SWC Tiger's Claw
- Thread starter Dragon1
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ELTEE
Vice Admiral
f**king bengals
What's the deal with the Bengal class?
I feel like the most we ever hear about them, aside from the Tiger's Claw, is that they're old backwater carriers that are falling apart. You never hear about them kicking ass during WC1 or WC2. You just hear about the 'survivors' later on.
I don't see why they became so aged so quickly. The Lexington in WC4 is a Concordia fleet carrier - that class had been around for ever. Sure seemed ready to fuck some shit up to me.
Were the Bengals just a collective failure? The fame and legend achieved by the 'Claw contrasted against the relative obscurity of the rest of the class is weird. Tolwyn sure as hell didn't mind having his flag on the 'Claw. It's like the USS Missouri was an awesome ship, but the New Jersey, Wisconsin, and Iowa all blew chunks because their length was a bit off.
If I had been some super awesome space marshall, I would have refit them with better shields, armor, etc, then sent them back out. At least they didn't have a crappy PTC that provided the requisite punctuation mark required to complete an interrogative every time you fired the damn weapon.
Make me smart.
What's the deal with the Bengal class?
I feel like the most we ever hear about them, aside from the Tiger's Claw, is that they're old backwater carriers that are falling apart. You never hear about them kicking ass during WC1 or WC2. You just hear about the 'survivors' later on.
I don't see why they became so aged so quickly. The Lexington in WC4 is a Concordia fleet carrier - that class had been around for ever. Sure seemed ready to fuck some shit up to me.
Were the Bengals just a collective failure? The fame and legend achieved by the 'Claw contrasted against the relative obscurity of the rest of the class is weird. Tolwyn sure as hell didn't mind having his flag on the 'Claw. It's like the USS Missouri was an awesome ship, but the New Jersey, Wisconsin, and Iowa all blew chunks because their length was a bit off.
If I had been some super awesome space marshall, I would have refit them with better shields, armor, etc, then sent them back out. At least they didn't have a crappy PTC that provided the requisite punctuation mark required to complete an interrogative every time you fired the damn weapon.
Make me smart.
Haven't we already discussed the point that the PTC isn't really dangerous to fire off once in most circumstances, but firing it several times in succession is more dangerous? The only time we hear of the PTC being dangerous is during a certain scene where Angel and Tolwyn were talking, and there were extenuating circumstances. Certainly we never hear confirmation of a Confederation-class Dreadnought that actually exploded from a PTC blast...
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
I think you're probably showing something of a false-positive here after years of fan games and fiction. IIRC, the only Bengal we hear about *after* the destruction of the Tiger's Claw is a passing reference to the TCS Wolfhound -- which is not said to be in any way old.
Every other Bengal I can think of is one that's serving around the same time as the 'Claw (or before).
ELTEE
Vice Admiral
You're absolutely right on my chronology. I'm just hungry for more information. They obviously weren't that successful because they're never talked about. It seemed like such a smart design - it leaves you wanting to know if it failed, then why, and if it failed, why was the TC by and large successful.
True, it's a big war with lots of hero ships and valiant pilots. Nevertheless, it just never seems that the Bengals had any impact on the war.
You are correct. I wasn't implying that there were any definitive consequences for firing it; just that at least we knew the Confederations did not achieve all of the success they could have, and why. The Bengals, on the other hand, seem to just fade into oblivion.
I always figured that the TC became just as famous for how it went down as it was for the Enigma sector campaign (I'm not sure how public Goddard and Firekka became, since they're of the "Secret" Missions). One of those cases where an entire class was defined for many people, mentally, by a single ship, and many people recalled one famous incident with that ship, rather than all the other stuff it did.
frostytheplebe
Seventh Part of the Seal
Wasn't the TC a variant of the class? I'd heard something about the early design being larger and more well armed then the later models.
