Confederacy or Federation?

[MKSheppard]

At the very END of the Dominion war the Dominion Alliance had 30,000 ships and the Federation needed something to go up against that.

They had the deus ex machina of the prophets

[Admiral Valdemar]

At the very END of the Dominion war the Dominion Alliance had 30,000 ships and the Federation needed something to go up against that.

They had the deus ex machina of the prophets

Well excluding that evident anti-climatic plot element, what is your figure for possible UFP ship capacity?

I'm curious since it's normall 10-12k tops which is what I agree with.

[Alyeska]

At the very END of the Dominion war the Dominion Alliance had 30,000 ships and the Federation needed something to go up against that.

They had the deus ex machina of the prophets

Can you provide evidence that the Prophets attacked the Dominion at Cardassia?

[Strate_Egg]

Is it a trait of trekkies to exaggerate?

[Strate_Egg]

I've never played any of the WC games..are they any good actually?


Ive seen the movie, even though the plot was horrible.

[MKSheppard]

Can you provide evidence that the Prophets attacked the Dominion at Cardassia?

Prophets wiped out a massive dominion fleet passing thru the worm hole
at one point during the war.

[Bob McDob]

w00t, a thread for me.

With only a dozen fleet carriers and a few hundred destroyers, the Confederation does not stand a chance against the Federation.

That depends whether you're referring to the wartime Confees or postwar ... Subcrid TC and Baron LOAF did some work about the number of fleet carriers at any given moment, which as you mentioned is not terribly great ...

There are several thousand destroyers per fleet, though.

The jump points seem to be natural phenomena of fixed location, but that's not a huge impediment if they can move between those jump points very quickly.

WC ships use scoops to attain sublight speeds. Their acceleration is only limited by relativity at scoops closed ... Captain Ian. St. John's fighter in Fleet Action easily achieved 3000KPS and climbing with them closed.

Open, speeds diminish dramatically, to about 500MPS or so. It's not a problem when the ships aren't actually maneuvering.

Anything jump point related can be found in LOAF's Jump Point FAQ, which I'll post shortly.

We can only conclude that its test target must have been a small moon rather than a full-sized planet, or it uses the mother of all goofy sci-fi chain reactions.

It was Loki VI, I believe, a moderately-sized planetoid. As to how it works, your guess is as good as mine. (That's what you're here for, right?)

Well, there are also some pilgrims left over from the great war. They dont need navcom AI to navigate jump points.

All the Pilgrims left the quadrant during the events chronicled in the as-yet-unreleased novel Pilgrim Truth ... quite a clever machina actually ...

Anyway, the standard time frame for the Confed is WC3/4 time period. They only have a dozen fleet carriers as already stated. By WCP they have few enough ships that the Nephlim were a significant enough threat to Earth itself. Saying the Confed will ass rape the Federation is like saying the Federation will ass rape the Empire. There are significant number differences as well as speed differences. Hell, there are industrial differences. The Confeds industry was only able to get 12 fleet carriers as of WC3, and half of those were older ships. Most of the capships shown in WC3 were actually vintage WC1 era type ships that got pulled out of reserve after the Confed fleet got its ass handed to it by the Kilrathi.

The reason for the incredibly slow construction times is that WC ships are produced at specific shipyards tooled to that ship design ... this is why the Confee carrier industry produced nearly nothing but Bengals and Concordias (the fleet carriers seen in Action Stations and again in WCIV) ... they simply couldn't build anything else.

That, and the fact that new carrier projects take years to get rolling ... the Midway was conceived about the same time as WCIV, and took the better part of eight years to become operational.

After WCIV, the economy is improving and Confed expands her fleet ... we know there are (well, were) about eight Vesuvii in operation, with another ten Midways coming up. That's 5740 strike craft in operation, not counting destroyers and cruisers which carry their own flight wings.

It's still far down from the wartime peaks, though ... one of the subplots in the ICIS manual for Prophecy is how the military is laxing again after the horror of the war.

