unwitnessed kilrathi capships:

[chuck_starchaser]

I didn't notice there were two front feet in the original model. I think I'll leave it like this, tho. As for them retracting, I was just thinking of making them appear and dissapear. There's no room for them to rotate, really; as there isn't any in the original. But if people want, I could carve slots for them to rotate into.

I did the full enchilada with the Hellcat; it has realistic-looking landing gear, with a suspension frame, rubber wheels, and covers that close flush with the body and all. But it's a bit of work...

[chuck_starchaser]

Big problem...
McAuliffe happens in 2634; but Chen only graduates in 2637...

[chuck_starchaser]

I made a first draft of the entire campaign; all 15 years...
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/ ... ign:Master

[chuck_starchaser]

Also, a modified concept I'm working on:



The tower on the side is under construction; it will smoothly blend with the body of the carrier. Engines will be smaller; tower will be different; but just for a quick preview.

[chuck_starchaser]

I just got an email from Maverick, of wcplanet. He doesn't think much of this airlock landing method, and proposes that whatever concept we come up with for the pre-war carrier should be such that, when you look at it, you can see why the later carriers came to be the way they are.
That's a tall order, though, because it's not easy to identify the purpose of some of the features, so it's hard to tell what constitutes an "evolution".

Let's look at 3 carrier classes: Concordia, Ranger and Bengal. No info on when the Ranger was first produced, but the TCS Victory was a Ranger class, and it was officially supposed to be retired in 2660, so I'm going to assume it predates the Concordia, which in turn predates the Bengal.


Ranger:



720 meters long. 1000 cm armor.
Max speed: 120 kps.
11 laser turrets + capship missile launcher.
Fighter Complement: 40.


Concordia:



800 meters long. 300 cm armor.
Cruise/max speed: 100/150 kps.
11 dual laser batteries.
Fighter Complement: 96.


Bengal:



700 meters long. 21 cm armor (?!... can't be durasteel standard).
Cruise/max speed: 100/130 kps.
8 dual laser turrets. 3x2 DF missiles.
Fighter complement: 104.



The trends I can identify are:

• Ship length keeps shrinking; yet fighter complement keeps increasing. Ergo, the space efficiency is going up.
• Armor thickness and defenses keep decreasing, but fighter complement keeps increasing. Ergo, we seem to be moving towards more specialization: "A cruiser is a cruiser; a carrier is a carrier."
• Getting slightly faster.
• Moving from boxy to stylish look.
• Moving from top launch strips to launch tubes.

Extrapolating backwards, this would lead us to the conclusion that our pre-war carrier should be less space-efficient, more heavily armored and armed, and therefore more of a cruiser and less of a carrier; more boxy than the Concordia and Ranger; have no launch tubes, and somehow be worse in terms of takeoff and landing than a Ranger.

I can't find the link, but I'm sure I once read that the fighter complement of the pre-war carrier was 50. Assuming this is so, to be less efficient than a Ranger, it has to be larger... Let's assume 1000 meters; though we could make it wider or taller, instead of longer.
Let's give it 1500 cm armor, 20 laser turrets, and capship and non-capship missile launchers, but, by the same token, heavy and pretty slow... say 80 kps?

The last bit is the more difficult. No launch tubes, alright; but how do we make landing and take-off harder than on the Ranger?

Let's look again at how the Bengal constitutes an evolution over the Ranger/Concordia:
The most visible difference is the "wings"; which are NOT "wings" in the sense of producing air-lift, but wing-like structures that contain launch tubes.
The Bengal has 12 launch tubes, apparently. There's supposedly a cinematic in WC1 where Blair is walking to get to his fighter and is passing a sign that says "launch tube #9. And since the Bengal is symmetric, it must have an even number, so it could be 10, 12... But
the standard wing is 12 fighters, so presumably 12 is it.

Now, the landing is a strip on top, so we must conclude that ships are moved down from the landing deck, and from that "basement" below the landing deck there's tunnels that go back, passing under the side launch tubes, and continuing on back to the "wing"-tubes.

This kind of disagrees with the flight deck images in-game, where you see the ships lined up at the start of strips that extend forward into space. I would think that'd be the way the top flight deck might look like in the Ranger class; and let me assume that when the artists at Origin painted those screens, the plan was to be flying off a Ranger/Concordia, but that later the plot changed to flying off the Tiger's Claw, but the artwork was not changed due to time constraints.

