Tarsi are too large. But you should be able to get a single Dralthi as long as you start off with an empty cargo hold.

The PR Stiletto can mount Tachyon canons with ease. That will give it an advantage over other slower craft.



I wish we could. But i can only imagine the time required to do such a thing. Take the Paradigm. That had two Flak Turrets. Not all turrets were designed to fight smaller craft. Some (the lasers) were there to combat missiles.



We could do that as well as the Militia is a group of normal pilots (I presume under trained for military craft) given Military craft told to destroy drug smugglers. I would not think that they are even that well motivated.

I put together this page from various sources, about ship roles. Note the note at the bottom...
Ship size classes and roles.
Just to say that I believe canon needs to be stretched a bit to make ship classes better fit their more traditional roles than
they currently do in WC.

Anyways, I'm not sure if I follow your argument about the Paradigm. Lasers are long range weapons; turreted lasers
complement other types of turreted energy weapons to extend the kill zone of a destroyer. The preferred weapon to
mount for missile defense is the flak cannon, IIRC. I think that in many cap-ships, flak cannons for missile defense are
there, but they are smaller than the other turrets and most stats tables don't even bother to list them. And in the case
of the Paradigm destroyer, this seems to be precisely the case; --I don't even see flaks mentioned...


My theory is that there are two types of militias: Confed-funded (like Federal Police); and local militias, --base-funded (like provincial or city police). The local militias fly cheap Talon's and are indeed poorly paid, unmotivated, and often serving conflicting interests; but usually you find them fighting retros or pirates. When Lynn Murphy gets you two militia escorts for the last Palan mission, those are local militias, for example.

The Confed Militias are well funded; they get to fly military craft like Stillettos and Gladiuses and Broadswords, but they don't have the mandate to fight pirates, as Confeds get their under-the-table budget from selling Talon's to pirates through the likes of Menesch and Lynch; so they wouldn't shoot their own customers. Instead, what Confed Militias do is "fight piracy" but with a very narrow definition of "piracy" which only seems to include smuggling. They put on a big show of scanning ships for contraband; meanwhile turn a blind eye on real pirates attacking a Drayman at the next jump point...
Confed militias show as "Confed" in your screens; but obviously they are not part of the military.

See also my deep analysis of the privateer storyline, characters and background, Privateer's militias, and the Lynn Murphy page.

So, yes; local militias are poorly paid, poorly trained and poorly equipped.
Confed militias are better paid and better equipped, but probably poorly trained as well.

CHuck, the Mass Drivers are there for last defense against missiles, the lasers also help destroying missiles and the Flak is a slow cloud (or dart depending on which character who said this) that is really powerful (as someone once said "could destroy a fighter with one hit"). Often stations had them mounted for defenses against Cap Ships. It's one of the few weapons that can damage Phase shielding.

A corvette usually had none, a destroyer had 1-2, frigate 2-3, Carriers 3-4, larger ships such as, Cruisers Could have up to 6 Flak Batteries while Dreadnoughts are the only ships in the game to carry 8 or more. Dreadnoughts were not produced in a great number. I think that there were about six named Dreadnoughts and thus there are only six known.



This confuses me. I think you are right, chuck. Everything DOES contradict it self. The fact that the manual says that makes it had to disprove. But a friend of mine has one of the Original Wind commander games. I recall someone telling his wing man to "stay away from the flak canons as they could destroy a ship in one hit". Eventually the guy wanders to close to the turret and gets hit and is destroyed.

I see you know quite a bit about WC; maybe you could help us with wcpedia. When in doubt I prefer to go back to real world references that WC was based on. In RL, flak was invented in Germany prior to WW2, and German flak guns were used in the Spanish Civil War. Here's a pic of their 88 mm flak batteries:



According to Wikipedia, "Their shells are usually fitted with different types of fuses (barometric, time-delay, or proximity) to send exploding metal fragments into the area of the target." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-aircraft).

IOW, they were/are manually aimed weapons, not expected to be used with precision, but able to deal at least some damage in spite of lack of precision. Basically a large fragmentation grenade that you throw in the path of a plane.