That, as well as the Nephilim's sheer unknown numbers (analogous to the Shadows, or the Shivans. Or Species 8472, which Prophecy members later designed) to their ability to open wormholes well-nigh anywhere (not to mention their ability to blow up entire fleets) contributes to why they're considered a rather large threat to national security.

Right, and we can completely ignore the fact that the Victory has the designation of CV-40 on her hull?

The Rangers are old, old ships ... we know they've been around since at least the 2580s ... the Victory herself is relatively new, being commisioned during the Venice Offensive at the start of the war (listen to Eisen when he relates how he grew up with the ship).

The Tiger's Claw was commisioned in 2644, I think, based on a refit of the Bengal-class design, which entered service in 2619. Her registry is CV-07.

The Confederations are a special breed ... there's a so far unidentified (at least conclusively - popular theory labels it the name ship) labeled CVS-14, while the Concodia is CVS-65. We're pretty sure they're at least partially based on the Concordia fleet carriers under the skin. The Lexington, one of that class, and rebuilt after the Battle of Terra (which was in FLeet Action, not Action Stations), is CV-44. The Rangers are light carriers, while the Connies are full-sized analogous to the US Essexes in WWII.

Suffice to say, registries are totally baffeling.

Question: Since the Privateer games began in the same universe, are we considering them as well, or only games titled Wing Commander?

All games remotely related to WC are considered canon. This includes novels as well as things loosely based on WC, such as The Darkening (which in any case takes place a full 100 years after Prophecy in an as-yet-undetermined corner of the universe). Hell, everything short of fanfiction is considered canon. This can be rather annoying at times.

I've never played any of the WC games..are they any good actually?

Yes.

... erm, but being the WC cultist I am I'm hardly an accurate source <G> Let's just say I'm playing through WCII again right now, without sound. It's incredibly engaging for a twelve-year old game.

[Ghost Rider]

The Wing Commander Games are fun....if they could run on today's computers.

Nothing too fancy but decent sci-fi sims with giant kitties as enemies.

And please less said about the god-awful movie....oi that thing was some sick travesty.

[Bob McDob]

The Wing Commander Games are fun....if they could run on today's computers.

WCII works quite well, at least if you have the CD version ... copy the folder to the hard disc and then uncheck the read-only for everything. You might not get sound, but there's an emulator for XP that should solve that. WCIII can be gotten to work with some tweaking (look for www.crius.net forums or alt.games.wing-commander for help), and there's a patch for IV that lets it run in Windows 9x.

Nothing too fancy but decent sci-fi sims with giant kitties as enemies.

They were the first true "modern" space combat sims, and, aside from the X-Wing series, the only consistant one. Wing Commander II's dogfighting is unparalleled, in my opinion ... other sims have expanded on the premise. Some have a deeper, more cinematic storyline (WCIV), some have more furious and intense combat (FreeSpace), but in my mind nothing equals the sheer purity and beauty of WCII's gameplay. It created the box which those which came after struggle to break out of, with greater or lesser success.

And please less said about the god-awful movie....oi that thing was some sick travesty.

The movie is underrated, in my opinion ... the plot (or at least the execution) sucks donkey balls, but most else is competant, and I liked the overall feel of it. StarLancer is effectively the WC Movie game, and it improves upon the fleet battles, giving huge-ass firefights with capships blowing the shit out of each other with torpedo barrages, if nothing else.

[Ghost Rider]

Cool...I still love the series.

Though for me WCII was fun, I liked WCIII battles more. The only thing I disliked of WCII was the whole capship/Torpedo lock on. But WCII did everything nearly better than WC1.

It had okay points, but it was the story and the whole...why change seriously there were some things I just didn't grasp why they decided to change for movie, though the crusier battles were nice...they literally needed a better look for the movie as well...and like you said the execution sucked donkey balls.

Overall it needed a lot more effort to be considered something I would rent, and sadly I was lured under the pretense of my love of WC...and it bite me in the butt and wallet(though nothing like Batman and Robin, but that's a different story).

