Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
I understand your point of view, I just don't understand that particular expression regarding the Lance itself being "on trial" -- it seems to contradict everything else you're saying.
What Happened to the dragon
- Thread starter Loco337
- Start date
Death
gh0d (Administrator)
"[A]ny other craft" couldn't have done what the Dragon did, though, easily or otherwise.
The only other ship that could sneak past various defenses under cloak (excepting one-off kludges like the cloaking Avenger used in Orestes) was the Excalibur, which had mounts for neither the Flashpack (using torp racks in the ship loadout screen was a coding consideration; you see the novel-mentioned FP-specific rack in the game when Pliers is investigating the captured Dragon, as well as in the WC4 intro when Seether FPs the Amadeus) nor for the dispenser for the GenSelect nanovirus.
Contrary to numerous bits of WC fanfic (some of which I'm guilty of perpetrating, but anyhow), it's not as simple as just slapping Weapon B onto a mount designed for Weapon A and voila, new functionality.
The only other ship that could sneak past various defenses under cloak (excepting one-off kludges like the cloaking Avenger used in Orestes) was the Excalibur, which had mounts for neither the Flashpack (using torp racks in the ship loadout screen was a coding consideration; you see the novel-mentioned FP-specific rack in the game when Pliers is investigating the captured Dragon, as well as in the WC4 intro when Seether FPs the Amadeus) nor for the dispenser for the GenSelect nanovirus.
Contrary to numerous bits of WC fanfic (some of which I'm guilty of perpetrating, but anyhow), it's not as simple as just slapping Weapon B onto a mount designed for Weapon A and voila, new functionality.
I just meant thats what everyone here is discussing, whether or not the Lance is/should/could/ be in service as whatever after WC4. 'On trial' = 'being feverently discussed' in this case.Bandit LOAF said:
Because the Telamon population didn't know that the Dragon was 'kindof' Confed, it was just some unknown fighter that had dropped caisters of death on it. If a Hellcat had done the same, they would probably be upset with any Hellcat pilot who landed on their planet.Iceblade said:
I'm sure with as much money that they sunk into the Dragon, they could build a pod that could have been mounted on an Excal hardpoint (they somehow converted two hardpoints to mount the T-bomb in record time on a Black Ops budget, not to mention the thrown together cloaking device - which apparently can be mounted on an Arrow by the Black Lance, so I'm not going to quesiton their augmetation abilities). I'm also assuming that those bioweaps canisters (as small as they are) could be mounted in a pod, like the 'pavement buster' multiple munitions that can be mounted on a F-4 or F-111 craft, and mounted on a Hellcat. Those canisters weren't even as big around as a missile, I'm sure it is possible that they could be mounted in a normal hardpoint. No you can;t just throw one on there and it work, but with the resources of the Black Lance, I definitely wouldn't say that it would be impossible.Death said:
C-ya
I would think that this "Military Man" would be saying something along the lines of "We have a state of the art fighter that's a symbol of pure EVIL and is expressly created to deliver Weapons of Mass Destruction. Not only that, it's terribly expensive. That's what the bill was from senator, just those babies going into mass production." Not only would the senator probably get ousted, that General or Admiral or whoever is most likely getting demoted.
The Dragon is outclassed by WCP. A wasp, Panther, or Vamp could take it down easily. The Dragon's tech was used to create that era of Confed fighters. Same/Better performance without the Bad Image. And about the B29, it wasn't created for the Atomic Bomb, it was the other way around, unlike the Dragon. It shouldn't've been created in the first place. Bioweapons have been condemned since their creation. I don't think Confed wants something like that in their Space Force. A Nice alternative would be to re-do the Dragon, different color scheme, etc... Remove the evil look, etc...
The Dragon is outclassed by WCP. A wasp, Panther, or Vamp could take it down easily. The Dragon's tech was used to create that era of Confed fighters. Same/Better performance without the Bad Image. And about the B29, it wasn't created for the Atomic Bomb, it was the other way around, unlike the Dragon. It shouldn't've been created in the first place. Bioweapons have been condemned since their creation. I don't think Confed wants something like that in their Space Force. A Nice alternative would be to re-do the Dragon, different color scheme, etc... Remove the evil look, etc...
