Why Warsaw and Sirius?

[Farbourne]

I haven't read Fleet Action (yet), so maybe this is explained there, but I was looking at the Wing Commander Universe map, and for the life of me I can't figure out why any kind of major engagement takes place in Warsaw.

Since the Kilrathi's objective with their suprise attack was to crush Earth, it's not at all clear why their fleet would have been moving through Warsaw. The most direct path from Kilrah to Earth is Kilrah-Munro-Proxima-Sol (kind of scary it's only a 3-jump trip!) Given that the heaviest Confed defenses were probably on that route, or perhaps their fleet was coming from a different location, I could see a different approach, perhaps (Freya-Alcor-Vega-Proxima-Sol), but the only reason I could see for the cats coming through Warsaw would be if they were coming down from the "north" so to speak (i.e. Trik'Kha-Planck's Star-Warsaw-Vega-Proxima-Sol). But I find it really odd that they would do that. Why not take the most direct path to Earth? Were they worried about Terran spies picking up their surprise fleet if the came from an obvious approach?

A second but more minor question is why bother with Sirius. Coming from Warsaw, they must have come through Vega and Proxima, and once in Proxima, you have a direct jump to Sol (as the Cats would use at the end of WC3 on the losing path). Why even bother with attacking Sirius, unless they wanted to take our the colony there, too, or were worried about the Terran fleet left unfought on their flank?

 

[t.c.cgi]

Quick answer.

They weren't launching the attack from Kilrah. If they were, Confed would have readily spotted the supercarriers under construction. The attack came from the shipyards out in the boondocks, and came up through Landreich space.

 

[Dundradal]

Quick answer.

They weren't launching the attack from Kilrah. If they were, Confed would have readily spotted the supercarriers under construction. The attack came from the shipyards out in the boondocks, and came up through Landreich space.

The Hakagas do pass through Kilrah. There is a scene in FA when Thrakhath and the Emperor review them as part of the Fifth Fleet. I'm actually in the process of gathering the data to write the "Earth Defense Campaign" (Action Stations names it in the prologue), Battles of Warsaw, Sirius, Earth, Hellhole articles for WCPedia.

I'm not sure about the map thing. LOAF will have to explain that.

Here's what I've got so far for the Kilrathi.

Kilrathi Table of Organization

First Fleet of the Claw
Reserve Force
3 "old carriers"

Second Fleet of the Claw
Van Force for Fifth Fleet of the Claw
4 "older carriers"

Fourth Fleet of the Claw
Attacks Landreich
3 "older carriers"

Fifth Fleet of the Claw
5 Hakagas

The Fifth and Second Fleets head towards Earth while Fourth attacks into the Landreich. The latter attack being thwarted by Kruger and the Confed CVEs before their run to Earth.

First Fleet has held in reserve while numerous cruiser squadrons raided the frontier worlds. There is no mention of a Third Fleet although I would postulate that it was the 10 older carriers that were unable to be stocked with pilots because the new Hakagas required so many themselves from existing stocks. So they would be held somewhere around Kilrah I'd guess...but that's all my own conjecture there.

 

[ChrisReid]

I haven't read Fleet Action (yet), so maybe this is explained there, but I was looking at the Wing Commander Universe map, and for the life of me I can't figure out why any kind of major engagement takes place in Warsaw.

Since the Kilrathi's objective with their suprise attack was to crush Earth, it's not at all clear why their fleet would have been moving through Warsaw. The most direct path from Kilrah to Earth is Kilrah-Munro-Proxima-Sol (kind of scary it's only a 3-jump trip!) Given that the heaviest Confed defenses were probably on that route, or perhaps their fleet was coming from a different location, I could see a different approach, perhaps (Freya-Alcor-Vega-Proxima-Sol), but the only reason I could see for the cats coming through Warsaw would be if they were coming down from the "north" so to speak (i.e. Trik'Kha-Planck's Star-Warsaw-Vega-Proxima-Sol). But I find it really odd that they would do that. Why not take the most direct path to Earth? Were they worried about Terran spies picking up their surprise fleet if the came from an obvious approach?

A second but more minor question is why bother with Sirius. Coming from Warsaw, they must have come through Vega and Proxima, and once in Proxima, you have a direct jump to Sol (as the Cats would use at the end of WC3 on the losing path). Why even bother with attacking Sirius, unless they wanted to take our the colony there, too, or were worried about the Terran fleet left unfought on their flank?

LOAF's map has "extra" jump links that are corroborated from other sources. In some cases they may have been discovered later, disappeared at some point or were otherwise not normally accessible (due to devices such as the jump points being "too small"). Also consider that the maps were made *after* Fleet Action and were set up to conform to as many Wing Commander stories as possible. You should also look at the published Universe Map that came with Prophecy: http://download.wcnews.com/files/wcp/wcum.jpg Sirius stands squarely between Proxima and Sol.

