Why didn't Confed fight the Kilrathi more intelligently?
- Thread starter Joshua
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Here, what do you think of these:
Glow Missile
The Glow Missile was designed to cause a target to glow. This would enable units to keep track of it easier. Thus if the target cloaked itself, the glow missile would shine a beacon to indicate where the target is.
Attractor Missile
The Attractor Missile was designed to attract missiles to itself. The Attractor Missile lands on a target and can attract the target's IFF and heat seeking missiles.
Glow Missile
The Glow Missile was designed to cause a target to glow. This would enable units to keep track of it easier. Thus if the target cloaked itself, the glow missile would shine a beacon to indicate where the target is.
Attractor Missile
The Attractor Missile was designed to attract missiles to itself. The Attractor Missile lands on a target and can attract the target's IFF and heat seeking missiles.
Joshua said:
Are you suggesting a missile that covers the target with a glow-in-the-dark super polymer
Joshua said:
That would be a somewhat annoying weapon, don't you think? So this thing latches onto a target and attracts every deployed missile in range to itself? That would piss off way too many wingmen. It would be pretty frustrating to go for a sure-hit missile kill only to have it compromised by someone else's "attractor" missile.
Also, how would that one work? Does it scan for every signal that every missile is locked onto and replicate it, only more intense? I can see how that could work but only for IFF missiles. That seems purely fantasy, too, for I cannot see how that could be made practically as a missile.
ChanceKell
Rear Admiral
Can you try to keep the board a bit civilized? It gets hard with your childish posts.
As for the missile ideas, they're interesting and original, but if you were to actually get the missiles to the target, wouldn't it be a lot better just to have a real warhead instead of something that could possibly make the target an easier hit? It doesn't take much to get a fighter down.
As for the missile ideas, they're interesting and original, but if you were to actually get the missiles to the target, wouldn't it be a lot better just to have a real warhead instead of something that could possibly make the target an easier hit? It doesn't take much to get a fighter down.
The Hologram missile creates a 3D hologram around the fighter it hits -- the hologram looks like a unit that opposes the unit it hits. Hologram missiles can only be fired at fighter sized objects. The idea is that units on friendly terms with units hit by hologram missiles will attack those units.
And how would the Kilrathi be able to see my energy emissions? If I use blackfuel like from Star Adventure 4010 game, they won't be able to see any emissions because the blackfuel exhaust would blend in with the blackness of space. In Star Adventure 4010, blackfuel is pumped into chambers but they're not combustion chambers -- the blackfuel is then exited out of the chambers in a manner similar to air exiting out of a balloon -- the exiting of fuel pushes the ship forward.
And how would the Kilrathi be able to see my energy emissions? If I use blackfuel like from Star Adventure 4010 game, they won't be able to see any emissions because the blackfuel exhaust would blend in with the blackness of space. In Star Adventure 4010, blackfuel is pumped into chambers but they're not combustion chambers -- the blackfuel is then exited out of the chambers in a manner similar to air exiting out of a balloon -- the exiting of fuel pushes the ship forward.
Wouldn't a pilot of average intelligence think twice or, at least, be very confuzzled if he saw his wingman suddenly turn into an enemy fighter after getting hit with a missile?? Also, would the target know he/she looked like an enemy fighter? If not, the illusion is further foiled by the fact that a fighter that looks like an enemy fighter is blowing up other enemy fighters.
Also, in order for it to truly work, the missile would have to scramble the target's FoF signals in order for it to show up as an enemy on radar for lock-on purposes.
Also, in order for it to truly work, the missile would have to scramble the target's FoF signals in order for it to show up as an enemy on radar for lock-on purposes.
The pilot would probably think. Yes, the pilot of the target would know it looked like an opposing fighter. I was thinking that this would probably work where there are massive numbers of fighters, like in the Battle for Terra. The attractor missile would be able to broadcast IFF codes.
