I agree, The WC universe as stated before has thier own ideas on what ships are and stuff. it goes back to the dev team in the first place. We shoudln't really mess with it. I mean for the most part they are accurate when it comes to fighters/bombers and carriers, there is this "grey" area when it comes to offensive tank-type cap ships and thier role. Whos to say in the future destroyers are more battleship-like. Realistically though the types of ships in the real world have kept thier design and class throughout history with some exceptions. It might be more interesteing to take specific ships and group them with like-class. The war was really long like a cosmic "War of the Roses". So a Ralari wouldn't hold up to a like-ship from WC: Prophecy. Heck I think the WCIII Cat Corvette would own it. Perhaps a time-line based list would be more effecient, like you're saying. Show what could possible be the upgrade from the generation before or somthing. Like Carrires, they went through a transistion period, starting off being converted transport ships with a flight deck bolted to the top, to the traditinal "from the ground up" carrier design, to the split deck for more modern aircraft, to the more impressive Nimitz class supercarrier which could be related to the Midway in WC Lore.

Just realized we are on page three, this post has gone way off topic from when I first posted it LOL

Even though WC canon is full of those "grey areas", as you put it, doesn't mean that in future mods (or even better, official big budget WC games), the devs can't use examples from real history to expand on their classes and improve AI to where the ships are clearly defined and function in real time as they should according to their class.

Monkhouse said it better on the ship-size classes page of WCpedia:



That prospect is actually quite exciting. I'm always interested in AI improvements as I feel too many developers focus mainly on graphics over such an important aspect of the goal of complete immersion in the universe.



That's where that handy "split topic" button comes in.

I only know what i have picked up from my research.



I must say that while the 88 was cool the 4mm was cooler. Couple 4 4mm together with a higher rate of fire and you have something awsome. One of my father's family served on a Half truck mounted 4mm Flak turret.

I will answer the rest of the posts later as it is almost 2400hrs and i have school at 0900hrs tomorrow.

Gotta leave for work but I just wanted to say thanks to all for keeping this very interesting thread alive and high quality. Yes, I think I'll split the ships and weapons discussion when I get back tonight.

Indeed, the evolution of carriers IS somewhat reflected in WC canon. In Action Stations, the diversionary force that attacks the Landreich in 2634 includes at least one carrier that is actually a modified cruiser, as opposed to the true carriers that attack McAuliffe.

I've been working heavily in completing and updated the Wing Commander's Pre-War Ships page.
AFAIK, nearly all named classes are in. What remains to do is the carriers, and a lot of ships that are mentioned but whose classes remain nameless.
These include most of the capital ships involved (or destroyed at port) in the Battle of McAuliffe.

UPDATE:
I'm gradually adding carriers and unnamed classes to the pre-war/pre-wc1 ships page, while at the same time writing up the Battle of McAuliffe story.

The Flak from WC was obviously based on the 88's which would explain why it is slow, strong yet still capable against smaller craft.

Torpedoes. From some sources they are supposed to be REALLY strong missiles that bypass Phase Shielding to explode on ship armor. But, if several were capable of destroying a carrier then why did the attacker always launch hundreds of bombers? Sure the Defenders would try to shoot them down but still... Why not smaller bombs that have no lock but all the diagnostics are done on board the ship? These would have to be much smaller as this would be unfair.

k


Yep. High speed phase shield penetration technology was first developed (or stolen from some race) by the kilrathi. It was a new technology to the Confeds at the time of McAuliffe (2634). Some of the kilrathi torpedoes failed to detonate, reportedly because one part was often put in backwards, presumably sabotage by the slaves that manufactured weapons for the kats, allowing the confies to reverse-engineer them. (See Battle of McAuliffe.) So, by the time of WC1, confed and kat torpedoes are equal in technology. Apparently both sides have also upgraded phase shielding technology to counter high speed penetration, so torpedoes again become slow attack weapons.
Typical torpedo explosive power can take out a carrier's engine, or cause a hull breach if it hits a carrier on a side. To actually blast a carrier to kingdom come would indeed take several torpedo hits; ---though the second Concordia (the Confederation class one) got killed by a single lucky torpedo, because apparently it had approached a planet at suborbital speed, so it needed to use engine power to get back out, but at that moment it lost one of its engines to a torpedo, so it couldn't avoid falling into the atmosphere.


