Let's Play Wing Commander - Gimle Mission #2 - Deathstroke

 We were supposed to be getting out of Gimle pretty soon, but there was one small problem: Ops had detected a number of inbound Kilrathi fighters. They weren’t going to let us leave without a fight.



The Rapiers were with another team today, and we were back in our Raptors. All we had to do was run out to Nav Point 1 and see what was there.

Dralthi. Two full flights of them. Dakhath Deathstroke was leading the second flight, but we'd have to get through the first group to
even worry about that.

Angel broke right, I pulled left and we both went to 'burners. Outnumbered four to one, our only chance was to be aggressive from the start.

Under full guns, the lead Dralthi practically vaporized and then we were fully committed to the merge. I picked a target, engaged, and as soon as that one blew up, I went after another one. I don't recall which one was Dakhath, but I sure wasn't going to let that furry bastard shoot any more ejected pilots.

I had to check my watch when it was over. We'd blasted all eight of them in less than five minutes.

Let's Play Wing Commander - Gimle Mission #2 - Rapier Test Flight

I have no idea how I lucked into this one. When the pair of shiny F-44A pre-production birds touched down on the Claw, I assumed that if anyone would be taking them out on combat flights, it would be a couple of senior pilots on a milk run. Not so! Instead, Colonel Halcyon picked Angel and me to take the new fighters out on a regular three point CAP.



I can't wait for these things to hit regular squadron use. The Rapier is faster than a Hornet, with shields like a Raptor. It could use a couple of heat-seekers in place of the Iffies, but other than that I have no complaints.

Angel and I took off on patrol. We slipped through a small asteroid field at Nav 1, then ran into a Dralthi patrol at Nav 2. Not much to worry about there. Then we jumped a pair of Gratha a Nav 3. Still no worries. The Rapier really outclasses the cat heavies. I'm going to enjoy flying this bird.

Let's Play Wing Commander - Gimle Mission #1 - Exeter Stage Right

If I thought the first couple of systems we had fought in were tough, Gimle was a whole different kind of battle. Our first mission was supposed to be a basic escort, walking an Exeter-class destroyer home from the jump point.



Instead, Angel and I launched straight into the teeth of a surprise ambush by two groups of Salthi. I don't know if the cats had blundered into the Claw's battlegroup by accident, or if they meant to be a quick strike force, but they sure hadn't brought enough firepower along to attack a carrier and her escorts.

Angel and I quickly joined the fight and made short work of the Kilrathi light fighters. Then it was off to Nav 1 and the destroyer.

Maybe the Salthi were just supposed to be a diversion to buy time. Because when we got to Nav 1, the destroyer was already under attack by a trio of Jalthi heavy fighters. Maybe the cats had figured that a few light fighters were a worthwhile trade for a destroyer. I don't know. What I do know is that Angel and I had one hell of a fight on our hands. Not that the Jalthi is much of a dogfighter, but that six-pack of lasers, plus the twin neutron guns for good measure, makes those things positively lethal as cap-ship killers if they're left unchecked for just a few seconds too long.

Angel and I split the bandits between us. We rolled in punching off missiles as quickly as we could, trying for a quick kill. I bagged one of the fighters first, and turned my attention to the unengaged fighter. Sure glad I was in a Raptor now, because those full gun bursts were able to make short work of the Jalthi once I got on the cat's six.

Angel finished off her target, and we joined up with the destroyer. They were pretty beat up, but still spaceworthy. Once they got back to the Claw they'd have a fair bit of damage control to finish up, but it would be nice to have that additional firepower in the strike group. 

Let's Play Wing Commander 1: McAuliffe Mission 3

I was going to miss flying with Paladin. He sure wasn't flashy, but you knew exactly where he was, and that he had your back. I hadn't realized how valuable that was back in the academy.


