Wing Commander vs FreeSpace

[TC]

Unfortunately that usenet post is stupid...

Klicks are kilometers, it even says kilometers right in the manuals.

Fighters cruise in the hundreds of kilometers a second range, they engage at approximately, 1/1000 of that speed, depending on conditions.

Basic Wing Commander Fighter Propulsion:

Wing Commander ships are fueled by gathering large amounts of hydrogen from space with huge electromagnetic ramscoops. The scoops, when open, cause a drag force. This is what gives the ships a maximum cruising speed. Fighters have rather small fuel tanks and cannot spend much time with their scoops off, so you don't see them travelling in a newtonian fashion very often.

Combat:

When in a position where there are a number of fighters manuevering close together the large ramscoops quickly eat up much of the surrounding hydrogen, as a result, fuel is limited. Maximum sustainable speed drops as a result. The proportion between speeds is still comparable, but isn't in kilometers per second.

Capital Ships:

Capital ships have nice big fuel tanks. They will, quite often, turn off their scoops and run around in a newtonian manner. However, they also have a maximum speed with scoops on for the same reasons as fighters.

[Bob McDob]

Wing Commander 3 time period is silly.
Should I remind everyone about Wing Commander 4's flashpacks?

Which aren't used anymore . . . possibly because the Vesuvius armor could deflect it. Blair could do it, that's like saying Alpha 1 can . . .

The Behemoth planet-killer?

Which, going by the WCIII novel may discharge as "little" as 120MT.

The Vesuvius super carrier (pretty damn impressive maneuverability for such a large ship)

Programming error. The Vesuvius didn't have any maneuverability programmed into it so it did whatever it liked. It's probably more accurate to use the WCIV cutscene where Tolwyn orders the Vesuvius full 180.

and the Dragon Heavy Fighter?

Outclassed by the Vampire in almost every regard.

[Shinova]

The fact remains that WC is very self-contradictory.

It takes many many seconds to cross from one end of the Midway to the other, yet your speeds are rated in kps. Additionally, the manual and box state Midway to be 1.8km long.

Someone once actually calculated the fighter speeds of kps and the time it took to cross midway and came up with a length of something in the hundreds of thousands of kilometers for the Midway.



A side note: It's impossible to fight at kps speeds. Anyone ever hacked into the tbl files in FS2 and jacked up the speeds for all ships? I did once. LOLOLOL ^_^

[Shinova]

The autoslide makes WC fighters superior to FS fighters in terms of maneuverability, that much I'm sure anyone can admit.



Also about phased shielding and FS beams:

FS beams, both anti-cap and anti-fighter penetrate shielding as if it were nothing and strike the hull itself. The only exception would be the Lucifer but that's cause of the invulnerability tag so we can discount Lucifer.

[Bob McDob]

Wing Commander 3 time period is silly.
Should I remind everyone about Wing Commander 4's flashpacks?

Which aren't used anymore . . . possibly because the Vesuvius armor could deflect it. Blair could do it, that's like saying Alpha 1 can . . .

The Behemoth planet-killer?

Which, going by the WCIII novel may discharge as "little" as 120MT.

The Vesuvius super carrier (pretty damn impressive maneuverability for such a large ship)

Programming error. The Vesuvius didn't have any maneuverability programmed into it so it did whatever it liked. It's probably more accurate to use the WCIV cutscene where Tolwyn orders the Vesuvius full 180.

and the Dragon Heavy Fighter?

Outclassed by the Vampire in almost every regard.

[Bob McDob]

The fact remains that WC is very self-contradictory.

It takes many many seconds to cross from one end of the Midway to the other, yet your speeds are rated in kps. Additionally, the manual and box state Midway to be 1.8km long.

Someone once actually calculated the fighter speeds of kps and the time it took to cross midway and came up with a length of something in the hundreds of thousands of kilometers for the Midway.