Also, why didn't Confed have all the civillian ships assist the Confed military when Confed was initially attacked? Confed could've used the civillian ships as decoys. And in the Battle for Terra, why didn't the civillian ships ram the Kilrathi capships?
That Behemoth project of Tolwyn's was the most moronic project ever invented. It devoted resources away from building carriers that could be used to support other carriers and to fight the Kilrathi. It took too long to build. Morale must have dropped sharply while people were waiting for it to become operational. Thus job performance amongst Confed personnel was lower.
Also, why didn't Confed have all the civillian ships assist the Confed military when Confed was initially attacked? Confed could've used the civillian ships as decoys. And in the Battle for Terra, why didn't the civillian ships ram the Kilrathi capships?
That Behemoth project of Tolwyn's was the most moronic project ever invented. It devoted resources away from building carriers that could be used to support other carriers and to fight the Kilrathi. It took too long to build. Morale must have dropped sharply while people were waiting for it to become operational. Thus job performance amongst Confed personnel was lower.
Expendable
Spaceman
Confed did use all available civilian ships as decoys for the marine landing. They had no chance to ram any Kilrathi ships, unless as bits of debris, for the civilian ships were civilian. At best, these ships had minimal shielding to protect against debris, nearly no armor, and no weapons except for at best point defenses.
Their pilots were given a pressure suit and a rescue beacon. If I remember right, 99% of the civilian ships were destroyed. When you have no shields, no guns, and probably no afterburner, resulting in slow speed, facing thousands of blood-thirsty Kilrathi fighters...
As for the Battle of Terra, who would need an attractor missile? The Confeds were outnumbered and outgunned. There was a solid mass of red blips and such on the scanners. With that many targets, an attractor missile would have been fatal... for Confed!
Just think, if 40 FF and ImRec missiles all homed in on the same Sartha. Leaving alive all the other fighters targeted by the other missiles, such as those that carried torpedoes or lethal heavy fighters?
And, what if more than one pilot fired an attractor missile? If the attractor acts like a NARC Beacon, and multiple missiles were fired by multiple fighters, which missiles would home in on which attractors? More likely, the missiles would run out of fuel trying to decide and thus nothing would be hit at all. Better to fire training missiles at the Kilrathi than have the chaos of the attractor missile.
As for Behemoth, it was super classified, a true "black" project. If only a few in Confed know about it, how can it harm their morale?
For that matter, even if I did know about Behemoth, I would be really happy to hear of a ship with a cannon that could blast a planet into pieces with one shot.
Job performance? Confed troops had better things to think about than a rumor of a Behemoth, such as dying in the next mission, would the Kilrathi carriers breaching Confed space head for their homeworlds next, or one of the myriad tasks needed to be done. Thus, their job performance was unaffected by Behemoth.
Their pilots were given a pressure suit and a rescue beacon. If I remember right, 99% of the civilian ships were destroyed. When you have no shields, no guns, and probably no afterburner, resulting in slow speed, facing thousands of blood-thirsty Kilrathi fighters...
As for the Battle of Terra, who would need an attractor missile? The Confeds were outnumbered and outgunned. There was a solid mass of red blips and such on the scanners. With that many targets, an attractor missile would have been fatal... for Confed!
Just think, if 40 FF and ImRec missiles all homed in on the same Sartha. Leaving alive all the other fighters targeted by the other missiles, such as those that carried torpedoes or lethal heavy fighters?
And, what if more than one pilot fired an attractor missile? If the attractor acts like a NARC Beacon, and multiple missiles were fired by multiple fighters, which missiles would home in on which attractors? More likely, the missiles would run out of fuel trying to decide and thus nothing would be hit at all. Better to fire training missiles at the Kilrathi than have the chaos of the attractor missile.
As for Behemoth, it was super classified, a true "black" project. If only a few in Confed know about it, how can it harm their morale?
For that matter, even if I did know about Behemoth, I would be really happy to hear of a ship with a cannon that could blast a planet into pieces with one shot.