Where did you hear this figure of "hundreds" of bombers?! The largest battles in WC were McAuliffe and Battle of Earth, and neither one involves even as many as one hundred bombers, AFAIK. But I guess you launch as many bombers as you think are needed. At McAuliffe, Gilkarg sends a strike force of 6 bombers and 24 fighters to attack Concordia. Fighters from Concordia concentrate on the bombers, managing to destroy 4 of them. The last two launch two torpedoes each. Tolwyn shoots one down. Another pilot crashes his plane on another torpedo to take it out. A third torpedo hits the Concordia on the side, breaching the hull, starting a massive fire in one deck, killing 100 personnel, filling the ship with smoke. The fourth torpedo entered the Concordia through the hole left by the third, but failed to detonate. So Concordia can still fight, which proves that 6 bombers were not enough; one or two more would have made all the difference.
and often did. Sorry? What "diagnostics"?
I don't understand. In any case, if you're inventing some new weapon, it's been done before. The problem with new weapons, or rather, the biggest problem coming up with good new weapons is to maintain game balance. All weapons have to have pros and cons that balance out. Torpedoes are very powerful, but they take a long time to acquire lock, "synchronize to the target phase shield frequency" supposedly to be able to get through it, and being slow, can be taken out by point defenses. Not sure if this was modeled in the games; though it should be if it isn't. One tactic used in 2668 by both Max Krueger in the Landreich and by Tolwyn at Sirius, was to have regular IFF missiles fired at carriers while torpedoes were on their way. The IFF missiles were faster than the torpedoes, so they'd arrive first; and they'd do no damage but would blind the point defenses momentarily, increasing the chances of torpedoes making it through to their targets. A tactic like this should work in-game as well. Which, BTW, I'd rather expend efforts on making current weapons more tricky to use, more interesting and better balanced, than to try to come up with new ones. But if you were just posing a question, like "wouldn't it be better for them to do X", then yes, there are a bazillion things that could be made to make better sense thoughtout. Heck, why aren't jump points fully mined, like 90% of the time? It would kind of ruin the game, if they were, though; when you think about it.

UPDATE:
Finished the Battle of McAuliffe WCpedia page. Next I'll complete the missing ships in the pre-war ships page.

Urgh, sorry chuck i was just having a rant about how much i hat lock times

take a look at this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:B-17_Schweinfurt.jpg

Holly smoke!

Not sure if it'd be worth trying to represent flak realistically. Problem is, in the WC universe, shields are
magical things that can stop high velocity projectiles. The whole point of flak is to put a lot of little
projectiles (fragmentation grenades) on the assumption that if you hit one of them you're probably
toast; but that wouldn't be so in WC. Thoughts?

Well, shields stop the projectiles up to a point, every blast deteriorates the shield's energy until it gives out and the physical armor is exposed. Or did I misunderstand something?

A tiny projectile from a fragmentation grenade carries relatively little energy, so it wouldn't take much energy out of the shields.

In real life, the fact that that little energy is so concentrated is significant: If it hits your windshield it can crack it or go through it, depending on the windshield's material. But with WC's shields, concentration of the energy means nothing apparently. Only the total energy counts for wearing down the shield. Of course it makes no sense; --or at least begs the question "how do shields work?"; but I'm just saying it how it is.

What we could perhaps try would be to make "flak" be shells that explode upon impacting a shield, rather than grenades that explode in the vecinity of the target. So, like a mass driver, but with explosive rounds. That would put a good portion of the energy right at the shields.

It seems that missiles should be bypassing the fighters shields. if one remembers before phase shields your dumbfire and IFF could be used against capships. But then Phase shielding came on the line rendering dart and IFF (and others) useless and bringing in Torps.

Fighters can't mount phase shielding and that would explain why less missiles were needed. The missiles just bypass shielding and impact on the hull.

Since we will probably never be able to see real shields, let's assume they're there and create the "best" physical explanation for why they're working, and how. If we consider canon what we see in WC, shields can also repel energy bursts like from lasers, not only projectiles. I can think of 2 kinds of shields:

Static shields: Non-recharging, consumpting a certain power, like 600 whatevers, and when you're hit by 800 whatevers, 200 whatevers pass your shields and do damage (without causing the shields to reduce or collapse).

