Wing Commander Starmada

CmdrPanda

Spaceman
Hey all,
I'm working on a conversion of the Wing Commander universe to a tabletop wargame called Starmada. The free demo rules are available at www.mj12games.com/starmada. I'd be happy to send the data sheets I've put together so far to anyone who is interested.

Anyway, I'm in the process of building some ships for the game out of balsa. I've built two Exeters and a Bengal so far, and I want to branch out to some WC2 ships as well. I'm in need of top and side profile views of the following ships, to use for templates:

Concordia class carrier
Wake Island class carrier (that's the Tarawa's class name, right?)
Ranger class carrier
Hakaga
Karga

Also, how long are the Wake Island and Ranger classes? The CIC database lists the Ranger at 720 meters which I guess must be how long it is ingame, but it seems somewhat silly to have a light carrier as big as a Bengal, which is nearly three times as powerful. I guess I need the dimensions of the Hakaga and Karga as well, and a pointer to somewhere where I can get stats for them.

Thanks in advance,
Commander Panda
 
Also, how long are the Wake Island and Ranger classes? The CIC database lists the Ranger at 720 meters which I guess must be how long it is ingame, but it seems somewhat silly to have a light carrier as big as a Bengal, which is nearly three times as powerful. I guess I need the dimensions of the Hakaga and Karga as well, and a pointer to somewhere where I can get stats for them.

One of the mod teams can probably provide some pictures for you. I can help with some of the data.

The CVEs don't have an established class. Since we know there were only nine of them, Wake is one of the seven or so possibilities for the name (I'm not sure where the 'Island' came from - the ship is called 'Wake' in the novel). Other options include Crete-class, Gallipoli-class, Saipan-class, Iwo Jima-class, Enigma-class or Khorsan-class. No dimensions are ever established.

The Hakaga-class is 1,580 meters long.

The Karga is a specific ship. He's "Bhantkara-class", and is 920 meters long.

The Ranger-class is supposed to be a much older design, less efficient design -- as of Wing Commander 3, they're a hundred years old and operating outside of they're planned life expectency.
 
Thanks a lot!

Also, is there any place I can get top views of the WC1 and WC2 fighters? I'd like to make fighter counters as well.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
The CVEs don't have an established class. Since we know there were only nine of them, Wake is one of the seven or so possibilities for the name (I'm not sure where the 'Island' came from - the ship is called 'Wake' in the novel). Other options include Crete-class, Gallipoli-class, Saipan-class, Iwo Jima-class, Enigma-class or Khorsan-class.

The "Island" comes from the WWII battleground "Wake Island". The Japenese captured it early in the war and used the slave labor of captured servicemen to build up their defenses. Given the presence of the Iwo Jima, Wake Island probably got stuck in his head. Besides, that's probably the origin of the TCS Wake anyway. :)

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake_Island

Has anyone noticed that the Karga has a name very similar to the Japenese Carrier, Kaga? Coincidence?
 
I understand the reference, I'm just not sure why Wing Commander fans sort of universally added the 'Island' to the name (it shows up in other places). All the CVEs are named after amphibious operations (theoretically).
 
Bandit LOAF said:
I understand the reference, I'm just not sure why Wing Commander fans sort of universally added the 'Island' to the name (it shows up in other places).

It's because calling it "Wake" is unnatural. The name of the place is "Wake Island", so everyone calls it that unless they conciously stop themselves. It's just like the "Tiger Claw" vs. "Tiger's Claw" thing. While "Tiger Claw" may be grammatically correct, it is aesthetically incorrect. I damn near have to rip out my own throat to stop from using "Tiger's Claw" in reference to the movie ship. :)
 
FA calls the carrier simply "Wake", though - wheter it's unnatural to you or not is another matter entirely. :p

Like LOAF, I don't understand why everyone else seems to assume they actually meant to say "Wake Island" instead. Is it simply because that's the name of the place/battle/whatever which we think the carrier's name is a reference to? I certainly don't remember reading about the WWII battles of Enigma or Khorsan, so "Wake" doesn't have to be a reference to the battle you're thinking of... and in either case, I don't think the real-life name of a place/battle/whatever should take precedence over what a WC novel says.