So now we could speculate about the internal structure of a Ranger/Concordia:

We have a tunnel, and we have the flight deck with strips on top.
Which is for landing? Which is for take-off.
I think the top strips are take-off, but I could be wrong. In any case, there has to be elevators that connect the top and internal bays, and airlocks to move the ships into pressurized areas for repairs and maintenance.

What I'm going to propose, however, as a "worse" scheme, is a blurring of the distinction between landing and takeoff bays...

I think our pre-war carrier could have a single deck, serving dual purposes as landing and take-off. No tubes. This would lead to "jams" when fighters are coming back for repairs and resupplies, while at the same time other fighters are taking off.

Tunnel or strip?

I'd say tunnel, as landing strips seem to get more popular as we move forward in WC time.


So, to summarize:


Pre-War Carrier:

Image pending:
Very boxy look, no flight deck on top, no tubes; and a square tunnel used for both landing and takeoff. Heavy-look, small engines for its size, and lots of emplacements for turrets.

1000 meters long. 1500 cm armor.
Cruise/max speed: 80/100 kps.
18 laser turrets. 3x2 DF missiles, capship missiles.
Fighter complement: 50.


Thoughts?

[chuck_starchaser]

How about...

[starlord]

Half recalls me the vesuvus class: except for the rear.
I don't know about the graduation problem: What can we do about it?
Will we have to change caracter?

I was actually hoping on a surprise effect when ripper (which nearly knowbody knew about) would turn into bossman (as stated in the WC1 manual), but if it contradicts...

Also, does anybody have the WC movie? (even if it's horrible crap?).
We will definately need those movie ships later on...

[chuck_starchaser]

Half recalls me the vesuvus class: except for the rear.

It's a lot smaller than the vesuvius. I think the vesuvius was 1600 meters, but graphically they made it like 3 kilometers.

I don't know about the graduation problem: What can we do about it?
Will we have to change caracter?
I was actually hoping on a surprise effect when ripper (which nearly knowbody knew about) would turn into bossman (as stated in the WC1 manual), but if it contradicts...

One solution would be to put him to work before graduation. But I would realy, REALLY, like to have a couple of chapters preceding McAuliffe, operating off a pre-war carrier...

How about finding an older character whom you can play from about 2630 up to McAuliffe (2634), or up to 2636, post-McAuliffe campaigns; and then we can play Ripper/Bossman in the chapters from 2638 (pre-Enyo), up to Custer's Carnival (2649)?
The first character could be someone who appears in the McAuliffe battle but is never heard of again. Not sure who; I'm not too familiar with the characters.
He could meet Ripper, have a chat, and after the chat you're Ripper, and he retires to civilian life, say.
Or, for a wilder alternative, the first character could be a privateer. Priv 0 ?
Perhpas Ripper himself; maybe he was a privateer, attending the academy part-time

Also, does anybody have the WC movie? (even if it's horrible crap?).
We will definately need those movie ships later on...

I second that question.

[chuck_starchaser]

Fixed a few things:

[BradMick]

The movie style ships I did up i'd say work fairly well. Also, the Movie Bengal was first comissioned in 2619...So i'd have to say we have a pretty good idea of what the 'pre-war' style is.

[chuck_starchaser]

the Movie Bengal was first comissioned in 2619...So i'd have to say we have a pretty good idea of what the 'pre-war' style is.

Seems you consider the movie very canonical. I don't. It contradicts prior canon. The movie Bengal is a perfect example of it. That's a submarine, not a space-ship. What would have been so wrong about using the original Bengal design from the game? They couldn't find a modeller? Pass them my business card, next time.

I'm not saying my experiment above is final, in any way; I'm just experimenting and looking for answers as to what the pre-war style was; but I definitely won't take my answers from the movie, of all places. And I don't care what the CIC's position is on it, either. We all know why it is what it is: Picture opportunities next to a smiling Chris Roberts that could evaporate otherwise...

Your models are very nice, but I'm not sure that that was the pre-war style. I don't see the progression from them to the Concordia, Bengal, etc. Specially those armor "skins", multiple layers in some cases. I've never seen them in any WC ships.

It seems to me the whole concept is backwards: Consider the old Drayman and the Privateer Drayman, for example: The more stylish things seem to come later, not earlier.
Same thing with carriers: The Ranger/Concordia are shoeboxes.
The Bengal gained "wings" and whatnot.
Later, the Lexington is a bit more squarish but even so more stylish than the Bengal, and the Vesuvius is really beautiful.

