Age of Star Conflict vessels.

Game Discussion Miscellaneous
1

I’ve been wondering about this for a while, and although we cannot access the descriptions of several ships now, I have been able to get some of them from the Wiki.

 

This is going to take a while and a lot of working through, but I’m hoping that we can find some clues as to what kind of age and availability each ship has.

 

We’ll start with the Empire - best foot forward and all.  ;)wt

 

Now, the Empire gives me the only concept I feel confident to say absolutely:

 

Tier 1 ships are over a thousand years old!

 

The evidence for this? Let’s take a look…

  • The Harpy is stated as once being “best ship of the Direktorium”. The Direktorium fell as Earth’s government in the 36th century.
  • The next supporting point is the Iron Harpy, a Legion Frigate based upon the Harpy. To quote the official wiki: “The elite of the Imperial Space Navy is undefeated Legion, a large body of troops, created at the dawn of the fleet under the command of the Emperor”. The Legion have thus existed from the dawn of the Empire (or the end of the Direktorium if you prefer), and the Iron Harpy was reported modified slightly by the Legion for their own use. This further reinforces the idea that the Harpy predates the Legion and the Empire.
  • The Hercules flavour text states, ‘This fighter has formed the basis of the Army from the moment of Imperial declaration. It has been removed from service, and is used in Army schools.’ This is pretty clear cut - the Hercules was around since when the Empire came to be, which would require it to be over a thousand years old.

This of course suggests that other Tier 1 ships, from Jericho at least, are of a comparable age. Federation ships would obviously be newer since they didn’t come back until the 38th century at the earliest.

 

The tricky part, from the Empire point of view at least, is that T2, T3 and T4 ships are full of references to them being an active part of the military. For example, Hydra frigates (all variants) are described as being the mainstay part of the army, Cerberus ships are part of “assault vanguards” and T4 are, respectively, cancelled and technically doesn’t exist, “the frigate of the Imperial Guards”, and the frigates charged with defending the Imperial Battleship.

 

My general theories here are that T2 Empire ships are meant to be the front-line vessels of the second war with Jericho, making them around 400 years old. T3 ships are ‘modern’ vessels; they are starting to get on in years, but are still good enough to function as front line warships in the coming war. T4, finally, are cutting edge vessels; the latest developments that have only just come into use, or else have yet to be put into full scale production.

 

Not sure how T5 will tie into this though. One theory might be that T5 ships will be created as a direct result of the massive influx of Precursor tech, effectively causing T4 and T5 ships to be developed within a decade of one another, yet have a significant jump in power.

2

You really think about this in an after engineered backstory, which origins started with an incident at “sector 1337” ??? :smiley:

+1 just because of that.

3

You really think about this in an after engineered backstory, which origins started with an incident at “sector 1337” ??? :smiley:

+1 just because of that.

Background is what makes or breaks a game to me; of course I think about this stuff! :wink:

 

And on that note… let’s start looking at what else we can find…

 

First off, the Federation is a nightmare to work with here. There is nothing to give any kind of frame of reference, with the Raptor Mk II apparently still being used by support squadrons and the Swift Mk 3 likewise lacking any past-tense terminology.

In fact, the general theme of Federation ships is that they are not military ships - they are private vessels, built for personal or corporate uses.

 

Fortunately, we start to see some hints that Jericho, like the Empire, have some kind of timescale, and they support my original hypothesis. Let’s see how!

  • The Axe-X type S was developed for the “first Bartle crusade”. This is likely the First War for the Bartle Sector from the 35th century.
  • The Dagger is described as one of the Frontier Army’s first interceptors. It’s hard to say when they would have built this, but given that the prison ships left Frontier in the 27th century they would have had at least 700 years to form their own industry and develop the Dagger.

However, Jericho (or more precisely, the Techs) also give us another useful snippet of information - the Templar type S. This ship was developed “to stand in for the ships lost in the Third War”. We know for certain that the Third War for Sector Bartle was launched by the Empire in the 42nd Century. The Templar chassis is a Tier 2 ship, and originally all three Templars were Tier 2. Likewise, the Stiletto AE’s flavour text directly references the Third War.

 

This now gives us a more refined timeline for the ships of Star Conflict:

 

Tier 1 Hulls: Dawn of the Empire / First Bartle War - around 1000+ years old.

Tier 2 Hulls: Third Bartle War - around 400 years old.

 

Note that I say “hulls” rather than referencing specific tiers. In real life technology is not scrapped the moment a replacement comes along. The same is going to be true in the Star Conflict universe. All ships will have a bell-curve lifespan, and the eras mentioned above represent, as far as we can guess, their apex. If a Tier 2 hulled ship appears in game as Tier 3, it likely represents the absolute end-of-production model; a version that has had every last drop of potential squeezed out of it. By contrast, these ships are at best equal to the ‘default’ version of the next ship in the series, which could be interpreted as a fairly basic, early-type model (as opposed to the two+ variant models elsewhere in the ship tree that are invariably better).

 

To put it another way, you can take a high-spec PC from ten years ago and tune it to hell to get a good machine, but its performance can be equaled by a fairly mundane machine build today.

 

So, can we extrapolate anything about T3 and T4, or the as-yet-unreleased T5 from Jericho? Alas, not yet.

 

But have made progress, and progress is good! We can now instigate further extrapolation!

 

Chronology of Starship evolution:

  • 35th Century - First War of Bartle. Direktorium presumed to field Hercules, Harpy and Dvergr as their main attack ships. Jericho believed to use Axe (including variants), Zealot (possibly including variants) and Dagger (possibly including variants).
  • 36th Century - birth of the Empire. Legion comes into existence and adopts the Hercules 2 and Iron Harpy (and probably Dvergr 2) as their main attack craft.
  • 37th Century - Warden’s order comes into existence, developing their own variants on the Army / Legion chassis. These ships require considerable overhaul to remain ‘competitive’.
  • 42nd Century - Third War of Bartle. Empire and Jericho have both developed new ships and technologies for the conflict. Imperial fleets have all but removed the obsolete Direktorium ships and replaced them with Imperial designs; Dwarf, Deimos and Hydra. Jericho has likewise brought new model ships into their fleet; Stiletto, Machete and Templar. During / after the war these ships undergo various improvements by the major factions of the Empire and Jericho respectively.
  • 44th Century - Continuous back and forth conflict between all three factions drives enhanced ship development. Tier 3 vessels are born of this age of conflict.
  • 46th Century to Present - Precursor sightings occur in 1337. Strategic value absolute; all three factions begin rapid development and refinement of military technology to ensure dominance in the Sector. Tier 4 ships are the result of this race for domination.
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