frostytheplebe
Seventh Part of the Seal
No Raptors either, right?
No, the Raptor makes an appearance in the Simulator, that counts as far as I'm concerned.
Bengal Carrier
- Thread starter frostytheplebe
- Start date
No, the Raptor makes an appearance in the Simulator, that counts as far as I'm concerned.
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
We do have a lot of models in Standoff. Quite a few of them were not something we specifically intended to use, but merely something Eder made for the fun of it. They were all added into the game's ship database, but that's not the same as finding a use for them. The Bengal, IIRC, will appear at some point in Episode 5... it just doesn't play a significant role in the game, that's all.
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
Do we know this for certain? It seems possible that Raptors could appear in Episode 5 - they're one of the fighter types described as taking part in the Battle of Earth.
Wedge009
Rogue Leader
I remember one of my economics teachers in high school joking that if you want to give the economy a big boost, start a war (because the sudden injection of war production and R&D has a huge effect on economic activity). But, of course, the situation would be far different 40 years into a war.
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
Your economics teacher was right - but that wartime boost is then followed by a recession as the war industries shut down (or in the case of our generation-long war, an outright depression). The post-armistice issues that Fleet Action talks about are mostly taken directly from World War II. The conscript army returned home to find work at the same time as the government was reducing the number of jobs by reducing the amount of money spent on war materiel. (The military aspect in Fleet Action is taken from that era, too - many criticized the speed with which the United States decommissioned its military given the perceived threat of Soviet aggression.)
Toast
Space Marshal
No, I guess I don't know for certain. Just from reading the Standoff threads, I'm guessing they won't be including any Raptors, as it was stated that the only reason the Raptor's in the game at all was because Eder happened to have made a model of it, and all the ado over the Raptor's scaling has been met, by other things, a response along the lines of, "well, we didn't have to include it and now I wish we didn't."
The Hornet might, though, despite it too suffering from scaling problems. IIRC, there was some suggestion that if you're on the losing path for Ep 5, you'll see Landreich Hornets coming in as reinforcements or something along those lines.
I might be wrong about specifics.
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
I looked up the reference -- the Hornets and Raptors were actually from the Sirius battle. The novel describes the initial attack wave on the Kilrathi carriers as being made up of Rapiers, Raptors, Ferrets and Hornets.
Did those carriers lack phase shields, or were the fighters carrying special loadouts?
Thunderbolt
Rear Admiral
This is a good thread. You make an excellant point about the bad side of post war demilitarizations. The US navy and airforce kept up a lot of its strength in the 50s but most the army was really neglected. Nuclear weapons could be deployed by either sea or air so I think that would have been the main reason for keeping the airforce and navy strong. It was only the US army division in Europe that was kept battle ready. But ultimately that army demilitarization was a heavy cost cause in the Korean War the army was not ready and that complicated things a lot.
Thats funny you say that active fleets were supposed to be cut by 50% cause I thought there was only 5 fleet carriers online (Concordia, Leyte Gulf, Moskva, Verdun and Saratoga) and there would have been at least double that numberof carriers in dry docks etc. So I think its possible that more then 50% of confeds fleet was offline which definately made things a lot worse.
t.c.cgi
Vice Admiral
Arguably it could have been any 50%. I would assume carriers have a higher cost to keep running - fuel and ammo for fighters, supplies for the large fighter support crew, etc - compared to a destroyer squadron. So when faced with downing 50% of the fleet over costs, they probably cut a higher proportion of larger, high maintenance ships and a lower proportion for smaller, expendable ships.
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
Actually, only four carriers were kept active... and two of those were drydocked. The fifth was likely Saratoga, which didn't make it to Sirius.
I don't remember getting a solid number for the Confederation's total carrier fleet in Fleet Action. We're told that the fleet believes that the (standard) Kilrathi carrier force outnumbers them "nearly two to one." The Kilrathi have twenty carriers, but the Confederation only knows about nineteen of them. We do see exactly ten Terran carriers during the course of the book (seven in the battles, three in drydocks on the moon), but there could be a few more. We do know that the fleet had only eight carriers at the start of End Run (a year earlier)... and that one of those (Trafalgar) was destroyed at Vukar Tag.
floundericiousMI
Commodore
Indeed...particularly with the nearly complete rationalization of the U.S. economy and industries to support the war effort(s)
The auto industry - for example - had been converted to building armored/mechanized vehicles...and building aircraft (TBM Avengers were built by G.M.)... after the war, it took a while for the industries to retool themselves to peacetime activities!
