Whats the use of Capships?
- Thread starter Ace A.E.
- Start date
They could have put some more effort into make it some sort of super-ship,with 2 engines,3 launchers and 4 bridges!!! 
:What's the use of capships? What is this, stupid questions week?
(j/k)
So what would your fleet look like?
Couple hundred fighters that can't even leave a system because of their short range and lack of JD's on most of them, right? You need carriers to carry fighters, than you need other capships to protect your carriers, than you need lighter capships to use for recon and spy missions, you need transports witch have to be protected themselves by few capships if they have a long route. You need heavy battleships to waste planets and smaller capships...
And turrets on Corvettes are not invulnerable.
Other than the fleet Plasma, the Ship Killer is a pretty weak ship all things considered... The Nephilim dreadnough, not that's a ship.
And might I ask how they'd get that ship to Confed space? The Nephilim are obviously located far away if they need something like the wormhole to get there.
Besides, what's so speciall about 2 engines, 3 launchers and 4 bridges? The Midway has all of those, the Vesuvius has more engines that that, and two launch tubes...
[Edited by Earthworm on 12-16-2000 at 14:11]
(j/k)So what would your fleet look like?
Couple hundred fighters that can't even leave a system because of their short range and lack of JD's on most of them, right? You need carriers to carry fighters, than you need other capships to protect your carriers, than you need lighter capships to use for recon and spy missions, you need transports witch have to be protected themselves by few capships if they have a long route. You need heavy battleships to waste planets and smaller capships...
And turrets on Corvettes are not invulnerable.
Other than the fleet Plasma, the Ship Killer is a pretty weak ship all things considered... The Nephilim dreadnough, not that's a ship.
And might I ask how they'd get that ship to Confed space? The Nephilim are obviously located far away if they need something like the wormhole to get there.
Besides, what's so speciall about 2 engines, 3 launchers and 4 bridges? The Midway has all of those, the Vesuvius has more engines that that, and two launch tubes...
[Edited by Earthworm on 12-16-2000 at 14:11]
And you forgot the best thing; cap ships look cool as hell. A trademake of space combat games is the fighter battles around ships 100s or 1000s of meters long. What would WC or Freespace be like, if all you did every mission was scout or superiority missions. Capships add variety and intrigue to the game.
cap ships are pretty useful...from time to time...and remember if the game wasn't a game and was real life - it'd be pretty hard to gun 'em down...if u look at world war II big carrier ships would be the equiv and they had to take some beating before going down...and it wasn't always that easy to get close to 'em...unless u were kamikaze
The difficulty in taking down WWII warships depends on where you hit it. For example battleships were vulnerable to any hit that caused the gun magazines to blow. E.g. HMS Hood was sunken from 1 hit from the German battleship Bismarck, when the Bismarck's shells penetrated the forward magazines. This led to a massive explosion & the swift sinking of the Hood. Likewise the Japanese assault at Pearl Harbour succeeded at sinking 8 battleships. All but 1 were salvaged & returned to service. The 1 that wasn't was due to the extensive damage to the hull, caused when a Japanese weapon penetrated a magazine.
However as long as crucial areas weren't hit, battleships could absorb incredible amounts of punishment. 1 Japanese battleship absorbed 20 torps & 17 bombs. Another German battleship was able to sustain hits from 12,000lb Tallboy bombs. Note that the heaviest bomb in current US inventory (outside of nukes) is the GBU 28 'Deep Throat' bunker buster, which weighs 4500lbs. GBU 28s were developed to eliminate underground hardened bunkers, so imagine what a 3 times heavier weapon would do.
However as long as crucial areas weren't hit, battleships could absorb incredible amounts of punishment. 1 Japanese battleship absorbed 20 torps & 17 bombs. Another German battleship was able to sustain hits from 12,000lb Tallboy bombs. Note that the heaviest bomb in current US inventory (outside of nukes) is the GBU 28 'Deep Throat' bunker buster, which weighs 4500lbs. GBU 28s were developed to eliminate underground hardened bunkers, so imagine what a 3 times heavier weapon would do.
i wouldn't mind seeing more cap ship fights in more wing commander games...like in wc3 with the victory's escorts trying to take out other cap ships...there was an escort mission and u just had to take out the puny ships and then the destroyer took out the cap ship
wouldn't mind seeing a full fleet attack
or like in wc4 with st helens tries to take out the vesuvius
wouldn't mind seeing a full fleet attack
or like in wc4 with st helens tries to take out the vesuvius
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
Yes. Of course, that was just luck on their part - had they been outside the harbour when the strike came...
In a way, the Americans were saved by getting caught with their pants down. Had those ships been under power, they probably would have all done what the USS Nevada tried to do - get out of the harbour. But then again, I suppose they would have been ordered to turn back, like the Nevada was.
I wonder, what sort of possibilities are there for salvaging ships in space? Certainly it's possible (Lexington is an example, and so's the Karga), but how feasible is it? I mean, is it a real possibility when the ship goes down away from a shipyard? I guess not in wartime, since there's no way the Karga could have been salvaged had the war still been on, but maybe in peacetime.
Wow, I feel really silly suggesting this (it's almost like saying Blair is alive
), but maybe now that the War's over, they should give the Concordia a try 
.heh heh... sure they could. As scrap - the Concordia is a pile of blackened metal laying half-submerged in the lake formed by it's own impact crater, with all internals most likely blown (including the PTC) and a compromised hull integrity. Plus it's on a planet - it would be nearly impossible to get it back up to space in a single piece.