[Bob McDob]

Aaand ... here: http://www.wcnews.com/articles/jumpfaq.shtml

Lots of crazy pseudoscience to pour over there.

And as a bonus: ftp://ftp.wcnews.com/files/wing4/wc4win95.zip The Win9x patch for WCIV.

As to the ORIGINAL POINT of this thread, there's a reference in Fleet Action where the Kilrathi annihilate the biospheres of dozens of worlds using 500MT thermonuclear capship missiles laced with Strontium-90. Take that, because it's as good a reference as you're likely to find.

[Bob McDob]

I could see the self replicating cloaked mines being used on Confed jump points.

Hmm, Confed has the ability to see through certain types of cloaks already, so I'd be careful about that. They're not stupid, either; scout ships and probes are usually sent to scout out jump points first.

The thing about the jumps are that they aren't quite as limiting as everyone seems to make out; there are numerous in-system jumps at points (Firekka has a rather staggering number, if I recall), and ships can jump fairly large amounts of space instantaniously (the Ulysses corridor in the WCM is a good example, a strategic point that allows access to large amounts of space immedietly). In general, black holes and other spacial anomalies seem to boost jumps dramatically.

[Stormbringer]

I could see the self replicating cloaked mines being used on Confed jump points.

Hmm, Confed has the ability to see through certain types of cloaks already, so I'd be careful about that. They're not stupid, either; scout ships and probes are usually sent to scout out jump points first.

There are quite a few instances where whole battle squadrons have gone through with minimal or no recon. And if they put all the mines so close that they run into them as soon as they jump then they're fucked even if they see the mines.

The thing about the jumps are that they aren't quite as limiting as everyone seems to make out; there are numerous in-system jumps at points (Firekka has a rather staggering number, if I recall), and ships can jump fairly large amounts of space instantaniously (the Ulysses corridor in the WCM is a good example, a strategic point that allows access to large amounts of space immedietly). In general, black holes and other spacial anomalies seem to boost jumps dramatically.

But they're still tied to the jump points. Those can be blockcaded. Regardless of how far or how fast they carry you're still tied to the jump netowrks.

[Bob McDob]

To be fair, of course, Confed accuracy is hardly spectacular, which is why flak is preferable to pinpoint defences like lasers ... but the Confees can also afford to throw waves of bombers. Can the Starfleet target and destroy that many ships within the twelve-to-thirty seconds it traditionally has taken Confee targeting computers?

There are quite a few instances where whole battle squadrons have gone through with minimal or no recon. And if they put all the mines so close that they run into them as soon as they jump then they're fucked even if they see the mines.

I should probably ask you for specific instances ... also, it would take a rather dense commander who didn't think something was up when the scouts failed to report in.

But they're still tied to the jump points. Those can be blockcaded. Regardless of how far or how fast they carry you're still tied to the jump netowrks.

That's an awful lot of blockade points! (See the map at wcnews.com) Does the fleet have the numbers to maintain that kind of defense and still maintain a passable offensive ability?

[TC]

I wish I hadn't written the first portion of this post earlier this evening, but I got rather bored part way through and left it for quite a while. Some of this stuff's been addressed since I originally started composing it...

According to most calculations as well as some of the novels, the Confederation is way ahead. Their lighter weapons come close to equally the federations heavy weapons. The big one are fairly well beyond the UFP.

Which calculations are you talking about? I have no idea what established Star Trek numbers are, but I have yet to see a set of Wing Commander calculations that satisfies me, including my own.

The only numbers I can think of that are given in the novels for weapon strengths are the 500 mt level, huge, capship based planetary bombardment bombs used in Fleet Action and referencing the Wing Commander 4 Torpedo as "multi-megaton", which isn't really very specific.

They also had the Behemoth, which is stated to have a 500 million GW weapon (roughly 120 megatons per second). This would shred any Federation starship's defenses and do a good number on any Federation world. It was even stated to be a planet-destroyer, but that level of power is woefully inadequate to get the job done. We can only conclude that its test target must have been a small moon rather than a full-sized planet, or it uses the mother of all goofy sci-fi chain reactions.

