Autotracking

I'll never forget the fuzz at the CIC over autotracking in PR and WCU. "IT'S NOT CANON! REPENT!"

So I was just re-reading Action Stations and, in page 95, at a bar in Hell Hole, Hans Kruger is talking to Winston Turner about the upgrades he has on his ship, and says,

	Forstchen wrote:
	The best money can buy. Engines are Reverberator Three Thousand C series, I’ve had an extra half inch of durasteel laminated onto the pressurized hull, a quad auto-tracking laser in a retractable belly turret added on, and a complete overhaul of the jump engine.

Emphasis mine.

Now, this is happening in 2634, and there were already autotracking turrets. So the retros thought that by 2669 autotracking turrets went out of fashion?

LOL

Was their objection more that autotracking turrets didn't appear in the original Privateer, or did they claim that as a whole they were "non-canon"?

I can't say for sure because it was a long time ago; but I'm more inclined to think it was the latter.
In any case, did any of the original games have autotracking? Privateer 2 did, but many don't
consider P2 canonical. So to argue that PR/WCU shouldn't have autotracking because Privateer
didn't would apply to any WC fan project by the same argument.

As far as I remember Wing Commander 3 featured auto tracking turrets. But of course that's AFTER Privateer.

WC3 is quite conceivably after Privateer, but not by very much. Month or two? And, officially, though I don't agree, Righteous Fire happens AFTER WC3.
Now, IMO, Righteous Fire overlaps the beginning of WC3. The opening screen saying "A Year Later", IMO, is a canon error. All the bar rumors about lost carriers, like the Winterrowd, are losses near the end of the war, but not after the war. And by all indications, the war is raging on during Righteous Fire.

But even so, Priv and RF are happening the same year as WC3, not years apart.

Good to know there were autotracking turrets in WC3. How is the player introduced to them? Thunderbolts have them?

I believe the Longbows, perhaps the Thunderbolts as well.

Hi Guys,

It is Andreas here.

I can't get to my usb key which has the last of Fleet Actions, thanks to monkhouse (chuck), but I think that the excaliber and the Hellcat IV.

Andreas

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"Justice is decided in the courts, not with particle cannons." - Jeannette "Angel" Devereaux

Ah, MAS? Didn't realize it was you.
You're saying the Excalibur and Hellcat V have autotracking?

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PU (Privateer: Parallel Universe's Home)
WCpedia --The Wing Commander Encyclopedia

Certainly not that I recall...

Welcome aboard Chief. Wink

	monkhouse wrote:
	You're saying the Excalibur and Hellcat V have autotracking?

I was reading something about the leaders around when it was relesed (excalibar). One of the admirals mentioned autotracking. Also there was a picture of the excalibar and it's specs at fleet Actions and it mentioned Auto Tracking. Been a while though.

	monkhouse wrote:
	Ah, MAS? Didn't realize it was you.

Nah, thought so. I decided to use a user name that hid my identity. I may change the rest (VS, PU) to Master Chief.

	Marvrick wrote:
	Welcome aboard Chief.

Thanks, did you hear 'bout the new Halo 3? I WANNA PLAY IT!!!! I can't wait until it's released.

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"Justice is decided in the courts, not with particle cannons." - Jeannette "Angel" Devereaux

Did I hear about it? Who HASN'T heard about it? Razz

Seriously, bought it the first day and beat it already. Now I'm climbin' up the X-Box Live rankings. Smile

Master Chief wrote:

	monkhouse wrote:
	You're saying the Excalibur and Hellcat V have autotracking?

I was reading something about the leaders around when it was relesed (excalibar). One of the admirals mentioned autotracking. Also there was a picture of the excalibar and it's specs at fleet Actions and it mentioned Auto Tracking. Been a while though.
.

Fleet Action takes place in 2668 (Battle of Earth); whereas the Excalibur was released in mid 2669, even as Blair is on the Victory and about to make the Temblor Bomb run (Heart of the Tiger), after Behemoth. The only places in HotT the Excaliburs are spoken about are,
page 55, Rachel Coriolis
pages 319 and 328, Paladin
In none of those places there's any mention of autotracking.
The only other book where I see the possibility of there being any info on Excaliburs would be The Price of Freedom. Don't have the time to page through it now like I just did with Heart of the Tiger; but I read it like twice already and really don't remember seeing any mentions of autotracking.
I'm pretty sure your information does NOT come from a book.

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PU (Privateer: Parallel Universe's Home)
WCpedia --The Wing Commander Encyclopedia

Hmmm, the place i may have picked it up may have been inaccurate but i really can't remember.

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"Justice is decided in the courts, not with particle cannons." - Jeannette "Angel" Devereaux

I don't see autotracking as a matter of canonity, rather as a matter of technology.

Okay, let's discuss if there'll ever be a jump drive, a cloaking device, or a fusion gun.

But heck, year-2000-computers capable of running WC3 perfectly simulate autotracking by calculating vector and speed of the targeted ships. So why should this be so much trouble in the future?!? Seeing autotracking as a fantanstic ship upgrade is simply a canonity error - all you need for it is a capable computer and some sort of servos or "magnetic fields" (see PR description) for it.

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Never change a winning team.

Hi Tilt.

Thanks for your thoughts on the subject, they are appreciated. And i could not agree with on that first point of canonity/technology, as well as the last.

