What if theories!

[Viper61]

I can agree, it is done just for game dynamics (I mean who doesn't have fun blowin the crap out of carrier every 7 or 8 missions?) I forget how many kat carriers get toasted in the novel but I think it's only 2 or 3, could be even less. but the fact that the kats had so many and confed so few (I would guess at less than 12 or 10 after the battle of earth) the destruction of a few kat carriers still doesn't affect the odds enough in confeds favor.

It bothered me in the games (esp. WCIII) when you singlehandedly toasted 4 or 5 carrier groups in about 3 missions, and it had little to no effect in the war! That kats sure churned cap ships like nothing in this universe.

Surely. But if losing BILLIONS of carriers(Only at WC II, i remember cripling at least 30 capships ALONE) don't cripple the kilrathi, what would do?

Actually IIRC, Confed had closer to 5-6 fleet carriers 'operational' after the Battle of Terra.

As with any situation in life, do a little homework before giving an opinion if you want it to be given even the least bit of weight. You don't engage that many carriers during the Kilrathi War, and when you do it usually has a pretty good reason behind it (ie not just for game dynamics).
You don't even engage a true carrier until WC1:SM2 (the carrier-conversion Fralthi apparently carry only 20 fighters, which isn't even up to later 'light' carrier standards). When you do, you 'engage' 5 new Snakier Heavy Carriers in the span of a few days. The reason being is that the Kilrathi fleet is bringing their best and brightest for the little picnic that is the Sivar Ceremony, so why wouldn't the Elite of the Empire be on the best, new carriers in the fleet? You engage one as it arrives in the Firekkan system. The next 2 your only supposed to target to get info on them and return to base (but who follows orders in this place? ) and not even engage them. No matter if you waste those 2, you engage another returning to the Firekkan system after your mock withdrawl (stands to reason that they'd send a carrier to chase you out of the system) and then another while your hauling it out of Firekka after your glorious return (stands to reason that you definitely stirred up a hornets nest now). My personal feeling on this is that the 2 snakiers you see later are actually the ones you targeted in the earlier mission, bringing the total down to 3 for the entire Firekkan crusade. Be it 3 or 5 carriers, either number wouldn't be stretching it considering the reason for their presence (the Firekkan Sivar ceremony).
On to WC3 for more carriers (as we never engage one during all of WC2). We engage 4 carriers in WC3, all after about midway through the game. We take on 2 Bhantkaras in the Ariel system. A logical reason for their presence is that Ariel was a trap (remember the shrouded jump-point? No stretch of the imagination since I believe the WC3 novel and game points it out specifically as a trap) So what better way to ensure the demise of a light carrier that carries a pilot known for toasting capships? I believe 2 carrier groups with full air wings would do nicely from a purely statistical standpoint. Next instance is in Freya where you meet up with a single carrier battle group. Your 2 jumps from Kilrah, I really hope that the Kilrathi Home Fleet dispatches something to try and stop you before your on their doorstep. The final carrier you meet on your run to Kilrah is in the Hyperion system. Again, on Kilrahs doorstep, I seriously hope that the Kilrathi Home Fleet is worried by now.
We really don't have time to see what these carrier loses would have done to the Kilrathi War effort as we nuke Kilrah a few days later, but I seriously doubt it would be much. Consider that the Kilrathi have around 2-3 Hakagas remaining after the BoT, probably quite a few more Bhantkara's, and probably several other fleet and light carriers we don't even know about left (not to mention the Dreadnaughts in the wings). The Kilrathi are a purely military society; every resource they have after the bare necessities is put into building capships, fighters and other weapons of war.
(most information was either retreived or verified from a 5 minute search through the online CIC game guides)
You do toast alot of capships during the Kilrathi war, but almost all of them are cruiser or below, all of which the Kilrathi war machine churns out at record pace.

Alright, rant over. Morale of the story, everybody's got an opinion . . . you just usually have to make it an educated one before anyone will even bother listening (and also to keep from looking like a jackass ).

C-ya

 

[Bandit LOAF]

And, for the sake of looking into that timeline, say we did push the Kats out of Vega twenty years early; how do you think that would have affected the overall outcome of the war outright, taking into consideration the changes in technology, amounts of available resources, and military (and political) morale?

Eh, my thought is that this would essentially be the end of the war - Confed would have a chance to heavily fortify their borders and a 'cold war' with the Kilrathi would ensue. We'd see limited engagements whenever the Kilrathi have an advantage - the Sivar, the stealth fighters, etc... but Confed would always counter them fairly easily with their significantly larger and undamaged industrial base.

