[Tolwyn]

This week, the Saga team would like to show off another ship: the Confed light cruiser. This vessel is meant to fill in the gaps of the Confed Fleet as well as to show a conceptual design that’s been mentioned in the various novels.

This ship is intended to be the same class of Kilrathi War-era light cruisers that were sold off by the Confederation to the Landerich during the False Colors novel. Such fans would remember some of the vessels as the FRLS Themistocles (ex-TCS Andromache) and the FRLS Xenophon.

Our fans and resident naval experts can be quick to point out the differences and similarities between the Terran and Kilrathi light cruisers in this game. To begin with, both were not in the game but mentioned in various novels and lost concept art. While the Kilrathi light cruiser is an anti-aircraft vessel, the Terran light cruiser is optimized as a hit-and-fade vessel.

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[Liberator]

Nice looking ship.  A little plain, but then WC ships are kinda plain looking, so working as intended.

While I don't pretend to be a WC afficiado, something that has always bugged me about the uni is the sheer number of large ship designs the confeds seem to field.  It seems to me that they replace the majority of their fleet every half-dozen years or so.  Something that just isn't possible.

Part of the reason that FS has held up so well is that, even though FS2 is 30 years after FS1, many of the ship designs are still in use.  Even though the tech room goes out of it's way to mention that designs like the Orion and such are aging and not actively being built any more.  This might be a situation of "driving it till the wheels fall off"  but the WCU seems to bin a ship after less than 1000 space days.

Also, forgive the gripe.

[gevatter Lars]

While it might looks like that from the outside quite a lot of ships are "resused" classes.
Problem is that its not in the game but just mentioned in the novels.

For example the "TCS Victory" from WC3 is actualy such an old design that it was in service before WC1. Even then it was a pretty old design and when in between WC2 and WC3 most of Confeds forces where whiped out Confed put these old ships back to the front lines. (but players are seeing them for the first time)

Also a good number of fighters from WC3 are updated fighters.
For example the Arrow design itself has been around since Blair was in the Academy. So its a pre WC1 design.

So its not like they replace everything every 10 years.
There is also another differance between FS and WC. In WC they have a constant war going on, so losses are high and you have to come up with new stuff to beat your enemy.
In FS they had a pretty quite periode between FS1 and FS2. So its no wonder they have just one generation of ships build in that time. There was simple no need to do so.

But as I said, its no wonder you get the impression that Confed is kinda lunatic in designing new ships if your only source are the games.

[IceFire]

I think it may be a scale thing as well. The FreeSpace universe is rather small containing only a dozen star systems. The WC universe is much larger containing hundreds or perhaps thousands of start systems established on the official star charts. The Confederation is a rather large collection of systems and so with likely dozens of major production facilities it's probable that quite a few designs hang around for a long time each having the chance at seeing the limelight depending on how competitive the design is.

Doing a simplified historical example... the USAAF had several families of fighter aircraft during World War II and each evolved significantly over the conflict.

P-40 went from A to I think it was L or beyond. Not all saw combat.
P-39 went through major production models of D through Q and then there was the redesigned P-63
P-38 went through from major production models of E to L
P-47 went from C to N with quite a few improvements along the way
P-51 completely changed engines and went from A to H (also the A-36)

Nevermind the US Navy having totally separate types. It's an over simplification but I hope the point is made. All were pretty much in production from the beginning to end and most changed a lot. Some were favoured in some theaters and others in other theaters. I see the WC world much the same way currently... it makes a tiny bit more sense to have so many different models floating around.

[Thundertrod]

The united states also had 9 classes of active battel ships during WW2, of corse only two of those classes are know to the genreal public now. the Iowa, and arzona.
7 classes of air craft carriers, 2 classes of trianing carriers that oprated on the great lakes so never saw any action "kind of like the wellington in preloude" 6 classes of ecort carriers. 12 classes of crussers rangeing from light to battel crusser. 17 classes of destaryers,

[Scooby_Doo]

and who knows how many other classes in the works or designing (like the montana)