However, good aiming did not hurt, and if you could actually hit a craft with a flak munition, you'd score a kill for sure. And the German flak
gunners had a motto of "One shot; one kill", and trophies to go with it...
http://www.wehrmacht-awards.com/war_badges/heer/flak.htm

So, to whatever extent the flak cannons in WC were inspired in RL flak, they'd be a spread-area-damage munition, but could also shoot down a fighter at point-blank firing range, I suppose; so there may not need to be a contradiction there.

I'd say the manual is slightly incorrect in saying that "flak rounds are not dangerous singly".
At long range that would be true; but not at close range.
Perhaps flak needs to be better implemented in fan mods; --as bombs that explode kind of randomly in your general area and
ahead of your flight trajectory, and that deliver more damage the closer to you they detonate.

The German 88 was an "all purpose cannon". They used it for everything from artillery to anti-aircraft; I even think that’s the type of cannon the King Tiger tank used. During the battle of Bastogne they had the shells on a timer so they would explode in the trees above the entrenched American troops so that the trees themselves became the projectiles. This is an extension of Flak. On air raids the projectiles where also on timers based on elevation and meant to explode at that elevation. The shrapnel produced by the round was essentially a “shotgun” effect, it meant to rip the aircraft apart, and/or kill the pilots inside. That’s why the “Flak jacket” was created to give some protection to the airmen. But your right if the shell did hit the aircraft dead on before the timer went off it would down the plane. Pretty sure everyone has seen that footage of the B-17 on bombing run over Germany where the 88 hit it’s wing and blew it off, the “round” went through the wing then exploded somewhere above it.

In WC a laser/particle based flak cannon would be interesting, not sure how that would work since those type of weapons “in theory” travel a certain distance then dissipate based on the WC lore; there would be nothing to detonate to create a large blast. Then again it goes back to the post about cap ship names- Destroyers big as carriers, frigates with the power of battleships and so on. I don’t think the people at Origin really put much thought into ships, weapons, and other things based on their real life counterparts. I think it would make more sense to use a mass-driver type weapon for flak.

Tripitz, if you're knowledgeable on ships and armaments and battle roles, could you give me some feedback on this page I wrote?
Ship size classes and roles.
I did as much googling as possible to inform myself, to write that; but I'm not a military guy, and I fear the possibility I may have committed some major blunder.

I looked through it, a few things I noticed where:

Dreadnoughts: The term actually came up with the new class of British ship, the name of the first ship was called "Dreadnaught" it was the forerunner of the modern battleship. The guy who came up with it, forgive me I forget his name, but his family crest was the inspiration for the name as it said "Dread Naught" or not to fear, which was a good choice as Dreadnaught was a fully iron ship, in the days when wooded sail ships ruled the sea, which could cause no damage to this new type of ship. Size really had nothing to do with it. Ships like the Behemoth from WC probably didn’t fall into the category of “dreadnaught” or “battleship” but rather experimental type ship, new class or something strange. Actually if I were to equate Behemoth to anything it would be The Paris Gun or Anzio Annie Leopold Gun Since these where essentially giant movable guns, much like the Behemoth

Battle cruisers- This class of ship was built like a battleship in the sense of size and weaponry but it had a massive lack of armor. The idea was to have the firepower of a battleship with the speed of a much smaller ships. In a fight Battleship vrs Battlecruiser take a look at Bismarck vrs HMS Hood A quick summery is Due to the “Glass Jaw” of the Hood, Bismarck Destroyed her with one shell. I believe 3 salvo’s where fired by Bismarck the final struck the- I want to say aft magazine of the Hood and blew her up, there were only 3 survivors. Granted it was a lucky shot but in a fight between at true battleship and a battlecruiser the odds are in the favor of the battleship greatly. WC has no true Battleships that I can think of, though I have thought about how cool it would have been if one was added.

You also mentioned battlecruiser vrs carrier, your point is quite valid if the guns of a battlecruiser/ship came to bare on a carrier it would be over quickly. However, this only happened once in history to my knowledge.The German Battlecruiser Scharnhorst surprised the British Carrier HMS Glorious and sunk her. Surprise would have to favor the Battleship greatly for this to ever happen again and even in this day and age it just isn’t possible not to mention the WC timeline. Though I didn’t factor in nebula or some other stellar formations to add an element of surprise. Anyway that’s what Battlecruisers where like, Fast, Big guns, light armor. Though there was an exception to the rule. The Iowa-Class Was designed to have the full armaments of weapons and armor with a extremely fast speed, to keep up with fleet carriers. This class was essentially the greatest Battleship design ever made since they were active up until the first gulf war.

