Why didn't Confed fight the Kilrathi more intelligently?

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J

Joshua

Spaceman
Greetings everyone, my name is Joshua Harrington. Some of you might know me from the game Star Adventure 4010. I found out about Wing Commander about a year ago. I don't get it. Confed personnel never really fought the Kilrathi war as intelligently as they could have IMHO. Confed could have used gigantic unfurlable screens to block line of sight to their carriers (Confed could've used advance recon units to pinpoint opposing unit locations), Confed could have used missiles with super polymer warheads to prevent opposing Kilrathi ships' turrets & guns from rotating to train on Confed ships (this would've enabled Confed to send boarding ships to capture the crippled Kilrathi ships* and the super polymers could have been used to blind opposing fighters), Confed could have placed small pistol sized guns on their fighters to shoot down missiles, Confed could have used decoy fighters and decoy ships to divert Kilrathi forces away from true fighters and true ships (indeed, Confed could've stored expandable deployable fake spacecraft in the cargo bays of their carriers), Confed could've had two people per fighter (one pilots, one shoots), Confed could've designed their spacecraft to look like asteroids so the Kilrathi would not have fired on them (at least Confed had the brains to do that with the secret Confed outposts in Kilrathi space in Heart of the Tiger game). Obviously, cunning and salvaging aren't Confed's strengths. A shame. George Washington would've been disappointed in them. That's what I'd like to see in the next WC game is to have more variety.

*My friend is currently researching super polymers. For those of you who don't know what a super polymer is, think of it as a super superglue like substance. He wants to develop them for the U.S. Military to be used in peacekeeping and salvage missions.
 
You forget two things.

Firstly, the Kilrathi worn born and rasied to fight a war. Their governemnt and military and forces were geared towards a system-to-system conflict of assimilation and eventually eradication. They were prepared, ConFed wasn't. This left them scavaging for the rest of the war to fight with whatever the could scramble online. They simply didn't have resources online from the beginning to fight the war. In WC3 we see them throwing 30 year old carriers into service as frontline ships. In the meantime the Kilrathi have enough front line ships to fight the war, AND to Mass a fleet at Kilrah, just to show you the comparison. The Kilrathi in addition were sucidial fighters. They would ram their enemies to take them out of the fight. Once the war became a war of total Eradication they used radiation weapons to destroy whole planets and ecosystems, while Confed fought them with thirty year old carriers and whatever they could scramble online. There simply wasn't time to prepare those kinds of specailty weapons. Further, as the war progressed, it took 90% of Confeds resources not to prosecute the war, but to fight it defensivly and hold onto their terroritory. Again, there was no time nor resources to prepare some kind of special attack. The Kilrathi (who have ambush fighters disguesed as asteroids by the way) had all the time in the world to prepare for their attack, and they used it to their advantage. There first strike set the stage of the entire war: They would hurt Confed badly, but they could not simply beat them into submission.

Secondly, the Confederation Military (to some extent) had it's hands tied during the war. There was a limit on what they could and could not do, in partly because of resources, but also because of the government. There is a large allusion to this by Tolwyn in False Colors, when he mentions that the military personel didn't have direct control over all of their assets. In addition, the secret operations and weapons being developed were highly classified and compartmentalized. After spending 50 Billion dollars to design and test an epoxy missile to freeze enemy turrets, before we even discussing what retooling their factories would cost in time and money, do you think Congress is going to allow them to simply start building it and then turn it loose against the Kilrathi? Do you think Congress is going to approve funds for a project such as that, or for say, the build up of a convential fleet to defend their planets and government sectors? And then, you have to take a hundred factories offline, re-tool them, re supply them, and kick them back into gear. More money down the drain. A few months without 100 factories probably would have killed the Confed. And then the missiles start trickling in. Soon there's one dumbfire, the Kilrathi catch it, reverse engineer it, build a shield for it, and now Confed is out 50 Mil, plus 200 mil they spent on the factories, and we just gave the Kilrathi a new toy. In the Kilrathi Empire, the Emporer orders them to build more ships, and they do it. Do you know the kind of process you would have to go through to do the same thing in the Confederation? No one really does, but their government is structured largely as the US government, which means it's built to NOT get anything done.