I think the actual FA quote is something like "the Iwo, the Wake, and the Crete...", and it's said by a character, not by the narrator. So while one could argue that the character wasn't referring to the carriers by their official/complete names, I believe one can argue the opposite to be true just as well.

Makes me wonder if the TCS Tarawa should actually be the TCS Tarawa Atoll. :rolleyes:
 
It's because calling it "Wake" is unnatural. The name of the place is "Wake Island", so everyone calls it that unless they conciously stop themselves. It's just like the "Tiger Claw" vs. "Tiger's Claw" thing. While "Tiger Claw" may be grammatically correct, it is aesthetically incorrect. I damn near have to rip out my own throat to stop from using "Tiger's Claw" in reference to the movie ship.

It's not "aesthetically correct" -- you're just used to one over the other. There's almost no difference in pronunciation (it's not like a romantic language where there's some liason between the words that would emphasize the 's'...).
 
What's wrong about a nice funeral wake?

Although the games are produced in the U.S., with certain cultural paradigma pointing at the U.S., it also has lots of intercultural and international references. So does the whole naming of ships, ranks, maneuvers, classes and relations really have to be based on North American history and U.S. military structures?

Maybe someone just had read a bit too much of James Joyce when he was thinking about the ship's name. Maybe we're just wrong in interpreting the naming as being based on WWII amphibious operations.
 
Maybe someone just had read a bit too much of James Joyce when he was thinking about the ship's name. Maybe we're just wrong in interpreting the naming as being based on WWII amphibious operations.

It's not an interpretation, End Run states that they're named after amphibious operations (though not WW2 amphibious operations, as at least the two 'Kilrathi War' named CVEs prove).
 
Bandit LOAF said:
It's not "aesthetically correct" -- you're just used to one over the other.

Isn't that more or less the definition of aesthetics? :)

But that's why people keep trying to say "Wake Island" instead of "Wake". "Wake" just sounds wrong to them.

There's almost no difference in pronunciation (it's not like a romantic language where there's some liason between the words that would emphasize the 's'...).

It's not a pronunciation difference, it's a difference in the aesthetics of the name. "Tiger's Claw" means that the ship is a claw posessed by the tiger. i.e. It's a force projection tool for a wild and fearsome creature. (Analogous to the ship itself and Confed.) "Tiger Claw" is just a deadwood name. Oh, it's a tiger claw. As if it's been detached from the tiger. Blah.

Of course, I can't think of *any* instance in real life when someone would say that a detached claw is a "tiger claw". Most English speakers would say, "It's a tiger's claw." If we were to refer to it in a non-posessive form, we would rearrange things and say "It's a claw from a tiger," which stresses that the tiger and the claw are two separate entities. In other words, saying "Tiger Claw" is aesthetically wrong because no one will use the term in normal speech.

What's wrong about a nice funeral wake?

Because no one would want to serve on that ship? ;)

Although the games are produced in the U.S., with certain cultural paradigma pointing at the U.S., it also has lots of intercultural and international references. So does the whole naming of ships, ranks, maneuvers, classes and relations really have to be based on North American history and U.S. military structures?

The references are heavily US due to the fact that the only major sea warfare of WWII was in the Pacific Theater. Germany was not an overly significant sea power (minus their U-Boats) and thus most of the fighting was in the air and on land.
 
Hey Loaf are the other possible names for the class of ship the Tarawa is just postulations? (most of them would work but for me Wake Island has a certain ring) its just that I'm not sure about two of the possible designations, those being the Galipoli class named after a failed and unsound operation that cost the British quite dearly and the Crete class which I guess is named named after the battle that involved an initial aerial assault from German Para-troopers AND then a less decisive amphibious assault and in which a good number of British, German and Cretans lives where lost for no real reason (in a strategic sense).

