"Super" Eikan?

[Fred]

I'd like to request that the "Super Eikan" cruiser just be renamed to the Eikan-class.

I think the "Super" prefix in front of the name makes it feel very unprofessional. Out of some kiddie G.I. Joe supervehicle, I'd take it in stride, but if some other setting like Star Trek had brought up some ship called "the Super Avenger-class", I'd have rolled my eyes too.

What happened to the Eikan-class was that when designed, it was actually kind of small for a cruiser, so it was adjusted. I think this was a good idea, though what it should have had been is a retcon-style adjustment to set the ship to better fit its role in the setting, rather than the creation of a new ship class.

 

[OsakanOne]

Uh... You do know about the Super Tomcat, right? It hit carriers with the TF-30 powerplant. It was seriously underspec of what the fighter needed to perform properly but it met the cold-war requirements and meant the plane came within budget. In 1994, VFAX performed trials and determined it wasn't good enough in a mission critical interception scenario. In addition, the airframe bled speed too quickly for the TF-30 to recover quickly enough for a proper furball so the General Electric F110-400 engines were modified from another shelved platform. This rose the thrust to weight ratio of the F14 above and beyond what the original spec actually called for, making the damn thing an utter joy to fly. Its avionics had to be updated to compensate for its new twitchiness at high speeds. A full glass-cockpit was also fitted and the AWG-9 was replaced with the AN/APG-71 Radar. Other systems included the ASPJ, JTIDFS, SJU17V seats, NACES and IRST.

The retrofitted engines and detection performance differences were so massive that they reassigned it the name "Super Tomcat" to avoid confusing deck-crews. This same renaming of aircraft and even carriers with the prefix 'super' has been used quite extensively in US naval forces.

If the Eiken is a retrofit and update of an older platform (akin to the 1701 vs the 1701-a in startrek) it actually makes total sense.

 

[Fred]

Except that the Eikan magically disappeared, and was replaced by Super Eikans overnight that were so much larger that any retrofit was not actually possible. I'd compare, but the Eikan-class article doesn't even exist anymore.

Nope, not as I see it. This was a retcon, based on how the Eikan's size actually poorly qualified it to hold the "Heavy cruiser" label. Then it was adjusted by adding a different article with the "super" appelation. At first I thought it had been poorly handled, but didn't feel anal about it to the point of trying to get it fixed because... I didn't mind. It was kind of a random SAoY mook ship and seldom seemed to really draw attention - it seemed to me more a tool to just confirm the power of Yamatai's navy on the wiki.

There wasn't a need for that. The size was an OoC oversight, some things were considered, and then it could've have had been changed, and no one ICly would likely have had been the wiser because there just wasn't any impact there: the information on the ship was just becoming more faithful to how it was meant to be represented.

But now, people are considering it to be a plotship. It's quite likely that in the upcoming roleplay, a lot will end up being fleshed out about the class. With that consideration, I really think the least that's owed to the people that are interested in it is to give them a better foundation.

To me, that starts with the class' name. Hence the existence of this thread.

Edit: honestly, Osaka, that video you ended your post with just seemed to give it a grandstanding, condescending closure. It's like that most of the time you add media in your posts for me (aside from artwork or actual academic referencing). Maybe you like to think that pictures are worth a thousand words, but there's 99% of it I find to be 'insulting words'. You can communicate with anyone else you want to as you like, just know that everytime you've done so with me, it's pissed me off.

 

[OsakanOne]

Maybe its like a spiritual successor to the Eiken, then? Similar design: Enlarged hull, based on the same tried and true concepts. Like a sort of Eiken II?

Edit:
How you chose to interpret that began and ended with you and wasn't planned or intended.
Develop a sense of humour immediately.

 

[Gallant]

Magic.

 

[Fred]

Yes, magic. It magically increased in size. It can magically keep the name it started with too.

 

[Abwehran Commander]

It's like the Grinch. But instead of it's heart, Eikan got FAT.

 

[Jimmy]

Actually, to keep with the aircraft theme, the FA-18 Super Hornet became roughly twice the size of its original namesake with just about better...everything. I guess they wanted to truly take advantage dat alpha/AoA. If we wanted to go with a Japanese theme instead, we could call it the Eikan Kai (I learned this from Kancolle), but that usually summons one of our more popular members.

Personally, I don't think it's a big deal but then maybe having limit familiarity with U.S military aircraft has just made me used to the convention. At worst we could call it the Eiken 2, or something, or just retcon as the original spec. The ship is probably too damn big for the PC's to completely explore anyway.

 

[Kai]

but that usually summons one of our more popular members.

Did someone say something?

Actually, I think the big problem is that the original Eikan, article, art, and all, has simply disappeared. IF the original Eikan articles and whatnot were still around, even if just for posterity, it would clear up all the confusion and everything would make sense.

 

[OsakanOne]

Then why not retcon the size issue?

 

[Doshii Jun]

Kai's suggestion to win. I like the Super Eikan name, but it's not super if we have nothing with which to compare it.