All of that being said, let's now discuss the concepts you came up with.

a) Giant Unfurable screens: Do you know what star charts are? If you look at a screen and it blocks the stars behind it, wouldn't you KNOW something is there? Solution: Paint on a star chart. Conclusion: This would be so costly, you'd have to carry a million screens for every possible position you might deploy the carrier in. Repainting is to expensive and time consuming, we're talking about a combat carrier not an art gallery. Also, the screen to be able to be carried manuvered rolled up and deployed would be to weak to provide any protection for to much of a cost. Fact of the matter is that Carriers are MOBILE assets. Tie them to one PLace and they die. America learned the lesson the hard way in World War II.

b) Advanced recon units: Hell, have you played the game? You think they send fighters on patrol for your entertainment? Or maybe...*Gasp* To pinpoint enemy locations in advance?

c) Super Polymar Missiles: One word: Shields. Beyond that, have you considered how cold a true Vacumn is? That stuff would freeze before it ever hit it's target enough to do any good. Is that good? No. Ships Hulls can survive missile and laser hits, as can their shields. Impacting either with frozen glue is utterly useless. Same goes for blinding a fighter.

d) Pistol Guns: Do you know what Close in Weapons are? They look like R2D2's and fire like gatlin guns. Hundres of rounds a second. Right at incoming missiles. Computer Controlled. Most Navy ships have them. Confed Navy Ships have them. When there are four guns, and 200 hundred missiles, how do you shoot them all down? Or do you plan to attack enemy ships with just a single bomber and torpedo?

e) Decoy Fighters and Decoy Ships: These cost money and time. But on a side not, when the Battle of Jukar Tag went down (Am I spelling that name correctly?) Confed had a group of Corvettes in Enigma running false signals to fool the Kilrathi into thinking all their Carriers were farther away then they really were. This is costly and stupid. Such ships would have to have power, or be detected as inactive immediatly and disregarded. This goes the same for fighters. Also, you seem to to be under the mistaken impression that fleet carriers have gobs of unused cargo space they can carry dummy fighters in. If your going to do that, why not carry another group of REAL Fighters that can do REAL damage?

f) Pilot and a Gunner: I don't think this really deserves a response but the Thunderbolt and Longbow Bombers both had turrets to be operated by gunners. In addition the Sabre had two turrets (Or just one? Not sure.) and the Broadsword had THREE, all designed to be operated by gunners during combat. Later the Shrike and the other bomber (Devestator? I don't recall the Prophecy bomber name) both had turrets you could fight from, that could carrier gunners. By the way, most bombers deployed with two crewman, one to fly and one to control the torpedo. And what do you think, Confed had a dozen factories building fighter pilots? It takes time and money to train them, to things we have safely established that the confed did not have.

g) Asteroid fighters: Aside from uses in an asteroid field, what good are these? You have to refuel and re arm them, don't you think that'd be noticed? Besides that, the Kilrathi had such fighters because they were ready to fight a war...Confed had to make do with whatever the could poor onto the lines in the last minutes before a battle.