They just don't seem to fit although I could be derided for being subjective because they where both British defeats (although I wonder how the Japanese or other nationalities in the WC universe felt about being assigned to ships whose names are based upon the great defeats of their own people)
 
McGruff said:
Well, they managed to find a crew for the Tinderbox.
Although no canon source ever confirms this, according to the WC Bible, Clydesdales don't have names - they have hull numbers and unofficial nicknames given by the crew.
 
Well if it's Wake, seems an odd way to name a ship, particularly since you have examples within the class itself(Iwo-Jima, properly if it were just to drop the "island" part, it'd just be Iwo) and outside of the class(St. Helens, as an example) that are rather formal about the use of the full geographic name.

Still, not all that important.
 
AKAImBatman said:
It's not a pronunciation difference, it's a difference in the aesthetics of the name. "Tiger's Claw" means that the ship is a claw posessed by the tiger. i.e. It's a force projection tool for a wild and fearsome creature. (Analogous to the ship itself and Confed.) "Tiger Claw" is just a deadwood name. Oh, it's a tiger claw. As if it's been detached from the tiger. Blah.

Of course, I can't think of *any* instance in real life when someone would say that a detached claw is a "tiger claw". Most English speakers would say, "It's a tiger's claw." If we were to refer to it in a non-posessive form, we would rearrange things and say "It's a claw from a tiger," which stresses that the tiger and the claw are two separate entities. In other words, saying "Tiger Claw" is aesthetically wrong because no one will use the term in normal speech.

You just explained the situation where people would use the term in normal speech though. "Tiger Claw" is how you would normally say "Claw from a Tiger."
 
Bandit LOAF said:
It's not an interpretation, End Run states that they're named after amphibious operations.
Uh-oh, you caught me there. Sometimes I marvel how well-plotted the whole WCU background material is, and how many things there are to know even after all these years...

*Drifts off into a reverie about a fully crosslinked HTML database for all WC texts..*
*Wakes (pun intended) up again*

AKAIMBatman said:
Germany was not an overly significant sea power (minus their U-Boats) and thus most of the fighting was in the air and on land.
This is getting waaay off topic, but it's hard to resist: Don't forget the British navy, or even the French and Italian fleets. You have Cape Spartivento, Cape Passero, Cape Matapan, Mers-el-Kebir, and Punta Stilo in the Mediterranean; or Cromer, Coronel, Vestfjord, Spitzbergen, and Ushant in the North Sea - all with mostly European powers cruising around each other. And for Germany (and other European countries) as a sea power, I faintly remember the Bismarck (wasn't that WW1?), the Gneisenau, the Scharnhorst, and the Admiral Graf Spee only to name the biggest, and ships like the Prince of Wales, the Barham, the Ark Royal, the Hood, the Terror, the Repulse, and the Glorious for England... (So if you need names for furter mods/fanfic, look these up :) )
 
Nob Akimoto said:
Well if it's Wake, seems an odd way to name a ship, particularly since you have examples within the class itself(Iwo-Jima, properly if it were just to drop the "island" part, it'd just be Iwo)...
That's precisely what Fleet Action does, though. I've found the exact quote:

“I’m coming up now off your starboard beam, Iwo and Wake and Crete are clear as well. How’s Tarawa look?”

So it's not that odd at all. :)
 
ChrisReid said:
You just explained the situation where people would use the term in normal speech though. "Tiger Claw" is how you would normally say "Claw from a Tiger."

I didn't explain any such thing. I explained why people *wouldn't* use the term. I'm not really sure how you managed to turn that around. Your average speaker would always say "It's a tiger's claw" or "It's a claw from a tiger." I have never heard someone say anything quite as clumsy as "It's a tiger claw." That's not to say there aren't exceptions (especially for non-native speakers; English is quite forgiving), but the grammar used in modern English tends to preclude such an abomination.
 
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