Aeronautico
Rear Admiral
Does anyone have any information on the Snakeir II-Class Carrier? We all know about the original Snakeir, and I believe that there was a Snakeir II, but I know nothing about it. Does anyone know about it?
Snakeir II?
- Thread starter Aeronautico
- Start date
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
I don't think there's a canonical "Snakeir II"; the only 'II' Kilrathi ships that we know of are the Dralthi Mk. II (from Secret Missions 2) and the Fralthi II (from Wing Commander Prophecy). I think a lot of fans take the fact that these exist and attach a numeral to explain when there's any confusing history with other ships...
... and that confusion certainly exists with the Snakeir!
We have, basically, four 'conflicting' specifications and two histories. The version seen in Secret Missions 2 has had two different specification sets assosciated with it: a 600m/15,000 tonne version printed in later editions of Claw Marks (SWC, etc.) and a 650/30,000 tonne version in the 1991 CGW insert (see awesome picture below). Halcyon calls this "the new Snakeir carrier" (2655).
Then the movie has a "Snakeir-class superdreadnaught" as the lead Kilrathi warship. The Handbook masses them at 67,000... but Merlin's dialogue in the movie claims that the ship Blair tricks is 200,461 tonnes. The Handbook says they began to show up in 2649.
(Also, I think fan projects often incorrectly refer to the Shiraak-class from Wing Commander Armada as being Snakeir II-class because it uses the same design as the Snakeir did in Super Wing Commander... but that's a logic-tangle that we don't even need to bother unraveling.)
... and that confusion certainly exists with the Snakeir!
We have, basically, four 'conflicting' specifications and two histories. The version seen in Secret Missions 2 has had two different specification sets assosciated with it: a 600m/15,000 tonne version printed in later editions of Claw Marks (SWC, etc.) and a 650/30,000 tonne version in the 1991 CGW insert (see awesome picture below). Halcyon calls this "the new Snakeir carrier" (2655).
Then the movie has a "Snakeir-class superdreadnaught" as the lead Kilrathi warship. The Handbook masses them at 67,000... but Merlin's dialogue in the movie claims that the ship Blair tricks is 200,461 tonnes. The Handbook says they began to show up in 2649.
(Also, I think fan projects often incorrectly refer to the Shiraak-class from Wing Commander Armada as being Snakeir II-class because it uses the same design as the Snakeir did in Super Wing Commander... but that's a logic-tangle that we don't even need to bother unraveling.)
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Interesting, you can see more than six even in the picture.
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
I think you'll find that with most if not all of the Wing Commander I capital ships. It comes down to whether or not the manual should be describing the fictional world or (theoretically) describing how the game itself actually works to help players; the latter won out (only in theory, though, since balancing meant that many of the weapons loadouts were changed after the manuals were printed...).
Lt.Overload
Rear Admiral
Uhm...wasn't the Fralthi II from WC3?
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
It's just a "cruiser" in Wing Commander III -- Prophecy came up with the (dare I say goofy?) name.
Dundradal
Frog Blast the Vent Core!
As LOAF explained...I think what you are calling the Snakeir II is the Shiraak-Class from Armada.
Farbourne
Rear Admiral
I think these numbers are close enough so that there's not necessarily a conflict between the two. On the length issue, different ships of the same class can have different lengths due to minor design changes. A real life example would be the Essex-class carriers from WWII. Halfway through the production run, a design change was made so that all Essex class carriers from Ticonderoga on were "long-hull" Essex class with a greater overall length, yet the U.S. Navy still considers them all Essex-class. We even see a similar example in the Wing Commander universe...Claw Marks specifies that the Tiger's Claw is longer and slightly more massive than all subsequent Bengal-class strike carriers due to various design modifications. So the fact that some Snakeirs are 600m and some are 650 wouldn't surprise me.
As to the tonnages, have you ever tried looking up the tonnage of any real warship? Different sources list widely varying different numbers. I think there's "design displacement", "actual displacement at launch", "in-service displacement", and "full-load" displacement.
Could this be a similar issue to the whole Concordia issue? The Concordia in the movie is decidedly not the Confederation-class dreadnought from WC2, or the fleet carrier that originated the class name, right? It's been established that there were three distinct, non-overlapping Concordia's, all different classes. We know the movie pre-dates SM2, when Halcyon calls it the "new" Snakeir carrier. Maybe the Kilrathi had retired the Snakier-class super-dreadnought and re-cycled the name for their new fleet carrier class in SM2, the same way Confed recycled the Concordia name.
Incidentally, if the Snakeir class was new in SM2, do we know anything about what the Kilrathi used for fleet carriers during WC1 and SM1? In-game, we only ever see lots of Fralthi, and there's implications that they rely on the Fralthi (and, to a lesser degree, the fighter-carring capability of the Ralari) to launch their fighter strikes. I assume they had fleet carriers and we just never saw any? Or were they in a different strategic mode where they were using multitudes of faster cruisers and destroyers with medium fighter-carrying capabilites as opposed to Confed who was relying on smaller numbers of bigger, heavier fleet-carriers?
