Bandit LOAF
The manuals and such are full of similar "in-jokes" - from Colonel Chris Roberts in Claw Marks to (well deserved) references to hard-working fans in Star*Soldier. Understanding where it came from is just trivia, really - it's good fodder for a future story (ours or someone else's) as to what that star system means. Is it accessible only via Hopper Drive? Was it a regular star system that got separated from the rest of the galaxy when a sun went nova or somesuch? There's some good possibilities, even if it was originally put in as a joke about an over-eager project lead.
Yeah, you're right. I think Chris Roberts even appeared as the Broadsword pilot who tractored Blair in in the movie...
Well, I agree and I disagree. I don't especially like the overblown World War II stuff that he did in Action Stations... but I also don't think it's actually a continuity error. It's important for us to distinguish 'I don't really like this' from 'this is directly contradictory'. Action Stations may be the former, but it isn't an error. The novel is clearly moving towards the continuity we know and love - explaining why carriers rather than battleships are important (twenty years before WC1). It's also worth noting that there's a *lot* of talk about "battleships" in the original Wing Commander's dialogue, so it's not entirely some new concept Forstchen tractored in from Pearl Harbor.
I would agree with you about the overblown WWII stuff in Action Stations, but I also consider it to be a continuity error, as there didn't seem to be any references to true Battleships in WC1
(Dreadnoughts were covered in WC1, WC2 and WC3 though, but not the traditional Battleship designation)
When "battleships" were discussed in WC1, they were largely talking about big capships. Often they were talking about Cruisers or Destroyers, while they are no doubt ships that do battle, hence battleships, they are not what we would typically call a battleship in terms of Naval Designations.
As for dreadnoughts... they seem to be a logical outgrowth of Action Stations - a mating of pre-war battleships and war-necessary carriers. See also the Concordia supercruisers from the movie... spacegoing battleships, to be sure, with only a small fighter complement. Also, note that the 'CVS' designation is *only* ever seen on the Concordia... it's possible that the 'S' is for dreadnaught.
Not really. Even the Battleships in Action Stations had their own fighter compliments if I recall correctly. They weren't just all guns armor and shields...
Are you sure that CVS was never used in referrence to any other capship in WC?
he 'Fleet Admiral' rank in the US Navy was created as part of a particular chain of events. When the United States allied with England during World War II, they created a 'General of the Army' (5-star General) rank. This was because the British had a five star 'Field Marshal' rank and the American military needed an equal footing for their combined operations.
I didn't actually know that
Even then, though, WC did have some british naval elements to it as well. If I recall, Banbridge was at least once referred to as an Admiral of the Fleet, which is the same as a fleet-admiral.
... but then the US Navy couldn't be run by Admirals outranked by the Generals running the Army, so the 'Fleet Admiral' rank was created for them. Both ranks still 'exist', but in all likelyhood neither will ever be used again. There's no *need* for such a 'super rank' under normal circumstances because of the concept of seniority. The military (modern or otherwise) isn't a tiered system of ranks - it's a system of ranks *plus* seniority measured by time in grade. The 4-Star Admiral who's held the rank for the longest (Banbridge) outranks the others. This is something the military measures very exactly, down to knowing that an Ensign comissioned several minutes before another would technically be the senior officer between the two.
That is only partially accurate... if Banbridge was CICCONFEDFLT, that is a TITLE, even if he was a 4-star, and the guy below him was a 4-star, and that guy was a 4-star, he doesn't just have the right to order him because he served longer, but his title is higher than the titles of the Admirals below him hypothetically. If afterwords, Banbridge became the Commander of the Third Fleet, even if he served like 70 years in the Navy, his title is subserviant to whoever holds the title CICCONFEDFLT, that's why I ask why was he bumped down?
Banbridge's position is "CICCONFEDFLT", but he is only ever called Admiral (four star). Now, I do think there's a story to be told here. After all, why is Sandra Gregarov a Space Marshal in 2654? Did the Congress disapprove of Banbridge and decide to promote someone above him to run the war? Perhaps the Firekkans or some other wartime ally had a 'Field Marshal' style rank that needed to be equivocated like the WW2 story?
I thought Banbridge was at least once referred to as an Admiral of the Fleet, or something like that which is equivalent to a fleet-admiral.
Regarding Space Marshall Sandra Gregarov, I didn't know there was any mention of a Space Marshall until Wing Commander 4 (game)... Still I don't have the slightest clue why she would be posted above Banbridge. Banbridge seemed to be for the most part a highly successful Admiral, and I do find it odd that someone would take over in his place.
