Your own ideas for weapons/equipment for WC?

Haesslich said:
Read End Run - the missile already exists, and costs several million per unit. However, it splits into -50- HARM missiles, which coordinate with one another through a command unit on the squadron commander's craft.
IIRC, its an air/space-to-land based munition. A similar missile for a fighter attacking a capship wouldn't be extremely applicable do to the fact that on attacking a capship you don't "see" more than a half dozen turrets at one time (thats if your lucky with the approach vector, its a really large capship, etc.) so if you use more than 3-4 HARM missiles in a single rocket, you pretty much waste ammunition ;).

I am a bit biased though, I'd rather have the 4 normal missile slots that are probably taken up by a MIRV on the Vampire than one big rocket whos missiles I have no control over and are rather easily spoofed.

C-ya
 
Eh, three or four turrets could be the difference between finding a blind spot and dying a fiery death. An anti-turret multi-munition rocket with four or five munitions would be quite nice (especially on some of those WCP alien ships that have ungodly numbers of maser and missile turrets)
 
overmortal said:
Eh, three or four turrets could be the difference between finding a blind spot and dying a fiery death. An anti-turret multi-munition rocket with four or five munitions would be quite nice (especially on some of those WCP alien ships that have ungodly numbers of maser and missile turrets)
That's true, but that would tend to make wild weasel missions way easier and what exactly would be the fun in that? :D

C-ya
 
How about a capship that is specifically designed to be an AAA ship. It would be like a retrofitted cruiser that had its main armament removed and instead you would have like 16 Laser turrets and 4 missile batteries that put up a screen to defend more important, but less armed vessels, like the Victory. That ship, like the Concordia class, has a huge blind spot directly astern that a kilrathi pilot could sit and fire a torpedo into the launch bay and detonate it, which would destroy the ship.
 
They had those in World War II. Their designation was CLAA (Light Cruiser Anti-Aircraft).

The Atlanta class light cruiser packed 16 x 5" DP guns, along with some secondary 40mm and 20mm mounts.

The problem with a CLAA was that they basically were overgrown destroyers, lacking higher caliber main batteries. Hence the loss of two of the Atlanta class, USS Atlanta and USS Juneau in the Solomons when forced to engage in surface actions.

A CLAA in Wing Commander would have the same limitations as the ocean-bound version. Without powerful main batteries, the CLAA would be vulnerable to attack from bigger capships, which is significant if caught alone or if the group that the CLAA was in was destroyed or the like.

Also, the cost. For the cost of retrofitting or building an entire cruiser, a fair number of ships could be refitted with both extra turrets, and numerous point defense weapons. For example, the early-war US carriers (Enterprise, Saratoga, Essex) were refitted with additional anti-aircraft mounts later on in the war, instead of the construction of additional CLAA's, which would have taken longer and costed a lot more. And for that matter, later war heavy cruisers such as the Baltimore class carried a number of turreted dual purpose twin 5" guns, 12 of them in fact.

So, given some down time, one could refit a Concordia with additional mountings, improve the targeting, replace older weapons with more powerful and modern weapons, replace single tube anti-missile systems with gatling versions, give the ship a good coat of paint, and the like for a fraction of the cost of a CLAA.

Good idea, but too specialized for actual practice in battle. A better improvement to the anti-spacecraft capability of ships is refitting or designing them with additional turret mounts and such.
 
Viper61 said:
That's true, but that would tend to make wild weasel missions way easier and what exactly would be the fun in that? :D

C-ya

Eh, true enough, but, outside of a video game, challenge and/or fun aren't what pilots would be looking for in a mission. I believe that honor would go to "success".

But, for video game purposes, you're absolutely right. Those missions would have been much easier than they already were.
 
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