Thunderbolt
Rear Admiral
Well regardling the total number of confed fleet carriers Victory Streak mentions; Armageddon, Kennedy, Lincoln. Liberty is also mentioned in WC4. Then theres the 4 carriers that fought at Sirius (Concordia, Leyte Gulf, Verdun, Moskva.
Saratoga you said was at Earth (the WC encyclopedia says a maintainance problems prevented it from reaching Sirius in time).
Lexington and Ark Royal were both in dry dock as the and got pushed out to try to stop the Kilrathi attack (WC encyclopedia)
Then there was also the Winterrowd, Hermes, Invincible, Copenhagen which seem to show up in fan fiction. Then there was the modified carrier dubbed 'Lexington' (Victory Streak timeline) and sent behind enemy lines but was presumed lost in action.
So that seems to be about 16 fleet carriers. There might have been more carriers for all I know. I don't know how valid some of my sources are so don't criticise me if I'm off the mark as much of what I wrote its purely speculative and open to debate.
t.c.cgi
Vice Admiral
...which doesn't count. So that bumps your 16 down to 12.
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
Don't worry about it. A few points:
* We don't know what the ships in Victory Streak (Armageddon, Kennedy, etc.) are, only that they carry some number of fighters. They could be destroyers, cruisers, light carriers, CVEs, fighter transports, bases, etc. Since the same article notes that the *Victory* was to essential to pull off the line for the competition, it seems unlikely that 60% of the fleet carrier force wasn't in the same position.
* The same applies to the TCS Liberty. The novel refers to it as having been retired with the '40 series CVs', and the intention was to suggest it was the same class as the Victory... the authors didn't know at the time that Wing Commander IV's artists would make the Lexington and the Princeton CVs 44 and 48 respectively.
* I don't *think* we know what the TCS Winterrowd was, either. It's even less of a speculative carrier than the Victory Streak ships, since it's never even mentioned in the context of carrying fighters. It's the ship where we first hear about Mandarin traitors being discovered (in SM2)... and then one of the bartender rumors is about it being destroyed by the Steltek drone in Privateer. I will look into this one, though, it's possible that the Official Guide calls it a carrier...
* Hermes and Invincible are, indeed, carriers - though we're not entirely sure what type. They're other battlegroups under Tolwyn's command in the Wing Commander III novel (they scout for the Behemoth in other systems). They're also the 'center' of the battlegroup at Freya - which means they may be shown as Yorktown-class light carriers in Wing Commander III itself. This is all well after the Battle of Terra, though, so they could also be new ships.
* The 'dubbed Lexington' ship is the carrier from 'Wing Commander Armada'. It's a Covert Ops ship which doesn't put to space until after Fleet Action.
* Copenhagen is made up, doesn't appear anywhere in the continuity.
ELTEE
Vice Admiral
So I'm trying to get my head around all of these carriers. As I understand it, the TCN utilizes 8 different classes of carriers over the course of the Wing Commander series. Am I missing any?
Bengal, Concordia Fleet Carriers, Yorktown, Confederation, Lexington, CVE (like Tarawa?), Vesuvius, Midway...
Do we know numbers for any of these classes? For example, Loaf mentioned we only know of 2 Confederation class dreadnoughts...
Bengal, Concordia Fleet Carriers, Yorktown, Confederation, Lexington, CVE (like Tarawa?), Vesuvius, Midway...
Do we know numbers for any of these classes? For example, Loaf mentioned we only know of 2 Confederation class dreadnoughts...
Thunderbolt
Rear Admiral
Missed a couple
1) There was the Jutland attack carrier class
2) Some of the Cruisers from the WC2 era were reconfigured as carriers too I think.