A side note: It's impossible to fight at kps speeds. Anyone ever hacked into the tbl files in FS2 and jacked up the speeds for all ships? I did once. LOLOLOL ^_^

I'm going to put this as simply as possible, please brush me up on my basic physics if I screw this up:

The maximum speed of a car can be, say 250 KPH. We all know, though, that due to friction, the car will not be able to MAINTAIN a constant 250KPH unless it's moving in a straight line.

It's the same with Wing Commander . . . only this time, the ships have to suck up hydrogen fuel to maneuver. Ships use large plasma fields to scoop up hydrogen. These are fairly large, and generate a rather significant amount of drag. This isn't the real reason, though. WC ships use maneuvering jets, so the fuel that went into pure speed is now diverted into maneuvering. As for the speeds they are actually going at now, 180 MPS seems reasonable enough.

It's worth noting that with scoops closed, ship speeds are limited only by relativity.

[weemadando]

Unfortunately that usenet post is stupid...

Klicks are kilometers, it even says kilometers right in the manuals.

Remember the debaters trademark, visuals override dialogue.

[TC]

Wow... you live in some sort of crazy world where wrong things are ignored? We've seen ships travelling at those speeds throughout various Wing Commander material. We know they slow in combat. What's the problem?

[Hotfoot]

Unfortunately that usenet post is stupid...

Klicks are kilometers, it even says kilometers right in the manuals.

Remember the debaters trademark, visuals override dialogue.

Games are somewhat different than movies and Television, however. Objects will be resized so as not to make things completely invisible or tremendously large (case in point, Homeworld, Warcraft, Command and Conquer, so on and so forth). In such cases, visuals cannot necessarily be trusted as accurate sources of information. Also, by using "visuals override dialogue" logic for games, the Lucifer from FreeSpace is completely invulnerable to all weapons in realspace. Why, it acts as though it wasn't being attacked at all. You could pump a few teratons into the darn thing and its hull wouldn't even get warm.

And then there are patches. Game fixes, balance adjustments. Things start to act a little differently than they did before. Even from sequel to sequel, things have been known to change. PPCs, lasers, and gauss cannons changed dramatically from MW2 to MW3, for example.

In games, dialogue seems to take more precedence in my experience, as it's more a part of the universe than the game is. The game itself is just a simulation of the universe, a close approximation.

[Alyeska]

The autoslide makes WC fighters superior to FS fighters in terms of maneuverability, that much I'm sure anyone can admit.



Also about phased shielding and FS beams:

FS beams, both anti-cap and anti-fighter penetrate shielding as if it were nothing and strike the hull itself. The only exception would be the Lucifer but that's cause of the invulnerability tag so we can discount Lucifer.

FS shielding is not standard shielding. FS shielding does prevent ship colissions nor does it stop every missile weapon. Simply put, FS shielding is different from WC shielding. Just because FS beams pass through FS shields does not mean FS beams pass through WC shields.

[Bob McDob]

The autoslide makes WC fighters superior to FS fighters in terms of maneuverability, that much I'm sure anyone can admit.



Also about phased shielding and FS beams:

FS beams, both anti-cap and anti-fighter penetrate shielding as if it were nothing and strike the hull itself. The only exception would be the Lucifer but that's cause of the invulnerability tag so we can discount Lucifer.

FS shielding is not standard shielding. FS shielding does prevent ship colissions nor does it stop every missile weapon. Simply put, FS shielding is different from WC shielding. Just because FS beams pass through FS shields does not mean FS beams pass through WC shields.

And vice-versa . . .

[Shinova]

Wow... you live in some sort of crazy world where wrong things are ignored? We've seen ships travelling at those speeds throughout various Wing Commander material. We know they slow in combat. What's the problem?

Yes, visuals obviously contradict the numbers, yet many people stick to the numbers. Probably cause they're more "concrete".

Either way, I try to combine common sense with visuals.


My analysis:

Final Outcome : WC wins (And I'm a FS fan)

Why:

Capships : I believe FS capships have a edge in this department (Assuming we ignore the kps figures). However WC still wins because they have more capships and can build faster.

