Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
Ehh, Privateer kind of forced them to -- you could buy armor that was ten, twenty and sixty times as powerful-per-centimeter as dursateel...
Fighter technology advancement WC1-WC2
- Thread starter Viper61
- Start date
You know, if they stuck a modern powerplant in the WC4 fighters, increased the recharge on guns and shields and beefed up the missile armerment I reckon they'd hold up pretty well, infact I know so. I've been mucking around in WCPEdit recently, double the armor on the Excalibur and soup up the engines a bit and you have a pretty decent fighter. Tripple the Armor and you have a greet fighter.
Yeah, the Excalibur was an awesome fighter, even without the cloak... only the Bearcat or Dragon came close to it in WC4.Doesn't newer variants imply an all new ship? Anyway, why would you be producing lesser quality fighters when building one with newer specifications is just as easy? I'd say its just as simple as the people who were responsible for drawing WCA ships just took the easier to draw ships from the WC universe (or the coolest) and stuck them in with no regard for the timeline (though what alot of people have come up with to explain the discontinuities is really entertaining - especially when people argue against it
). The arrow showing up in WCA I can see as its an early design that is improved upon (hence a new craft) by WC3 (which it kindof resembles an old A-wing to me anyway, though it is just a wedge ie very simple but effective design). The "Hellcat" showing up in the 1st episode of WCA (which ironically is where tons of the discontinuities, including the arrow, in the series are rooted) on both the statue and the simlulator I thought has been explained in another way. It can be seen that the fighters in the simulator have no shields, so aren't these just the Wildcats (or whatever they were called), the pre-shield Confed fighter? And in WC3 it's the Hellcat V, so apparently it had been through many variations, V being the newest one (hence new fighter). Let's see I think thats the only Confed WC3 apperances in Academy (not including the Kilrathi "one cap ship for all duties" and the abundance of WC2 fighters on both sides). Maybe a longbow showed up but I don't think so. Anyway, in conclusion I think the fighters are new fighters, the capships are just the ones taken out of mothballs.by the way, how do you fly an excalibur in SO? Does the editing utility allow this? I would love the challange
.C-ya
Haesslich
Spaceman
Newer variants don't imply the ship design is new - just that there have been new features or functionality added by improvments in technology. And why would you build older fighters when you could build one with newer specifications as easily? Because you've got factories tooled to build the old fighter frames, and you don't have ones to build the new ones yet - or the bugs worked out of those newer fighters.
Example: The F-15 first came out as a production line model in 1972. It's thirty years old, and the newest variant, the F-15E, came out in 1988, with a larger HUD, faster computer, and AMRAAM and Maverick capability. Why does the United States still use them? Because they're still damned good, the design is proven, there are parts everywhere for these things, and the F-22 was only approved as a final design in 1995. The thing came out as a flying prototype in 1990, and they're still only now starting to phase out F-15 production. Thirty years. A bit longer than the period between Wing Commander Academy and Prophecy.
The old fighters work, new variants have greater capabilities than the old ones, the frames are already in production from factories that are tooled for them, spare parts are common, and people know how to fly them.
Beyond that, to replace your whole fighter inventory at once is madness, when you can just replace fighters as they come to the end of their service life and you'd have to do it anyways... thus spreading your costs over a longer period, and letting your techs and pilots get used to these things in the process.
Jeez Haesslich, did you even read my post? I'm not talking about retooling and launching a new line. It was mentioned before that the fighters were also old versions like the capships. Their not. Their variations on old ones (ie Hellcat five ) which means their newer ships which are superior to those flown in WC2 (which the previous post seemed to say that the fighters we were using were lesser craft than WC2). I presented a speech to a funding board about continuing an old program that had been revamped through the years and I used the F-15, the A-6, and others as examples. I was pointing out that in a previous post it sounded like Confed said "well gee, we're using 50 year old capships, lets use 50 year old designs in our production fighters." I'm simply stating that Confed used the fighters it was already producing around the time of the BoT in WC3, not older fighters.
Ridgerunner
Vice Admiral
One of the reasons that they have to keep building new fighters is because my wimp wingmen are always getting themselves blown out of the sky. Buncha non-hackers.
Originally posted by Viper61
That's something I was always curious about. They are always your wingmen. You are the Wing Commander, therefore they are supposed to stay on your wing and peel off enemies while you do the attacking, I've found in almost every WC game, I'm doing the protecting. Figures . .
But then again, you're usually outnumbered at least two to one. Given that, it makes more sense for the superior pilot to be the one most concerned about keeping the kitties off your back.
Starkey
Avenging Rooster
So you think that 600 years from now they are still using the names of nowadays´American air fighters? like, there´s an F-15 Eagle II today, so if Confed would build a SPACE fighter 6 centuries from now named Eagle they would name it Eagle III, just to ´respect´ the old fighter name?
I think it is MUCH more plausible that Thunderbolt IV was the final variant of a series of SPACE fighter prototypes rather than a A-10 grand grand grand, grandson.
I think it is MUCH more plausible that Thunderbolt IV was the final variant of a series of SPACE fighter prototypes rather than a A-10 grand grand grand, grandson.
WildWeasel
Spaceman
I realize that you're talking about a hypothetical Thunderbolt IV, but I should point out that the fighter seen in Wing Commander III was the Thunderbolt VII.
Um, no offence, but you could really be arguing over this til the cows come home. The US tends to use numbers for completely different models (i.e. P-47 and A-10), and letters to differentiate between the same basic design with different performance upgrades (ultimate example probably being the classic F-4 Phantom II, which went from a to I think j).
The only one that we can really be certain of is the Dralthi, because the multiple model numbers actually appear in basic documented sources, although the Kilrathi fighters appear to get a 'Mark' number, which is often (but not always - see WW2 German panzers for a case where it doesn't apply) used in a similar fashion to the letters that the US uses.
In short, don't get too hung up over it all.
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
The roman numeral after Confed fighters represents a whole new type of ship. Whether the Thunderbolt VII is the seventh futuristic space fighter to be named Thunderbolt or if it's the seventh aircraft to be named Thunderbolt is unknown...
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
On one hand, yes... but on the other hand, just looking at WCIII it's clear that the designers were trying to imply a relationship with the famous WW2 warbirds that had those names (Hellcat and Thunderbolt).
Ridgerunner
Vice Admiral
LOAF is right. The P-47 Thunderbolt and the A-10 Thunderbolt II only resemble each other in that they fly. Two entirely different planes, different manufacturers, same name. When I first played WC3, I immediately thought of the P-47 and the A-10 when I saw the Thunderbolt VII. And that's another cool thing about the game. Same with the Hellcat.