Surely. But if losing BILLIONS of carriers(Only at WC II, i remember cripling at least 30 capships ALONE) don't cripple the kilrathi, what would do?

The only games that actually pit you against Kilrathi fleet carriers are Secret Missions 2 and Wing Commander 3... the heaviest ship Blair ever faces in Wing Commander 2 is a Fralthra cruiser. The Confederation Handbook indicates that both sides produce cruisers in the thousands.

Following the 'Novel' path (Losing Blackmane, Delius instead of Caliban), the PC version of Wing Commander III pits you against 5 carriers (1 at Blackmane, 2 at Ariel, 1 at Freya and 1 at Hyperion). The 3DO version has six - one at Ariel, two at Delius, one at Torgo, one at Freya and one at Hyperion.

The fact that we can destroy so many carrier groups in WC3 and not effect the war is the fact that the kats have a large amount of carriers (more than 20) even after the battle of earth. Destroying 5 carrier groups produces a result on the war, however, the homefleet orbiting kilrah is most likely sufficient to destroy the confed fleet in a meeting engagement.

In fact, all the carriers you engage in WC3 are Thrakhath's new Bhantkara-class... ships that just entered service in 2669. We destroy *none* of their 'Fleet Action' carriers.

I can agree, it is done just for game dynamics (I mean who doesn't have fun blowin the crap out of carrier every 7 or 8 missions?) I forget how many kat carriers get toasted in the novel but I think it's only 2 or 3, could be even less. but the fact that the kats had so many and confed so few (I would guess at less than 12 or 10 after the battle of earth) the destruction of a few kat carriers still doesn't affect the odds enough in confeds favor.

The Kilrathi end Fleet Action with 18 fleet carriers (17 operational, 1 crippled)... plus 12 Hakagas (7 nearly complete, 1 damaged and 1 crippled).

BTW, McAuliffe was a WWII General. Brigadier General, artillery Cdr. of 101st Airborne. He commanded the division at Bastogne while General Taylor was on leave. He was who replied "Nuts"

Wrong McAuliffe. Christa McAuliffe was NASA's 'space teacher' who died on the Challenger. If you trace your Prophecy Map, you'll find that there are systems named after each of the STS-51L crew members...

 

[psych]

Actually IIRC, Confed had closer to 5-6 fleet carriers 'operational' after the Battle of Terra.

Are you referring to right after the Battle of Terra, or the desperate Confed rebuilding of the Fleet a few months after? There's a part in the Armada manual that refers to "those damn cats smoked over half our carrier force". It's not to hard to figure out that there were 5 carriers (Verdun, Moskva, Leyte Gulf, Ark Royal, and Lexington) lost, plus another 3 carriers stranded in drydock in the lunar naval base, and god knows how many new carriers in construction in the lunar shipyards. So considering at least eight lost, it shouldn't be too hard to guesstimate the # of carriers total. Around teenage numbers.

Confed definately had more then 5 large carriers around Wing Commander 3 times, You got the Kennedy, Lincoln, Armageddon, Saratoga, Hermes, Invincible, Liberty, Valiant, Winterrowd, and the Bradshaw.

 

[Edfilho]

Ok, so we don't destroy hundreds of carriers alone, but let's be reasonable: Blair is not a 1000 times better than ALL other fighter pilots in the ENTIRE Confed... I distinctly remember almost never picking Vagabond as a wingman because he stealed many, many kills. If you consider that at least 20 confed pilots should be comparable to blair, maniac and vagabond, so the carrier loss of the kats would be really huge.

And the only reason we do not toast all carriers of their fleet is that we don't meet them. it's really easy to make them go boom.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Mah - for every Blair or Maniac who scores hundreds of kills, there's probably an equally good Kilrathi ace. It balances out.

(And you can't really site 'player' performance as Blair, anyway... unless you've *never died*. )

 

[Slawter]

LOAF, i know the system is named after the astronaut, but someone else asked WAAAAAY before if McAuliffe wasn't a WWII General too. That was my answer.

 

[Edfilho]

Concerning the many deaths of blair, i liked the solution dvised by the writer of Wing Commander 4.2721q2182. It's like Blair is dreaming or having a premonition, ehehehe. Fits really well with the feeling of the player.

 

[Viper61]

Are you referring to right after the Battle of Terra, or the desperate Confed rebuilding of the Fleet a few months after?