h) Obviously Cunning and Salvaging aren't Confed's greatest strenghts. I have four points to make here. First the aforementioned battle at Jukar Tag. The Confed brilliantly Ambushed a Kilrathi Fleet. Not JUST A kilrathi fleet, but the Homeguard fleet, the Kilrathi Elite, and eliminated a good portion of those forces. Second, at the same time a deep raid into the HEART of the Kilrathi Empire, their home system itself was launched, eliminating five carriers under construction AND their shipyards. This strike was preformed by a destoryer (I think) A LIGHT Escort Carrier, Division of Marines, and a Corvette. If that's not salvaging I dunno what is. As for cunning, the entire brilliance of the operation speaks to that safely. But wait! There's more! (Now I feel like an infomercial) The opening battle at Mcaullfie caught the Confed almost entirly by surprise. Half their forces weren't prepared, something like 75% died. The whole base was lost and destroyed. As for cunning and Salvaging, with meager reinforcements and about 1/10th the strenght of the Kilrathi Fleet Confed forces in the system and arriving to support managed to beat back the Kilrathi Advance and hold the planet despite bumbled attempts by the senior command staff which did very little to command the battle. I'm not done yet. After decommissioning their entire fleet, when Confed learned that a larger then ever Kilrathi fleet led by ships larger then anything ever seen carrying more forces then had ever been waged before int he war, they managed to scramble enough forces back online to stop the Kilrathi advance before they struck Earth. You want cunning? They threw Marines in with a weak wave of fighter and assualt transport craft, boarded the Kilrathi super carriers, and blew them to hell with antimatter mines. I guess that was a stupid move, even though it won them the day. I guess they suck at salvaging, because they obviously didn't do that when they brought in their fleet to save Earth.

Don't drag down Confed for the way the war was fought. They had limited resources, limited time, and poor politicol support. They did what had to be done to save the Human race, and I wouldn't see them go back on any of it. Not their failed projects or tactics. Except that Armistice. That was just stupid. Aside from that every aspect of the Confed war was Cunning. Everything they did was salvaging. And they did it so well they beat back a greater more powerful enemy who initiated the conflict with the strongest desire to win. And enemy who was prepared when Confed was not.

Don't attack Confed. They did what they had to do, and they did it well.
 
The super polymers could be heated hot enough so that they don't freeze as soon as the warhead breaks open. And it costs more time and money to replace a real fighter and real trained pilot than it does a fake decoy fighter.
 
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Yes, and having a fake decoy fighter defending your carrier is certainly better then having a real fighter and pilot.

As for your missile, even that's a stretch. It would have to be heated all the way to the target (space is cold) so now you've got a booster, processor, homing radar, "warhead", and a heater, and a power pack for the heater. Doesn't seem like much? How much does a space heater go for at Home Depot these days? About 20 bucks? 20 bucks extra, PER Missile? How many missiles do you think Confed uses in ONE DAY of fighting? 100? 1000? 100,000? That means 20,000 a DAY extra to heat that missile, instead of just using a dumbfire. What would happen if you, say, fired this missile from behind your target? Nothing. Glue would do no good. I dunno about you, but I never had a whole lot of success with dumbfire missiles, you can see them coming. But lets assume your talking about a dumbfire. Unlike a dumbfire you can't fire this missile from behind your target, the engine exhaust would cut right through the fuel, so with your missile armed and selected you close range with the fighter to ensure you don't waste another 150 dollars of tax payer money. Now your in range, your enemy fires...and breaks, before you can fire, or you fire, and he breaks. you've now wasted 150 dollars. But let's assume you wait. Your not in a dogfight at close enough range to use your missile...your missile that has exactly one target, the cockpit. The cockpit thats at the front...of the fighter your chasing. Most dogfights in WC don't take place at close range while facing the cockpit. So now your down two hardpoints that could be carrying say, a heat seeker. Wouldn't that be nice right now?

Problem number two is the shields. If your firing a missile at extreme range, as would be the case with a dumbfire, how do you remove the shields? Your epoxy spray isn't going to go through them, despite what you might think. Another dumbfire knocks the fighter of course so the second missile misses. Now what? You've wasted a missile and gained nothing. You close more. He's shooting you. You shoot back take out his shields, and he ducks out of the way.