You're still not reading what I'm writing.
All I'm really saying is I do not believe that the fighters are as large as stated in the documentaion. There is a body of evidance to support this and you could probably calculate how big they actually are by using WCSO to make a comparison.
Back on topic:
Aside from the fact that the Dragon is a fat target, maybe 10m wide fusalauge, its manuverability is only average, the speed is nothing to shout about and the missile load isn't great.
The Dragon has:
2x2 Medium
2x3 Light
2x1 Torp
The Excalibur has:
3x3 Medium
The Panther has:
2x6 Meduim
The Vampire appears to have:
4x4 Medium
4x1 Light Torp/MIRV.
So the Vampire carries more missiles with more armor and a much better dogfighting capability.
The Dragon's guns aren't amazing either, 2 Tachyon 2 Plasma, versus The Excal's 4 Tachyon 2 Ion.
The Excal does more damage for less energy, at a faster rate and still autotracks.
Obviosly in the post war era autotrack is considered too little for too much money, so the Dragon wouldn't have it.
So at the end of the day by WCP what you have, at best is a fast bomber with good shields and mediocre manuverability.
Ad to that the fact the the Dragon costs a bomb and is politically unhealthy, to say the least, and its not worth it.
All I'm really saying is I do not believe that the fighters are as large as stated in the documentaion. There is a body of evidance to support this and you could probably calculate how big they actually are by using WCSO to make a comparison.
Back on topic:
Aside from the fact that the Dragon is a fat target, maybe 10m wide fusalauge, its manuverability is only average, the speed is nothing to shout about and the missile load isn't great.
The Dragon has:
2x2 Medium
2x3 Light
2x1 Torp
The Excalibur has:
3x3 Medium
The Panther has:
2x6 Meduim
The Vampire appears to have:
4x4 Medium
4x1 Light Torp/MIRV.
So the Vampire carries more missiles with more armor and a much better dogfighting capability.
The Dragon's guns aren't amazing either, 2 Tachyon 2 Plasma, versus The Excal's 4 Tachyon 2 Ion.
The Excal does more damage for less energy, at a faster rate and still autotracks.
Obviosly in the post war era autotrack is considered too little for too much money, so the Dragon wouldn't have it.
So at the end of the day by WCP what you have, at best is a fast bomber with good shields and mediocre manuverability.
Ad to that the fact the the Dragon costs a bomb and is politically unhealthy, to say the least, and its not worth it.
OK, since I seem to have taken the side of the Dragon in this debate, one more time for the cheapseats. No new Dragons are involved (God I wish someone would come up with a source that said Blairs Dragon was destroyed on impact so I could drop my argument) ergo, no new huge expenditures. Also, no senators are involved, as would probably happen, I'm saying that the fighter development that happened between WC4 and P was in a black ops fund, that the Senate approves without asking too much about, therefore no senator will be responsible.Dammerung said:
The 'miliary man' deals with evil weapons and WMD everyday. Any weapon used to kill something can be considered evil, if you talk to the right people. The only WMD that was used was the genselect weapon, the flashpak just does what a torpedo does, only it accomplishes its task a little quicker. I'm sure that the Dragon wasn;t 'designed' to deliver a single bioweap, kindof limits its payload bay (unless it is conceeded that the genselect can be mounted in a normal hardpoint bay).
Ok, so now we have a super fighter thats already been built, no more costs, kept secret as possible, with the potential to shave years off of new fighter design and construction. Would you throw that away?
Okay, agian for the cheap seats, the Lance doesn't belong in WCP, we have much much better craft now, I'm arguing that to pave the way for these new fighters in such a limited amount of time (9 years?), some dragons would be needed for testing purposes and maybe a special covert ops unit in the interim years between WC4 and P.
Redesign the Dragon and still spend a fortune per for them? Not a good idea, economically speaking, that's what the senate would go ape about.