Is the movie widly considered to be a main part of the wing commander historic fiction? It seems like a spin off to me. Some of the same names and cats vs. humans but the rapier, carriers, and other ships look totally different, the whole pilgrim issue and so on…
Could there be so many issues with the historical accuracy because this game had more of a lighthearted development than zealot like historical fiction of Star Trek or other Sci-Fi series? I love the games but from what I read on these forums I know far less about the WC universe than most of you. However, a lot of the stuff seems to line up better when you remove the movie entirely.
It seemed like old PC games (and newer ones) always had glaring issues between the literature and the game. It could be communications errors between the people printing the manuals or balance issues changed in the software after the printing had been started. The Cap Ships in the WC1 drawings always had a TON more weapons than they did in the game or even the description next to the picture. C&C was another name that always seemed to have massive flaws in the unit descriptions, attributes, or appearance in cut scenes.
Slightly back on topic I think the Exeter class has zero weapons on the game model. From what I remember from before and what I noticed in DOSbox lately I haven’t seen that thing fire a shot. Also (in WC1) the Cat missiles are all seekers, the light fighters don’t have DF missiles like the manual suggests. Again, could have been last minute balance issues that the AI couldn’t hit squat with a DF missile so they changed it or that escorting a heavy destroyer was pretty easy so they nerfed its weapons. Of course, I could be wrong about the Exeter… but I swear I’ve never seen that sucker fire a shot from any of its “classified” weapons.
Also, this site is a HUGE resource for someone who is casually interested in the series. Thanks a bunch to all involved in its upkeep.
Could there be so many issues with the historical accuracy because this game had more of a lighthearted development than zealot like historical fiction of Star Trek or other Sci-Fi series? I love the games but from what I read on these forums I know far less about the WC universe than most of you. However, a lot of the stuff seems to line up better when you remove the movie entirely.
It seemed like old PC games (and newer ones) always had glaring issues between the literature and the game. It could be communications errors between the people printing the manuals or balance issues changed in the software after the printing had been started. The Cap Ships in the WC1 drawings always had a TON more weapons than they did in the game or even the description next to the picture. C&C was another name that always seemed to have massive flaws in the unit descriptions, attributes, or appearance in cut scenes.
Slightly back on topic I think the Exeter class has zero weapons on the game model. From what I remember from before and what I noticed in DOSbox lately I haven’t seen that thing fire a shot. Also (in WC1) the Cat missiles are all seekers, the light fighters don’t have DF missiles like the manual suggests. Again, could have been last minute balance issues that the AI couldn’t hit squat with a DF missile so they changed it or that escorting a heavy destroyer was pretty easy so they nerfed its weapons. Of course, I could be wrong about the Exeter… but I swear I’ve never seen that sucker fire a shot from any of its “classified” weapons.
Also, this site is a HUGE resource for someone who is casually interested in the series. Thanks a bunch to all involved in its upkeep.
Mace
Vice Admiral
Then confed recycled it, there is after all no reason the cats should give human names to their carriers, and recycling names does make sense, and it has happened over a long, long time. Ofcourse you could go ahead and name everything "big evil thingie mark something", calling it something else that's easy to pronounce makes sense, also isn't there an F-86 Sabre operational figher, or was during the 70's?
But Snakier is, presumably, a Kilrathi name, not a human one.
Death
gh0d (Administrator)
Not to get into a long, drawn out argument that's been hashed out many times before, but yes WCM is a "main part" of the WC universe. Browsing via the search function, since by your registration date you weren't around for those discussions (not intended as an attack on you, or anything like that), will cover a lot of that ground.
Or you could just wait for LOAF to wake up. He has a lot more patience for this sort of thing than I do.
In any case, if it's official, it's official. We don't go in for the whole "pick and choose what you like, then toss out the rest as discontinutity" thing.
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
Nope - Snakier is a human name, or rather, it's an adjective. For example, "He's snaky. But she's way snakier than he is."
(Snakeir, on the other hand...)
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
It's always hard to say what the Kilrathi names mean. Halcyon does specifically say that 'Sivar', in The Secret Missions, was the code name assigned by the Confederation... (at the same time, I'm sure we can think of a dozen examples of Kilrathi using their ship names).
The movie is considered "canon" for future Wing Commander histories; it's referenced several times in the only completely new game since it came out (Wing Commander Arena) and now appears in the official Victory Streak-derived timeline.
It differs from other property-to-movies in a few ways, the most important of which being that it was directed by the game's creator rather than some unrelated Hollywood entity.
I think that for all these things the zealousness comes from the fans rather than the original product.
Star Trek has all the same continuity errors (resulting from writers being more interested in a particular story than a perfectly ordered universe)... we just see it's fans categorizing it all better.You're right, about the Exeter (I don't think Draymen/Diligents/Ventures fire either) and about the reasoning (I think it was the other way around - a last minute change to make escort missions a challenge). These ships actually do have weapons coded into the game (you can see them in WCEdit)... they just don't have the ability to fire them.
LOAF and Death, thanks for clearing up the movie being part of the history for me.
The ventures, I'm pretty sure, at least fire their forward firing lasers in WC1 or the expacks. I remember kind of chuckling seeing it trying to turn on a fighter and firing at it. Didnt think about the Draymans but now that you bring it up I cant remember them firing either.
The ventures, I'm pretty sure, at least fire their forward firing lasers in WC1 or the expacks. I remember kind of chuckling seeing it trying to turn on a fighter and firing at it. Didnt think about the Draymans but now that you bring it up I cant remember them firing either.