Cruisers- Modern cruisers are typically missile cruisers. The WC ones seem to be more like the WWII era cruisers. Moderate sized guns, fairly well armored. There were essentially two types of cruisers (this is from an American standpoint mind you) in this era. The light Cruisers, and the Heavy Cruisers. Both of these were considerably less armored and armed then the larger counterparts of Battlecruisers/ships. Heavy Cruisers typically had 8 inch guns, while light cruisers sported 6 inch. Now keep in mind that Battleships had anywhere from 14 inch, to the massive 18.1 inch guns like the Yamato-Class Though older Pre-WW1 Era and WW1 Era battleships had smaller guns, and they themselves much smaller ships. So there is a great difference in raw firepower, not to mention armor. You said the are “Heavily armed and armored, they may conceivably engage a small carrier-based fleet, and prevail by virtue of their longer endurance and superior firepower.” This was never a role of a cruiser, they were and always have been support ships. Though Heavy Cruisers did, at times operate alone, but then again that’s what happened to USS Indianapolis If you don’t know the story about this ship, look it up! Typically no naval ship is really designed to run alone, it’s not practical or safe by any means. Even the mighty Bismarck had backup.

Destroyers- There are many types of these historically, The Germans in WWII had the “normal” type of destroyers of that era and then the “Z-Class” Which had 5.9 inch guns, which was pretty much a light cruiser. Destroyers were always protection for the fleet, Destroyer Escorts Where used to hunt subs in the north Atlantic for the transports and “Frigates” (I’ll get to those in a bit). There were never designed to last for any amount of time against anything larger then their own class-type. They also served as torpedo platforms to take out larger ships as well. Gun duels however, not going to happen with a larger ship. I think escort Corvettes in WC probably fill the true role of what a Destroyer actually is.

Frigates - These are an oddball ship to classify. They can be warships, they can be transports, they can be missile frigates, they can be anti-submarine vessels, they can be radar detection… the list literally goes on. Added to that they come in all shapes and sizes. Pretty much saying a ship is a “frigate” doesn’t really describe it. During the age of sail however it was more about the size of the ship which made it a “frigate”, they had all types of names to distinguish size, schooner, brig, man of war, ect. In the WC universe I honestly don’t think “frigate” has a place, unless it's a “missile frigate” or “transport frigate” ect.

I need to hit they hay, I’ll look at more of it later, but for the most part your correct. Based on the WC universe, they, I mean the Origin design team didn’t really know a raft from a battleship when it came to naming classes for cap-ships. I hope this was the type of feedback you were looking for.

Exactly the type of feedback I was looking for. Thank you!

So, it seems that everything I said about "cruisers" I should have said for "battleships", which I didn't even have.
And my description of "frigate" is how I should be describing a "cruiser".
The games never mentioned "battleships" as a specific size-class; but Forstchen writes about "battleships" and
"battlewagons" in his Action Stations novel, about the start of the war in 2634.
BTW, I always write "dreadnaught" and then have to remind myself it's spelled "dreadnought"; but maybe it was
everybody else that was wrong. Not sure what to do about it; I think in WC there's only "dreadnought" and it means
basically "anything that's huge". Might have to leave it like that in order not to break canon down to fine dust.

Okay, back to the drawing board... I won't be able to edit the page until tonight; but what I think I'll do first, tonight, is
to make a table-form classification for naval ship size classes, for you to look at again and correct me; and only then
try to make a space-ship equivalent table.
The naval table I'm going to leave it there as a historical reference, and it will expose any semantic ambiguities and
overlaps and whatnot.
The space table, however, will be designed to make classifications less ambiguous, formalize and standardize WC
ships in future WC fan mods, and hopefully try to accommodate WC canon to some extent; but also establish well-
-defined roles for the classes, so that AI writers know exactly what kind of AI is needed for each kind of ship. And
hopefully, then, I can have your feedback on that work too.

I'll let you know after I take the first step.
Thanks again; this is really, really helpful.