I was referring to right after the BoT. Hmm, I thought before the armistice, Confed had maybe in the high teens in fleet carriers. The Kilrathi nailed 2 of them and then many were deactivated or had their drydock repairs halted during the false truce. After the Kilrathi's march to Earth, another eight were destroyed with the Concordia heavily damaged. With all the decommissionings and the losses taken during the BoT (along with those still under repair and the Concordias damage), I estimated that Confed had maybe (at most) 5-6 fleet carriers completely operational after all of that (those being the ones who didn't make it to the party).
I don't think I've ever read the Armada Manual (its in PDF form around here, I should really get around to that), but if "the damn cats smoked over half our carrier force" meaning 8 > half the carrier force, wouldn't it stand to reason that Confed had 14 or 15 fleet carriers going into the BoT, leaving the fleet 6 or 7 carriers (probably including the Concordia)? Or is it more likely that statement was including light and escort carriers also?

C-ya

 

[Bandit LOAF]

http://www.hamtwoslices.net/loaf/fleetcarriers.html

The carrier list will tell you how many Confed carriers there are at any given point in the sixties.

 

[Sylvester]

Psych, your'e forgetting the Wolfhound and Kipling.

 

[psych]

I doubt the Kipling was even around. During End Run, we knew there were 7 fleet carriers in service, and these are pretty much accounted for. I'm sure the Kipling wasn't included (in other words, long gone).

For the Wolfhound, no one knows. If worse comes to worse, one can assume it was one of the three carriers destroyed in drydock in the Lunar shipyards.

 

[Delance]

One funny thing is how the WC3 manual mentions the fact that Maniac destroyed 3 kilrathi fighters in 2 days (or something like that) as a big deal, when the game requires that you destroy dozens of those per mission to beat the game.

It was also curious how the TCS Victory was supposed to escort "the big boys" near the end of the game... Considering how the reason they were there was to allow the Victory to get close enough to deploy Blair and the T-Bomb strike team (tm).

It was some of those "everything but the kitchen sink" missions where a couple of confed ships (usually non-escorted bombers) would destroy an entire Kilrathi fleet per mission, including a carrier, some escort capships, and tons of fighters.

Oh, it's just a game... It would be way less fun it was realistic on this way.

And it was very fun!

 

[Edfilho]

I really liked the way Cap ship killing worked in WCP. It was an effort, and well worth it. And you needed some pretty beeffy weapons to get the job done. The rush of straffing turrets was great.

WC2 torpedoing was also neat, but I must confess I never quite got the hang of it's gameplay... unfortunately.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

One funny thing is how the WC3 manual mentions the fact that Maniac destroyed 3 kilrathi fighters in 2 days (or something like that) as a big deal, when the game requires that you destroy dozens of those per mission to beat the game.

Erm... that's the *point* - before Blair arrives, the Victory has been a second string backup carrier. It only made it into serious combat because Tolwyn assigned Blair there...

It was also curious how the TCS Victory was supposed to escort "the big boys" near the end of the game... Considering how the reason they were there was to allow the Victory to get close enough to deploy Blair and the T-Bomb strike team (tm).

"The Big Boys" were the Hermes and Invincible carrier groups.

It was some of those "everything but the kitchen sink" missions where a couple of confed ships (usually non-escorted bombers) would destroy an entire Kilrathi fleet per mission, including a carrier, some escort capships, and tons of fighters.

The mission is Hyperion 2 - the "Kilrathi fleet" is a carrier, a light destroyer and a cruiser. (And as has already been pointed out, you only go up against five carriers in all of Wing Commnder 3...).

 

[Delance]

Erm... that's the *point* - before Blair arrives, the Victory has been a second string backup carrier. It only made it into serious combat because Tolwyn assigned Blair there...

Wow, Blair rocks then.

"The Big Boys" were the Hermes and Invincible carrier groups.

Thanks for the info! Hey, how many carrier groups where on that big fleet before the mission jumps? The one with the FMV cutscene and Rollin's voice over calling Blair to the briefing room?

You seem to know all that stuff. Can you name that destroyer (or cruiser) that is shown close to the fleet HQ on the opening cutscene where Blair talks to Tolwyn?

The mission is Hyperion 2 - the "Kilrathi fleet" is a carrier, a light destroyer and a cruiser. (And as has already been pointed out, you only go up against five carriers in all of Wing Commnder 3...).