Fighters : WC fighters are probably superior, most likely in terms of speed and maneuverability. I'm not certain about firepower though.


Thus, I think WC wins, since they have more ships and better construction capabilities.

[Bob McDob]

Actually, going by this site's standards, the novels override all.

Final Outcome : WC wins (And I'm a FS fan)

And I'm the exact opposite . . . possibly because of my comparitavely low numbers for WC, which can be found in my sig . . .

[Slartibartfast]

Velocities are ALWAYS stated in kps. Even during a dogfight, you set your speed to kps. In fact, the stated MAX speed is higher than the stated CRUISE speed, and it is the exact same amount that shows in the screeen (plus/minus 1 kps but that's definitely due to some fractions rounding in trig calcs - it changes according to heading)

Yes, KLICKS in real life are kilometers. There's no doubt about that. There's also no doubt that the ships in WC don't travel at kps speeds. No lame explanation about "running out of hydrogen" changes that. And if carriers were traveling at relativistic speeds, it would be impossible for fighters to catch up. The manual states that speed is relative to a nearby 'stationary' target, so having a 'maximum velocity' in space is ludicrous, if you can accelerate you can do it indefinitely. Just the fact that the speed is relative to some nearby astral body means that it's not some velocity related to some obscure 'full stop' state in the void of space, so there's no 'speed limit' no matter how much hydrogen they have available.

[Slartibartfast]

Unfortunately that usenet post is stupid...

Klicks are kilometers, it even says kilometers right in the manuals.

Remember the debaters trademark, visuals override dialogue.

Games are somewhat different than movies and Television, however. Objects will be resized so as not to make things completely invisible or tremendously large (case in point, Homeworld, Warcraft, Command and Conquer, so on and so forth). In such cases, visuals cannot necessarily be trusted as accurate sources of information. Also, by using "visuals override dialogue" logic for games, the Lucifer from FreeSpace is completely invulnerable to all weapons in realspace. Why, it acts as though it wasn't being attacked at all. You could pump a few teratons into the darn thing and its hull wouldn't even get warm.

And then there are patches. Game fixes, balance adjustments. Things start to act a little differently than they did before. Even from sequel to sequel, things have been known to change. PPCs, lasers, and gauss cannons changed dramatically from MW2 to MW3, for example.

In games, dialogue seems to take more precedence in my experience, as it's more a part of the universe than the game is. The game itself is just a simulation of the universe, a close approximation.

Indeed, but the people at Origin themselves admitted that they used 'klicks' because it sounded better than 'some arbitrary measurement value'. They didn't have kilometers in mind. The manuals go thru every possible effort to not show what a klick is (only the SNES manual states kilometers, I think, while the PC manuals states that fights are done within METERS of each other, which is more or less consistent with visuals). In practice, WC ships aren't any faster than FS ships.

About the Lucifer, unless you hack the code and see the invulneravility flag, there's no reason to believe that Lucifer is impervious to attack. Heck, even the X-Wing games had an 'unkillable' flag, geez, that's because these games are STORY driven and you're not supposed to kill the Lucifer (or some of the ISDs in X-Wing) UNTIL the game says you can.

In-game, all you see is that it has a really strong shield that can't be damaged by anything FROM the game.

Yes, I agree that it is simplification, that ships go to such low speeds (less than a racing car) and if there are novelizations then these values would be fudged. But then they don't really care about continuity, they only care about their cool space fighting game and how ships blow up. If we want to go with those values, like for instance that two ships are dogfighting at a distance of 2000 meters yet each one is traveling at 400 km/s opposite from each other, and take 10 seconds to get 3000 meters apart, then we have a problem.

Then, we have to conclude that we CAN'T use computer games for versus debates.

[Slartibartfast]

Wow... you live in some sort of crazy world where wrong things are ignored? We've seen ships travelling at those speeds throughout various Wing Commander material. We know they slow in combat. What's the problem?