If they could though...
And while they were at it, might as well resurrect the 'Claw.
If they could though...
And while they were at it, might as well resurrect the 'Claw.
Yes, luck played the key part in the examples I highlighted. However in the technologically sophisticated world of WC, precision weapons make bullseying weak spots the primary method of eliminating capships.
"In a way, the Americans were saved by getting caught with their pants down."
You want to explain that? If those battleships had survived the attack, they probably would have rendezvoused with the carriers and gone after the Japanese that much faster.
As for salvaging. Salvaging depends on just how much is left to salvage. There has to be enough left and what is left has to be of sufficient quality to make salvaging worthwhile.
As for whether they could do this in wartime - it depends. Suppose the Concordia gets taken down in the BoT. Somewhere out in space where its remains don't get sucked into a planet. After the battle, the wars still on, but Confed controls the area sufficiently, making retrieving the Concordia's floating wreckage plausible. However whether you could get the ship in question through a jump point would probably be the deciding factor.
Finally salvaging Connie. On paper its a good idea but the hull was probably so smashed, that it just wasn't worthwhile. Besides how do you lift something like that out of the planet's atmosphere. Admittedly its better of as a monument to the war. A relic of the war, whose name symbolizes the peace bought at such cost.
"In a way, the Americans were saved by getting caught with their pants down."
You want to explain that? If those battleships had survived the attack, they probably would have rendezvoused with the carriers and gone after the Japanese that much faster.
As for salvaging. Salvaging depends on just how much is left to salvage. There has to be enough left and what is left has to be of sufficient quality to make salvaging worthwhile.
As for whether they could do this in wartime - it depends. Suppose the Concordia gets taken down in the BoT. Somewhere out in space where its remains don't get sucked into a planet. After the battle, the wars still on, but Confed controls the area sufficiently, making retrieving the Concordia's floating wreckage plausible. However whether you could get the ship in question through a jump point would probably be the deciding factor.
Finally salvaging Connie. On paper its a good idea but the hull was probably so smashed, that it just wasn't worthwhile. Besides how do you lift something like that out of the planet's atmosphere. Admittedly its better of as a monument to the war. A relic of the war, whose name symbolizes the peace bought at such cost.
PopsiclePete
Mission programmer
Humm... no you may not. Before WC3, capships blew up completely leaving only small debris behind
(j/k)i think penguin is right....how would u lift something as big as a carrier ship into the atmosphere...once on a planet it would weigh a CONSIDERABLE amount and the amount of energy or fuel it would take to get it into space...
if ur thinking about how they built the ships...well in wc4 u see the vesuvius and st helens being built IN space, coz must already know its gonna be too hard to get it up from a planet
i reckon they wouldn't have salvaged destroyed ships that were on planets...they prolly just stripped it and used any extra metal for the rest of the war effor...be easier as well
if ur thinking about how they built the ships...well in wc4 u see the vesuvius and st helens being built IN space, coz must already know its gonna be too hard to get it up from a planet
i reckon they wouldn't have salvaged destroyed ships that were on planets...they prolly just stripped it and used any extra metal for the rest of the war effor...be easier as well
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
Oh, I know that salvaging the Concordia would cost far too much money (and indeed, I'm not serious about this suggestion - it just makes an interesting discussion).
Penguin: I believe I did explain that. If the battleships had been under power at the time (as they certainly would have if they had been forewarned), they would have tried to get out to sea. Thus, every ship sunk (and there'd still be plenty) would be sunk permanently (not that it matters, since those ships weren't exactly front-line status). Besides, the Japanese probably could have handled the American carriers, too. And that would be disasterous.
Penguin: I believe I did explain that. If the battleships had been under power at the time (as they certainly would have if they had been forewarned), they would have tried to get out to sea. Thus, every ship sunk (and there'd still be plenty) would be sunk permanently (not that it matters, since those ships weren't exactly front-line status). Besides, the Japanese probably could have handled the American carriers, too. And that would be disasterous.
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
Couldn't handle them? They certainly sunk a few, but the Americans kept bringing more in. Now, at the start of the war, the Japanese could have handled them all at once (how many were there in the Pacific? Four?), or at least they had a reasonable chance. Essentially, what would... well, could... have happened is something like the Midway, except that this time the Americans wouldn't have all that intelligence, while the Japanese wouldn't have had their forces split up all over the area, and they wouldn't have all that confusion with their planes changing ordnance every five seconds . There's no 100% in war, and all we're doing is speculating, but I reckon that the Japanese had a fair chance of plastering the American carriers all at once that day.
. There's no 100% in war, and all we're doing is speculating, but I reckon that the Japanese had a fair chance of plastering the American carriers all at once that day.Quarto: At the time of Pearl Harbour the Americans had 3 carriers in the Pacific. The reason the Japanese didn't sink them was because A) they weren't at Pearl Harbour at the time & B) they were scattered around the American Pacific seaboard. Hunting them down would've been a b***h.
It is true that the Japanese could've handled all the American carriers, if things had gone their way. However the real problem though, was that the Americans could build, equip and man carriers faster than the Japanese could. So ultimately they would've lost.
It is true that the Japanese could've handled all the American carriers, if things had gone their way. However the real problem though, was that the Americans could build, equip and man carriers faster than the Japanese could. So ultimately they would've lost.