Yeah pretty much. Agian though if I where to choose a ship that would fall into the catagory of "Battleship" I would have to say the Nephilim Tiamat-class Dreadnought. Agian this would be a hyper powered battleship, perhaps without the ship killer gun it would fit the role, and adding some primary very-powerful cannons that could take one ship out at a time, not the "entire fleet" as it did to the Kilrathi fleeet at the start of that game.



Yup. Agian Frigates are very hard to describe. They are a multi-faceted type ship with many different roles, at least through-out history



Yeah it really never does. Modern Battleships are essentially obsolete, as ship-to-ship combat hasn't really happened since Battle of Leyte Gulf. Now its all about long range missles and things of that nature. However, I could deffinatly see the role of the "Battleship" reappearing in space combat.




I really like the idea of mods incoorperating the idea of actual ship-type in referance to historicaly accurate designs. By this I mean a Destroyer taking on a cruiser with its primary guns and winning. it just wouldn't happen. However if the said destroyer got of some cap ship missles i.e. historicaly "torperdoes" that would be belivable, but even then unless ths cruiser was suprised the destroyer would take massive damage as futureistic cannons would most likly be extreemly accurate.



I would love to, mind you I'm no expert in this field by any means just somthing I've been interested in over the years. Most my knowledge is based on WWII era vessles as well. Then agian I feel that WC cap ships are really based on thier WWII era counterparts then modern ships, for the most part. By this I mean all the cap ships have anti-aircraft "guns" Modern warships use primaraly missles to take out aircraft with the exception being the Phalanx CIWS which offers the dual role of taking out incoming missles as well. Honestly I would love to see the WC counterpart of the Phalanx CIWS, a stormfire gun on crack so to speak

Tirpitz, we got a problem. I expected from your descriptions, and others I've read before, that a battlecruiser would have a lot less armor but be a lot faster than a battleship. However, In making the ship size classes historical table I talked about and putting the Bismark and Hood as examples, that when I look at the comparative stats, no such differenciation is evident.
http://www.hmshood.com/history/denmarkstrait/bismarck1.htm
The Bismark was slightly faster than the Hood, and armors were about the same. Are these two a bad example to use?

Let me look some stuff up, I don't think those armor ratings are correct. Bismarck was much more armored than Hood. Also, Hood was a MUCH older ship. I think there is somthing about Hood being re-fitted to be a more modern ship, but she had the same issues Titanic had with poor quality steel. If you take a look at the amount of firepower that was used on Bismarck that led to its destruction you will understand. Actually this was one of those mysteries for years until James Cameron did his documentry on for the discovery channel. For years the Germans argued that they scuttled her (sank her themselves with charges) and the British said they sunk her. James Cameron Finaly settled this disput while diving on the ships remains, she was in fact scuttled. For another look at that class of the ship, battleship Tirpitz , Bismarcks sister ship was sunk it took (from memory here could be wrong) 3-4 sorties from the british dropping no less then 8 10,000 pound bombs to sink her. Anyway let me look up some information, I have a few books that may help, but I know Hood was a far less powerful ship then Bismarck.

Here is a Great referance for armor ratings for Bismarck:
http://www.kbismarck.com/proteccioni.html

Here is a pretty detailed look at Hood:
http://www.hmshood.com/ship/hoodspecs2.htm

you will notice that the armor varies throught the armor belt. where is Bismarck's did not. She did have strong spots, but also had some very weak ones.

This is a good example, if people get past all the "what if's" and "how do you know's?" Bismarck sunk Hood not Prinz Eugen This was also debated but proved to be impossible in Cameron's documentory. Anyway look over those specs, I'll try to find more info when time permits. kinda busy with RL atm. Probably later tonight or tomorrow.

Oh, one other thing. Not all things are created equal. for example many battleships had 16 inch guns, however, a 16 inch .45 caliber gun was less powerfull then a 16 inch .50 caliber gun. Also take into the aspect of age, this plays a pivital role on ships in battle. older less refined steel will buckle under fire much faster then better tempered high quality steel. Bismarck was a brand spankin' new ship when she sank Hood, this was may of 1941, Hood however was created in September 1916, huge difference in age, and ship design there.

I think the variations in hoods armor, (agian, all from memory) was like it is to create more speed, but in a whole much less armored. Agian 29 knots in 1916 for a ship of that size and weight is hauling butt.

