are used to power capships and thus the entire fusion/fission argument is invalid?
 
At any rate, in the Wing Commander era, the carrier is the undisputed queen of space. It is explicitly stated in canon literature that a carrier entering a system is enough to establish dominance over that system, and there seem to be two different schools of thought as regards heavy carriers.

First, there are the Vesuvius-style "dreadnought" carriers. These ships are very large and very massive, designed to combine the functions of battleship and heavy carrier, though with a distinct bias toward the carrier function. They are also quite expensive, and appear to be the Confederation's equivalent of Darth Vader's Executor command ship.

Second, there are the Midway-style "megacarriers." Obviously biased toward the carrier role at the expense of all others, these are the most direct analogue of the modern Nimitz-class "supercarrier," which is an aircraft carrier first, foremost and only.

Smaller carriers appear to combine, at least to some extent, the roles of carrier and cruiser, though most of the Confederation's main warships seem to be strictly warships, with little to no fighter capability.
 
It depends on what part of the Wing Commander era you're in. Carriers have not always been dominant. Even when they were they were not really able to hold their own and require support craft to take and hold systems.

TC
 
Originally posted by TC
It depends on what part of the Wing Commander era you're in. Carriers have not always been dominant. Even when they were they were not really able to hold their own and require support craft to take and hold systems.

TC
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During the entire Kilrathi War and postwar period, carriers are the dominant warship. The fact that carriers can't take and hold systems isn't a mark against them - they're not expected to, any more than our modern carriers are. That's what the Confederation Army and Marine Corps are for. What carriers are expected to do is what they have always done - create and maintain a condition of air superiority.
 
Carriers are extremly valubale capships, but I don't think you could call them dominant... That would be dreadnoughts, which are basicly heavy battle ships with fighter wings. A ship like the WC3 Kilrathi dreadnouhgt was and still is an extremly powerfull ship that could take on a small fleet, even though it didn't carry many fighters.


First, there are the Vesuvius-style "dreadnought" carriers. These ships are very large and very massive, designed to combine the functions of battleship and heavy carrier, though with a distinct bias toward the carrier function.
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Dreadnought carriers?:) There's no such things, the Vesuvius class was never intended to function as a carrier combined with a battle ship.
 
This may not be the most powerful ConFed, its the most powerful Kilrathi ship...

The WC II Kilrathi garbage scow, I never manage to get near one, let alone destroy one.....
 
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