Cap Ships

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micheal_andreas_stahl
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Cap Ships

Post by micheal_andreas_stahl »

Do Dreadnoughts fly in convoys or on their own? I need to know for an up coming GNN Today post.

Thanks

P.S. Is it possible to get more than one type Dreadnought. The confederation class had six made and five of those were destroyed in the battle of Earth.
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micheal_andreas_stahl
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Post by micheal_andreas_stahl »

Ummm hello??? HELLO???
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Post by spiritplumber »

How do you mean?
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Post by micheal_andreas_stahl »

Would thay fly from the front to Gemini on there own or would they fly in groups.
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Post by DualJoe »

I'm not an expert in WC-lore so I can't help you there.
If there is no lore on the subject, my advice is use current navy/military info. Better still use WW I & II stuff, because that's where the origin-artists supposedly got their info.

I'm an officer with the Royal Dutch Army and we use the following formula. For every soldier at the front firing his weapon at least 10 people are needed to make that possible and effective (and only then under practically ideal circumstances). Think about lines of communication/logistics, Simply put it's easier for one person to burn up fuel and fire off ammo than it is for 10 people to get it there. That's the so called tooth to tail ratio and the tail is usually a lot longer than that. Under difficult conditions it can easily go up to 100 people along the chain with the infantry-soldier at the end. That's why in the real world wars are mostly won or lost because of logistics and not by Rambos.

Now this is an army-man speaking, but the same applies to the navy. For every gunship you'd need a tenfold equivalent in support(vessels), maybe more if the fleet is cut off from resupplies. You also need protection/escorts for the supply ships adding to the equation.

All in all the tooth to tail ratio for the navy could be a little less than for the army, because the navy can take their stock with them in bulk, while the army constantly has to resupply and distribute under difficult and shifting circumstances. Imagine the added problems of you constantly needing to move your supply yards and protecting your transports while the front is shifting.

It's a subject that can easily last you several lifetimes, it really is a science onto its own. Hence my first advice, take your inspiration from real life examples like the two World Wars. Hope this helps.

My guess, yes dreadnoughts travel in convoys, but I don't think they'll be in a convoy together unless there is a very good reason for it.
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Post by micheal_andreas_stahl »

Hmmm, I was thinking of having a Cap ship move into Gemini to help quall the civil war that has started. I was not sure if it would have supply ships with it. but, that makes sense. Also Would a real dreadnought travel with a crusier or battle ship as well?

Oh could you if posible give me some web sites i can look up, please??? :)
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Post by DualJoe »

I usually get my info from our own military doctrine and library and a little bit of info is on our military intranet, unfortunately I'm not free to share all that info.
You'll have to do some surfing yourself. Shouldn't be that hard to find some useable info though, war is one of the hottest topics around.

Try yahooing/googling for naval operations and doctrine and you're bound to find something. Try looking up the stories of some of the really big ships and especially the ones that went down, some of those stories are really spectacular.

Come to think of it, I seem to recall some very strange navalstories during WWII in the Pacific, where the US won some squirmishes against incredible odds. Some of those naval battles were turningpoints for the US in the war with Japan(not the A-bomb contrary to common belief).

Hey it only now hit me that the Kilrathi Empire is the Japanese Empire. Silly of me that I didn't realise that earlier.
Well it certainly narrows things down, just focus on navaloperations in the Pacific during WWII. Watch some Discovery shows on the subject or rent a documentary to get you in the proper mindset and I' m sure you'll come up with some good stuff.
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Post by klauss »

In that context, I've seen mention of large convoys where a battleship and up to two cruisers were in it.

In general, you want one big ship, two smaller, and quite a few destroyers as escort.

Big example:

1 Battleship
2 Light Cruisers
8 Destroyers

The destroyers were a peculiarity of the time, they were actually anti-sub escorts, they would surround the convoy at a distance, listening for subs. So, it doesn't apply well to WC, but I bet they did it anyway - as Dual said, Origin took everything from WWII, whether it made sense or not.

Merchant convoys were somewhat different - they had a variable number of merchant ships surrounded by a variable number of escorts: sometimes a few, sometimes as many as merchant vessels.

And I'm talking allied convoys, but everyone was doing pretty much the same.
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Post by micheal_andreas_stahl »

I can't find that site that has all to ships in it
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Post by Zel »

Try Fleettactics

http://tactics.solsector.net/

IIRC they also have a nice fictional exchange of mail between Tolwyn and Admiral Terrell about loosing carriers in Gemini and reinforcement requests. Maybe that helps you out a bit.

But to the original question. If you go by what is seen in Wing Commander 2 the confederation dreadnought seems to be operating on its own or with minimal escorts. Think they got a Gilgamesh destroyer escorting them most of the time. Though after the battle of earth this may have changed as we see in Wing Commander 3 with Victories escorts. Or maybe the setup depends on the task that the carrier has to fullfil.

And on another note of 2669 no confederation dreadnought is in service at all (concordia was the last beeing destroyed just prior to WC3).
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Yep; I think before Concordia the dreadnought TCS Apocalypse was destroyed in Deneb, together with the 6th Fleet. Looks like no dreadnoughts at all by 2669. Fleet Tactics is an excellent website, indeed; a must read. Written by an active naval officer, as well as WC fan.
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Post by z30 »

chuck_starchaser wrote:Yep; I think before Concordia the dreadnought TCS Apocalypse was destroyed in Deneb, together with the 6th Fleet. Looks like no dreadnoughts at all by 2669. Fleet Tactics is an excellent website, indeed; a must read. Written by an active naval officer, as well as WC fan.
Whenever I got stuck on deciding ship balances on PR Parallel Universe mod, I always ended up in the Fleet Tactics site looking up references, specs & descriptions to decide the matter.

That site is a godsend for PR & WC modders.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

This is really, repugnantly OT, but, FYI, the detailed 2669 timeline I worked out in the wiki includes the Fleet Tactics letters as canon, as well as merges Privateer, RF and WC:
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/ ... v_Timeline
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/ ... F_Timeline
See also:
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/ ... Ftimelines
and
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/ ... imingOfWC3
/OT

Back on topic, there are several Bengal carriers whose ends I'm not sure are documented. According to wikipedia, 9 are named, but the losses of only 3 are mentioned there:

Code: Select all

* TCS Beacontree
* TCS Bengal
* TCS Eagle's Talon
* TCS Exeter (lost 2654)
* TCS Kipling6
* TCS Kyoto
* TCS Tiger's Claw CV-07 (lost 2656)
* TCS Trafalgar (lost 2654) 7
* TCS Wolfhound 8
So I'm not sure that we can say for sure there wasn't a single dreadnought in 2669, though, admittedly, they'd be quite old by then.
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Post by micheal_andreas_stahl »

i kinda have an obsession with dreadnoughts. i reinvented the wheel a bit. this was a new dreadnought.
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Post by chuck_starchaser »

Thought I'd mention, even Concordia class dreadnoughts might conceivably, though not likely, be around by 2669. A handful of them are unaccounted for.
http://www.answers.com/topic/concordia- ... et-carrier
like TCS Kalamazoo. And that's only speaking of named ones, but apparently 60 of them were built, so it's not entirely impossible there might be one or two to be found somewhere.
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Post by Zel »

To my understanding the Concordia class Fleet carriers are still the backbone of Confed fleet in 2669. The first ship you serve on in WC4 is a Concordia class so they are definitly still around though they arent dreadnoughts but carriers.
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