Wing Commander....DEAD?

I can see what you mean, Pedro, that CG would be a step backward from the live action we have in the more recent games. But Wing Commander did pretty damn well even before FMV was put in, and those games were no less 'special', IMO, than the ones with the FMV. Eh... I think you know what I mean.

Vondoom: I'll agree with you on one point. Compared to other WC games, Petrarca's acting was pretty subpar, but by computer game standards (which is what you said), he wasn't that bad. But that's just my opinion, so take it as you will...

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If I'm locked on, there's no such thing as evasive action!
 
Main problem he was too young, infact the whole damn ship was too young! You fill a movie or game with young actors and your bound to get problems! Maybe in the next game we can have some older wingmen (Blair was only in it for half the game and Hawk got waxed so even the old oldies weren't much help and maniac hardly adds any maturity to a situation).

My entire point has been it would be a step back, I'm not going to not get the next WC game just because its got CG animation but I would be kinda peeved off. I think Privateer would work well with CG though because you don't really get to know many characters.
 
Very true. I guess they wanted to totally reinivent WC for the new trilogy and in the absence of CR. But why everything new? WC has a great history, and it would have been better if they would have embraced it more. I think they could have found a better balance.

As for bad acting, that can be unavoidable when you are on a budget, and I didn't actually think Casey was THAT bad.
 
The reason Casey et al were young is because Prophecy was supposed to be introducing a new generation. IIRC on the back of the WCP box it said the Midway was an untested ship full of newbies.
 
Yes, and I think they did a pretty good job. A good deal of old characters were there to pass the torch, I just would have liked more. Thats nostalgia for you.

On the upside, if you like older, experienced characters, by the time WCP2 comes out all of the new characters will probably be old already.
 
Pedro: The Midway wasn't full of plebes. Blair notes to the CAG that they didn't even have a full complement of ships or pilots. Therefore the Midway wasn't even full at all. Also if you check the killboard at the beginning you'll notice that quite a few pilots already have kills. So the crew isn't quite as green as you imply. The only problem is they overemphasize the fact that Casey is a newbie.
 
All right but your commanding officer, stilletto, the intelligence officer etc etc don't seem right being that young, and I'd have rather focused more on the older characters rather than having casey alienated from them. I mean I really didn't see enough of Blair and the cpatain showed his face like twice!
 
I must agree. To have a new class of carriers, new fighters of all classes is a little unrealistic in ten years. I understand Origin had to do it, but I would have liked to see a handful of older ships sometime in the game.

As for the crew, there was some age, but not enough of it. I believe the average age of a flier should probably be around 30. With the exception of a few people, the age diversity seems to be nada, and average age is too young.

[This message has been edited by Wolf Dog (edited October 02, 2000).]
 
Wolf Dog said:
I must agree. To have a new class of carriers, new fighters of all classes is a little unrealistic in ten years.
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Isn't that basicly what happened between WC1 and WC2?
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All the fighers and capships are newin there to.

As for the crew, there was some age, but not enough of it. I believe the average age of a flier should probably be around 30. With the exception of a few people, the age diversity seems to be nada, and average age is too young.
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I don't believe we see too many pilots from the Midway in Prophecy. True, most of those are young, but than there's Maniac, Hawk, Spyder, Amazon and Zero always reminded me a little of Vagabond... an experienced flyer with a low rank.
 
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From WC1 to WC2 there are no serious changes in ship design other than Phase Shields and minor improvements to the fighters. Even the Rapier is still a standard fighter in WC2. Ship design takes a much larger leap forward in WCP. Shields apparently let you crash into other ships without problems for one.

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There is no God but myself. No destiny but what I deem for me. I walk my path and no others, for I am free.

http://www.ntr.net/~vondoom
 
Earthworm said:
Isn't that basicly what happened between WC1 and WC2?
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All the fighers and capships are newin there to.
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You are right. And I really didn't like it then either.

I stand corrected on the pilot situation as well. I didn't remember there being that many experienced pilots on the Midway. Still, I don't know, there was something about the atmosphere that made everyone seem so young. Maybe it was how they over played the whole plebe thing.
 