C-ya
The case of redesign would tone down all of it's systems. Infinite Afterburn, guns, etc. It would remain an Excellent Medium Bomber. The Dragon was designed to be evil, although using technology from it(It WAS ahead of it's time) would be acceptable. Take out the Super-Expensive stuff, remove the evil look, give it guns along the lines of 2 Tachyon 4 Ion, Maybe and it'll be a great Medium-Bomber/Heavy Fighter with a not-so-steep cost. If you're talking about just putting existing Dragons into confed forces, That COULD be acceptable if they were... ya'know... repainted. An enemy taking footage of a Wing of Dragons ripping up a Cruiser or something like it and claiming that Confed is using WoMD would not be very good of an image, no matter how untruthful. Change it to a Blue/White Color Scheme and press the Existing ones into Garrison service. That's about the only way I could see it working. Just so they don't seem so much like horrid icons of evil. Though, I don't think people want to be reminded of the Black Lance too much, either.
Haesslich
Spaceman
The Dragon was doomed the moment its mission and systems were modified or designed to drop Flash-Paks and bioweapons on people. Its technological improvements were incorporated into more recent vintage fighters, which incidentally perform better and are probably a LOT cheaper since they're purpose-built for their tasks, which means extra systems which are non-essential to their missions can be left out.
Why should they bother using the Dragon anyways, when they're horribly expensive and apparently a limited-run fighter, when they've got the Bearcat and Excalibur ramping up into mass production?
The Bearcat is a superior dogfighter, and could well be the predecessor of the Vampire and Panther heavy fighters in terms of design philosophy. It combines maneuverability, a similiar missile load, and guns in a package which is well-suited to the missions which Vampires and Panthers later take.
Building fighters is not as simple as 'put together engine X, body Y, computer Z, guns A, B, and C'. Otherwise the United States would not have to spend millions on fighter development - they could just tell Lockheed-Martin to give them two thousand engines, then ask Boeing for fighter bodies, and then Raytheon for whatever radar and computer systems they needed to slap into the airframe. They're complex systems, whose parts often need to be selected to work properly with one another, and which are integrated into a whole which means that they're harder to retrofit than your home PC. Redesigning the Dragon would NOT be a minor undertaking - the whole fighter's built around its incredible (for the period) maneuverability and a M/A engine which effectively give sit unlimited range.
If you removed the M/A engine, probably the single most expensive system in the fighter, or even 'toned it down', you'd be looking at having to reengineer the whole craft from step one. Smaller engines would mean that you'd probably have to shed some mass in the form of armor, jump drives, or shield generators to keep the maneuverability. Guns would have to be scaled down or removed entirely, ditto missile loadout, if you wanted to keep the speed or ability to fire more than two shots before running out of gun power.
This is just the tip of the iceberg - on top of the public-relations disaster this ship would be. It would be a lot more cost-effective to just produce Bearcats, Excaliburs, and Thunderbolts while designing the next generation of craft to take advantage of the Dragon's advances, and less costly in a political sense as well.
Excaliburs are almost as good as Dragons were, at least for missions which didn't involve killing civilian ships or genocidal killing sprees. Most dedicated bombers could handle the ship-killing tasks as well, since Flash Paks were not (and are apparently still not) standard Confed issue. The Fission Guns are too damned energy-hungry for later fighters to take advantage of, especially with the development of the Plasma Gun which the Devastator later employs, or the Tigershark's CMD.
Why should they bother using the Dragon anyways, when they're horribly expensive and apparently a limited-run fighter, when they've got the Bearcat and Excalibur ramping up into mass production?
The Bearcat is a superior dogfighter, and could well be the predecessor of the Vampire and Panther heavy fighters in terms of design philosophy. It combines maneuverability, a similiar missile load, and guns in a package which is well-suited to the missions which Vampires and Panthers later take.
Building fighters is not as simple as 'put together engine X, body Y, computer Z, guns A, B, and C'. Otherwise the United States would not have to spend millions on fighter development - they could just tell Lockheed-Martin to give them two thousand engines, then ask Boeing for fighter bodies, and then Raytheon for whatever radar and computer systems they needed to slap into the airframe. They're complex systems, whose parts often need to be selected to work properly with one another, and which are integrated into a whole which means that they're harder to retrofit than your home PC. Redesigning the Dragon would NOT be a minor undertaking - the whole fighter's built around its incredible (for the period) maneuverability and a M/A engine which effectively give sit unlimited range.