Well... read it!
http://images.ea.com/ea/arcade/draft2cRGB.pdf The torpedoes part is in one of the Letters to the Editor. Even if you have no interest in Arena, Star*Soldier is definately a manual designed after our own hearts.
For all I know, they may have just taken what was in Fleet Action and basically re-iterated it. Also, what's a proton-bomb, and why in god's name would the Ranger-Class be listed as the Yorktown-Class?
The Handbook bit is a sad story - there was originally a line in the movie where Paladin talks about having been on the Iason (it's still in the novel). Blair says something along the lines of that no one survived and it's eventually revealed that Paladin was captured and in a Kilrathi prison. In order to fit Paladin's existing backstory, Chris McCubbin moved the Iason stuff up...
No offense but that strikes me as a monstrously large continuity error... it was flatly said that it happened in 2629...
... but he left an out! Look closely at the Iason's history at the bottom of the page - it was an explorer until 2629, when it underwent an major overhaul into a military support ship for some reason.
Not a very good out... if I recall the Iason was completely destroyed with the loss of all hands -- in
2629. There could have been
another Iason, but it wouldn't have been
THE Iason... and thus would be in conflict with what Taggart said.
The movie intro is something of an oddity - it wasn't scripted, it was done much later by folks at Digital Anvil when they realized the movie needed a quickie introduction to the universe. I think it's a brilliant bit of work, but the 'continuity' expressed *doesn't* direcctly match the stuff done for the novel and the Handbook; The Confed Handbook doesn't list any Kilrathi warships that large.
I would have never known it wasn't scripted. Even despite that, the Kilrathi capships in the movie looked NOTHING like the capships later on.
That said, this is an easy 'fix' since we have no real idea what's being described. Maybe it's a space station or a ship built only for in-system use. Beyond that, Wing Commander IV establishes that there are different sizes of jump lines/points - and that huge ships like the Vesuvius can operate travelling only through the big ones. It may be a ship designed for that purpose.
True, but it sounded like they were looking at a vessel. Consider that the first time the Iason spotted the kilrathi, they saw a
ship of unidentifiable origin, which shortly after blew it up.
Regarding the jump-drive issue, the advances made to jump the Hakaga-Class carriers was largely about the ability to simply jump a ship of a given size and mass. The jump field extends out only to about 500 meters in radius, meaning you'd only be typically able to jump a vessel of no more than 1,000 meters in length, and/or width without exponential increases in energy required to make the jump. To put it simple, without the technological advances made in Jump-drive technology, the Hakaga wouldn't have been able to jump
period regardless of how much energy the jump-line had in it.
The issue about jump-lines is different, everytime a jump is made some energy is taken out of the jump-line with time required to recharge. Some jumplines do not simply have the energy to jump a gigantic ship through them, but that's actually another issue. The Hakaga may have figured out ways around that problem
additionally, but the major issue required to jump large ships was the size and mass of the ship, and the radius of projected jump-field vs. power consumption required to do it.
Fleet Action is 2668 - it's on several manual timelines.
Thank you.
Wing Commander III actually uses both separately and with different effects. There's a pulsar at Blackmane which causes damage when you leave the shadow of a planet... and a quasar at Loki which blocks transmissions.
Is this both in the game? Or was this in the Novel... because I don't remember taking any damage in the Blackmane system from just flying around and doing nothing. I should note that a Pulsar's powerful bursts of energy could disrupt communications as well.
Hehe - well, parts of it are a prequel...
Here's the 1996 series bible, part of our project to preserve development documentation:
http://download.wcnews.com/files/doc...Bible_High.zip
Regarding the jump-physics articles written, I stand corrected.
(I still don't quite get how anti-gravitons would rip a hole in space rather than simply push a ship away from the anti-graviton field...)
Hmmmm... I thought the Custers Carnival battle occured in 2649 not 2644
(The Claw first flew that year)
Interestingly, it clearly mentions that the ships shields have seriously underwent some major changes, and can't be taken out with nothing less than a torpedo. Considering this seemed as a suprize to Cpt Blair, and it did seem to indicate that this was not so anytime before, and the fact that the WC Bible also stated that phase shields were first possessed by the Kilrathi and the Confed at first couldn't figure out how to crack through them until they built a Torpedo. These sort of look like glaring inconsistencies with Action Stations.
Additionally the "Bible" when discussing Kilrathi Culture refers to Coups and Assassinations being commonplace political maneuvers, not something incomprehensible like in Fleet Action
(Which was one of the few errors in Fleet Action)
Vicky Kent