Kyle Maverick
Rear Admiral
Something like that. Claw Marks tells us that the Claw was the first one to be completed and see active service, all others after the Claw were ten metres shorter in length and several hundred (I think) tonnes less massive, making the Tiger's Claw the largest ship in it's class
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
Ehh, I still disagree -- not *ever* mentioning a carrier type again is par for the course with Wing Commander (ie, the Concordia is the only Confederation-class we hear about, the Intrepid is the only Durango-class^1 we hear about, etc.) The Bengal is probably actually unique in that we *do* learn about a good number of others:
* TCS Beacontree - One of the ships which hunted down the TCS Olympus.
* TCS Eagle's Talon - Stopped a last-ditch Kilrathi attack on Hell's Kitchen and then joined the Tiger's Claw for the final push at Vega.
* TCS Exeter - A Bengal which is either destroyed or rescued in Super Wing Commander, depending on how you fly the Gimle (or equivalent) series missions.
* TCS Kipling - The next Bengal constructed after the Tiger's Claw.
* TCS Trafalgar - Admiral Bergstrom's flagship in 'Chain of Command'.
* TCS Wolfhound - One of the main assets for Operation Backlash. Hobbes served as her Wing Commander.
There are also a number of unnamed Bengals, too. There's one in Tolwyn's task force in the movie, at least one destroyed at Pegasus and a group of four together at the end of Super Wing Commander (attacking the Kilrathi shipyards). LaFong writes in his book that all the rookie pilots at the Academy were vying for the limited number of slots on Bengals before anything else... and if you've ever looked through the unnused artwork for the Privateer manual, a drawing of a Bengal had originally been planned to represent the Confederation military presence in the Gemini Sector.
Clearly, though, the Tiger's Claw *is* one famous ship... it's referred to as the flagship (in the Star Trek symbolic sense) several times and is even spoken of by the Kilrathi. It achieved its fame *before* Wing Commander I, though -- she had famously stopped a invasion on her shakedown cruise and then saved the day at Custer's Carnival two years later. Blair reacts that it's the "best carrier in the fleet" when he hears it mentioned in the first episode of Academy.
The movie material retconned this somewhat, adding an (apparently smaller) earlier version that predated the Tiger's Claw.
^1 - Edit: Okay, before anyone points it out, there is the BWS Tango...
ELTEE
Vice Admiral
Ah, I feel smarter.
This makes sense then. It appears then, in a final analysis, that we do have access to evidence that Bengals were important.
See, I would understand why we wouldn't really learn much about Durangos or Confederations. Confederations were, by and large, a flawed design with several weaknesses. I would argue that the Concordia was as successful as she was because of the makeup of the crew, rather than the ability or nature of her construction and technology.
While there is no doubt that this factor plays a crucial role in determining the success or failure of any ship, it seems that, by and large, the Bengal can be considered a success since we hear about others in the class (law of averages.)
I suppose then one could then make the counter-argument that since Bengals were the most desired postings in the fleet, on average they would have better trained crews with higher proficiency at executing combat operations. Still, I think it is safe to say that ultimately, success is achieved by employing the right balance of all of these factors. Hmm... I smell a new thread coming on.
This makes sense then. It appears then, in a final analysis, that we do have access to evidence that Bengals were important.
See, I would understand why we wouldn't really learn much about Durangos or Confederations. Confederations were, by and large, a flawed design with several weaknesses. I would argue that the Concordia was as successful as she was because of the makeup of the crew, rather than the ability or nature of her construction and technology.
While there is no doubt that this factor plays a crucial role in determining the success or failure of any ship, it seems that, by and large, the Bengal can be considered a success since we hear about others in the class (law of averages.)
I suppose then one could then make the counter-argument that since Bengals were the most desired postings in the fleet, on average they would have better trained crews with higher proficiency at executing combat operations. Still, I think it is safe to say that ultimately, success is achieved by employing the right balance of all of these factors. Hmm... I smell a new thread coming on.
frostytheplebe
Seventh Part of the Seal
Ok this is an argument I do not understand. What was so flawed about the Confed class. We do know that the PTC had a tendency to explode IF OVERUSED, as we saw stated in WC2.
Other then that, we don't know ANY specifics about problems the PTC had. It may very well have simply been an expensive upkeep that Confed decided wasn't worth it, and retired the cannon.