Job performance? Confed troops had better things to think about than a rumor of a Behemoth, such as dying in the next mission, would the Kilrathi carriers breaching Confed space head for their homeworlds next, or one of the myriad tasks needed to be done. Thus, their job performance was unaffected by Behemoth.
Haesslich
Spaceman
This thread is making my eyes bleed. We really don't need a lot of super-duper-new-nifty-ultra-special stuff in WC, though - the games give us a lot of variety as it is. But, to address some of these posts...
What's the point of this? By WC4 'see through cloak' capability exists - why do you need a glow missile, since visual highlighting is unlikely to be useful beyond a few hundred meters, and that, should I manage to tag someone with a missile, I'd rather hit him with enough high explosives that I wouldn't have to worry about keeping track of a cloud of debris?
Besides which, even if you hit a target with a 'glow' missile, wouldn't it splash on the shielding and then be removed as soon as the target flicked its shields off and on again?
How does it do the latter? The main limitation to IFFs and Heat Seekers was not their targeting capability, but rather their fuel capacity. Also, to be honest, I'd rather NOT launch one of these at a target when possible, given the fact that it might not only attract enemy missiles... but also those of guys on my side who were using them on the Kilrathi fighter tailing me. I'd rather that missile STAY on its present target, thankyouverymuch.
Again, a warhead with enough explosive force to shatter the hull would probably be my choice if I was given the option of carrying that or one of these toys. Incidentally, neither one of those missiles would have done much good at the Battle of Terra, since we were so terribly outnumbered - by the time we'd launched them all, we might've taken a few hundred of their craft, and then gotten wiped out afterwards because of our lack of REAL firepower.
Again, what good will this do, given that it isn't likely to change the IFF, and that holograms would be of limited use given that it would require power to create it... and, again, what's the point? I'd rather use that one missile to hurt or kill my enemy, rather than dazzle him with my mastery of holograms. It'd be cheaper, too.
Easy - you've got an IFF broadcasting, don't you? Another way is to look for the scoop fields which do the double-duty of maneuvering and powering your reactors. Why would you bother creating yet another new technology for Wing Commander, when it's of dubious use and is unnecessary? Your 'blackfuel' would leave a trail for someone to follow, either visually or by radar reflection? Space isn't really 'black', and we don't currently follow ships by their VISIBLE emissions anyways. You'd still be leaving a trail that any sensor could follow, given that its composition is undoubtedly different from run-of-the-mill interstellar hydrogen. Also, if you're not using the blackfuel for power, then you've got problems - first being that you'll run out of propellant sooner or later (hydrogen is relatively cheap in space, and that's why we use scoop fields anyways), and the second being that you'll need some sort of reactor to power shields and weapons. That'll result in energy emissions of some sort, due to the operation of electronics or whatever fields you use to contain your fusion or matter/antimatter power generation.
They did have civvie ships assist in the Battle of Terra - they were decoys, and being blunt, you don't go out of your way to destroy your own transport infrastructure just to gain a tactical advantage. Being unable to move supplies around the Confederation would've spelled the death of the war effort, as the Kilrathi discovered before the Armistice. It was the destruction of their transport fleet, on top of the reallocation of other transports to supporting the Hari construction effort, which resulted in their serious situation before the Armistice's implementation - ships would have to fall back from the front to resupply, which meant more time in transit and also increasing maintenance costs as ships would be taken out of service to retune their jump systems.
Notice that most of the Confed ships couldn't get close enough to the enemy to ram them anyways - even single fighters could destroy them, as they were nowhere near combat-worthy.
Remember also that the Behemoth existed before Tolwyn took the project over, and even he wanted to scrap it due to its insufficient speed and protection. The main reason he ramrodded the project through was to end the war before Bellisarius could take over. Also, given that it was classified top-secret, about the only crews' morale that might've dropped would've been the welders who had to work overtime on it to get it done.