The Behemoth wouldn't really be a very effective anti-ship weapon... It has an inefficient drive system (being the only capital ship we've ever seen need to refuel), is rather large, and even with it's point defense fully operational it didn't seem like a combat effective design, according to Tolwyn's initial views on the project.

I also very much doubt Loki IV was a moon sized planet, it would make an odd test for something that was really designed with Kilrah in mind. The Behemoth seems to take advantage of some sort of tectonic technobabble, just as the T-Bomb does... here's a related quote from The Heart of the Tiger:

"Tolwyn continued. Taking up a laser pointer, he used its narrow light beam
to highlight features as he spoke. "Behemoth is a series of linked
superconducting energy amplification conduits, focusing an output of five
hundred million gigawatts into one lancing point. A target at the end of
that point is destroyed . . . utterly. And the energy released by the impact
is enormous: devastating. Even the scientists can't say for sure whether the
energy beam itself would destroy an entire planet, but they do agree that
the resultant seismic stresses should be enough to tear it apart,
particularly a world like Kilrah which is already highly unstable. The
upshot, gentlemen, is this. Behemoth can destroy worlds, and properly
employed it can knock the Kilrathi Empire out of the war in a few short
strokes.""

The problem is they come through blind and close to defenseless. If they had been smart they would have blockaded some of the key jump points with forts and nailed any ships coming through.

Mining jump points is a standard strategy, the first instance that comes to mind is in Action Stations.

It is, that's my point. A strategic chokepoint like that should be heavily defended as it's a great way to cut ships down when they're vulnerable. You wouldn't need to have the massive fleet battles when you could just ambush them and take out a bunch of them early. Any competent strategist would recognize that.

You mean like in the movie, where they do exactly that?

How do they make the warp gates anyway? I never kept too close of attention to Wing Commander.

Here's the Jump FAQ:
http://wcnews.com/articles/jumpfaq.shtml

The movie representation seems to be at odds with the previously established mechanics so I don't think it's worth considering.

Most of the jumps in the movie are special jumps relating to odd phenomena. This results in odd effects. We've seen black holes, particularly cause odd results, as in the Academy episode where there's a long period spent active within a jump, and the Enigma system having a large number of in-system jump points due to it's blackhole. Anyway, the description of jump drive in the movie's companion Confederation Handbook fits just fine with the rest of the series.

The reason why I say this is because WC bombers must fly very straight in order to use their torpedo systems. Makes them very easy targets.

That's assuming one wishes to use a torpedo. One could just fire a salvo of dumbfires, or use energy weapons as they do in a number of Wing Commander games.

Well, there are also some pilgrims left over from the great war. They dont need navcom AI to navigate jump points.

You don't need a navcom to navigate jump points... At the time of the movie they were actually using it to verify co-ordinates and jump information. Verified jumps were 100% certain, removing the slight statistical possibilities of misjumping that otherwise occur. It was just a slight bitch to have it fall into Kilrathi hands as it contained all of Confed's known jump co-ordinates. The navcom became even less useful as time went on and sensors and jump technology improved. For instance, we see Paladin mapping a series of jump points as they go in Fleet Action.

they didn't stop building ships after the Kilrathi
War ended, but instead kept on building EVER LARGER fleet carriers,
culiminating in the MIDWAY class megacarriers

The Midway class heavy carrier isn't exactly the most combat effective carrier. The Vesuvius is more capable as a fleet carrier. The Midway just happens to be cheaper, and better for peace-time duty.

Yes, the Midway which has no capital ship weapons and fewer fighters then the Vesuvius.

We've seen the Midway fire six training missiles (capship missile sized). One would expect that it would fire useful capship missiles as well, then.

By WCP they have few enough ships that the Nephlim were a significant enough threat to Earth itself.

Eh? I don't think it's a matter of having few ships at the time of Prophecy, but rather not being prepared for the situation and having the Nephilim very nearly send a huge fleet at you, which was what was in the process of happening as you closed the wormhole.