So, the pre-war carrier should be boxy and ugly. Perhaps more "modular" than my model, I'm thinking. Maybe I could wrap the engines in a separate box from the main box, or something like that. Maybe I could still have a couple of fuel tanks between the two boxes...

[BradMick]

odd, so why are you modeling the movie rapier then for this project?

The movie is a part of the official WC continuity. Visually, and timeline wise. The pre-war ships i did up were going more for the movie style and leading up to what we get later on. The concordia class is a pre-war ship also, which is why its in that timeframe. Ark Royal and Concordia were both Concordia classes (least i beleive Ark was...gotta look that up again).

Anyway, thats where the overlapping bits came from, or at least that idea. That and the fact that thanks to Action Stations we know that 'big battleships' was the way of that era, so big thick armor to me works well.

[chuck_starchaser]

What I said about armor was that I've never seen it as separate skins, in any WC game models or art.

The ship I did above, I don't like it any more than you do yet, but it does meet your criteria: It is larger and more armored.

If the Ark Royal was a Concordia class, then it must have been a shoebox like the Concordia class, only bigger; no?

As for why the movie rapier, because it doesn't bother anything to have it.

But to have pre-war carriers that look like submarines, just because the movie Bengal does, I don't think so.

[chuck_starchaser]

Another pre-war carrier concept:

[Shissui]

Regards the Ranger --

720 meters long. 1000 cm armor.

You have GOT to be joking -- 33 FEET of armour !! ??
On every side !! ??

Let's give it 1500 cm armor

Do you really want to make this absurdity worse by putting 50 feet of armour on the older carrier ?

[chuck_starchaser]

In WC, the "cm armor" figures are in units of "durasteel equivalent". Durasteel was the metal used long before the war. Later materials, such as "plasteel", "tungsten" and "isometal" have like orders of magnitude more strength than durasteel, so the actual thickness is much less; but it is given in durasteel-equivalent units for ease of damage computations.
I didn't make up the 1000 cm; it's the official figure.

Update:

[starlord]

I had already thought of a character change after the problem, but your idea of ripper/bossman being a privateer could possibly be even better.
We'll have to keep this in mind.

As far as the movie goes, I still don't understand the snakeir problem though: they appear in the movie, which is around 2934 and in the CIC database, they are said to have entered service in 2949.

Although I suppose it is not much of a problem yet as we could plan a few missions after the custer carnival (those last missions would eventually lead to the halt of kilrathi progress in vega and to the establishment of the "front line" in vega as it is in WC1. During those missions, it could be possible to encounter snakeir super dreadnaughts.

But if they appeared in 2934, it means they were part of the task forces sent to mc auliffe and enyo (alongside the sivars).

What is to be considered true?

P.S: the second carrier I like very much, also, despite what bradnick says about it, I actually found his snakeir model to be beautiful.

[chuck_starchaser]

I had already thought of a character change after the problem, but your idea of ripper/bossman being a privateer could possibly be even better.

Glad you think so. What year was he born? Can't find any references about his birthdate.

Here's a view of Kaohsiung, Taiwan, where he was born; we'll need to figure out what it looks like in the 27th Century, for some cinematic...



He'd have to be no less than 18, to be a privateer by 2632, so latest birthday should be 2614. He dies in 2656, so, if born in 2614 he'd be 46 by then. He'd be quite an accomplished fellow by his early 20's...

Kien Chen had been a pilot since 2637 and had served on the Tiger's Claw for many years. He used to go by the callsign of Ripper, but later it changed to Bossman. He was a native of Kaohsiung, Taiwan with a degree in aeronautical engineering from the Confederation Net university system.

So he would have got first an engineering degree, and and then a flight academy graduation, by 2637; --i.e., by age 23.
But it's quite doable, I suppose: He could do his studies while privateering, since most of the time the ship flies on autopilot and there'd be nothing to do except read, study and pursue a degree. As far as flight academy, if he's already fighting kats while privateering, he'd probably get a lot of credit for that, and only need to go through theoretical subjects, and then do a short, pre-graduation tour of duty to get familiar with military ships and the carrier life.
So, this seems quite conceivable.
It's interesting that the enciclopedia says he got "a degree in aeronautical engineering from the Confederation Net university system", rather than say that he "attended university"; it really suits our having him get a degree while privateering...