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I think that the phase shields in themselves would be a pretty significant advancement. The ships also got faster, tougher, and better armed.

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"I'm putting you back in the cockpit Colonel, where you will be reunited with an old friend, the thrill of battle!"
-Tolwyn to Blair WC IV
 
Vondoom:
But the point is about all of the ships changing, not just the ship design.
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BTW, phase shields have been present a long time before WC2.
 
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Earthworm: But there was a full fledged war going on then. There was no war driving development leading up to WC4.

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There is no God but myself. No destiny but what I deem for me. I walk my path and no others, for I am free.

http://www.ntr.net/~vondoom
 
You were talking about the various pilots on the Midway including Amazon. I could never be sure which female pilot she was. Does anyone know for sure or have a screen shot of which one she was?

Also, all of the talk about computer generated images in Wing Commander made me take another look at some of the games. Do any of you Sliders fans recognize the computer console that Casey logs into after every mission? It's been used in that series every now-and-then. Does anyone else remember seeing it or any of the other props anywhere else?

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Put that in your pipe and smoke it!
 
Regarding the plebe-only cutscenes: Basically, Casey's a plebe. You can't possibily expect him to see the Captain all that often. He hangs out with his own peer group, and since they're all pathetic plebes...
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As for the sudden change of ships, it actually makes sense. Remember,

"Over half of our war-era fleet is obsolete and failing, and if we tried to replace the old ships with ships of the same type, it would cost almost twice as much as the entire megacarrier program to provide the same level of defence".

Now, this is obviously talking about capships, rather than fighters. However, if you want to replace the old capships with new ones, your old fighters will obviously become obsolete. Thus, any capship updates (which, as you can see, are a necessity) will obviously be accompanied by fighter updates. I mean, what would be the point of flying WWII-era Avengers off a nuclear carrier?

Furthermore, note that a barrier was crossed towards the end of the war - the Excalibur had a different type of powerplant than older ships. This is in many ways parallel to the situation at the end of WWII, when jet-powered planes were seen as the future of air combat. You may be wondering what this has to do with the WCP fighters. Well, what makes you think WCP fighters don't have M/AM powerplants? When a new engine is invented, you don't dump it because it's expensive - rather, you try to figure out a way to make it cheaper.
 
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You point has a lot of merit. Looking back at the jump from the end of WWII to Korea, less than 10 years, and you see a lot of new technology in the forefront. Then again, after WWII the Cold War began fueling an arms race, so there was more of a reason to for the development.

But, looking at the size of the new fighters compared to the old, I have a hard time envisioning M/AM drives. However, I can see a M/AM drive being smaller than a fusion drive, since it doesn't have to worry about generating an initial temperature of around 100,000,000K to initiate the drive. And antimatter storage wouldn't neccessarily be that big, assuming we already have antiproton storage devices now and they have 600 years to improve on them.
 
First of all, Fusion requires only 10,000,000K or so, not 100,000,000. I know, I know, being nitpicky and all. But a M/AM engine would require far less fuel than a Fusion engine but neither need much space for fuel if they are efficent. The main problem lies in effective containment and directment of that energy, which for either plant is considerable. And the cold war is a valid point because during that time, we believed we would be going to war with the USSR at any time. Look at weapon development in the past ten years with no real threats. Our most advanced bombers are a almost 20 year old design, and new fighters like the F-22 may not ever see the light of day because currently there is simply no use for them. You don't develop and spend massive resources on new weaponry when there is no need for them. Seems like the Confederation would have wanted to used that money to rebuild infrastructure. Also the Midway was built to do the job of an entire carrier group, there by costing less by only building one advanced ship instead of 4 or 5 smaller ones based on the same technology. But anyway, the real reason that they are there is because Origin wanted to start fresh so no ships were carried over at all from the Confederation. Everything was new for a new start. Thats the real reason
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There is no God but myself. No destiny but what I deem for me. I walk my path and no others, for I am free.

http://www.ntr.net/~vondoom
 
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"Regarding the plebe-only cutscenes: Basically, Casey's a plebe. You can't possibily expect him to see the Captain all that often. He hangs out with his own peer group, and since they're all pathetic plebes... "

SO why not give us someone with a little more experience?
 
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