An unofficial, unendorsed, and unhinged rant about the Red Alert: Aftermath Helicarrier

[Killing_You]

INTRODUCTION

     It's been a week since the release of the October Hunt patch for A Path Beyond, and by now I imagine most people got the chance to play with one of the new units introduced in the update; the long-anticipated and much rumored Helicarrier. Albeit, it was in a different form than many anticipated, being given to the Soviets and as a surface combat vessel in addition to helicopter support. Since then, I've seen and been involved with some discussions about the Helicarrier, and I've made it no secret that I don't particularly care for the original design of the Helicarrier that was hidden away in the files of the Aftermath expansion. I mentioned that I could write a whole thread on what's wrong with it during one of the game nights, and people seemed interested, so here it is!

     I'll preface this by saying that this isn't meant to be a reflection on Westwood itself, as I don't believe the sprite was intended to be the "final" look of the unit, but rather a proof-of-concept or "debug" placeholder meant to test the functionality. Remember the "Tesla Tanks" from Counterstrike? The ones that were just reused Mobile Radar Jammer sprites, ahead of the Tesla Tank getting its own unique art in Aftermath? Same principle, except the Helicarrier never made it to release (likely for balance reasons), and thus I think it's reasonable to assume that Westwood simply didn't want to make something more polished for a unit that (they figured) would never see the light of day anyway.

     Oh, by the way, I should warn you all: this is going to get Pedantic as FUCK. I am a Naval nerd at heart, have been since I was eight, and a lot of this might come off as a big pile of "Who Fucking Cares" to... I'd say 90% of people. So if you'd rather not waste your time listening to a ship nerd screaming into the void, this is your last heads-up to check out. I won't judge you one bit. This is just for those genuinely curious.

     With that disclaimer out of the way, the Ship Autistic Special Interest Rant begins...

REAL HELICARRIERS

      Before we can break down the original sprite, we first have to establish how helicopter carriers function in real life. Yes, they do exist, and they typically come in two flavors; Helicopter Cruisers (such as APB's own Moskva) and Landing Platform Helicopters, or "LPHs" for short (which is how I'll be referring to them for the rest of this post). The original version seems to most closely match with an LPH in terms of function, so let's take a look at them. The best example is the Atlântico, since there's a high-def picture easily accessible for reference:

     I know what you're thinking. "But KY, this looks like an aircraft carrier for planes, not helicopters!" That's a completely fair train of thought, as LPHs began life as Light Aircraft Carriers, AKA carriers that were much smaller and designed around smaller squadrons and/or aircraft. It does make sense to do things this way; by turning the majority of the deck into the flight deck, you maximize the area where aircraft can take off, land, or get emergency maintenance. In fact, this dedicated functionality is what separates a Helicopter Carrier from a ship with a landing pad; many ships can have choppers land on them, but can't support extended helicopter operations. Let's take a look at what this support looks like under the hood, so to speak:

     Looks like a lot, right? That's because it is, but don't worry. I'm not expecting you to know this entire thing by heart. I just want to have a quick visual aid as to how complex carriers are internally. All you need to worry about is the basic necessities: The bridge, flight deck, hanger deck, elevators, engine rooms, storage, and quarters. A good fictional ship design doesn't need to have everything planned out to this degree, but it does need to at least imply that the ship is large enough for all of the above. To demonstrate what I mean, let's take a look at another C&C unit (and arguably the spiritual successor to the Helicarrier), the RA2 Aircraft Carrier:

     At a glance, this is definitely a rather unorthodox layout, but the ship is big enough and laid out logically enough that the pieces are probably all there. Based on the shape, it can be easily surmised that the engine rooms are on the bottom (as usual), most of the quaters and storage are located sternside with the bridge up top, and most of the bow is dedicated towards the flight deck. In fact, the design seems to imply that there is a dedicated launch pad at the end of the flight deck, which itself connects directly with the hanger bay, so no elevators needed. While I still have my question marks in terms of efficiency (specifically how unnecessarily huge the superstructure is resulting in the flight deck being proportionally small for a ship like this), I can look at it and at least see how this would function. Really, that's the main measuring stick to use when judging fictional vehicle designs; efficiency can (and often does) take a backseat to rule-of-cool, but if the design starts to veer into the territory of nonfunctional, you either need to get VERY clever with your writing or give your design a second pass.

     Okay... NOW things are about to get MEGA pedantic. THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING BEFORE THE MARBLES BECOME LOST!!!

   Still here? I knew I liked you. Now, let's look at the original sprite...

AFTERMATH HELICARRIER

     So with all of that context above, I imagine you'll understand when I say...

WHAT IN THE GLACIER FLAYING FUCK IS THIS ABOMINATION TO THE HMS DREADNOUGHT'S HOLY NAME?!?!?!