Yes, visuals obviously contradict the numbers, yet many people stick to the numbers. Probably cause they're more "concrete".

Either way, I try to combine common sense with visuals.


My analysis:

Final Outcome : WC wins (And I'm a FS fan)

Why:

Capships : I believe FS capships have a edge in this department (Assuming we ignore the kps figures). However WC still wins because they have more capships and can build faster.

Fighters : WC fighters are probably superior, most likely in terms of speed and maneuverability. I'm not certain about firepower though.


Thus, I think WC wins, since they have more ships and better construction capabilities.

While I am a FS lover and think that mostly their ships are evenly matched, I agree that in the end it depends on which side can produce ships faster. Unless the question were 'x amount of WC ships vs the same amount of FS ships' I'd say that it is a tie.

[Slartibartfast]

Actually, going by this site's standards, the novels override all.

LOL! By this site standards, canon policy is defined by whatever the company that made the product SAYS!

Fan-made novels based on computer games would be at the bottom of the canonicity food chain! Which is about the same validity of Trek novels.

Or maybe we should stick to the novelization of the movie?

[Alyeska]

Actually, going by this site's standards, the novels override all.

LOL! By this site standards, canon policy is defined by whatever the company that made the product SAYS!

Fan-made novels based on computer games would be at the bottom of the canonicity food chain! Which is about the same validity of Trek novels.

Or maybe we should stick to the novelization of the movie?

The WC novels are not Fan-made. They follow simmilar lines of requirements as the SW novels do.

[Alyeska]

Then, we have to conclude that we CAN'T use computer games for versus debates.

When gameplay is your only source of information, you have no other alternative. In the case of FS you can not arbitrarily assigned figures you think sound good.

[Slartibartfast]

Then, we have to conclude that we CAN'T use computer games for versus debates.

When gameplay is your only source of information, you have no other alternative. In the case of FS you can not arbitrarily assigned figures you think sound good.

That is exactly my point, which you seem to have missed. Whatever Lucas uses as canon guidelines is not universal, they only apply to HIS universe. Just because Lucas' games aren't canon, doesn't mean that, say, Space Quest isn't canon and some graphic novel about it IS. If they contradict each other (like a novel saying that it was actually a purple octopus who stole the Star Generator, and not green aliens) then it should be thrown out of the window.

Now, if you have any quote that states, or at least implies to any extent that Wing Commander novels have MORE validity than the game, even if the game IS Wing Commander and the novel is just a story BORROWING from the WC universe, then we'd have a different issue.

Fact: klicks = arbitrary units (in WC manual, game, etc). We see distances in meters. The manual states meters. We see ships NOT closing 6000 meters in 1/1000000th of a second. Conclusion: klicks != kilometers.

Let's use this example: X-Wing games isn't canon. Does that mean that I can't measure ship velocity INSIDE X-Wing games regardless of its validity when compared to movies? I can, and definitely ships in that game move at speeds of hundreds of km/h at most.

[Slartibartfast]

Actually, going by this site's standards, the novels override all.

LOL! By this site standards, canon policy is defined by whatever the company that made the product SAYS!

Fan-made novels based on computer games would be at the bottom of the canonicity food chain! Which is about the same validity of Trek novels.

Or maybe we should stick to the novelization of the movie?

The WC novels are not Fan-made. They follow simmilar lines of requirements as the SW novels do.

It would be hilarious that they even had consistency guidelines for velocities, since the producers of the game couldn't even agree on them, and it changed from game to game like anyone changes underwear.

"Sorry, in your novels you have to contradict my game completely, so my ships actually look much faster than they are."

That's like saying that Lucas' guidelines say that everyone must write that blasters are purple.

[Mad]

In regards to the gameplay vs whatever of games:

I don't accept the gameplay as the ultimate canon of a game for various reasons. The main reason is for the simplified physics code and bugs contained in a game.