This is all AFTER getting senate approval. AFTER retooling factories. AFTER production meets demand. But it gets better! AFTER the initial design we decide to change it to add a heater. More designing. More senat approval, more re-tooling to meet to demand. You've now wasted two years developing and getting approval for your missile and testing it. That's best case. It took the US Three years to develop the "Slammer" (Pheonix) missile, AFTER Senate Approval, and BEFORE retooling. Your talking about a much larger government here, the Confederation.

You've now also added another mechanical part. One more thing that can go wrong and fail in the missile. A significant part that can go wrong, too. Is all this trouble really worth the expense for a limited application weapon? Is it worth it over say, a dumbfire missile which simply blows its target up, no messy pieces?

Let's talk about something else. Say everything works perfectly. For whatever Reaons the Kilrathi pilot plows straight into the oncoming missile. The Proximity fuse (Forgot that on my parts list, didn't I?) sets the missile off. The Epoxy is hot, cools at just the right rate to slap onto the cockpit and blind the pilot. Is he really blinded? No. Through carefully use of his radar, and his wingmans radio, he goes to full afterburn, blows right through the defensive screen, and because he's not good for anything else, plows right into your carrier. But wait! There's more! That assumes he can't see. He could also trigger the canopy ejector, and then he could see just fine. Makes him more vulnerable sure, but pilots fly in fully enclosed space suits already, and it's not like he'd have wind in his face. He's strapped in, he could set his ejection seat not to cook off.

This missile has such limited application and usage it's not even worth arguing over anymore.
 
I've had good success with dumbfires. The key is to get really close to the object and hit it with dumbfires before they have a chance to react & escape. I wouldn't recommend this missile be a dumbfire, but an image recognition missile. To remove the shields, I would use lasers. I just got to hope I don't shoot up the object too much with lasers that I end up wrecking it. The problem with dumbfires is that they don't always have the firepower necessary to destroy objects. The super polymer missile has the capability to blind and stiff objects. I wasn't recommending the super polymer missile for use against fighters, but that would be a nice idea. I was really recommending it for use against capship turrets. The missile would save tax payers money by crippling ships for salvage -- the salvaged ships could be reused for everything I said in my prisoners, capships, and fighters should be saved thread.
 
You'd still have to send in a marine boarding party to take control of the ship - and more likely than not, the Kilrathi would simply blopw themselves up. And even if they didn't, they'd still give a hell of a time to the boarding party, and there's a good chance you'd suffer more casualties than if you just blew the thing up. So why not just use your SuperMissiles to blind the turrets and then blow it up? Well, that would be a waste of time - why spend billions of dollars developing a new weapons system when you could just use a ImRec or HARM (I'm sure they're around then) and blow it up the old-fashioned way.
 
Tried and true technology, but the WC games are just games, and they were made years ago, even WCP, advanced weapons and the such are not something that they had played with in the games.
I tell you what, if (prays) if they ever attempt to revitalize the franchise, the computer technology now, I would love to see massive fleet actions, with dozens if not hundreds of fighters and capital ships. Despite the replay value of the older games, they seem small in scope for the gameplay, Prophecy was just the tip of the icerberg.
 
I don't think the Kilrathi would commit suicide. I think many of the Kilrathi if given the chance to surrender would. I don't think Kilrathi are mindless followers of the Emperor -- I think they would prefer to stay alive if possible. I remember in the animated series, there were scenes of Kilrathi being taken prisoner. I'd rather use the super polymer missile and capture a ship to use for parts instead of blowing it up.
 
Being TAKEN PRISONER and SURRENDERING are not always the same thing. Granted they may not be fanatical to-the-death types, but they aren't the type to wave a white flag at the drop of a hat either. Have you read any of the novels by chance?
 
"And, with severe reaming, another newbie is initiated into the flock."

Good to see you here in the CZ, but be careful of what you say and do.
 