Dynamic shields: Those we see in WC, let's say you've 5000 whatevers shield strength and get hit by 800 whatevers, you got 4200 whatevers left until you suffer from damage (but your shields can recharge).

Talking about projectiles, we often see those things passing shields, like proton torpedos.
I agree that flaks work like nail bombs or machine guns: wasting loads of ammo to finally get one or two hits. However, I think it's not necessary to consider flaks as guns capable of killing a foe in one shot. The point is:
a) In WW2 there was no other way to stop fighters. No missiles, neither infrared nor radar.
b) Flaks are cheap. Even if WW2 had more powerful rapid ground-to-air guns, it would've been be a waste of money, ammo, you name it.
c) Today's planes hit by flaks may loose fuel, but don't explode when being shot at.

I think WC flaks could be guns like I built on my Fireblade: Fast, low reloading time, but weak.

Did anybody EVER switch in a turret and fight manually? It's nearly impossible to hit the foe. Imagine you were sitting in a capship as a turret gunner. Frustrating, isn't it? Your best chance is to hit the big, sluggy Bombers, but even those can evade your plasma gun shots. But they cannot evade a rapid flak. They can take some hits though, but they cannot stay too long in the vincinity of a capship then.
Are we talking about projectile flaks? I mean, energy-related flaks could also be possible, right?

Yeah, well, the canonical story is that shields seem to work better on fast-moving objects. Phasing shields can stop fast-traveling missiles, but can't stop slow-moving torpedoes.
Non-phase (fighter) shields can't stop missiles, but can block mass-driver rounds, which travel a lot faster than missiles.
The difference is quantitative.
Shrapnel from fragmentation bombs would be very fast-moving, and therefore be more block-able by a fighter's shields.

Don't get me wrong; I hate the way shields are defined in canon; they make no physical sense; but that's the way they are.

Very true; which makes it even more difficult to figure out how they supposedly work.


Yeah, if shields were some kind of electromagnetic field, they'd work against protons, but would fail to stop neutrons; but I don't think the Origin guys could tell a proton from a neutron.

Yeah, maybe we can just forget the science and just work on visual tricks. Make flak look like it creates many "sparks" (explosions) around the ship, and just plug in some numbers for damage, and be done with it.

The power of energy weapons rests on the idea of tight beams; but we could think of the beam-equivalent of a fragmentation grenade: An explosive charge that, for a microsecond or so, causes multiple tight beams to be radiated from a pineapple-like thing full of little lasers or something, that use the explosive material as a power source, before being obliterated.

[/quote]Or, use similar handwavium as noted with the "projectile" flak. Call it a "Tachyon pulse" or "Plasma Bubble" and instead of sparks/explosions, make it a bubble/blast ring. If you want "science" behind it, say "We're using the same basic throw-away components of the cannon, but without the expensive focusing devices. The result is a small, uncontrollable burst of energy."

(just my two cents....I'm just trolling right now )

I now have my evidance. What other gun can destroy a undamaged Broadsword in one shot. AFAIK only flak. I was fighting a capship and was getting my lock for a torp while dodging these projectiles from this ship. In one hit this project destroyed me. There was no one around and i was undamaged.

Also, i was fighting a ship with no wingman. Just one ship. I could never get a shot in so i fired my two Dart Dumbfires and the ship went up in a bang. There was No damage to the shields.

Dilloh's suggestion of a HK1303-styled gun is not bad, but that's closer in principle to an M61 Vulcan than a flak battery.

The problem I see with doing physical flak is in how the VS engine handles physical projectiles; it has them in the same class as ships, just smaller and a lot more painful if they smack into you. (Which is presumably the reason you can tractor in missiles and fly them.)

The confed had mounted on every capship Gatling Mass Drivers to throw up a lead wall for incoming torps. So this is already on cap ships. A flak was described by Paladin to a younger pilot as a slow cloudy inaccurate projectile that could destroy a fighter in one hit. That picture shows that up. Sure most flak can't destroy a fighter in one hit but if my grandpa is correct (he should know he's an expert on flaks, his father manned 3.7cm [not 4cm]) the 88 could be used against smaller fighters as well as larger bombers.