For what would be our last mission as a flight pair, the Colonel had us back on escort duty. Confed had a lot of heavy cargo coming in, both to fortify the system, and to resupply before our next jump. Not that the Cats were going to make it easy. They'd turned one of their best loose somewhere in system, and were putting up a massive fight.

Given that, I shouldn't have been surprised that we bumped into a four-ship of Krants halfway to the jump point. Paladin broke right to take the lead, and I burned in underneath to try and catch at least one of the big medium fighters from behind before its pilot could react. After that it just dissolved into a massive furball, fighters going every which way. Paladin drew a lot more than his fair share of fire, which allowed me to knock down most of the enemies.

That issue solved, we pressed on to the jump point. The Drayman transport jumped in right on schedule, and we started for home. That's when Bhurak and his two wingmen (wingcats?) jumped us. I knew Bhurak had me maneuvered, but he was still flying a Salthi. While Paladin rolled in on the wingmen, I went straight for Starkiller. Intel had said that the Kilrathi ace liked to launch his missiles at max range and then close for gun kills. I figured if I closed fast enough, I could negate his maneuvering advantage and bring my Scim's mass drivers to bear faster.

Against a heavier fighter, I would have been toast. As it was, I swear I saw one of Bhurak's rockets just pass my right wing, then I opened up with the mass drivers. Maybe the cat was used to people running from him. Maybe he just didn't expect a human to play chicken. I don't know. What I do know, is that I flew through an expanding glass cloud that used to be a Salthi, and the cat hadn't managed to knock my shields down.

After that it was an easy 2v2 cleanup of the remaining hostiles with Paladin. Then home to the Claw for a bit of R&R before the next jump.

Note: Success in this mission will send players to the Gimle System to fly Raptors. Failure will send players to the Brimstone System, still in Scimitars.

Let's Play Wing Commander - McAuliffe System, Mission 1 - Don't Mine Me...

New system, new ship, new wingman. It was great to fly with Paladin on my wing, but to be honest, I could have done with the transfer into the Blue Devils. Nothing against the squadron itself, but like Iceman warned me, the Scimitar is a gun heavy slug. Oh well, the Colonel sets the squadrons, not me.



My first mission with Paladin was a simple four point patrol. We ran into some Dralthi at Nav 1 and made quick work of them. The Scim may not be artful, but against the flying bullseyes, burning in and dumping a full capacitator of mass driver shots is all the art you need.

The minefield at Nav 3 was another matter. I don't know Paladin managed to slice through that field the way he did, but I was dodging those damn magnetic mines the whole time, and praying my shields would hold up. At least I got to take my frustrations out on a wing of Salthi that were hanging around near Nav 4.

Paladin's a good wingman. You can always count on him to be right where he should be. He likes to let pilots learn by experience, and only intervene when he needs to. Part of me is surprised that he's not an academy IP, but having his experience embedded in the squadron is definitely a huge win for every one of us younger pilots who are willing to listen.

Let's Play Wing Commander 1 - Enyo Mission 2 - Babysitting Duty

(Note: since mission recaps are kind of boring, and I've had this head-canon for something like twenty-five years, I'm going to start writing these as fiction from the POV of Bill "Maverick" Loridan.)

The Drayman transport was just painfully slow. I wanted him to go faster, or at least give me a reason to do barrel rolls around the ship, but Spirit probably wouldn't have approved of that. Still, the little Hornet felt like she was practically begging to be wrung out proper-like. It was almost a relief when we finally ran into a pair of Salthi light fighters lurking near the first nav point.



"Spirit, fight's on. You take the trailer, I'll get the leader." A double-click on the comm was all I needed in return. Unlike some of the other folks on the Claw, Spirit wasn't especially talkative during missions. Still, she was a good pilot, and burned ahead, aiming at the trailing enemy fighter. I throttled up to engage the lead fighter, who made a serious mistake in turning to engage Spirit as she burned past him.