The class itself I'd say was a smashing success. The front runner, TCS Concordia, spent years on the front lines. Yes carriers don't fly themselves, but after accruing a lot of damage over the years and then to take 3 direct torpedo hits, which still didn't put her out of the fight, that doesn't sound like a flawed design to me.
AD
Finder of things, Doer of stuff
The Confederation Class was designe *around* the PTC... it's whole purpose. So the fact that the PTC didn't work properly is a pretty serious design flaw. If you aren't going to incorporate the PTC in any future designs then there's no reason to build ships of that class.
ELTEE
Vice Admiral
Death
gh0d (Administrator)
But... there's no evidence the PTC was unsafe. IIRC, the KS manual cites reliability issues. Something having questionable reliability isn't the same as being unsafe to operate.
Really, I think people put too much emphasis on Angel's 60% warning. Being "by the book" as she is, I'm betting she was quoting some tech manual, and engineers by nature tend to be rather conservative in their estimates of safety margins, for the simple fact that if they err on the side of being too optimistic, people can get killed (and not the intended targets, for military hardware).
Really, I think people put too much emphasis on Angel's 60% warning. Being "by the book" as she is, I'm betting she was quoting some tech manual, and engineers by nature tend to be rather conservative in their estimates of safety margins, for the simple fact that if they err on the side of being too optimistic, people can get killed (and not the intended targets, for military hardware).
frostytheplebe
Seventh Part of the Seal
Yeah I think that was the point I was trying to make. So many people are saying it was unsafe. It seems to me that this all came up around the same time as the heavy plasma gun in WCP. Everyone seemed to assume that one 1-hit-kill weapon was the same as the other.
Gagarin
Spaceman
There's some connection - a weapon not working when you try to fire it is unsafe! Meanuvering the ship to point at the target, your CAP and your counter-strike craft moving out of the way, leaving you exposed - and in a lot closer range than you wanted to be! You could have been moving away from your target instead of exposing yourself to a 'frontal' =)
But we need to hammer this out - is it 'unreliable' in the "didn't fire" way, or "will backfire and cause secondary explosions" way? Both could be catestrophic.
frostytheplebe
Seventh Part of the Seal
That's if you're on the Behemoth. But if you're on the Concordia its a little different. The Concordia has other options; it has phase shields, 4 flak cannons, a full fighter squadron, and 8 antimatter guns. So even without the PTC the Concordia was a formidable ship.
Gagarin
Spaceman
Formidable, absolutely! It's just that in order to use the weapon they would have had to put themselves in a compromised position, that otherwise they could have done at a longer distance (with fighters).
Dyret
Super Carrot!
I dunno, disregarding nostalgia the SWC Claw is just a cooler design, though I agree the WC1 version is *the* Claw.
Huh, I thought they were the exact same model with different textures. at least ingame. In that case the same cinematic model would work for both.
Gagarin
Spaceman
Well, you don't hear much about anything else in WC1 or WC2 besides your carrier. But the impression I feel they were trying to create in game and in Claw Marks was that the Tiger's Claw was impressive, rugged, and had a history - and it was no slouch.
You're right - the Lexington, as shown in WCIV, is an older design (and certainly doesn't have the 2 or 3 launch bays Bear talks about as current design doctorine). But it was being deployed in WCIV to the Border Worlds, not exactly Enigma or Vega Campaign.
Well, that could have happened through the years.
But one thing that they can't do is make the ships bigger.
(Could the launch tubes handle bigger craft? Broadswords? Could the hanger and repair areas accomodate as many fighters as they could in the 50's?)
There's not a lot - if anything - written about 'Strike Carrier' mission profile, but it could be that these ships, as a class, took a helluva lot of beatings and over time. The Concordia Fleet Carriers may have aged better because they didn't get put into positions where they'd be pounded on. High Command could have said "No, no more carriers with lots of guns and little escort, we'll stick to close escorts and a conservative "no more expensive cap ships jumping behind enemy lines and pretending to be their own fleet" strategy". ...If that's what a Strike Carrier did.