Miracynonyx100
Swabbie
Banned
This partially is in relation to my mod idea, but could come in useful in other areas.
The fighters in WC-2 are absolutely tiny. It doesn't mesh with WC-1 and WC-3 which preceed and succeed it respectively. While many of the WC-3 fighters are old, the Excalibur was brand-new, so was the Longbow and they both were large. Additionally the Rapier from WC-1, was a different size in WC-2, and the Wraith from one WC-game was like 16 meters, and was 36 in Armada.
I attempted to simply scale up the fighters by the same amount as the ratio between the WC-1 Rapier and the WC-2 rapier (24/19), and for the Ferret (Which was now the same size as the Razor), and Rapier and possibly the Sabre it worked, for the Epee it still came out too small (under 16 meters).
I have come up with a ratio based on the size of some ships in the game which I wrote down, the number at least. I forgot what I was actually comparing, but it was not a random number = 1.45812... when multiplied by 12.4 meters equals 18.08 or so. Which is more in line with the WC-1 and WC-2 sized fighters. Although a 16-meter light fighter isn't that ridiculous... but 12.4 seems just too tiny.
For the Wraith, I think I averaged the two figures together and got 25.5 meters, which is more than acceptable for a medium sized fighter.
As an aside, it is my opinion that WC-1, and WC-2 carrying weapons on external mounts is outright ridiculous. They can be shot off for one, and in the event of weapons like torpedoes which carry anti-matter in them, is outright dangerous. The ships have bussard-intakes which draw in hydrogen which is used to fuel the spacecraft as it flies, also providing aerodynamic effects. While I'm pretty sure there's a variable geometry component to these things to allow for small asymmetries, carrying missiles would produce significant drag at the velocities the ships would be traveling at. External hard-points make it easy for enemies to figure out exactly what kind of weapons you're carrying, and can increase or reduce your radar cross section. Carrying them internally however results in no radar cross-section change, no drag changes, no risk of them being shot off, etc. Considering the size of the WC-1 and WC-3 fighters, internal carriage is not a serious problem. For the WC-2 fighters resized it is still possible to carry weapons internally.
I've also, as another more of an aside thing, I've also compared trends in Confed Capships from WC-1 all the way to WC-P...
The older destroyers were fairly big 490 - 500 meters (Durango was around 500 if I recall). By WC-1 they were smaller around 360 meters and had small fighter compliments, and in WC-2 had become a little bit smaller at 312.1 and no data on fighter compliment. In WCP they've increased to 589 meters again with a small fighter compliment.
The older cruisers were around 530 meters with minor fighter compliment, and by the 2650's cruisers reached sizes in excess of 700 meters with at least some cruisers having fighter compliments of around 30 fighters, then shrunk down to just a little over 500 meters with fighter compliment going up to 40. By WCP They ballooned up to 777 to even 1,200 meters with capacity varying from model to model from a few to as much as 30. The 1,200 meter figure I would exclude since this was almost certainly the result of newer jump drive technology allowing larger ships to jump.
Carrier wise, the oldest carrier in WC was the Yorktown, which was 720 meters in length with a 40 fighter compliment, following the Concordia-Class carrier which was 800-meters long with around 90-fighters capacity. By 2644 the Bengal-Class Tiger's Claw which was considered a strike-carrier-- a heavy-class of vessel which seemed to stand alone with no escort sporting 104 fighters, and one of the largest vessels of it's day apparently was 700 meters in length, with all subsequent designs 690 meters in length. By the early 2660's throughout the end of the Kilrathi War the biggest Confed Carrier was the Confederation-Class Dreadnaught which despite being a dreadnaught was also classified as a fleet carrier and was built right up against the 1,000 meter limit at 983.7 meters with a fighter compliment a whopping 120.
Carrier wise, whether it be through the game, or through the movie, or even novels stated that many of these ships were supposed to have a fly through deck. The Tigers Claw had a fly through deck in the movie, as did the Ranger and Concordia Classes in the games and apparently the Confederation-Classes did (In WC-4 Novel).
It is my opinion that the Ranger @ 720 meters is fine, as is the Concordia Class at 800 meters, and the Confederation Dreadnaught is fine at 983.7.
The Bengal though is too small for a fly-through deck to work. Awhile back, I actually drew up a drawing and quickly found that the size of the fighters in WC-1 couldn't comfortably fit 104 fighters even if it's flight-deck was fully covered with a fly-through deck (Yet the movie featured it so I would assume it's what Chris Roberts wanted) while able to carry all the other things a ship would carry, fuel tanks, crew quarters, the squadron rooms etc. The mod idea I've actually conceived of, involved a Bengal-Design that would look like the SWC-Bengal (without the inward canted fins on the bottom and without the small engines mounted under the fuselage) with a fly through deck, and wings like the WC-1 Tiger's Claw (The wings would be swept like on the WC-1 TC, and would be thinner than the main hull, but would still taper towards the tips in both chord and height; the reason for the wings not being as thick as the main hull would be to avoid it looking like a long stretched out gilgamesh with a flight-deck up front) with three engines mounted on the back of each wing. Obviously the idea would be to have it painted gray and blue like WC-3 style. In either case the best size I've found that would allow it to carry a 104 fighter capacity, various shuttles, like how the Bengal in WC-1 and SWC was designed for, and the best size that would mesh with the other Fleet-Carriers in the WC-Universe, I used the 24/19 ratio. The ship came out within the 1,000 meter restriction pre 2668, of 884 meters. Even with a 10 meter reduction, the fighter compliment could probably be maintained.
