Planet landable craft.....Some information from someone in the know

M

Major A Payne

Rear Admiral
Hi again all. I've noticed over the ship database that theres very little in the way of info concerning if any craft are capable of combat in a planet atmosphere and whether any can physically land on a planet surface. Is it possible and if so what classes have this ability (this includes fighters AND capital ships)??

I'm asking because I've been trying to rack my brains for quite some time to find out how to partially involve ground combat and this might be the answer. If I can't use troop and vehicles because I've yet to see anything of this kind then it might be more useful to use fighters, bombers and where possible capital ships.
 
In WC3 and 4 we have atmospheric combat, we even see tanks. Several Fighters, including the Excalibur, Hellcat, Vindicator and of course the shuttles are evidently capable of atmosheric flight, there's even a Kilrathi fighter specifically designed for it https://www.wcnews.com/ships/wc3ekapshi.shtml
I read somewhere the Ekapshi was invented because their other fighters couldn't enter atmosphere due to their asymmetric shape, but the Dralthis in the WC3 intro don't seem to have any problems with it (even pull off some fancy stunts). Other examples of planetery landings are WC2 and Privateer.
And the novels mention some armed landing craft which can carry about a company of Marines and two tanks (don't remember the exact loadout).
As for capships, not sure. The novels mention some moon-based carrier construction facilities, but i don't remember if any of those moons had an atmosphere. The "bad" WC3 ending shows some Kilrathi capships in Earth's atmosphere http://www.crius.net/zone/attachment.php?attachmentid=593&d=1092530646
 
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I think I have crossed over with Red Baron here, but based off the top of my head,

Arrow (WCA TV)
Scimitar (WCA TV)
Grikath (WCA TV)
Jrathek (WCA TV)


Rapier (WC1, reference only in a briefing to having to rig the ship for atmospheric flight)

Ferret (WCII)

Excalibur (WCIII)
Ekapashi (WCIII)
Paktahn (WCIII)
Dralthi (WCIII)

Hellcat (WCIV)
Vindicator (WCIV)
Lance (Dragon) (WCIV)

Marine Drop Ship (End Run)
Rapier (End Run)

Hurricane (Action Stations)
Gladiator (Action Stations)
Some kind of kilrathi bombers, it might have been Krants or Gratha, can’t remember clearly.

Various Crazy Landreich kitbash fighters (Fleet Action)
At least one class of Corvette (Fleeet Action)

In End run, Tarawa and its escorts (Cruiser and a Destroyer?) entered the atmosphere of a gas giant to hide from the kilrathi home fleet.in the Kilrah system.

In Fleet Action Tarawa landed on the surface of a moon to monitor communications undetected, although it might not have had an atmosphere.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I forgot about the WCIII cutscene with the Kilrathi capships in the atmosphere of earth
 
I know the atmospheric flight in the Wing Commander Series is strange....It would cool if there was more of it....Perhaps a lil more realistic also.
 
I don't see why all Wing Commander craft couldn't land on a planet, except the capships with their interesting bits sticking out. As I understand it the major issue is fighting in atmosphere, not moving through it.
 
I have no idea how engines in Wing Commander work (except for the matter/antimatter part), but i imagine such big ships could create atmospherical disturbances. So maybe pretty much every craft is *capable*, but the big ones aren't allowed to enter atmospheres of inhabited planets. They're also pretty vulnerable there.
The Kilrathi in the losing endgame obviously didn't care because there probably wasn't anyone left on earth to complain about or exploit any of this.
 
I think that would be a pretty big assumption to make, don't forget there is already a dedicated space operations only fighter in Action Stations, the Wildcat, so there is some reason why it can't enter an atmosphere, but I couldn't guess what it is.
 
Simple reason, those fighters would need some type of antigravity unit to be able to sustain athmospheric flight, you'd save a lot of cost by just building a dedicated spacefighter. It's thesame reason why not every car is amphibious.
 
The WC3 intro shows Dralthis hover left and right of the Emperor's throne, and the hangar pits in Privateer would require some sort of hover/antigravity technology as well. Actually most cutscenes that come to my mind right now show vertical takeoffs and landings.
I remember when i played my first planet mission in WC3 i didn't dare to decrease my speed because i feared i'd fall down.
 
Red Baron said:
The WC3 intro shows Dralthis hover left and right of the Emperor's throne, and the hangar pits in Privateer would require some sort of hover/antigravity technology as well. Actually most cutscenes that come to my mind right now show vertical takeoffs and landings.
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This is what I mean. The only indication clearly made that I'm aware of is that some craft can't fight in the atmosphere for whatever reason (guns, shields, maneuvering, etc). Then again I've not read Action Stations or the Pilgrim novels.

Red Baron said:
I remember when i played my first planet mission in WC3 i didn't dare to decrease my speed because i feared i'd fall down.
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You too, huh?
 
