Cloaking devices and Flashpaks
- Thread starter Delance
- Start date
D
Dominator
Guest
Well you know these weapons are outlawed, but I don`t think that in the event of III world war breaking out during cold war period both sides would have any remorse about using chemical weapons, and during II WW gases were not used because both sides were afraid of response (bombers with gas filled bombs). During war the most important thing is victory - if you have effective weapon that could help achiving this goal at an acceptable price - you use it (and by `acceptable` I also mean acceptable to public opinion). History of warfare tells us that sides that had doubts about it usually came out defeated.
Delance
Victory, you say?
Wrong. When a torp destroys a capship everyone dies. It is shown over and over again on WCIV. If what you say is correct, Blair would strike against Ella with torps to spare the civilians.
You can cripple a ship with leech guns, torps or energy weapons. But in order to DESTROY a ship, you must kill everyone inside, regardless of the weapon.
When the ship is hit by the last torpedo, there's no time to escape. You can see that on WC2, WC3, WC4, WCP. The comm officer just says "arrrrrghhhhhhhhhh" and it blows up in a couple of seconds.
Flash Pak is NOT a bio-weapon, it's a conventional weapon like torpedoes or energy weapons. Bio weapons are immoral for a great number of reasons that are irrelevant to the topic.
True, but why does a ship wait until you put 2 torps in it (WC3) or wait until all the critical components are destroyed (WCP) to core breach (actually in WCP, you can argue that the ships don't go nova, just that there is a large explosion with lots of secondaries - in other words the whole ship isn't sucking vacuum). It's just gaming.
That's gaming. How do you feel after you've just wiped out an entire capship? Would you feel as accomplished if you just crippled it? Read a book in the WC universe, there are dozens of examples where ships don't go boom after multiple torpedo and heavy energy weapon strikes. Realistically, there is no way you can hit a target with such a force as to totally annhilate it.
I'm not talking about destroying the ship, I'm talking about incapacitating it (basically killing its ability to fight). You shoot out my engines, my bridge, my armaments, and my shields and I'd pretty much call that a kill since I'm dead in the freaking water and can't defend myself. Oh by the way, have you tried to leech a carrier? Anyway, why would you want to destroy a ship after it has been incapacitated? Ok, first of all let me make you as helpless as possible where you are no longer a threat to me and I could board you at will, then I'll destroy you. Wow, the Geneva convention would love you.
Comm officer can scream all he wants, we target the bridges remember, that's probably where he's at. If he screams that doesn't mean the whole ship dies, just him and whoevers in his vicinity.
Dude, read a bit before opening your mouth. I'm not saying the Flashpak is a bio weapon, I'm comparing the usage of it. I'll spell it out for the cheap seats: The flashpak is good for killing everything on a ship fast and in one shot, not killing the ship itself. Bio weaps and gas do the exact same thing. Want it even more plain? It doesn't target the weapons of war, it targets the people in an inhumane fashion.
C-ya
Delance
Victory, you say?
Wing Commander IS gaming, pal.
That's bull, ships are destroyed and everyone onboard dies is something that happens a lot on the WC Universe. Blair sparing the lives of the crew of the Lexington is the exepction, not the rule. No survivors on the Tiger's Claw. No Survivors from the Concordia. Sometimes the ship is not entirely destroyed, but that's not the intention of the attacker.
The notion that "there is no way" someone can "totally annhilate" a target is contradicted by WC games, novels, cartoons and the movie. What about the full spread of missiles Thrakkath ordered against the shipyards of Ghora Khar? It was so destroyed no evidence of stealth fighters was found. And that's a shipyard, not a destroyer.
Again, wrong. Incapacitating means destroying its turrets. And if you want to preserve the crew, you use leech weapons. Yes it's possible to disable a ship using conventional weapons (like Blair does on WC3 with the fuel transports), but, again, that's the exception, when you have a special interest on it. The victory needed the fuel, so they didn't destroy the Kilrathi transports. Blair didn't want to kill the crew of his former carrier, so he disabled the Lexington. But unless there's a special interest, people just destroy the enemy ships.
Sometimes ships are heavly damaged by enemy fire, but only when they somehow escape. The Intrepid survives its encounter with the Confed frigate and escorts not because the frigate decided to spare their lives.
That's nonsense on so many levels I feel I won't be able to reply to it all. First of, there's no article o SPACE WARFARE on the Geneva convention that I'm aware of, at least nothing on flashpaks and space torpedoes.
Also, you contradict yourself. Leeching is the way to disable a carrier, not using torpedoes on it. Furthermore, you use either torpedoes OR leech weapons, depending on what you want to do with the enemy ship. There's no point in disabling a ship and then destroynig it, and it is absurd that you'd think I was suggesting such a thing, when my whole point is that they are 2 different courses of action. You either is trying to disable the enemy ship, or you are trying to destroy it. You is the one saying that torpedoes and high-energy weapons are humane non-lethal weapons that merely disable ships.
On the missions where the objective is to "de-fang" the enemy ships, it is generally so that you can destroy it on the next mission.