Also, you can only tell so many things from pure jump links. Imagine there's two routes between Earth and Kilrah - one that is only three jumps and another that is six. What if the six-jump route lines up nicely so that your total in-system transit is only a few hours and the three-jump route involves three days of sublight travel to reach the individual jump points? What if the route with fewer jump points has a point that's inside an asteroid field while the the route with more jumps goes through a nebula that hides your fleet? You can't always tell which route is longer or shorter simply by counting jumps.

Finally, you really need to read Fleet Action. Here's a key quote:

"The Kilrathi have three main lines of approach, all of which finally come in here," and he pointed to a blue white star from which radiated a number of jump lines. "Here at Sirius and the jump point behind Sirius the shortest routes of jump lines come together and then from there straight back to Earth. By the shortest route, jump line alpha, it's ten jump points from Sirius to the frontier, four back to Earth. The next route, beta is twelve jumps to the frontier and delta is thirteen. All the other routes meander back and forth. For the Kilrathi I think they'll be so confident of their strength, and also concerned about not giving us time to rearm, that they'll come straight on in.

"I propose to meet them in front of Sirius."

"Geoff, that abandons several hundred inhabited colonies further out," Polowski said quietly, "my own home of Planet Warsaw being one of them."

Tolwyn nodded.

"There are eighteen major jump points leading across the frontier and several dozen other jump points running parallel or zigzagging back and forth. Before the armistice neither we nor the Kilrathi had the strength to simply go charging in, saying the hell with our rear and leaping towards the jugular. They now do. We lack the strength of a major counter strike and even if we did have it, it'd be weeks before we could even begin to move it. By then it'll be too late. In addition they can hold a number of their standard fleet carriers in reserve as a reaction force to counter even light escort raiders the way we had been using them in the past. We have to fall back and concentrate what assets we have. If we try a forward defense they might swing around us."

 

[Ilanin]

I really don't think the Prophecy map was ever intended to accomodate the Forstchen novels. The giveaway is the location of Vukar Tag, ridiculously far into Kilrathi space - and Kilrathi space years after the war is over and they've presumably ceded the disputed worlds, no less - for the events of End Run to make any sense. Neither the discovery, nor the operational plan for the battle of Vukar Tag make any sense, nor do the jump lines Strike Force Valkyrie follows appear to exist.

I think that's in large part because the Prophecy map shows, as we can see in the passage ChrisReid quoted, Forstchen's universe is much too big to fit on a nice foldout map. On the other hand it's also much more "realistic" - the Kilrathi Empire ought to be rather larger than the Terran Confederation, given their constant numerical advantage despite the slight technological inferiority.

 

[ChrisReid]

Fortunately we do know quite a bit behind the intent of the map. A draft was posted on the Origin Prophecy website in early 1997, and fans provided input to help add things that might have been missed. CaptainJohnny, the creator of the Prophecy map, is also a Crius poster here.

There were a lot of compromises in order to make a nice end product. Obviously, the fact that Vukar Tag is on there at all acknowledges that the novels shaped the map. A number of systems from the novels, and their locations relative to those in the game, are included.

Not only are the Forstchen novels too big to include on a fold-out map, the sectors mentioned in the games are also too large and numerous. The Firekkans' Antares Sector and the Deneb Sector mentioned in WC2 are downgraded to quadrants in the new Epsilon Sector.

You can find the draft map at https://www.wcnews.com/news/update/9674 A draft map that would have added another sector for Privateer 3 can be found here: https://www.wcnews.com/news/update/9678 Finally, a preliminary spreadsheet of star systems (from games, novels, and other sources) that was used as brainstorming material for the map can be found at https://www.wcnews.com/news/update/9617

 

[Ilanin]

Well, each to their own, but I don't think that including systems from the novels in locations which make the campaigns described in the novels impossible to plot on the maps really acknowledges much in the way of influence from the novels. And the weirdest thing is that End Run, at least, could have been made completely plausible if Vukar had been in the Trk'Pahn sector somewhere - actually "closer to the Fleet than Kilrah". As it is, we're left wondering why the hell the Johnny Greene was sent on a recon mission to a planet eight jumps and two sectors away - and if Vukar and Jugara had been in Trk'Pahn (yes, I know that End Run talks about the "Vukar Tag Sector", but as you've already said multiple sectors the game talks about have been condensed into quadrants or just plain ignored), then this jump line could actually have existed, too:

using a recently discovered jump point which will take you into the bottom side of the Empire nearly five hundred parsecs from here and just four jumps from their home world of Kilrah