I figure that the "non atmosphere" fighters don't have a problem landing on a planet, but can't fly and maneuver fast enough (due to poor aerodynamics) to fight effectively against more aerodynamic craft. In the WC Academy series, Blair said that the Scimitar has all of the aerodynamics of a brick--so if he had to dogfight in an atmosphere using a Scimitar, he'd be badly outmaneuvered by the more aerodynamic Dralthis, for example.
 
The WC3 manual (or is it only the KSaga manual?) mentions that some guns work poorly, or don't work at all in atmospheric conditions. Specifically, the laser and photon cannons are said to lose effectiveness in atmosphere, while the particle cannon does not work at all. The meson blaster also seems to be affected - "atmospheric conditions render this gun ineffective", which may either mean it completely doesn't work, or that it works poorly. What this means is that some fighters may be perfectly capable of atmospheric flight, but their guns might not work well enough in such conditions.

The great big irony, of course, is that the Kilrathi dedicated atmospheric fighter, the Ekapshi, is armed with... lasers and mesons.
 
Wow, I never bothered to check for those sorts of inconsistencies. That's pretty funny.

There is also Halcyon's remark that the Tiger's Claw's fighter complement is not "equipped for planetary overpressure", that is atmospheric combat. Whether he means the Hornet, Scimitar, Raptor and Rapier in general, or just the ones on the Claw is up to interpretation, I suppose.
 
Well, that certainly would explain why Blair's planetary flights in the Academy cartoon almost always ended with ejection ;).
 
The idea that some fighters are "atmosphere-capable" has more to do with space on WC3 and 4's CDs than it does background information about the universe. You're limited to one fighter type in each of the atmospheric missions in those games because you have unique 'entering' and 'exiting' rendered cutscenes for each planet. Letting you fly every fighter would mean the game would need five times as many cutscenes for little extra payoff -- so you're stuck with the Excalibur in WC3 and the Hellcat->Vindicator->Lance in WC4. You see other fighters in the atmosphere *in those games*, though -- Vagabond flies a Hellcat to punch Dr. Severin.

There is also Halcyon's remark that the Tiger's Claw's fighter complement is not "equipped for planetary overpressure", that is atmospheric combat. Whether he means the Hornet, Scimitar, Raptor and Rapier in general, or just the ones on the Claw is up to interpretation, I suppose.
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This, to me, is evidence that there must be situations when these fighters can fly in atmospheres in some cases, though -- otherwise it would be a completely pointless thing for him to brief you on.

By the way, pilots, remember that you can't fly your F/A-18s under water, they aren't designed for that.
 
~~~

The fact that we fly the Hellcat in atmosphere in WC4 is enough to make it plausible that the WC3 Hellcats can do the same (i.e. the airframe is designed for it from the start), so Vagabond landing in one does nothing to break the pattern.
 
Hmmm... they put the Hellcat's guns in some kind of half-tubes for WC4, maybe that gave it the streamline necessary for fighting in atmospheres...
Though i always had the impression it was the shields that took the weight of airdrag
 
Hmmmm. Much in the way of information to contend with. Thanks all, but I'm somewhat confused to whether its possible. Okay then. Let me put it this way. Would it be possible to refit a capital ship or fighter for this type of landing and combat??

Perhaps some sort of variant with a fighter/bomber.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
The idea that some fighters are "atmosphere-capable" has more to do with space on WC3 and 4's CDs than it does background information about the universe. You're limited to one fighter type in each of the atmospheric missions in those games because you have unique 'entering' and 'exiting' rendered cutscenes for each planet. Letting you fly every fighter would mean the game would need five times as many cutscenes for little extra payoff -- so you're stuck with the Excalibur in WC3 and the Hellcat->Vindicator->Lance in WC4. You see other fighters in the atmosphere *in those games*, though -- Vagabond flies a Hellcat to punch Dr. Severin.
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Yeah, but it doesn't really explain why you also fight only these types of ships in the atmosphere (ekapshi's in WC3, Hellcats and Vindicators in WC4)
 
Mancubus said:
Yeah, but it doesn't really explain why you also fight only these types of ships in the atmosphere (ekapshi's in WC3, Hellcats and Vindicators in WC4)
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Two reasons - firstly, to keep things consistent, especially in WC4. After all, if you were to encounter both Banshees and Vindicators while flying a Hellcat, then how would they explain later on why you can only fly the Vindicator?

Secondly, to make the missions feel different. In WC3, you only ever met the Ekapshi in planetary missions - it may not have been a huge difference, but it sure beat having yet another mission filled with Dralthi. Similarly, in WC4, you fight against Banshees in space, and then descend to the planet to fight against Vindicators - which sure beats fighting Banshees in space and fighting more Banshees planetside.
 
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