The Confed relies almost solely on its fighters. It has a smallish fleet designed to support the fighters themselves.

No. How the heck do you think they cover the number of systems they have with the small number of fleet carriers they have operational during the war period? I'll find whatever quotes I can on fleet size later.

Right, and we can completely ignore the fact that the Victory has the
designation of CV-40 on her hull?

Actually, the CV numbering system is somewhat screwed up... it doesn't seem to fit with what we know of everything else... for instance, I can name many more than 6 carriers that existed before the Tiger's Claw (CV 07). The Victory, being CV-40, was slated for retirement 10 years before Wing Commander 3 (which would be between WC1 and 2). Her class was designed 50 years before the war began and Eisen's first assignment out of the Academy was on her maiden voyage, making it seem that the Victory older than the Tiger's Claw... Even if it somehow isn't older than the Claw, and is only slightly newer, it would be absurd to believe that they made 30 carriers in a few years and then only managed to make 40 (to reach Vesuvius' CV-70) in the years up to the Vesuvius. There has to be selective reuse of numbers or some revamping of the numbering system at some point to make sense of things. We can't really explain it, so the CV numbers are a very bad indication for anything.

In the WC novel Action Stations IIRC the Confed fleet decomissioned the majority of their fleet carreirs because of a treaty with the Kilrathi. Then the Kilrathi renigged and attacked in force. This caught the Confed off guard and the Confed threw everything they had to stop the Kilrathi. It worked, but it cost them almost every single one of their front line warships. At the same token, it also cost the Kilrathi most of their modern ships. Both sides were forced to pull out older ships and send them against eachother. Hence the Victory being an OLD ship with a Distinguished history.

You're thinking of Fleet Action... You're also somewhat wrong... The Kilrathi lost a number of new ships that were almost completely seperate from the forces they'd been fighting the rest of the war with, so they still had most of the rest of their fleet. While the Confederation was hit hard, it also didn't cost them every single one of their frontline ships... I'm too lazy to check things up, but the Lexington was definately repaired at great cost, and not all of their carriers had been reactivated when the Kilrathi got there. I'm too lazy to check what else may have survived, and there were definately other capital ships out-system. There are a greater number of light carriers, escort carriers and other of that type of ship that don't get counted in the fleet carrier counts we see at various times in the novels that are around as well. The huge hit was the loss of the moon's carrier construction yards... Part of Confed's problems throughout the war was their lack of carrier construction (partly due to the inability to get a new yard built during Action Stations). We've been told that it takes 10 years to build a carrier shipyard, the construction of the carriers then takes additional time. The loss of a number of major construction facilities was a huge problem.

Are the novels even official? Have we heard from Chris Roberts that they
are part of the canon?

First, Chris Roberts would be a stupid person to ask. He doesn't own the rights and wasn't involved in the last two Wing Commander games. Second, there's been no such statement from anyone. All I can tell you is that the makers of the games use the books as if they were any other source. The best example being Fleet Action. They used the setup in Fleet Action as the starting point for the Confederation's hopeless position in Wing Commander 3. The events of the novels are listed in various timelines provided with the games. The novels of games (Heart of the Tiger and The Price of Freedom) are used as the official game paths for the start of the next game... also, the note on the back of the books suggests that you both read the books and play the games for the greatest enjoyment.

MK, they only have 12 full sized carries by WC3/4 and that is a fact.

I don't believe we actually have a Wing Commander 4 number... I can check on that though. I'll point out that Wing Commander 3 was at a horrible time where the Confederation was just about the lose the war. They never did have very many fleet carriers, but that was a particularly bad period. They lost half their fleet carriers in the year coming up to End Run, at a time when they had been low to begin with. They then lost a couple during End Run. After End Run things got happy for a very short time, and then the Confederation got seriously whooped once more in Fleet Action. Then starts Wing Commander 3.