Cruiser Wise: 530 meters is fine for the Talahassee-Class Cruisers. The Gettysburg-Class should be in excess of 700 meters, but, I honestly think scaling it past 884 though is ridiculous. The thing would by no means be a cruiser, it would be a dreadnought. Awhile back, LOAF one time suggested that perhaps the Gettysburg-Class would be a Concordia-Supercruiser sized vessel. With that said 855 meters sounds like it would be at least a good start. As for the Waterloo, a lot of people have thought of it's flight-deck set up as being like a "mini-Concordia"-- the dreadnaught. And since the Concordia in WC4M had fly-throughs, the Waterloo should have them as well -- at this moment. As for resizing the Waterloo, it does sound to be a reasonable idea. The Waterloo can carry 40 fighters, and probably support craft like shuttles.... but some versions can be converted into carriers with capacities of ~65 to ~75 fighters.
Destroyer Wise: 490 meters for the Southampton should be the destroyer to be used to compare the others against. It is the oldest destroyer, along with the Durango, and it is closest in size to the Murphy-Class in WCP. Bringing the other Destroyers into line with these is not that crazy an idea.
Using the 24/19 ratio would put the Exeter at 454.75 meters. A more than acceptable size for a Destroyer with a capacity for between 8 - 17 fighters. Keep in mind the Exeter is a much wider ship than the Southampton. The Gilgamesh using the same ratio comes in at 394.25 meters -- still retaining it's more compact design and sports-car like performance even though if it has any fighter capacity, it's minimal at best.
Me and LOAF talked about this yesterday in chat, and he told me that he hasn't really seen the ship much up close. However, I've thought about that and have found that technically we have seen enough of the Gilgamesh to determine a difference between typical trends in fighter-carrying destroyers.
-The Exeter, and Southampton have no engines mounted directly in the middle of the rear of the ship -- on the centerline in the middle. This allows a flight deck to be placed in the centerline in the back of the ship.
-The Gilgamesh has it's engines right in the center right on the centerline. In otherwords, there's no room for a fighter-bay in the back.
Now I'm not saying anyone has to agree with any of the things I've wrote down, but I'd like to hear your opinions.
Victoria Kent
The fighters in WC-2 are absolutely tiny. It doesn't mesh with WC-1 and WC-3 which preceed and succeed it respectively. While many of the WC-3 fighters are old, the Excalibur was brand-new, so was the Longbow and they both were large. Additionally the Rapier from WC-1, was a different size in WC-2, and the Wraith from one WC-game was like 16 meters, and was 36 in Armada.
I attempted to simply scale up the fighters by the same amount as the ratio between the WC-1 Rapier and the WC-2 rapier (24/19), and for the Ferret (Which was now the same size as the Razor), and Rapier and possibly the Sabre it worked, for the Epee it still came out too small (under 16 meters).
I have come up with a ratio based on the size of some ships in the game which I wrote down, the number at least. I forgot what I was actually comparing, but it was not a random number = 1.45812... when multiplied by 12.4 meters equals 18.08 or so. Which is more in line with the WC-1 and WC-2 sized fighters. Although a 16-meter light fighter isn't that ridiculous... but 12.4 seems just too tiny.
For the Wraith, I think I averaged the two figures together and got 25.5 meters, which is more than acceptable for a medium sized fighter.
As an aside, it is my opinion that WC-1, and WC-2 carrying weapons on external mounts is outright ridiculous. They can be shot off for one, and in the event of weapons like torpedoes which carry anti-matter in them, is outright dangerous. The ships have bussard-intakes which draw in hydrogen which is used to fuel the spacecraft as it flies, also providing aerodynamic effects. While I'm pretty sure there's a variable geometry component to these things to allow for small asymmetries, carrying missiles would produce significant drag at the velocities the ships would be traveling at. External hard-points make it easy for enemies to figure out exactly what kind of weapons you're carrying, and can increase or reduce your radar cross section. Carrying them internally however results in no radar cross-section change, no drag changes, no risk of them being shot off, etc. Considering the size of the WC-1 and WC-3 fighters, internal carriage is not a serious problem. For the WC-2 fighters resized it is still possible to carry weapons internally.
I've also, as another more of an aside thing, I've also compared trends in Confed Capships from WC-1 all the way to WC-P...
The older destroyers were fairly big 490 - 500 meters (Durango was around 500 if I recall). By WC-1 they were smaller around 360 meters and had small fighter compliments, and in WC-2 had become a little bit smaller at 312.1 and no data on fighter compliment. In WCP they've increased to 589 meters again with a small fighter compliment.