If you removed the M/A engine, probably the single most expensive system in the fighter, or even 'toned it down', you'd be looking at having to reengineer the whole craft from step one. Smaller engines would mean that you'd probably have to shed some mass in the form of armor, jump drives, or shield generators to keep the maneuverability. Guns would have to be scaled down or removed entirely, ditto missile loadout, if you wanted to keep the speed or ability to fire more than two shots before running out of gun power.
This is just the tip of the iceberg - on top of the public-relations disaster this ship would be. It would be a lot more cost-effective to just produce Bearcats, Excaliburs, and Thunderbolts while designing the next generation of craft to take advantage of the Dragon's advances, and less costly in a political sense as well.
Excaliburs are almost as good as Dragons were, at least for missions which didn't involve killing civilian ships or genocidal killing sprees. Most dedicated bombers could handle the ship-killing tasks as well, since Flash Paks were not (and are apparently still not) standard Confed issue. The Fission Guns are too damned energy-hungry for later fighters to take advantage of, especially with the development of the Plasma Gun which the Devastator later employs, or the Tigershark's CMD.
You got me on alot of those points, the Bearcat and Excal are pretty comparible, if not surpassing, to the Dragon in dogfighting ability. The thing that made the Dragon special was its ability to dogfight and strike with equal effectiveness in a craft built better than a WC4 era bomber. This was truly the last all-purpose craft Confed came up with (the Tigershark is a joke if you ask me). I don't think you could just scrap the remaining Dragons without pushing back new fighter development time.Haesslich said:
The Bearcat was a rediculously expensive and labor intensive fighter to maintain. I'm really not sure if this fighter went into mass production or not, due to its problems.
C-ya
Haesslich
Spaceman
Viper61 said:
Even as a prototype, the Bearcat displayed the same design concepts which would make the Panther and Vampire possible - it was the first fighter we've seen since maybe the F-54 Rapier which was created primarily as a dogfighter, though the Rapier was a medium-weight craft. The gun layout is similar to that of the Panther, with four Tachyons and similarly fast-charging shields and maneuvering capabilities. Its legacy can be seen in the missions that the Vampire and Panther were designed to handle, and to a lesser degree in the Wasp - all three craft were made to turn hard and fast, while laying into the enemy with a decent amount of direct-fire weaponry.
The Dragons had served their purpose - they pioneered a whole bunch of new concepts in engine design and high-maneuverability systems. I don't recall the comments about the Bearcat being incredibly labor-intensive, at least not that much more so than the Dragons with their cloaks, self-repair capability or no. Any technologies derived from the research which created the Dragons were apparently incorporated immediately into the next generation of fighter craft. The Shrike and Devastator seem to draw more of their design from the Dragon than they do the Longbow - each having powerful 'special guns' to do damage to any target, while being far more maneuverable than previous generations of bomber craft (Broadswords, Crossbows, Longbows).
This doesn't even count the impact that the Dragon's technologies
had on the Bearcat's descendants. The strike capabilities it provided are apparent in the Black Vampire and Black Panthers, which combine the same sort of maneuverability with a similar ship-killer capacity.
Lord_Nathrakh
Spaceman
viper its surprising on how many points i agree with you on this subject. It was quite interesting reading u defend the dragon againts well read and educated arguments, which u did a good job off doing by the way, i couldnt have put them betetr myself.
your point of using an existing model to create better ships is well proven, as it takes far less time to design a better, faster and all round superior ship as long as u have a general idea of where your gonna go with it.
I also hated the tigershark it was a joke of a fighter and i always hated flying it as its guns sucked, id rather fly a banshee against a fleet of bugs then use that ship.
Then again the ship is out dated by now fighhters reading these posts has changed my oppinion on it. For starters the ships presents a massive target to hit, sure it can move as well as a medium fighters and flky as fast as a light fighter, but what good that gonna do against 5-6 ships that combined cost less then the dragon and are far smaller targets.