BTW, the TCS Concordia from WC2 has a CV-14 designation. That means
between WC2 and WC3 the confeds built upwards of 26 carriers.

Actually the Concordia was a CVS, and it was CVS-65. It's a case of "The ship on the cover isn't the ship in the product". A similar thing happens with End Run, where the number doesn't match either.

Question: Since the Privateer games began in the same universe, are we considering them as well, or only games titled Wing Commander?

Both of the Privateer games quite certainly take place in the Wing Commander universe... Of course, Privateer 2 takes place 108 years after Secret Ops, so I doubt that's what the original poster was thinking of.

After WCIV, the economy is improving and Confed expands her fleet ... we know there are (well, were) about eight Vesuvii in operation, with another ten Midways coming up. That's 5740 strike craft in operation, not counting destroyers and cruisers which carry their own flight wings.

Actually, there are still war era carriers operational circa Prophecy. I very much doubt they would be retired as planned, to be replaced by Midway class vessels, in light of the Nephilim threat.

The Lexington, one of that class, and rebuilt after the Battle of Terra (which was in FLeet Action, not Action Stations), is CV-44. The Rangers are light carriers, while the Connies are full-sized analogous to the US Essexes in WWII.

I'll first just clarify for anyone reading that Bob was refering to the Lexington as a Concordia class, not a Confederation class ship... it seemed somewhat ambiguous in the way you phrased it...

There are quite a few instances where whole battle squadrons have gone through with minimal or no recon. And if they put all the mines so close that they run into them as soon as they jump then they're fucked even if they see the mines.

There are very few instances when anyone discusses any sort of advanced recon... that doesn't mean it never happens. It generally wouldn't add much to the story to mention that your advanced recon didn't show someone waiting there to kill you.
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[Bob McDob]

I'm just rather annoyed people are spending time arguing over Trek stuff and ignoring Wing Commander, which gets precious little exposure anyway.

[Stormbringer]

I'm just rather annoyed people are spending time arguing over Trek stuff and ignoring Wing Commander, which gets precious little exposure anyway.

Too bad. It's a good universe but the last game and then the movie killed the franchise. Too bad really.

[TC]

I'm just rather annoyed people are spending time arguing over Trek stuff and ignoring Wing Commander, which gets precious little exposure anyway.

Too bad. It's a good universe but the last game and then the movie killed the franchise. Too bad really.

I wouldn't say it killed the franchise... there's a suprising amount going on. There's Prophecy GBA, the TV Series, and some discussion going on in other places.

[TC]

Bleh... just as I hit submit my brain realized I hadn't mentioned that there's absolutely no way one can argue that Prophecy, Secret Ops or the Movie killed the series. There were games in development after that point that were cancelled for reasons unrelated to previous games, or the movie.

[The Dark]

Ah...didn't realize the Darkening was that long after the WC series. I was asking because by then the Jump Points aren't necessary any more (fighters carry jump engines that don't require gates). Oh, well...back to the thinking board .

[Bob McDob]

A The Dark-ening tech discussion would be interesting ... there's all sorts of fun stuff there, like personal shields that can deflect thermonuclear blasts and the like ...

[Bob McDob]

Since this thread is quite obviously dead with no clear response in the past 48 hours, I'll declare victory for the time being to prevent myself from further obsession.

(Sigh ... I do this far too much ... wonder if it's something I did ...)

[Darth Wong]

I think the problem is that most people don't know as much about Wing Commander as you do and are not inclined to do research, so they simply defer to your statements on the matter. As long as you don't say something truly stupid, like "Confed would 0wn the Death Star!", nobody's likely to get worked-up enough to contest them.

[The Dark]

I think the problem is that most people don't know as much about Wing Commander as you do and are not inclined to do research, so they simply defer to your statements on the matter. As long as you don't say something truly stupid, like "Confed would 0wn the Death Star!", nobody's likely to get worked-up enough to contest them.

Hmmm...could a Broadsword do a trench run ?

[Ghost Rider]

Probably not...too big.

Maybe the Excalibur