And the second. I dunno about jump drives and fusion canons, but for a cloaking device, maybe. But not the way it is in WC. Take away the radar in WC and you are virtually blind, allowing poeple to sneak up on you. Bring back the radar, but make the radar miss some ships and they can sneak up on you while other, that your radar can pick up can't. So the need is not really to make you totally invisible, but to be invisible to the naked eye. At least that's how i see it IMHO.

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"Justice is decided in the courts, not with particle cannons." - Jeannette "Angel" Devereaux

	Quote:
	Thanks for your thoughts on the subject, they are appreciated.

Thanks, ditto Laughing

Quote:

I dunno about jump drives and fusion canons, but for a cloaking device, maybe. But not the way it is in WC. Take away the radar in WC and you are virtually blind, allowing poeple to sneak up on you. Bring back the radar, but make the radar miss some ships and they can sneak up on you while other, that your radar can pick up can't. So the need is not really to make you totally invisible, but to be invisible to the naked eye. At least that's how i see it IMHO.

Yes, but all I wanted to express is that autotracking is nothing beyond today's physical imagination, as is lightspeed or invisibility. Autotracking simply is a computer calculating vector and speed, as mentioned before, and therefor spitting out a point to aim at. A technique mankind knows ever since we used bows to track down agile animals: Looking at a squirrel running from left to the right, our marvellous brain imagines where the animal will be when the arrow has reached its destination, so we're aiming some additional degrees to the right et voilà: Squirrel alla panna. The only difference is that in space one should assume that a C64 could perform this calculation properly.

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Never change a winning team.

Autotracking is easy to calculate in space since you don't have any or mostly no other things that you have to take into your calculation than your own speed, the targets speed and direction and the speed the bold/missile travels at.
I agree that a C64 should be able to do this...or even a smaller specialised chip.

The part of creating guns that are able to track down the target. I think that is much more complicated. Depending on the type of energie you want to emit you would need mirrors or "forcefields" to direct the energie. It might take a good amount of space and or energie to do so. Something you might not have in every fighter so that adding it afterwards could be complicated.
There is also the point of maintance. A more complex system is also most likely more often damaged or tends to failfunctions. So you have to balance out the use of a selftracking gun and a gun that most likely stops firing at the worst moment.

Give me a Banshee with its "hundred" of fix lasers and I am happy ^_^

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Yes

Actually, we're mixing things together: Leading Target indicator is a computation. Autotracking is a physical re-orientation of the weapons. The two things are so separate as to form four combinatorial quadrants: You could have target leading without autotracking (display only), you could have autotracking without target leading computation (wouldn't be very useful at all), or both (best), or none.
As for the technology used to implement autotracking, mirrors would be one way, but the way that was assumed with PR1.2 was that the mounting of the weapon could adjust the angle slightly, by like +/- 2 degrees, vertically and horizontally. Doesn't sound like much but it actually made a huge difference.

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WCpedia --The Wing Commander Encyclopedia

Indeed I mixed up the designation for two different things...sorry.
What you say is what I meant.

Haveing a weapon that adjusts itself completly...mh that is something different but I would think that it would need a lot of fine mechanics to work properly. Think about the speed and distances WC ships are moveing. At least when you belive the indicators...if that would be real I guess we wouldn't see much of a fight.
Anyway with this speeds and distances even the slightest missalignment in the mechanic would make you miss your target. Even with the slower gamespeed you allready missed from time to time.
I think the entire system, no matter how it would be archived, would be something for special fighters like the Excalibur or the Lance/Dragon.
The basic fighter would be much cheaper and build with more relayable parts...I think.
At least that is what I would guess for a WC in universe explanation.

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Yes

Autotracking without target leading was actually a terrible thing. You'd naturally try to shoot ahead of your target, but the autotracking would "correct" your shots, to shoot straight at the target, and cause you to miss every time.

Autotracking WITH target leading was the best, but not without its pitfalls. If a kilrathi was coming towards you corkscrewing, your hot shot instincts would be to shoot more or less straight at it, but the target leading computation would cause your shots to spread out in circles. So you had to be prepaired to turn off autotracking at times, then turn it back on. But there's no question that in the overall, autotracking + target leading was a huge improvement over manual aiming.
But of course, where autotracking makes the most sense is in turrets, where the autotracking can span the entire angular range of the weapon.

Speed and accuracy and other considereations I think they are mute, really; as the affect your manual aiming as much as any automated mechanism, so it boils down to a question of neurons versus transistors.

Finally, if the question is about retconning autotracking into the existing canon, it gets kind of hairy because of all the contradictions in canon. Kruger had autotracking turrets on his ship in 2634, yet we don't see autotracking in most of the games. We see a target leading indicator in Privateer 2....

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WCpedia --The Wing Commander Encyclopedia

I thinks turrets are an exeption as it might mean autotracking more in a way of an automated turret instead of guns that help the gunner to aim better.

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Yes

True. In any case, I don't think the mechanisms for aiming corrections are necessarily an unsurmountable challenge. Hydraulics are very fast and precise, as fluids for hydraulics usually feature low compressibilities, so you can get extremely accurate position control. But if we decide to put autotracking back in PU, I'll probably argue for a reduction of the correction angle to a +/- 1 degree cone; both for technological believability and game balancing reasons (two degrees made aiming a bit too much easier).

EDIT: But you're very right; we ARE talking about very different technologies, going from turrets to aim-correcting fixed guns.

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PU (Privateer: Parallel Universe's Home)
WCpedia --The Wing Commander Encyclopedia