Well, let's take the Bismark's horizontal protection graphic from your link. It says the top section of the sides is 145 mm; the main belt, at the water line is 320 mm thick. Side hull armor under water is 170 mm thick.
Looking at the Hood, it says the main belt was 305 mm at mid-ships, tapering down to 127 mm at the front, and 152 mm at the back. The top section of the sides was 127 mm thick.
So, over-all, it was less armored, but not by much. From reading the history of the battle, from your previous link, it seems to me that the Hood was never hit at the forward or aft ends, where the armor tapered; the killer was a shot that hit at deck level, at the base of the tower. Both ships had much thinner armor at the top deck, around 50 mm; so that shot probably collapsed the deck and made ammo stores in the ship's interior explode. In fact, they described the explosion as being like a cone of fire rising from around the base of the tower. Lucky shot I'd say. Well, not lucky, exactly; the Bismark's gunners had been refining their aiming through successive approximations, so they finally scored; whereas the Hood's gunners had been impeded from taking aiming, --first by mixing up the Eugene with the Bismark, and then hampered by the the Hood's maneuvers.
But in general, the Hood's armor doesn't seem to me to be a whole lot weaker than the Bismark's; and their max speed, according to that website was about one knot less than the Bismark's max speed.
To me, something doesn't seem right about the classification of the Hood as a "battlecruiser".
Wikipedia's Battlecruiser page doesn't even mention the Hood.

EDIT:
Had spent a long time writing my post and missed your last one.
Okay, if there's such a big age disparity, then maybe this is not a good example of battleship vs. battlecruiser action.
And it seems to me, from reading that wikipedia page, that battlecruisers were all the rage in WW1, which means that by WW2 perhaps the name "battlecruiser" is still around, but used for ships that already depart widely from the original spirit. Maybe better examples would be to take two WW1 battleships, one Brittish, one German; and compare them to two WW1 battlecruisers, one Brittish, one German. I'm going to read the wikipedia article again but more carefully and following the links.

A few quotations from the Wikipedia article... Actually, first a quote from Wikipedia's HMS Dreadnaught page:


Now back to Wikipedia's Battlecruiser page:

So, same guy who came up with the dreadnaught idea later came up with the battlecruiser idea...


So, there are at least two different definitions of "battlecruiser", with "greater speed" being the common element.


IOW, as I suspected, our best bet is to base our analysis on WW1 ship comparisons.


So, battlecruisers, rather than cruisers or battleships, are the ones that were not intended to be parts of a fleet.


So, we were right... BTW, the HMS Dreadnaught had a max speed of 21 knots. I think water drag increases polynomially with speed, ergo doubling of power to go from 21 to 24 knots...

Chuck check this out Battle of Jutland This was the second largets naval battle in history.

I think this excerpt pretty much summarizes Jutland:

I agree

The problem with finding a "perfect" Battleship vrs battlecruiser is that very few ship to ship engagments happened in WWII. I mean there was guadalcanal, leyete gulf and a handful of others but WWII for the capital ship like battleships was eclipsed by the carrier. the bottom line is battlecruiser wither lightly armored or lacking guns either scenario ends in disaster for the battlecruiser. there is always the "lucky shot" scenerio but on a whole a ship that is less armored or has weaker guns going agianst a larger, more armored, better gnunned ship is pretty much a no-win situation. this is not including torpedo's mind you as they can change the outcome of a battle.

Also my knowledge is very limited about WWI. Jutland is the only real battle i know about. I know the british HAD the ability to have better fire control with a new stabilizer design but opted no to buy it as it was to expensive, which in the end cost them greatly.

Yep; I've been arriving to the same conclusion. Well, the war in the Pacific very quickly turned into a carrier vs. carrier, long range war. The war in the Atlantic was more about submarines. And then the Cold War was about ultraquiet submarines, and long range ship to ship missiles.
For ship to ship battles it looks like WW1 is the reference.


IF misused; IOW, battlecruisers were meant to beat on smaller guys, and to flee from the big guys; but they were misused. Heck, battlecruiser weren't even meant to battle battlecruisers, when you think of it; like the theory behind it broke the old tradition that the armor of a ship should resist a shot of its own guns; so battlecruiser vs. battlecruiser would be a gamble... whoever scores first wins.