The older cruisers were around 530 meters with minor fighter compliment, and by the 2650's cruisers reached sizes in excess of 700 meters with at least some cruisers having fighter compliments of around 30 fighters, then shrunk down to just a little over 500 meters with fighter compliment going up to 40. By WCP They ballooned up to 777 to even 1,200 meters with capacity varying from model to model from a few to as much as 30. The 1,200 meter figure I would exclude since this was almost certainly the result of newer jump drive technology allowing larger ships to jump.
Carrier wise, the oldest carrier in WC was the Yorktown, which was 720 meters in length with a 40 fighter compliment, following the Concordia-Class carrier which was 800-meters long with around 90-fighters capacity. By 2644 the Bengal-Class Tiger's Claw which was considered a strike-carrier-- a heavy-class of vessel which seemed to stand alone with no escort sporting 104 fighters, and one of the largest vessels of it's day apparently was 700 meters in length, with all subsequent designs 690 meters in length. By the early 2660's throughout the end of the Kilrathi War the biggest Confed Carrier was the Confederation-Class Dreadnaught which despite being a dreadnaught was also classified as a fleet carrier and was built right up against the 1,000 meter limit at 983.7 meters with a fighter compliment a whopping 120.
Carrier wise, whether it be through the game, or through the movie, or even novels stated that many of these ships were supposed to have a fly through deck. The Tigers Claw had a fly through deck in the movie, as did the Ranger and Concordia Classes in the games and apparently the Confederation-Classes did (In WC-4 Novel).
It is my opinion that the Ranger @ 720 meters is fine, as is the Concordia Class at 800 meters, and the Confederation Dreadnaught is fine at 983.7.
The Bengal though is too small for a fly-through deck to work. Awhile back, I actually drew up a drawing and quickly found that the size of the fighters in WC-1 couldn't comfortably fit 104 fighters even if it's flight-deck was fully covered with a fly-through deck (Yet the movie featured it so I would assume it's what Chris Roberts wanted) while able to carry all the other things a ship would carry, fuel tanks, crew quarters, the squadron rooms etc. The mod idea I've actually conceived of, involved a Bengal-Design that would look like the SWC-Bengal (without the inward canted fins on the bottom and without the small engines mounted under the fuselage) with a fly through deck, and wings like the WC-1 Tiger's Claw (The wings would be swept like on the WC-1 TC, and would be thinner than the main hull, but would still taper towards the tips in both chord and height; the reason for the wings not being as thick as the main hull would be to avoid it looking like a long stretched out gilgamesh with a flight-deck up front) with three engines mounted on the back of each wing. Obviously the idea would be to have it painted gray and blue like WC-3 style. In either case the best size I've found that would allow it to carry a 104 fighter capacity, various shuttles, like how the Bengal in WC-1 and SWC was designed for, and the best size that would mesh with the other Fleet-Carriers in the WC-Universe, I used the 24/19 ratio. The ship came out within the 1,000 meter restriction pre 2668, of 884 meters. Even with a 10 meter reduction, the fighter compliment could probably be maintained.
Cruiser Wise: 530 meters is fine for the Talahassee-Class Cruisers. The Gettysburg-Class should be in excess of 700 meters, but, I honestly think scaling it past 884 though is ridiculous. The thing would by no means be a cruiser, it would be a dreadnought. Awhile back, LOAF one time suggested that perhaps the Gettysburg-Class would be a Concordia-Supercruiser sized vessel. With that said 855 meters sounds like it would be at least a good start. As for the Waterloo, a lot of people have thought of it's flight-deck set up as being like a "mini-Concordia"-- the dreadnaught. And since the Concordia in WC4M had fly-throughs, the Waterloo should have them as well -- at this moment. As for resizing the Waterloo, it does sound to be a reasonable idea. The Waterloo can carry 40 fighters, and probably support craft like shuttles.... but some versions can be converted into carriers with capacities of ~65 to ~75 fighters.
Destroyer Wise: 490 meters for the Southampton should be the destroyer to be used to compare the others against. It is the oldest destroyer, along with the Durango, and it is closest in size to the Murphy-Class in WCP. Bringing the other Destroyers into line with these is not that crazy an idea.
Using the 24/19 ratio would put the Exeter at 454.75 meters. A more than acceptable size for a Destroyer with a capacity for between 8 - 17 fighters. Keep in mind the Exeter is a much wider ship than the Southampton. The Gilgamesh using the same ratio comes in at 394.25 meters -- still retaining it's more compact design and sports-car like performance even though if it has any fighter capacity, it's minimal at best.
Me and LOAF talked about this yesterday in chat, and he told me that he hasn't really seen the ship much up close. However, I've thought about that and have found that technically we have seen enough of the Gilgamesh to determine a difference between typical trends in fighter-carrying destroyers.
-The Exeter, and Southampton have no engines mounted directly in the middle of the rear of the ship -- on the centerline in the middle. This allows a flight deck to be placed in the centerline in the back of the ship.
-The Gilgamesh has it's engines right in the center right on the centerline. In otherwords, there's no room for a fighter-bay in the back.
Now I'm not saying anyone has to agree with any of the things I've wrote down, but I'd like to hear your opinions.
Victoria Kent