In FreeSpace, even though the Lucifer is shielded, attacks against it still produce gouts of fire and metal debris flies from the hull. (Internally, this is because the game renders the attack normally, but because the 'invulnerable' tag is set in the mission, no damage actually takes place.) Gouts of fire can even occur away from the surface of the hull of a ship. Once a subspace portal has opened up, the player's ship becomes invulnerable. There are a few other things, but I can't recall them at the moment.

This problem can easily be applied to other games, as well. In Doom, Dark Forces, and Descent, weapons don't even scratch the walls or objects. Does that mean that a rocket launcher from those games do less damage than a real-life gun? (And that weak rocket launcher can kill a game character? How weak are the game characters now?) Should the Earthshaker missile from Descent II be weaker than the rocket launcher from Red Faction (which is still weird because it only damages certain walls)?

What about MechWarrior 2 and 3, where, inbetween games, the speed of light changes and 'Mechs go from standing up while missing a leg to falling down?

How about X-Wing, where I took out the Star Destroyer Invincible multiple times, once for each mission?

Or Jedi Knight, where I can stick a lightsaber through somebody and it not hurt them unless I press an attack button (a problem that was fixed in Jedi Knight II).

Some of those are nitpicks, but I think my point is clear. And those nitpicks can drastically affect the outcome of a versus debate. A Star Destroyer that can resurrect itself repeatedly and missiles that are considered scary to the game characters that leave the slightest mark on the walls certainly makes the results of a matchup differently from what it should be. So it's pretty obvious that game physics are not reliable. They should only be used when no other information is attainable. (So it is still admissable, even if flawed.)

The cutscenes, storyline, and manual should show more clearly what the intentions of the creators are, as they can contain far more detail and have more control over how the information is presented. If there's still a conflict between those, well, I haven't figured that one out. But the other sources are certainly more reliable than the gameplay and thus override it in the case of a conflict.

[Bob McDob]

Yes, KLICKS in real life are kilometers. There's no doubt about that. There's also no doubt that the ships in WC don't travel at kps speeds. No lame explanation about "running out of hydrogen" changes that.

That's exactly WHAT WE'VE BEEN SAYING HERE!

And if carriers were traveling at relativistic speeds, it would be impossible for fighters to catch up.

[/quote]

Hence Belgarde's comment about how the Kilrathi Snakier capship would overtake Blair's fighter . . .

The manual states that speed is relative to a nearby 'stationary' target, so having a 'maximum velocity' in space is ludicrous, if you can accelerate you can do it indefinitely. Just the fact that the speed is relative to some nearby astral body means that it's not some velocity related to some obscure 'full stop' state in the void of space, so there's no 'speed limit' no matter how much hydrogen they have available.

I'm not sure what you're saying here, exactly . . . either way, we should probably drop it, since it doesn't seem to change the point (ships in WC cruise at KPS, slow to MPS for combat).

[Bob McDob]

LOL! By this site standards, canon policy is defined by whatever the company that made the product SAYS!

Fan-made novels based on computer games would be at the bottom of the canonicity food chain! Which is about the same validity of Trek novels.

Or maybe we should stick to the novelization of the movie?

What in the god damn nine hells are you babbling about?

While I am a FS lover and think that mostly their ships are evenly matched, I agree that in the end it depends on which side can produce ships faster. Unless the question were 'x amount of WC ships vs the same amount of FS ships' I'd say that it is a tie.

Price of Freedom shows a temporary construction line in the Speradon system . . . they made fighters about as quickly as, say, in Homeworld.

[Bob McDob]

After reading the above, I suppose I should also note that the Terran Confederation Handbook notes that "several thousand Fralthi class cruisers have been identified", "more than 700 distinct Sivar-class vessels", and "51 individual Snakiers [a newer design] have been reported engaged in operations on the front, of which four are known to have been destroyed in battle, and two believed lost to accident or mishap".

The number of carriers is far smaller - while every ship larger than a destroyer has at least a light fighter complement, true carriers are compartively rare, since most of the carrier yards were destroyed at the outset of the war.