Joshua said:
What's the point of this? By WC4 'see through cloak' capability exists - why do you need a glow missile, since visual highlighting is unlikely to be useful beyond a few hundred meters, and that, should I manage to tag someone with a missile, I'd rather hit him with enough high explosives that I wouldn't have to worry about keeping track of a cloud of debris?
Besides which, even if you hit a target with a 'glow' missile, wouldn't it splash on the shielding and then be removed as soon as the target flicked its shields off and on again?
Joshua said:
Joshua said:
How does it do the latter? The main limitation to IFFs and Heat Seekers was not their targeting capability, but rather their fuel capacity. Also, to be honest, I'd rather NOT launch one of these at a target when possible, given the fact that it might not only attract enemy missiles... but also those of guys on my side who were using them on the Kilrathi fighter tailing me. I'd rather that missile STAY on its present target, thankyouverymuch.
Again, a warhead with enough explosive force to shatter the hull would probably be my choice if I was given the option of carrying that or one of these toys. Incidentally, neither one of those missiles would have done much good at the Battle of Terra, since we were so terribly outnumbered - by the time we'd launched them all, we might've taken a few hundred of their craft, and then gotten wiped out afterwards because of our lack of REAL firepower.
Joshua said:
Again, what good will this do, given that it isn't likely to change the IFF, and that holograms would be of limited use given that it would require power to create it... and, again, what's the point? I'd rather use that one missile to hurt or kill my enemy, rather than dazzle him with my mastery of holograms. It'd be cheaper, too.
Joshua said:
Easy - you've got an IFF broadcasting, don't you? Another way is to look for the scoop fields which do the double-duty of maneuvering and powering your reactors. Why would you bother creating yet another new technology for Wing Commander, when it's of dubious use and is unnecessary? Your 'blackfuel' would leave a trail for someone to follow, either visually or by radar reflection? Space isn't really 'black', and we don't currently follow ships by their VISIBLE emissions anyways. You'd still be leaving a trail that any sensor could follow, given that its composition is undoubtedly different from run-of-the-mill interstellar hydrogen. Also, if you're not using the blackfuel for power, then you've got problems - first being that you'll run out of propellant sooner or later (hydrogen is relatively cheap in space, and that's why we use scoop fields anyways), and the second being that you'll need some sort of reactor to power shields and weapons. That'll result in energy emissions of some sort, due to the operation of electronics or whatever fields you use to contain your fusion or matter/antimatter power generation.
Joshua said:
They did have civvie ships assist in the Battle of Terra - they were decoys, and being blunt, you don't go out of your way to destroy your own transport infrastructure just to gain a tactical advantage. Being unable to move supplies around the Confederation would've spelled the death of the war effort, as the Kilrathi discovered before the Armistice. It was the destruction of their transport fleet, on top of the reallocation of other transports to supporting the Hari construction effort, which resulted in their serious situation before the Armistice's implementation - ships would have to fall back from the front to resupply, which meant more time in transit and also increasing maintenance costs as ships would be taken out of service to retune their jump systems.
Notice that most of the Confed ships couldn't get close enough to the enemy to ram them anyways - even single fighters could destroy them, as they were nowhere near combat-worthy.
Remember also that the Behemoth existed before Tolwyn took the project over, and even he wanted to scrap it due to its insufficient speed and protection. The main reason he ramrodded the project through was to end the war before Bellisarius could take over. Also, given that it was classified top-secret, about the only crews' morale that might've dropped would've been the welders who had to work overtime on it to get it done.
Viper61 said:
A leeched ship still has afterburners, but not normal thrusters, and missiles can still be used since they drain no power. However, anything that uses the powerplant (shields, normal engines, energy guns) is rendered ineffective. A leeched craft isn't QUITE a sitting duck, but it's close enough to one that you can safely ignore it till the more mobile enemies are dealt with.
overmortal
Bearded Person
Bob McDob said:
I was just thinking that. Yikes.
"mayherestinpeace" . . . did he die or something? I haven't been keeping up with all the forums.
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