Joshua said:
I don't think the Kilrathi would commit suicide. I think many of the Kilrathi if given the chance to surrender would. I don't think Kilrathi are mindless followers of the Emperor -- I think they would prefer to stay alive if possible. I remember in the animated series, there were scenes of Kilrathi being taken prisoner. I'd rather use the super polymer missile and capture a ship to use for parts instead of blowing it up.
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You're right - depending on what source you're using. Forstchen's novels basicly used the Kilrathi as a literal transpostion to WWII Japan. The glory of the Emperor and everything. The Emperor's first son killed himself during the Battle of MacAullife by removing his helmet after ejecting (which kind of contradicts the philosophy that Kilrathi want to die in battle/their ships. Perhaps his rank in the royal family made him too precious?)

Then again, Hunter ended up with a Kilrathi defector on his side for a while. So, it plays to both extremes. I suppose it's whatever suits the writer best.
 
Short form of reply:

In space combat, even minor mistakes are lethal. Remember that most 'non-lethal' weapons can indeed be quite lethal... and given the technologies involved in space combat, most non-lethal options were not really feasable for most of the series, and of limited use on the ground. The only non-lethal weapons that come to mind are the leech guns and missiles of WC4 and Armada fame, which were of limited utility. While such weapons were developed, they were never apparently employed in great numbers during the Kilrathi War, either due to expense or the limitations the technology imposed.

Super-polymers, for example, work in a very narrow range of environmental conditions on Earth; I can't use them in weather well below -10 C for example, nor can I use them effectively in very windy or rainy conditions. They'd only be employable in ground combat in very specific cases, and even then the deployment systems would require getting in too damned close for comfort. While Confed could and DID capture soldiers in combat (on the ground more than in space), it takes more resources to keep them alive and handy for interrogations than it does to kill them in combat... and it's a lot easier to kill them, too.

Note: stealth in WC is pretty limited. While you could, in theory, block the line of sight to a carrier, what good will that do when an incoming bomber could 'see' your energy emissions or fly right through said screen to land torpedoes on target? It wasn't until the Kilrathi developed their cloaks that they found a really effective stealth system that was useful in combat, and the energy involved in cloaking even a small craft meant that the system could not be scaled up to handle capital ships with a reasonable energy expenditure. The only really large-scale cloak we know of (the Masker of WC3) could only function in a nebula which made scanning difficult.

re: Shooting down missiles - given the amount of maneuvering done by a fighter, it'd be nearly impossible to target the damned missile as it came in, since the constantly shifting vectors between the two objects (fighter and missile) would make interception nearly impossible. That's why they used decoys, to try and draw or confuse the missile long enough for it to explode or run out of fuel. Only capships are slow and stable enough platforms to employ such weaponry, and they indeed do have antitorpedo launchers, along with flak guns.

And what good would a dedicated gunner do on a fighter, incidentally? The main reason that we do have two-seater fighters is to handle torpedo locks, at least in game, while one guy concentrates on flying (see Fleet Action). In real life, the radar officer does a similar function, given that in both situations, the fighter has to guide the missile in towards the target. Beyond which, would the gunner be able to react fast enough to the pilot's change of vectors to make a difference, or would one be better served by giving the pilot the guns and putting any gunners, if needed, into turrets to cover the angles that the front guns can't take?

We do know that some ships were designed to hide in asteroid belts - look at Fleet Action, where Vance Richards comments on how some picket ships linger in asteroid fields for months or years to engage in ELINT work. What's the point of making every ship look like an asteroid, however, given that it wouldn't make the ship any more efficient, and indeed the whole ruse would be given away the first time the ship moved? An asteroid banking while zipping about at 400kps and firing lasers is obviously an enemy craft, and probably quite sluggish given its extra rocky mass. We only see a few of these in game anyways, given that they're of very limited utility, wit those limitations.
 
The use of super polymers in missiles as you propose would give far inferior results in comparison to leech weapons (missiles and guns). A leech missile can render anything up to a Paktahn or Longbow dead in space with insufficient power remaining for either weapons or maneuvering, which is quite a bit more useful than merely blinding the pilot or gumming up his engines.
 
