Mystery of Vesuvius' Guns Solved (December 14, 2021)

Bandit LOAF

Bandit LOAF

Long Live the Confederation!
Wing Commander IV didn't have a manual with ship stats so fans had to figure them out via trial and error. The turrets on the Vesuvius heavy carrier all fired yellow so for at least a decade it was assumed they were Anti-Matter Guns because those were the yellow turrets in WC3...





Except a cutscene seemed to have a small error: it identified them as laser turrets. But lasers are red and the film shoot happened long before the actual game was set up and balanced so it made sense that this was just a lil mistake.





Some years later, someone figured out that there aren't Anti-Matter Guns anywhere in WC4. In fact, they're specifically removed from ships that once had them... and the Vesuvius yellow guns don't hit like AMGs anyway. So: they're Heavy Photon Guns which are yellow on fighters?

Now flash forward and our top nerds have reverse engineered the game itself and we find that they were supposed to be... HEAVY LASER TURRETS. The cutscene was RIGHT! They hit for 60 armor points instead of 40. No other differences, aside from the color. That's the whole story.

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Original update published on December 14, 2021
 
Hi Loaf! Thanks for the great update. Was there a particular document you guys found or was this something in the actual code of the game? Are there any other revealing tidbits?

You've previously mentioned that the team wanted to nerf the Confed (enemy) capships for WC4. Was there any other discussion among the team why they chose to substitute regular lasers for the big yellow bursts (presumably AMGs) of the destroyers and cruisers in WC3? Do we have any idea why they did not keep the WC3 effects and flavor text and just weaken the stats of the in-game engine?

On a semi-related note, is there any evidence that the big array on the Tallahassees was intended to be a keel-mounted plasma weapon. or is this just something fans have made up?
 
Hi Loaf! Thanks for the great update. Was there a particular document you guys found or was this something in the actual code of the game? Are there any other revealing tidbits?
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This is from the game itself, we've managed to extract all of the ship and weapon specifications. The Vesuvius turrets are "TURLAS2" which have "Laser" as their display text.

You've previously mentioned that the team wanted to nerf the Confed (enemy) capships for WC4. Was there any other discussion among the team why they chose to substitute regular lasers for the big yellow bursts (presumably AMGs) of the destroyers and cruisers in WC3? Do we have any idea why they did not keep the WC3 effects and flavor text and just weaken the stats of the in-game engine?
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I think that's just two different ways to solve the same problem... but it was probably the right choice to go with the visual players would understand (hit with a red laser) versus making Wing Commander III veterans think they were being hit with an crippling antimatter gun. (IIRC WC4 is actually closer to the flavor text than WC3, as Victory Streak doesn't list any antimatter guns for the capital ships).

On a semi-related note, is there any evidence that the big array on the Tallahassees was intended to be a keel-mounted plasma weapon. or is this just something fans have made up?
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This was a weapon cut from the game called the 'Plasma Field' which was for one shotting enemy capital ships (in the mission where that was needed). In fact it's removal is likely why the game made the late in development switch to having some turrets being capital ship killing antimatter guns... the design needs to guarantee the Victory's escorts will beat the Kilrathi capital ships in that 'escorting the big boys' mission.)

The cut description, which is still in the Victory Streak material included in the series bible: "A powerful version of a keel-mounted plasma gun, the plasma field uses the nose of the ship to energize a large ball of nearly fused hydrogen molecuels. Once the fusion point is reached, a ball of plasma is discharged toward a target. This weapon is used mostly in against enemy capital ships. The damge potential of the plasma field is tremendous and any target in the way of this blast may be vaporized or severly damaged by the blast or by resulting heat and radiation."
 
That definitely makes sense for the WC3 capships. The yellow bursts hit hard in WC3 but they don't seem to act like WC2 AMGs, especially since they impact against Kilrathi phase shields rather than phase-transit them. Given that the escorts seem like older ships -- older than WC2 capships, anyway -- I'm just as inclined to think that their big guns are actually just upscaled laser cannons.
 
We can extract the in-game Wng Commander III stats too now, so we know that the yellow weapons there are "ANTIGUN". Which does match Victory Streak with regards to the fact that it includes Anti-Matter Guns in the gun listings and just not in the cap ship stats.

But at the end of the day this is probably one of those things were fans are insisting it be more even than it ever actually would be... there are differences in armaments/capacities/roles for all sorts of modern warships from specific sip to specific ship, it's totally believable that Confed might have some destroyers that mount a big anti-capship gun and then others that just have laser turrets for anti-shipping/anti-piracy type miissions and the like.
 
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