     Okay, first things first, the size. The landing pad looks big enough for a single helicopter, essentially making it as big as the Helipad structure. Typically landing pads are the same size as the length of the intended helicopter or the diameter of its rotor blades, but the bare minimum is 15.24 meters (50 feet). This was originally an Allied unit (and given to both sides in the Remastered edition), so we can use the Apache as a reference. The Apache measures 17.73m (58ft 2in) in length, and has a rotor diameter of 14.63m (48ft). If we want to use the Hind in the Remastered cameo as our reference, that measures 17.5m (57ft 5in) in length with a rotor diameter of 17.3m (56ft 9in). Let's be generous and round up the pad size to 18.288m (60ft). Add in that outer edge, and we can ballpark this thing as being about 21.336m (70ft) in all directions. Bow to stern and port to starboard... wherever the hell those are, but we'll get to that. That's a respectable size for a landing pad, but for a warship, it's laughable. For context, the Asheville-class gunboat (what some consider to be the closest equivalent to the Red Alert gunboat) reaches 50.1m (164ft 6in) from bow to stern, the Mandau-class missile boat (the gunboat model in APB) hits 53.7m (176ft 2in), the Moskva-class helicopter cruiser (the APB helicarrier) hits 189m (620 ft), and the Atlântico LPH (our example pic above) hits 203.4m (667ft). As you can see, going off of the cameo reference gives a Helicarrier that is positively dwarfed by the real ships.

     Let's be fair, though. This thing is supposed to be big enough to support five longbows, so let's extend the flight deck to compensate. Multiplying our original ballpark by five, we get a size estimate of around 106.68m (350ft). Still quite small, but closer to the realm of reality... until you realize the shape. I could go into detail about length-to-beam ratios (beam being the widest point on a ship hull) and what's best for what purpose, but I don't think I need to. There's a fairly obvious reason why you almost never see circular ships, and that's because it is a pretty poor shape for propulsion. Water resistance is much higher than air resistance, and ships have to push an absolute shitload of water out of the way in order to get from point A to point B. The typical shape you see focuses both propulsion and drag into the smallest areas to maximize the former and minimize the former. Going circular does the opposite for no discernable reason. In addition, it makes keeping the ship going straight a serious challenge. Just look up the Novgorod, often considered the worst warship ever built:

     Yes, this thing existed. Yes, it was technically in service in wartime (specifically the 1877 Russo-Turkish War). No, it didn't see actual combat largely due to how much it sucked at being a warship.

     But this provides a good segue back to the Helicarrier. You'll notice certain elements present on the Novgorod that are absent on the Helicarrier, namely the bridge, crew area, and smokestacks. So... where the HELL are these things on the Helicarrier?!?! I mean, I guess the blocky thing could be one of those things, but... which one? If it's the bridge, then how the hell do they observe the flight deck? Wherever the viewports are, they cannot give good enough visual coverage, and thus the ship will always have a massive blind spot. Is it the engines? If so... what kind of engine?! Most warships of the time used diesel or steam-powered boilers, both of which require sizable amounts of exhaust that clearly isn't present. I suppose it could be a nuclear reactor, which actually does match the timeline surprisingly well and wouldn't require exhaust. But that still leaves the question of where the hell is the bridge? And what about the crew quarters?

    The only thing I can think of is that maybe the crew area and bridge are rolled into one on that small block (which makes me ask how they crammed everything in there on top of the aforementioned visibility problems), and that this thing is actually a type of hovercraft. If we go that route, looking back at size, the largest hovercraft EVER is the Zubr-class LCAC at 57m (187ft). This lines up surprisingly okay with the low-end, single landing pad interpretation, but is still WAY too small for the scaled up, full carrier interpretation.

     Speaking of which, let's talk about the final problem: The hanger deck. Chiefly... where the glacier flaying fuck IS IT?! This is what makes carriers as effective as they are, being able to protect and maintain aircraft in an area shielded from the elements. Granted, some ships (mainly helicopter cruisers) don't necessarily have full hanger decks, but they do have dedicated storage areas for fuel and munitions for the aircraft they maintain. So where the hell are those areas? Maybe below the pad in that nebulous area, but there doesn't appear to be a way down there. Do the crew hop down onto the outer pontoons, open hatches to get the stuff out, and then toss it onto the flight deck? That could maybe make sense if this was a small, single pad hovercraft used for emergency support, but not for the squadron supporting behemoth it's supposed to function as. You'd need ramps up, elevators, hatch doors, ladders, the works just to get below decks from the pad area, none of which I see here. And then you get to how it was presented in the original game, where the helis go INSIDE the helicarrier. That means there needs to be elevators capable of lowering the Helis below decks and ample space to move them around to designated storage without whacking into other stored helis, but... I don't see where ANY of that is supposed to be!

     So in the end, we have two possible interpretations. On one hand, this is a small hovercraft designed to support single helicopters in an emergency. This doesn't fit the original five-heli presentation and wouldn't be nearly big enough to carry supplies for long term engagements, and wouldn't be much more than a tiny target for Soviets to take potshots at in actual combat. On the other, this is a nuclear powered behemoth of an LPH with a suboptimal shape, poor situational awareness, and a whole host of logistical layout nightmares that I don't even want to think about. This does beg the question, though. If I were to build a Helicarrier that matches the function of the original Aftermath unit 1-for-1 AND makes logical sense with reality, what would I do? Simply put, I'd use the HMS Furious:

     See that rounded shape to the bow end of the flight deck? I'd take that sucker and paint the Red Alert Helipad on it. Thus sticking to the visuals of the original sprite while using a design that actually works in reality. I'd probably also implement a starboard-side bridge superstructure like later carriers for the sake of efficiency. But this right here would be a nice blend of realism and "rule-of-cool" extravagance.

     If you made it this far... thank you on indulging me as I went truly insane. This was a lot of fun to write up and do research for. Spearheading the APB Naval Rework helped me rediscover my love for warship design, and this was simply an expression of that love. I look forward to seeing you all on the high seas of A Path Beyond, as well as the battlefields!