What does "fire control" mean, exactly? I thought it would have to do with accuracy, but Wikipedia said that the English ships had better fire control, but that the Germans had more accuracy.

My guess would be rate of fire or perhaps the time it takes to "bracket" another ship.

Yeah, rate of fire must be it. In fact, the article also said that the English were very keen on keeping up rate of fire, and that they kept bags of cordite near the turrets to ensure no slowdowns; --and paid a heavy price for it, as the cordite they used would explode rather than burn (like the German cordite did) when a shell hit the turret.

Fire control, by this I mean the ability to shoot accuratly, range finders and such. A fella came up with a new stabilizer for the guns, so the pitch and rolll of the sea wouldn't effect where the projectile was going when fired. The british decided this tech was great, but too expensive.



This is essentially correct. The first hit doesn't reallly mean instant win, damage control plays a major role. If you want to try a game that is pretty damn histoically accurate try Great Naval Battles of the North Atlantic This is where my love of battleships came from, its super old and might need dosbox but worth it if your into this type of game, there were like 5 of these games in the series but after this one they changed alot of the interface and they sucked imo. Anyway, Big ships like lets take Bismarck for example had its armor belt, and behind it was a bubble, then more armor angled differently. The idea was if a projectile or torpedo got past it the slight angle change would stop the round from penetraiting further. This is why the Brits couldn't sink her. Bismarck and Tirpitz were really amazingly well designed ships. As for taking a hit from equal caliber shells as they held this was pretty true, however the Iowa class where rated to withstand Yamato's 18.1 guns at a range that was really close, I forget what it was but it was amazing. USS Missouri (BB-63) Took a direct hit from a Kamakazi and was for the most part undamaged. The Iowa class was the pennicale of battleship design. Well the Montana Class Would of been the Super-Battleship had they finished them. Anyway I'm getting off track. My point is behind the armor belt there is dead space, so if a round gets through it might not cause anyd actual damage. Only if the round hits somthing critical will one shot turn the tide of battle, the magazine obviously would be catastrophic like in the case of HMS Hood.

Gosh; this Iowa class is pretty unbelievable; 17 inch armor upstairs in the citadel... Wonder how thick is the waterline belt...

Anyways, I think a picture is starting to emerge about a plausible WC naval history. Thing is, there are no equivalents of battleships or battlecruisers in the early games; but there are mentions of battleships in Forstchen's Action Stations novel, about the start of the war in 2634. It seems to me, then, that we could parallelize WC with 20th Century naval history. The beginning of the war would have featured similar ship classes and tactics as WW1, whereas by 2654 the emphasis had shifted to carriers. Actually, the opening of the war, the Battle of McAuliffe, was intended (by the kats) to be a carrier battle; but their planning was new and experimental; so we could say that their shift to carrier based tactics was in its infancy. The Confeds had more battleships than carriers stationed at McAuliffe, but lost them all at the opening stages of the battle. Aside from a few cruisers and destroyers, most of their fleet action was off the Concordia and the Ark Royal. Their qualified success at repelling the kats under such numerical disadvantage (4:1 or 6:1) must indeed have shaped subsequent shipyard orders. Ironically, the kats must have learned the wrong lesson, blaming their faliure on the experimental tactic (which tactic itself was sound and successful); and this would help explain their heavy reliance on cruisers in the WC1 and WC2 eras. Sub-standard fighters and poorly trained pilots would have helped cement their skepticism about carriers.

Really cool photo here of the kamakazi on Missouri


When the ship was near my home I talked to a guy who was in this photo, in the first 5 inch gun emplacment you can see nearest to the plane. That guy had some really awesome stories to tell. My dad and I were looking at the ship and I asked, "why is there a dent there?", then the old man told us the story, really all the plane did was make a small dent. Though the planes wing broke off and flew over to the next 5 inch gun, it was on fire so the men where scrambling to get the gun powder out and they tossed it in the ocean so it didn't explode, it was pretty scary the guy said, really crazy too, iirc no one was hurt; well the japanese pilot but thats a give in. A bit off topic but I figured you appreciate the pic

I think I'll start writing a tentative history of the evolution of ships and tactics on both sides of the border, and see where it leads.
Might be more interesting than having just tables of ship sizes and whatnots.