Still the ship was made as a symbol of power and fear, though i do belive with a name change and a slight redesign or a paint job it could be made feasable to build it without becoming a "political" torpedo. Again though i didnt think much of the bearcat, sure it had for light tachyons and 8 missles, good speed and manuverability, but the sheilds wernt great neither was the armour, i prefer it to most fighters but because of the wide positioning of the guns i find it harder to hit targets then any ship without the autotracking enabled.
your point of using an existing model to create better ships is well proven, as it takes far less time to design a better, faster and all round superior ship as long as u have a general idea of where your gonna go with it.
I also hated the tigershark it was a joke of a fighter and i always hated flying it as its guns sucked, id rather fly a banshee against a fleet of bugs then use that ship.
Then again the ship is out dated by now fighhters reading these posts has changed my oppinion on it. For starters the ships presents a massive target to hit, sure it can move as well as a medium fighters and flky as fast as a light fighter, but what good that gonna do against 5-6 ships that combined cost less then the dragon and are far smaller targets.
Still the ship was made as a symbol of power and fear, though i do belive with a name change and a slight redesign or a paint job it could be made feasable to build it without becoming a "political" torpedo. Again though i didnt think much of the bearcat, sure it had for light tachyons and 8 missles, good speed and manuverability, but the sheilds wernt great neither was the armour, i prefer it to most fighters but because of the wide positioning of the guns i find it harder to hit targets then any ship without the autotracking enabled.
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
The Dragon wasn't the last all-purpose craft Confed came up with - it was the only all-purpose craft Confed came up with. There's no other fighter resembling it in any way - not even the Excalibur. I mean, the Excal could do some planetary bombing runs, and it was a great space superiority fighter, but capship attacks? Thanks, but I'd rather take the Longbow instead... and I hate the LongbowViper61 said:
. This is also why the Dragon is such a crazy idea - every time you send it on a mission, most of the ship's capabilities are being wasted, because it's designed to handle x different types of missions. It's a waste comparable to sending a squadron of Longbows after an undefended transport, when you could just send a wing of Hellcats or Tigersharks.You keep saying that, but you still haven't explained how the remaining Dragons are actually useful. You've been told that they're not needed as technology samples (because Confed knows how they work anyway), and you've been told that the Dragon is absolutely useless as a testbed for new technology, because it's not just a matter of taking out part A and replacing it with part B.
Whoa, whoa... which problems would this be, exactly? We don't know absolutely anything about the Bearcat. As far as I know, we've never heard anything about it being expensive or labor-intensive to maintain.
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
That's from WC Aces club fanfic -- they created a backstory like that to prevent new writers from sticking Bearcats everywhere, IIRC. There's no canon indication that there was any sort of trouble with the Bearcat...
Lord_Nathrakh
Spaceman
No there wasnt, and dont they still use the bearcats as limited patrol ships in secret ops or somthen? so im assuming they never really were to expensive to produce and that cut scene from wing co IV where u saw them making dozens sure doesnt seem that they were too expensive
Haesslich
Spaceman
Bandit LOAF said:
About the only 'canon' source which even suggests there may be issues is the WC4 Official Guide which, IIRC, states that the auto-targeting guns may require more attention. Even then, I'd have to check the guide to be sure of that.
The Dragon's extra systems are going to be maintenance intensive, self-repairing mechanisms notwithstanding. Especially given that jump drives, or at least the older ones, had to be retuned every 12-14 jumps or so... which means that the Dragon's jump drive, one of its selling points, would require a lot of work to keep up and running.
And the cloak crystals in Pliers' own cloaking device failed after several uses, and it's implied by the comments in the novel that the Kilrathi-based device also uses crystals as they gave Pliers some advice on how to get more out of what he had... which again makes the Dragon a drain on resources.
Two of the Dragon's greatest strengths are also its most expensive and resource-draining weaknesses, and ones which require more time in the hangar bay either to resupply or keep in a state which does not threaten the life of the pilot within.
TurboTim07
Rear Admiral
for everyone that says that 40 meters sounds too big for the Dragon. wasn't the Raptor and the Gratha around 32 meters long?