The ship blows up. We only have to target the bridges on WCP and WCSO, on other WC games we can target any part of the hull, and the ship not only blows up but either completly disapears (WC1/WC2) or have the wreck of the hull floating in space.
Wrong. The Gen Select bio weapon, as the name implies, selectively kills. It doesn't kill "everyone" as a flashpak or a torpedo.
Besides, that's hypocrisy. It’s like saying the Behemoth was a humane weapon because it didn’t target people, just the planet.
Flashpaking the Vesivius had nothing to do with a bio-weapon attack. The result is the same of a torpedo attack: ship destroyed, crew killed. The flashpak is a CONVENTIONAL weapon. It's not a bio-weapon, or a MASS DESTRUCION weapon. It's not a radioactive warhead like the ones Thrakkath used against confed planets. It is a powerful weapon that can be used a single isolated target of size and destroys it with a single shot. The targets cannot be cities or planets, rather, capital ships or instalations.
So you prefer to you like to kill people on a humane fashion? The flashpak destroys the ship with everyone inside. It's just an overpowered torpedo, kills with one shot while the torp requires multiple shots for most capships.
The flashpaks targets the ship. It destroys the ship. WC is not some GI Joe cartoon where 100% of the crew bails from fighters and jumps off tanks before they explode.
The moral issue with the flashpak was using it against a CIVILIAN target. It would be equally immoral to kill civilians on Ella using Torpedoes. Unless you can prove that killing civlians with torpedoes is more moral than killing them with flashpaks, you don't have a point.
So if Seether and the Black Lance destroyed Amadeus with fission cannons or standard torpedoes, would it be more humane? Of course not.
If the flashpak is used to destroy an enemy military ship during a war, it's no better or worse than a torp or energy guns. On a mission during WC2, Blair is ordered to destroy Kilrathi transports with troops. Lots of troops. He destroys the transports and kill all troops onboard. So if he used a flashpak-like weapon, would it be less moral?
TCSTigersClaw
Greek Special Forces B' Company "Naoussa" 2007-200
You are making a stupid in my opinion and endless debate 
.
Ghost
Emperor
Oh yeah, i thought that you said the thing about heavy armor capships in the WC4 era (the only capship with heavy armor was the Vesuvius).
But If you can Flashpak a SuperBase...mmhhh... i don´t know how much armor you need to make the Flashpak obsolete.but that Ella had a very-big-heavy armor.
redwarf_64
Spaceman
I thought the Vesuvius had a new type of armor......i'm probably wrong
No not really. It's also a movie, cartoon, and novel series, as you stated earlier. This is one reason why its called a WC universe. And its just as foolhardy to throw out one medium as it is to throw out another in reference to a WC situation. Ships go nova in WC1, 2, 3, 4 and arguably P and SO because its a game situation where you want to see ships go boom, not just kill its ability ot fight. You read the same novels for the games (plus all the other stories) and I believe if memory serves me, there are very few times that ships go up and are hulled, when they do it is usually cited that the power plant goes critical. DO you think this is the case in every capship attack? Do all torpedoes magically find the ships weak point and hit the core? I beleive what we see when we play the games are just a small portion of what really happens out there in the WC universe. I tend to beleive from what I've gleamed from the novels that a ship going nova is the exception, not the rule.
For your first comment, see above. SHips we attack being the exception, not hte rule, etc. And if I remember correctly, the capships in the cartoon that were destroyed were seldom completely hulled. The only large capship that comes to mind (besides the small corvettes in the "Walking Wounded" and "Chain of Command" and the small Scout in "Red and Blue") is the carrier Payback hit after coming out of the jump node in "expendable". As to my statement, let me be a little clearer, there is realistically no way to completely annhiliate a capship with a torpedo unless you take out the core (which I'm guessing is deep within a ship between thousands of cm of armor - a capship missile on the other hand which can penetrate about 8 times as far as a torpedo, could reasonably do the job). Is it realistic that whenever 1 torpedo hits in WC2 & 3 that we see no explosion? No adverse effects from a single torpedo? But when the second torpedo hits from any angle that a ship is so completely and mortally wounded that it instantly self-destructs? Or, as in P and SO, that you would really have to destroy every critical component before some magical chain reaction sets off a core breach? Do you also believe that like in many movies that a car will explode upon impact, no matter which part of the car is demolished in the crash? Also in regard to the shipyard. Thrakhath said a missile strike. Who says this missile strike wasn't nuclear like those he let loose on the planets he bombarded. Also, the stealth craft are just fighters, easily destroyed by conventional missiles, much less what could have been nuclear tipped ones.
Wow we now have a new dictionary to WC terms on the board. A ship is defensless when you skin its turrets. I think incapacitated is better used to describe a capship that can't see (bridge), can't fight (turrets, missiles, and fighters), can't defends itself (shields), and can't run (engines). Its just an interpretation though.
Gonna have to start cutting these down, my lunch break is coming to an end. I would hope that a Geneva convention-type system would be in effect to deal with the rights of those captured in battle in the WC future. But I really wasn't referring to that, I was simply comparing horrible acts in the WC universe to what would happen if those same acts happened today.
