Carrier Design Ensures Fighter Capacity

Most Wing Commander artists are driven by the external look of the series' iconic warships, but Lars is trying to figure out how the internal layout works. He's started by making room for the Tiger's Claw's 104 fighter craft, and the result is a pretty tight fit! In these early mockups, he's made fighter stalls light gray, transportation areas red and supply storage green. The result takes up quite a bit of the carrier's internal volume. Lars is now working on detailed renders of these areas.

So after finaly finding a little bit of time I went from doing the outside to take a closer look on the inside. Mainly the hangar/fighter storage. Getting all 104 fighters to fit into the hull was quite tricky. I have changed the internal layout a lot in the process and this is now the version that I think would be the best.

Let me explain the images and thoughts behind what I did.

First the color code. Light grey areas are where fighters will be standing. Some of these spots are not so visible because the lift-placeholders are in front of it. There are also fighters parked in the catapult tubes so they are also not visible. So when counting you might not get all the 104 fighters. Still they are there.

Red colored is where I plan to put in the lifts that will connect the different decks.

Green colored areas are for supplies of fighters. I find its not enough space but its also going into the width of the ship... I will see if I am happy with it when I hollow out the thing and have a look from the inside. Still I doubt that I can make them any bigger as the back part is reserved for the engineroom, reactor and the engines themself.

So lets go through the decks themself.

Starting from the top we have the landing area. There is space to store fighters for either emergency takeoffs or to get damaged fighters out of the way. For that purpose there will also be a crane at the ceiling as seen in WC1.

In the back there will be 4 lifts that can take fighters to the lower decks. Also there will be a small storage part.

Second deck is the repair deck. Not much to say about it.

Third deck will be the storage deck for fighters. Here the repaired and flight ready fighters are stored. There are also 8 lifts to the catapult tubes.

Fourth deck isn't realy a deck its just the catapult tubes. Each holding two fighters.

The logistics to get all the fighters allways fitting inside and moving them around might be a horror as long as all fighters are present but during normal flight a good number of these fighters will be on patrol or other missions so it should be less cramped.

PS: There is one other version where I made the first lift go through all decks and I moved one of the lifts from the back to the middle part. Maybe I will stay with that version, cause it offers more flexebility.