And it's pretty amazing how 2 fighters can destroy all those.

I understand it's a gameplay necessity. They had technology limitations, and the game engine already did put the available hardware to the limit.

If those engagements were to be modeled after the WW2 battles they seem to reflect, there should be dozens of bombers making torpedo runs to take down an enemy carrier. Something more like they did on WCP, I guess.

Not that it makes WC3 any less of a cool game. It’s still a space combat sim, with a lot of action.

On a small note about technology and big ships, of all WC games, I think it was WC2 that had the more interesting capship vs capship combat . Remember that first missions? Instead of being just targets, for the first time, capships would move around and battle. Your ferret couldn't do much against the Kilrathi cruiser, but the Concordia PTC could.

 

[psych]

About that fleet, all we know is that there was at least the Hermes and the Invincible, there was an Admiral in charge, and that it was not as big as the combined fleet that held the Kilrathi at Terra.

We really don't have much to go upon, cause before those two above carriers were mentioned, it was said that the fleet had taken horrendous losses and it was about to get worse and within a few hours, the fleet would have been wiped out.

What I have just mentioned was all according to the WC3 novel. Now I will give another viewpoint, this from the WC3 script. It said that the massive Confed fleet jumping into Freya was fleet was "hundreds, probaly thousands of ships", and the mention that the Confederation was gathering "all of its forces for one last do-or-die stand".

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Wow, Blair rocks then.

I think you've missed key portions of Wing Commander 3. Tolwyn assigns Blair to the Victory *specifically* because he wants to use it to protect the Behemoth.

Thanks for the info! Hey, how many carrier groups where on that big fleet before the mission jumps? The one with the FMV cutscene and Rollin's voice over calling Blair to the briefing room?

Two carrier groups, plus dozens of destroyer squadrons, cruiser squadrons, frigate groups,etc.

You seem to know all that stuff. Can you name that destroyer (or cruiser) that is shown close to the fleet HQ on the opening cutscene where Blair talks to Tolwyn?

As far as I know (to the point of checking the original storyboard), its not ever given a name.

And it's pretty amazing how 2 fighters can destroy all those.

I understand it's a gameplay necessity. They had technology limitations, and the game engine already did put the available hardware to the limit.

... except your example was of a situation where another capital ship destroys one of the carriers.

On a small note about technology and big ships, of all WC games, I think it was WC2 that had the more interesting capship vs capship combat . Remember that first missions? Instead of being just targets, for the first time, capships would move around and battle. Your ferret couldn't do much against the Kilrathi cruiser, but the Concordia PTC could.

And players hated it.

 

[overmortal]

The rush of straffing turrets was great.

Have you ever flown a fighter
Going five hundred KPS . . .

Sorry . . . I just like promoting my stuff. I'm gonna re-record that song, btw, now that I can play it better.

 

[Delance]

I think you've missed key portions of Wing Commander 3. Tolwyn assigns Blair to the Victory *specifically* because he wants to use it to protect the Behemoth.

How saying "Blair Rocks" imply I missed this point? Yes, I know that, and it's not hard because Tolwyn specifically tells Blair something like "I assigned you to the Victory to protect the Behemoth".

The TCS Victory without Blair was, after all, "a second string backup carrier" that has not seen much "serious combat". Not exactly the ideal protector for confed last, best hope for victory. With Blair, however, it becomes an fearsome fighting force, capable of taking 5 Kilrathi carriers and multiple other capships, raiding Kilrathi prision worlds, and assaulting jump points on downtown Kilrah. Hey, Blair celebrity status even gives the Victory recognition within the Kilrathi royalty.

... except your example was of a situation where another capital ship destroys one of the carriers.

That was just a note. But the quintessential WC3 missions is about a couple of unescorted bombers devastating a Kilrathi carrier fleet. Or, if you prefer, a Kilrathi carrier task force. Or a Kilrathi carrier and its escorts. Whatever the name, it's still awesome.

I didn’t know players HATED the capship combat on WC2. I thought it was cool.

 

[Dundradal]

I also enjoyed the capship vs capship battles in the games. Although I did sometimes dislike in WC2 how I couldn't aid the confed ship in destroying the other. IMO there's really not much cooler than watching a bunch of cruisers and destroyers slugging it out...

The limitations of technology when WC3 came out probably was a contributing factor into why only 2 unescorted bombers could ravage a heavy carrier. Otherwise I think we would have seen what we see later in WCP and SO.