The service history and number of the Confederation-class Dreadnaught

YCDTD

Rear Admiral
Do we have a canonical number for how many "Connies" were in service? When did they enter service, and were any still active post-Kilrathi War? WC Saga had the TCS Armageddon as a Confederation-class - was that pure fanfiction?

It annoyed me how the novels always referred to them (incorrectly) as simply fleet carriers.
 
This comes up a lot and it's always a case of fans being very interested in one or two tiny references where no other information even exists.

And with good reason: Wing Commander II originally had a climactic scene in which the Concordia fires the phase transit cannon and against all odds destroys an attacking Fralthra. It had a bespoke animation and was ultimately cut for disk space. So all that survives in the base game beyond the ship having the gun in the engine is the reference in the manual to the ship having the special gun in the first place... one or two mentions explaning what it is in Joan's guide. Those fascinate fans because they touch on all kinds of cool ideas (mentioning the Sivar's weapon, having a big gun that the ship is based around, etc.)

But there's nothing beyond that. The game's script no longer talks about the gun, like the novels and every followup it treats the Concordia like a carrier. The cutscene animation got reused somewhat randomly at the end of Special Operations 2 (note the lack of setup or explanation and the fact that the Kilrathi ship doesn't even mention the design you see on screen!) and that's the end of what's known or seen about the PTC. But because Joan's is so tantalizing it comes up endlessly when fans talk spaceships.

The TCS Armageddon is referenced in Victory Streak but not as any particular class of ship, it's just home to one of the squadrons listed as winning a prize
 
That explains a lot about the Concordia vs Fralthra animation in SO2, thanks for that history lesson. Now that I think on it, since WC2 was my first WC game, that early mission where the Concordia takes on two Fralthra was pretty cool. I think there are couple more missions where the Concordia gets to fire her big gun but we never really see this kind of thing again until the Midway commandeers the Narwhal's 'ship killer' (and even then we only see it fire just the once in a pre-rendered video).

I can understand from a game-play and story point of view it's a bit skewed to have a capital ship that can blow away other capital ships in one shot - an actual 'dread nought'. (One wonders why the Kilrathi didn't attempt a similar design since it was their technology in the first place.) But it was a fun and distinctive feature nonetheless.
 
@Bandit LOAF Just to make me pull my hair out even more, the Vesuvius is described like she is a dreadnaught (although simply called a supercarrier) in the WC4 novelization!

Well, we now know she has Heavy Lasers! 😉
 
I loved that SO2 animation. It was a little random but it was a very memorable scene. I'm glad they were able to salvage it and squeeze it in there. The tension that they built up with the Concordia fighting to survive while you were dealing with your Mandarin problems was good stuff. I also liked those missions Wedge mentioned where the Concordia actually goes into combat and starts blowing ships away.

The whole carrier dreadnaught hybrid thing is popular in sci-fi (Battlestars and all that) even though it's kind of a silly idea, purpose built carriers and battleships make more sense, but I can't deny it's pretty cool.
 
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