 

[Soresu]

This is why I prefer a Generational or 'Mark' format.

 

[Fred]

A 'Mark' would follow the Mindy's scheme, to which I'm not as opposed to as I am to the "Super". At least, people don't keep calling the Mindy II the "Mindy Two". It's "Mindy" most of the time, and "the Mark II" mostly when its technical/logistics people talking about specific versions (the appearance of the Sylph II and Daisy II kind of messed that up, though).

The Irim gunship followed a similar process. "Oh, we got DOGA and can actually make it look like something" and then later "Hey, I'm fairly sure I can grab DOGA and make a somewhat better rendering of the Irim".. Although the Irim hit the 'Mark II' revision on the YE 30 upgrade, it still was called "Irim-class" and that was it.

However, my issue with it is that such a denomination wasn't really needed in the first place. It's not like the Plumeria class got called the "Super Plumeria" or the "Plumeria II" when Wes reworked its scale, found out it was a bit too large to be a 'light gunship' and renamed it a "medium gunship" along with putting a bevy of random turrets all over its main body (which, in my artistic opinion, broke the design language with the Sakura-class... but no one ever listens to me about these things anyways).

For the Eikan, it was a realization that it wasn't all that large for a ship that was called a heavy cruiser. Wes got called out on that (by me, as it happens), but then, all that was needed was to sit down, figure out what kind of numbers were needed for something that would be called a "heavy cruiser" in the Star Army of Yamatai, and then change those few numbers. Not litterally make a new ship class and practically wasting the lifespan of the name "Eikan" on so little (I hate wasting good names, especially when it's not needed). It was mostly an OoC reconcepting because, as far as anyone ICly in the setting was concerned, the Eikan never actually changed because the oversight had never happened. Because it could not have had happened.

Also, I really feel that the "super" in front of the name just sounds retarded.

 

[Yoshi]

As the player who wants to bring the Super Eikan to life n a plot, I would like to have my say here and then leave it at that.

I like the Idea of the "Super" part of the name. Like the Super hornet and a few others over the years it shows something that is bigger and better. On top of that i believe the name nether adds nor detracts from the RPing, with that said I do believe that a crew would look at the Super part with pride and use it to make them selfs live up to that "Superness" of the ship it's self.

Thank you.

 

[Gunsight1]

F-14D Super Tomcat
F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet
All the battleships built in WW2 classified as Super Dreadnought Battleships
American prototype tanks T28, T29, T32, etc, classified as Super Heavy Tanks

Heck, no one has issue with Darth Vader's command ship in Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi being a Super Star Destroyer

 

[Fred]

I'm apparently not part of this grouping called "no one". ~_~

 

[Kai]

This is correct, Fred. You are a Someone, and most No ones don't understand you. I, however, am more or less on your side, at least to the point that calling it a Super Eikan sounds really dumb when there's no regular Eikan for it to be superior to.

 

[Kyle]

I have to agree with Kai, because there is no regular Eikan I can't see the point of it being called the Super Eikan. For example, there is a Tomcat, which was a fighter introduced in the 1970s and then replaced in 2003 by the Super Tomcat, in this example, you have the regular aircraft and then the upgraded version of that aircraft.

The Super Hornet is another example of a fighter that is a variant of the F/A-18 Hornet. There are also regular dreadnaughts, and then super dreadnaughts. And then regular battleships, and super battleships. The word 'super' is traditionally used by the military to signify a ship or fighter that is a mark above its original, Tomcat > Super Tomcat.

The Super Star Destroyer is another example, in this case, in the fictional setting. You have the regular star destroyer and then the super star destroyer, which is several orders of magnitude bigger than your traditional star destroyer =)

I think the way this can be solved, is if the original Eikan page can be restored.

 

[Wes]

The first thing to know is that the Eikan and Super Eikan are definitely different classes of ship, particularly in size. The Super Eikan has a major new center/aft section added on, which gives it that "double arrowhead" shape when seen from above. Much like the entirety of the Sakura-class ships were disassembled and rebuilt into their larger Plumeria-class cousins, all Eikans were rebuilt into the Super Eikan. The reason the original Eikan pages were removed is because none of the original model of the ships exist anymore in that form, and I didn't want to duplicate the article content. Originally, the Super Eikan page was a stub that basically listed the modifications that made it different than the Eikan. When the last Eikans were rebuilt, I decided I didn't want to keep linking to the page of an obsolete design and moved the info to the Super Eikan page, leaving the old page as just a stub. Rather than waste effort on fixing up a page for a now-nonexistent ship class that served for maybe a year, I removed the page. Having it exist just as a note in thhe history section of the Super Eikan is good enough. I have no interest in restoring and maintaining a separate article for the original Eikan.

The naming convention was indeed inspired by the Super Hornet. If you want to refer to it as an Eikan-class, that won't confuse anyone because the original Eikans are now Super Eikans anyway. I'm just not sold on changing the official nickname for it.

 

[Fred]

Very well. That answers the request. Thank you for your consideration.