Scaling WC-2 Ships to Conform To WC-1 and WC-3/4 Size Standard

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
 
Be advised that this issue have be discussed again and again (and again and again [and again and again {and again... and so on and so forth}]) - never ending with any good results.

WC have their sizes set as they are - as you mentioned WC2 fighters are much smaller then in WC 1-3, bet the armada fighters are not only much larger than in any other game, but are also a lot "lighter" (mass-wise).

The WC ship dimensions are what they are.
There have been a few possible, fan made, in-universe explanations for that (like the "weapon vs phase-shield" arms race), but basically, these are the numbers.

Just let them be...

About the Hard points - I can start giving and in game explanation (like why a simple external hardpoint can be better then a complex, prone to malfunction, heavy, cumbersome, internal weapons bay - and can also give you reason why internal HP are better then external ones), but the real life reason is simple - 3d engine limitations.

Basically - you are nit-picking, and doing so with a "vengeance", and these kind of things don't end well.
 
This is something you should be debating with your dev team (not the general public) after you have the ships you want roughed out in the game engine. Otherwise, this is just anal retentiveness parading as a mod.
 
I would like to point out a few things:
A) A ship's length, besides being a number on a manual, is supposed to be an actual measure of how long the ship is.
B) Point A makes pretty much every official ship size in the history of WC contradict every visual cue we're ever given by the same games, based on the fact that Blair is not 5 meters tall and doesn't grow and shrink between every game. These ship sizes may be "wrong", but they're still official, however
C) Points A and B render any further discussion about "fixing" ship sizes automatically bogus (because you're not actually fixing anything), even more so when they are based on someone saying "WCX ship sizes are wrong in my opinion and should be scaled to match WCY ships!" - If you could measure WC2 ships from the in-game scenes, and found out that using the manual's sizes would make Blair about 1.8 meters tall, and then you measured WC3 ships from the in-game scenes, and found out that using the manual's sizes would make Blair about 6 meters tall, would you still want to "fix" WC2 sizes and accept WC3 as the "true" sizes?

So, the short version is "if it ain't broken..." indeed.
 
Hammerhead,

Actually I did partially touch upon that. I explained about the size differences between the Wraith in, I think it was Academy which uses the WC-2 engine and in Armada and determined a reasonable size by averaging them out. 25.5 meters is about right for a medium fighter.

With Armada figures you could divide the lengths by 24/19, or use divide the listed length by 16/35, then average that by the listed length to arrive at a figure...

16/35 = 0.457143 so for the Wraith: {(~0.457143)(35) + 35} / 2
{(~16) + 35} / 2 = 25.5

For the Phantom: {(~0.457143)(40) + 40} / 2 --> (~18.286) + 40 / 2 = ~29.143
For the Banshee: ~31.33

Or you could divide by 24/19 much in the way I multiplied the WC-2 rapier to get the WC-1 figure, but in this case backwards to get a more reasonable figure.

For the Wraith = ~27.71 meters
For the Phantom = ~31.67 meters
For the Banshee = ~34.041 meters

In my opinion, the Wraith is probably better at the 25.5 meter figure as that meshes closer with a medium-fighter size. The Phantom and Banshee are probably best with the 31.67 and 34.041 meter lengths respectively.

The Gladius is fine at 36 as it's a heavy fighter.

As for the mass figures, I'll look into that if I can.


Ricochet,

Perhaps you're right, but I can't seem to get my mod moving at all. So I got nothing to do but float ideas around.


Victoria Kent
 
Perhaps you're right, but I can't seem to get my mod moving at all. So I got nothing to do but float ideas around.

That's commendable, but this isn't really a good road to take for development ideas. The reason scaling and "meters" are all borked in the games is because nobody ever started the development cycle saying "we need to get these technical details hammered down first!" Technical details are for when the game is actually finished and you need stuff to fill up a manual or other such secondary content. So, I think if you want to flesh out something, you need to start with story and characters.
 
But we've already established everything on all the characters from WC-1 on... The mod is mostly for improved graphics for WC-1 and WC-2.

Victoria Kent
 
I would like to point out only one of your points -

you said that:

The Gladius is fine at 36 as it's a heavy fighter...

So I went a little tinkering - making the Gladius 36 meter long means its 75.5 meters wide (yap!).
It's cockpit would be 11.2 meters wide - wide enough to accommodate a crew of 4 sitting side by side, and still have room to spare...

Now - That might be logical for a corvette, but definitely not for a heavy fighter. (maybe if it was 36 FEET long, or 36 meters WIDE - like in standoff).

As for the rest of your calculations, they might make sense, and they might not, but The point is that just this is a mute subject, at least as long as you haven't made any real progress with the real thing - i.e. the mod itself.

P.S.
IMO the best way to find the "true" sizes of WC fighters would probably be to make an "average" WC fighter cockpit and to start scaling all fighters to its size- which probably push all ships to a scale much closer to the one used in WC2, but thats just my opinion, so...
 
That's a good point... The Hornet also is like twice it's length in width. The solution in that case at least was to use the SWC-model. Which was roughly 20 x 20. Not sure what to do with the Gladius...

Regarding the cockpit size... most modern cockpits like the F-22's are way larger than WW-II, or Korean War designs. The pilot is fairly small in the cockpit. Plus looking at the bailed-out pilots in WC-3, it would appear that they use some kind of clamshell ejector.

The XB-70 used them and for that to fit inside a canopy, an F-22's cockpit would probably be cramped, unless the clamshell was on an angle and the pilot was pulled back and down into the shell and it closed around him/her and they were then bailed out. The capsule could have a small acceleration absorber / inertial damper, something to boost it free of the ship, and the ability to maintain pressure and carry some supplies for survival.


Victoria Kent
 
heh,

Not sure I really want to jump in the quicksand here, but the F-111 utilized an escape capsule for the crew, and the cockpit still managed to seet two pilots side by side in relative comfort...

This thread sure does make for interesting reading though.
 
ELTEE,

I was just commenting on how the ejected pilot pod look like in WC-3. It looks like a clamshell type capsule. The ability to blow off the whole cockpit ain't a bad idea... but you'd have to be able to fit that whole cockpit inside a SAR craft... which could be tricky...


Victoria Kent
 
Regarding the cockpit size... most modern cockpits like the F-22's are way larger than WW-II, or Korean War designs. The pilot is fairly small in the cockpit. Plus looking at the bailed-out pilots in WC-3, it would appear that they use some kind of clamshell ejector.
The XB-70 used them and for that to fit inside a canopy, an F-22's cockpit would probably be cramped, unless the clamshell was on an angle and the pilot was pulled back and down into the shell and it closed around him/her and they were then bailed out. The capsule could have a small acceleration absorber / inertial damper, something to boost it free of the ship, and the ability to maintain pressure and carry some supplies for survival.


Victoria Kent


All WC fighters have the cockpit's canopy very nicely displayed - once your start tinkering with the pictures you'll notice that at quite a few fighters the canopy is "a bit to large" for the needs of a the single pilot flying them - I specifically showed the case of the Gladius (with a canopy of 11.2m wide and 7.6m long - larger then my bedroom!), but the Armada Banshee, and the WC1 Raptor (among others) have a similar problem.
What I suggested is to create a model pilot (1.8m high) and simply resize the ships so their canopy is at a "logical" size compare to this pilot, he's ejector-seat and the rest of the cockpit instruments.

but once again - who would decide what is logical?

As for the Clamshell ejector seat - you should simply watch the WC Academy TV series to see who they work in the WCU (they tend to eject there quite a lot :))
 
Check it out for yourself here. All the episodes have been available on the CIC for a while now.
 
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