You answered your own question. The Dragon is the only all-purpose craft that was able to do all things equally well. The Sabre in WC2, good dogfighter, decent bomber . . . The Thud in WC3, good small strike craft, decent dogfighter. The Dragon gives the ability to perform a true heavy strike on a target(s) and also do away with its fighter cover. You could send in a few Lances to do the job of a wing of Longbows and a wing of Hellcats. This is what the BL wanted from a craft. THey didn;t have all that many pilots, therefore you needed a craft that was equal parts bomber and fighter, and could do both extremely well. There were many times in playing WC3 I would have loved having a craft that could take out capships in a few passes and also be able to handle the fighter cover on even footing.Quarto said:The Dragon wasn't the last all-purpose craft Confed came up with - it was the only all-purpose craft Confed came up with. There's no other fighter resembling it in any way - not even the Excalibur. I mean, the Excal could do some planetary bombing runs, and it was a great space superiority fighter, but capship attacks? Thanks, but I'd rather take the Longbow instead... and I hate the Longbow
I've been told alot of things, but I only listen to those I want to hearQuarto said:
. Ok, I've been told that you can't put in part Y into part Z. The problem is this is exactly how things are tested today. I've actually been in the Hanger of a Defense contractor (man I wish I could get a job with them) where they test new Radar/Tracking systems and do you know what they use? The craft we were allowed to see was a front-line jet with a huge ass, bulbous nose on it that could accept any kindof radar they were toying with at the moment. If the radar system was too large to mount on that one, there was a larger craft still in use today that also had the nose ripped out of it to accommidate a system under test. There was also a helicopter that I finally could only recognized in profile becasue of all the pieces that were currently being put through their paces on the testbed. So can you fit slot a into tab b, as in the consumer world, if you have th right adapter, sure you can . (sorry I would have put more info about the planes and stuff in there but its so sad that for a internet post I had to pull out my non-disclosure thing I signed, and that thing was damn hazy to say the least).Okay, this is my last real sticking point for the Dragon since all ther others have been shot down pretty well. You can have samples but the testbed to test them on and test the improvements to those samples on is at your fingertips. I really don't understand why everyone would just scrap something that is one of the pinnacles of Confed R&D, because of some supposed flak that might come from the press (which I still don't believe would happen - I mean there are tons of examples of history where the weapon used maybe hated and dispised, but the delivery system received no condemnation at all). This would be parallel to the B-2 Spirit being scapped because once the public found out about its limited bombing abilities and high price tag, they were more than a little peeved. But this research and craft led to our most advanced fighter today, without the B-2 and the principles that were tested on it, the F-22 prototypes would have probably been delayed by at least a couple of years.
Ok, look at it this way. You've got this super-duper fast computer that is top of the line in everything. You then see the next generation of video card come out that's requirements are about half of your super duper machine. Do you a) build a machine to the specs to test and use your new graphics card or b) install it in the existing super-duper machine? Okay somewhere down the road a new whiz-bang graphics card with requirements slightly above the old one comes out. Do you a) build an entirely new computer to those specs to test and use this new video card or b) install it in your existing super-duper machine? A little while later. . . you get the idea. That's the practicality of using the Lance as a testbed.
Okay, so I thought I got this information from a reputable source (so btw, why don't we see a ton of Bearcats flying everywhere?). The Vampire and Panther are definitely descended from the Bearcats in the fact that the Space Superiority fighter niche was being continued. But they also were able to use Dragon tech to be able to keep this high degree of manueverability with the added armor, not to mention probably hundreds of other systems we have no clue about.Quarto said:
This is sad, I don't even care that much for the Dragon (I'm not a big advocate of the super-fighter concept in games - in real life design there are trade-offs, there is no perfect fighter out there). THe thing that brought me into this discussion is the fact that I didn't think that the Lance woud get skewered by PR. Also the fact that everyone seemed dead-set on dismantling the pinnacle of engineering knowledge in the known universe because 'we've got all the parts', is just not something you do in practice. I'll still debate this subject (because I love to do it on things like this
) but everyones got their mind-sets about a certain thing and no matter how much I banter with people, they aren't gonna change. Anyway, I think this is fun, actually having a nice technical discussion on a internet post wihtout it de-evolving into a shouting match .Edit: Wow your right, I never noticed the Raptor was so big!
C-ya