It was the last mistake that Kilrathi would ever make.  The moment he turned his back to me, my lasers cut through his shields and armor. I turned my attention to the second fighter just in time to see Spirit snap a perfect Dumbfire shot that caught the other Salthi amidship.

The second encounter was almost anti-climatic by comparison.  The pair of flying bullseyes waiting for us at the jump point never stood a chance. The Dralthi is a piece of junk that looks like it combines poor visibility, lousy armor, and light armament into a package fit only for target practice. I'm glad they're on the enemy's side, not ours.

 The post-mission debrief was pretty normal. Colonel Halcyon congratulated us on getting the transport safely away, and on getting ourselves back safely. Probably the biggest news was that I was being transferred out of the Killer Bees to go fly the Scimitar. Not sure how I feel about that just yet.

And The Winner Is...

I’ll admit to a bit of mild disappointment that my Twitter poll about the next Flight Friday game didn’t get more responses. Oh well, I said I’d go with the results, and the people, all three of them, have spoken. The next Flight Friday series will be Wing Commander!

I'm looking forward to being back here again.

Now that I’m not disappointed about. I believe that I’ve mentioned before how meaningful the Wing Commander series was in my professional development, and I’m genuinely excited to play through them again, hopefully while sharing them with at least a few folks who’ve never played them. It’s going to be a good time.

Now here’s the big challenge: including the various expansion packs, each of which has a sufficiently long campaign to constitute its own game, the Wing Commander series has a total of fifteen games. That’s five mainline games, five expansion packs, two Privateer spinoffs, strategy/space combat hybrid Wing Commander Armada, mission builder/playground Wing Commander Academy, and top-down multiplayer blaster Wing Commander Arena. Even discounting WC Arena for its total lack of single-player, that’s still a hefty number of games. Bear in mind too that the four game Star Wars: X-Wing series took me three and a half years to play through.

I’d like to not be still playing through this series when I’m forty-five.

One of the things that made these games unique for the time, and is still remarkably rare among modern games, is the branching campaign structure of the first two major titles. Winning or losing a series of missions doesn’t necessarily cause you to fail the mission, just take on a different, slightly harder series that can eventually get you back on the winning track, provided you don’t continue to fail. One of the things I’ll be trying to do in these playthroughs is hitting all the possible branches in each game. That’s going to increase my playtime significantly.

Another thing I’m excited about: I’ve never actually finished either of the Privateer games, or the Secret Ops expansion for Wing Commander: Prophecy. I’ve never touched WC Armada or WC Academy. That’s going to be fun when I get there!

The Book of Face helpfully* pointed me to a December article from PC Gamer for their Top 25 Best Space Games on PC. Not that I have too many issues with their choices (although how System Shock 2 didn't make the cut is beyond me) but man is it ever kind of depressing that the majority of the good space combat sims are all from the '90s.

Although I'm an original backer of Star Citizen, I wouldn't say it belongs on the list either. It's still too far from finished. Hopefully it's going to be a worthy successor to the Wing Commander throne someday...

This is the cockpit view that made me fall in love with space games.
Screenshot from gog.com

Independence War really belongs on there too. A game with full Newtonian physics more than fifteen years before Elite: Dangerous, and one of the few that really made you feel like you were captaining a bigger ship. Also, what's a list of space games without a single Star Trek game? Granted a lot of those have been hot garbage, but Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force was excellent, even if it did have a pretty weak source show to work with. At least it wasn't based on Enterprise.

I-War isn't all that complicated. Okay, it is.
Screenshot via gog.com

For my (admittedly biased) money though, I would have included Star Trek: Starfleet Academy as the representative for that franchise. Not the most polished space sim, but the only one that gave you the chance to stand on the bridge of a Federation ship and resolve conflicts with violence, or occasionally diplomacy. Also included a fair number of cameos from members of the original Trek cast.

That's your captain (on the right) and part of the crew though. You're
definitely more of a Kirk than a Picard.
Screenshot from gog.com

*Not actually helpful