Again, I'm camparing a weapon from teh WC universe to weapons of today, I'm not even refering to the Gen select weapon in WC. Gas and bio weaps today kill the people, not the weapons of war that conflict is waged with. If you'll naotice most weapons that are banned are weapons that target living beings directly, not the weapons they use.
The rest of your arguments are based in morality, of which you nor I can really make any definitive remarks about. Lets put it this way. I believe that the Behemoth and the T-bomb were not very moral ways to end the war with the Kilrathi because it targetted the people. Hell, I don't even like the use of the atomic bomb on Heroshima and Nagasaki because of the human factor. The people that made those decisions have to live with themselves and what they did. Were each of these decisions necessary? Maybe. Were any of them moral, in my opinion, probably not. The use of the Flashpak is a touchy subject, at least to me. I don't like anything that focuses on the death of the individual, rather on the destruction of their ability to fight. Call me what you will, but any of you probably haven't made that decision. I have. I'll leave it at that, for security clearance and for other reasons. You get to make your moral conclusions about weapons of war from a game. I get to make mine from real life, as I know some other people on this board have to as well.
C-ya
D
Dominator
Guest
I would like to make another comparison - let`s say that this `Black Lance` affair is a `low intensity` conflict in todays terms and the Kilrathi War is an all out war like WW II. During low intensity conflicts it is important to destroy enemies ability to fight - after all such conflict is short and you don`t want to conquer anybody. But Kilrathi War is an all out and very long war. In such case the physical elimination of enemy is regrettably also and probably more important than destroying his weapons - after all trained and experienced soldiers are harder to replace than weapons (see Japanese pilots in WW II). And during long war you have to find means to finish it faster - that is why `special` weapons were developed. Using them is a difficult moral issue but by using them you save many more lives that would have been lost if conflict had continued.
Needaham45
Spaceman
Now, now Quarto, I beg to differ.
You see, there have been millions of polls about how similar Tolwyn is to Hitler. and Hitler + WW2 = Tolwyn + Black Lance conflict. Black Lance conflict involved Flashpaks. So, Black Lance = Flashpaks. Flashpacks were lost by the Black Lance and picked up by the BW, so Black Lance + Flashpaks + Transport + BW Operation = Black Lance - Flashpaks - BW Operation, which happens to equal BW + Flashpaks, and Black Lance - Flashpaks. Now, the important expression here is BW + Flashpaks, so we'll focus on that. BW + Flashpaks = Victory for BW over the Vesuvius in WC4. Afterwards confed made a treaty with BW, therefore, Conclusion of Conflict = BW + Confed, but the Flashpaks suddenly dissapeared from the equation. So, we are theorizing on where the variable now is. Because BW + Flashpaks is a true expression, as well as BW = plot of UE, by the law of substitution, Plot of UE + Flashpaks is the new expression. However, this cannot be, as UE = No flashpaks in game. In conclusion, the logical thing to do is talk about whether or not Flashpaks will be in UE2. UE - Flashpaks = UE2 + flashpacks is the theory. Now, and Flashpaks to both sides and get UE = 2 Flashpaks + UE2. now we add reason to the equation. 2 Flashpaks + UE2 + reason = no flashpaks. Therefore, UE = no flashpaks. No Flashpaks = good, so UE = good.
So, you see, there really is a relationship to UE somewhere Quarto.
PS - QED
You see, there have been millions of polls about how similar Tolwyn is to Hitler. and Hitler + WW2 = Tolwyn + Black Lance conflict. Black Lance conflict involved Flashpaks. So, Black Lance = Flashpaks. Flashpacks were lost by the Black Lance and picked up by the BW, so Black Lance + Flashpaks + Transport + BW Operation = Black Lance - Flashpaks - BW Operation, which happens to equal BW + Flashpaks, and Black Lance - Flashpaks. Now, the important expression here is BW + Flashpaks, so we'll focus on that. BW + Flashpaks = Victory for BW over the Vesuvius in WC4. Afterwards confed made a treaty with BW, therefore, Conclusion of Conflict = BW + Confed, but the Flashpaks suddenly dissapeared from the equation. So, we are theorizing on where the variable now is. Because BW + Flashpaks is a true expression, as well as BW = plot of UE, by the law of substitution, Plot of UE + Flashpaks is the new expression. However, this cannot be, as UE = No flashpaks in game. In conclusion, the logical thing to do is talk about whether or not Flashpaks will be in UE2. UE - Flashpaks = UE2 + flashpacks is the theory. Now, and Flashpaks to both sides and get UE = 2 Flashpaks + UE2. now we add reason to the equation. 2 Flashpaks + UE2 + reason = no flashpaks. Therefore, UE = no flashpaks. No Flashpaks = good, so UE = good.
So, you see, there really is a relationship to UE somewhere Quarto.
PS - QED
U
Unregistered
Guest
Well um... -yeah its off topic anyway puting flashpaks in UE2
D
Dominator
Guest
Well... - yeah its off topic
D
Dominator
Guest
Anyway (returning to UE) puting flashpaks in it would have upset balance and made this excellent game too easy. And I would like to say that last mission was one of the best I saw in space combat sims - UE is worth playing even for this mission only!