In wc a flak is used mainly on bombers and cap ships. I would say there slow, inaccurate easy to dodge because there not meant for small ships, but if needs be you can use them on fighters.



Yep, when i fly my paradigm i fight in the turret. You get used to it after a while esp. if you have lots of ships to shoot at.

IIRC, WCU has an ammo-related gun which works - and I also remember rlaan put it into his "PrivatStrike". So basically this works, though I don't know if you can tractor in incoming ammonution. Bascially, I'd also say that physical flaks would be handled as warheads.

I guess the visual effect we're talking about is to have "spread" projectiles, like coming out of a shotgun, and I doubt that there's already code for that kind. Every hit on the fire-key launches one warhead, or one energy burst, but not multiple.
Good point. However, I wouldn't want to work as a turret gunner then.
Player's turret success is also related to the considerably dumb AI. Flying a straight line towards a capship is simply dumb. On an attack run, a human player would approach a foe with some sort of evasive maneuver.

Also, don't understate a Paradigms shields. Sitting in a smaller ship, a turret gunner needs to be precise and have fast guns, for he may not survive long enough to wait for the golden shot.

Yeah, that's correct. Could just get it out of WCU. I have it on our Desktop and last time i played it i had a Centurion with four.


You don't have to make it spread through multiple projectiles, just make the initial shot slightly inaccurate.


The way i think of it is the turret gunner is just a support gunner helping the pilot.


Yeah, you NEVER fly in a straight line, which in a broadsword you have to do. Damn, that thing flies like a beached whale.


I suppose why many peopel went to AI turrets. Cheaper too If your gonna mount turrets you should have lasers or mensons as there fast and light. The Confed used beefed up lasers and gatling mass drivers

Another way of representing flak could be just multiple random explosions (flashes); --but without clouds (no clouds in vacuum; just constant speed spheres that dissipate quickly to invisibility). The little warheads would be programmed automatically as they are fired to explode after a time calculated so it will have covered the current range to the target at the time of firing. At least this would be the textual explanation; though the actual programming might be amenable to simplification. For modelling damage, well, damage to shields would be a simple gaussian squared of the distance of an explosion; but once the shield is down, damage would be constant beyond a certain distance (assuming a single fragment hits you, being that the fragment doesn't lose energy ever, there being no air-drag in space) but with the gaussian function modulating the probability of damage (chances that you'll catch that fragment). At less than the "single fragment distance" damage could be assumed to include a number of assured fragments, plus a number of probabilistic ones.
But maybe I'm dreaming in technicolor; I don't know how bolts or munitions are handled in the VS engine, or how easy it would be to time-delay them, as opposed to collision-detect them.

That's also a problem, technically speaking. Those guns are all in a static position. I'd need to put them onto a turret (okay they'd be on a turret if used on capships) and give them a really dumb AI.
Not for sure - I'd activate my turrets and "paint" an 8 with my joystick while approaching the enemy - I never saw an AI which cracked this maneuvers. You can also use your standard guns for that - the bigger the ship you attack is, the more hits you make.
Exactly my thoughts! A turret on a moving object is inaccurate enough - why annoy the gunners with sluggy, slow-recharching guns additionally then?
I know what you mean - yes.
Your idea wouldn't need too much additional work. I could simulate a flak turret with the following attributes:
1) Use a missile turret as model (z30 got one into PU)
2) Give it 5000 missiles (=rounds), 0.2 seconds reloading time
3) Make the missiles extremely fast, low firepower and give them weak internal radars. This way each warhead will divert a bit from its course while tracking a foe it cannot catch at this speed (except of it is straight in its way). Also create a new explosion ani as you suggested
4) Remodel the "warhead" - a simple yellow stripe should do it.
However, we'd have the following problems since missiles are objects:
a) The rounds would be targettable
b) Rounds which have hit or flew to far away explode and leave object debris. I somehow don't see this as a problem since loads of little debris might look cool, however I'd like to see it first...
From what I've seen, hull/armor damage is not being displayed anyway, or at least not correctly, no matter if bolts or warheads hit a ship. The Tarsus has some sort of "smoky skin" which appears if the hull goes <50%, but that's all. I assume VS has no code for allocating damage textures to their respective positions.