VIP Kilrathi like Kasrha and Trakkath have ejection seats. You see Thrakkath being tractored in by a Kameth on WC2. But other fighters, perhaps, don't. Perhaps they fear that pilots will bail too soon, like they did for most of WW1 -- I think only german pilots even able to bail, and only after 1918.
 
Ijuin said:
A leech missile can render anything up to a Paktahn or Longbow dead in space with insufficient power remaining for either weapons or maneuvering, which is quite a bit more useful than merely blinding the pilot or gumming up his engines.
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I always meant to ask about this, since my last play through of WC3 brought something up. If I leeched a fighter, it still seemed to be able to put on short bursts of thrusts to keep up with me while I battled his friends. Also, although the leeched ship couldn't fire energy weapons, they seemed to still be able to launch missiles at me. Anyone else notice this?

C-ya
 
Not to mention super-polymer is a stupid name. Anyone firing a "super-polymer" missile in a game would snort snot out of his nose in derision. "Super polymer? Who the F**K came up with that pansy ass name? Oooh, it's the super polymer, run!"

As for putting up a giant screen to hide your carriers... uhh... there's a reason they don't do that in real life. Either (1) the screen is transparent to radar, in which case it does no fscking good, or (2) the screen is opaque to radar, in which case it's a big fscking target. Yeah, real subtle.

Prisoners: in the WC2 expansion packs, you get to tractor in Jazz's ejection seat and take him prisoner. In WC4, we get to see Tolwyn taken prisoner. In Freedom Flight, Hobbes is taken prisoner. In WC1 (I think), there's a Kilrathi transport which is captured. In WC3, we get to see Angel taken prisoner and disemboweled. In the WC movie, we see a Kilrathi ship captured; we also see Pegasus base captured. In WCP, Blair is taken prisoner, then released. In WCSO (and WCP), if you screw up eventually YOU get taken prisoner. Survivors were also picked up off the Blue Horizon, the WCP fiction alludes to alien artifacts being captured, the ship killer is captured and the plasma weapon stolen.

In short, Wing Commander is fulling of people being taken prisoner and ships being captured, etc.; the main problem is that it's not as easy as it's look. Just look at how much trouble the troops in Iraq had in capturing Saddam's sons; they finally ended up just killing them--and they had overwhelming force at their disposal.

Are you going to tell everyone your name is Joshua Harrington in every post you make? (Hi, I'm Troy McLure, you may have seen me in such forums as the WC CIC chat zone and...) As for George Washington, he was hardly the most brilliant military mind of his day, let alone of all time; in fact, most accounts describe him as a bit boring. The really top notch military mind of his day was Napoleon; they're roughly contemporaries.

As for major fleet actions, I'd like to see some of these in a WC game as well; WC3 had a neat cut scene during the final defense of Earth which is nice and all, but it'd have been even better if it were interactive.

But as for seeing something even approaching a fleet action in Prophecy, you must be joking; I personally think they invented the whole "self-sufficient Midway" thing just so they wouldn't have to make more than 1 Confed capship (I guess they blew their budget on Syd Mead and the Nephilim); I mean, they make this big deal about how the TCS Eisen is bringing in fighters to relieve you, and how Confleet is moving up to protect your back-side, but what do you actually see? A canned clip of some Panthers "jumping" in to assist you (or were they Vampires? It's been a while). The only thing there was a lot of were aliens. WCSO was much better about showing you as part of a larger Confed effort, with different ships playing a variety of roles.
 
GeeBot said:
Not to mention super-polymer is a stupid name. Anyone firing a "super-polymer" missile in a game would snort snot out of his nose in derision. "Super polymer? Who the F**K came up with that pansy ass name? Oooh, it's the super polymer, run!"
Click to expand...

Well, pilots could have slang names for them. I can think of one sexually derragatory one that would lead to one-liners involving the word 'load' upon a successfull hit...
 
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