Having him first be a privateer would also help explain his independent flying style:
He learned to fight kats on his own, alone in space, with no boss but himself. He'd probably love to be able to follow orders, but by the time he graduates from flight academy, the flying style he developed has totally become second nature to him. And the fact is, it works; so nobody really minds.

As far as the movie goes, I still don't understand the snakeir problem though: they appear in the movie, which is around 2934 and in the CIC database, they are said to have entered service in 2949.

Well, nothing in the movie makes sense; I think we already agreed to use it for visual inspiration in cases of desperation and nothing more.

Although I suppose it is not much of a problem yet as we could plan a few missions after the custer carnival (those last missions would eventually lead to the halt of kilrathi progress in vega and to the establishment of the "front line" in vega as it is in WC1. During those missions, it could be possible to encounter snakeir super dreadnaughts.

Sounds like a great idea to me. Maybe the verly last mission of WC0 could be to take out one of those...

But if they appeared in 2934, it means they were part of the task forces sent to mc auliffe and enyo (alongside the sivars).

Nah, forget that, man; the movie is plain wrong. It obviously wasn't made to put value into WC, but to take value from it, --i.e.: exploit WC's name to sell movie tickets. JMHO, of course.

What is to be considered true?

The canon that preceded the movie, and which the movie indiscriminately trampled upon, I say.

P.S: the second carrier I like very much, also, despite what bradnick says about it, I actually found his snakeir model to be beautiful.

Which second carrier? Second of Brad's or of mine? If mine, tell me which pic, exactly, just to be sure, of the ones below:



Concept 1:





Concept 2:





Concept 3:





Concept 4:





I like concept 4 esthetically best, but it tramples on the very analytical conclusions that led me to concept 3; and the idea is not for it to be esthetically pleasing, anyhow. But I did find concept 3 a bit "too boxy"; so I was thinking of coming up with a concept 5 being a hybrid of concepts 3 and 4.

[Shissui]

Personally, I like both 2 & 3.

I do not like concept 4 for technical reasons -- as entry and exit are front only, a failed attempt to land your damaged fighter with failing turn jets results in a bug splat. While that does fit in the category of "design flaw" it is SO classic a problem that no fleet architect would fail to address it.

Hmm. same problem with concept 3.

[chuck_starchaser]

Hahaha, well, that's the problem with all WC carriers; afaik, they all have landing at the front. Luckily they don't go too fast
And frankly, in space it wouldn't matter, as speed is relative.

Here's another concept...

Concept 5:

[Shissui]

And frankly, in space it wouldn't matter, as speed is relative.

Actually, it does not matter only if the carrier is not also accellerating. The bug splat effect occurs if the carrier is also using its engines.

***
I like concept 5 better than concept 4. I also like the 3rd entry bay in the centre.

[chuck_starchaser]

That's right; but in WC acceleration is negligible. WC is a strange universe... When you turn the engines on you move at a constant speed; when you turn them off you stop... Don't ask me.
They once explained it, or tried to, by saying that the WC drive technology is such that ships "crawl through the fabric of space". I guess the question begs itself: Why do we see exhausts behind the engines, then? Might seem to indicate "reaction thrusters"...

Anyways, been experimenting and it's not looking too good, but just to show what kinds of greebles don't work

[chuck_starchaser]

Here's a bit of color added:



One problem I was able to identify while trying to decide where to paint green and where not to paint green, is that in WC ships, you don't find a color boundary too often. What I mean is, usually, in WC, ships have features such as wings or other structures, painted a different color from other structures. Here what I have is a poverty of structures that forces me to have a lot of painted/unpainted boundaries. Not sure what the solution is, but I think it may call for yet another concept model.

Well, I'm not terribly attached to this concept, anyways.

(Frankly, I never thought that coming up with a good pre-war carrier concept would be so hard. Shut up, Brad.)

[starlord]

I agree on your analisys on the movie: We'll keep the snakeirs for the end, both standard and command: in fact, the command 4 KM long version would be encountered once probably in the last mission and would lead to the destruction of the kalralahr (We will make him a warlord of noble blood, from kiranka) and the halt of K advance.

About the carrier: I definately like concept 5, yet I'm unsure of the colors: why not try metal blue instead of green.

In the WC0 script, the tortuga pirate base intruiged me, but I like the idea, perhaps a privateering "sub" plot might leed to the destruction of that base...

[starlord]

Besides brad, do you have the movie? Or the confed handbook?

Maybe this could help us for the few missing ships: sivar and spy ship.