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This article appeared in Quake 4  

Quake41

A close-up view of the SMC Carrier/Destroyer

The SMC Carrier/Destroyer is a starship class used during the second Invasion of Stroggos. It can be seen throughout the events of Quake 4. One ship of this class, the USS Patton, transports the members of Rhino Squad to Stroggos.

Overview[]

Little is known about this starship class. It is by far larger than cruisers like the USS Hannibal. The ship can be subdivided into three sections: a wedge-shaped front section that seems to house many crew quarters and makes up about one third of the ship's length; a long middle section with a lot of hangar bays for Dropships; and an engine section that houses the ship's sublight propulsion systems. While the first two sections are built rather slenderly to offer very few surface for attacks, the engine section is about three times as broad as the rest of the ship.

In the intro of Quake 4, dozens of these ships are seen in Stroggos' orbit; therefore, it is likely that this class has already been used by the SMC before the war with the Strogg.

Role[]

Effectively, these ships seem to be a hybrid between a carrier (large hangar bays) and a battleship (heavy armor plating and powerful weapons): this versatility can be seen very well during the intro and the first few levels of Quake 4, where those ships first deploy large waves of Dropships and later participate in bombardments of Stroggos' surface.

Armament[]

Very little is known about this class's armament. However, ships of this class have at least four energy-based weapon arrays. These are placed in a very strange manner: two at the underside of the front section and the other two at the underside of the engine section, facing the other array. Therefore, these weapons can never fire in a straight line (as they would hit the ship itself); instead, they fire downwards or to the sides of the ship, making them ideal for bombardments or broadsides in fleet actions, these are probably used to destroy AA cannons, like the one found in MCC landing site, or provide cover to troops on the ground when they face fortifications or large enemy units.

Aside from the bombardment arrays, and a small top mounted turret no other weapons can be seen on these ships. It is likely that they possess missile batteries and smaller gun turrets for point-defense and ship-to-ship combat purposes. It is assumed that these ships are still in orbit above Stroggos after Operation: Last Hope is completed.

Size[]

The carrier is a full 1.7 or 1.8 kilometers in length in the game's opening ingame cinematic, if we assume the drop ships to be around 17 to 18 meters in length[1] (like a modern military helicopter frame in a similar role). This can be told from comparison of the models used for the opening ingame cinematic, in which the giant carrier and its emerging dropships are portrayed with small but detailed ingame models. If you look carefully, you can also see that bumpmaps sneak in much more detail and depth than the carrier model really has on its surface . This method to boost models in the ingame cinematics and avoid resorting to prerendered cutscenes allows Quake 4 to run all cinematics and gameplay in 4K and unlimited framerates from start to finish.

A large ingame model also exists with one side fully rendered, to represent the ship in a bombardment role within the game, with the implication that this model is full-scale. However, the model is not really full-scale relative to other ingame characters and models, not being large enough to contain the level geometry of the dropship bay in the opening cinematic of the game and not maintaining the 1.8km scaling already mentioned, when compared with full-scale dropship models.

It is likely that the SMC carrier is similar in size to the main Strogg tower housing the Nexus, the location of the final part of the game.

Trivia[]

  • The Carriers use the ship prefix "U.S.S.", which is used by the United States Navy. This implies that the U.S. Navy operates these vessels.

Gallery[]

References[]

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