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2008.279 (October 5, 2008)

[# 3287 | 10/5/2008]

Wing Commander's Iron Man
Roguetrada is living the dream - by which I mean he's casting his own tiny metal Wing Commander ship models! He has made (and painted) a Dralthi Mk. VII, a Tarsus and a Pirate Talon... with more to come! We can also expect to see a Gladius, Stiletto and Demon in the near future... and then all four of the original Confederation fighters. Want your own? He's making affordable copies available on eBay!

Star*Soldier Gloss: Page 54
This is the Star*Soldier gloss for the first weapons page:

CONCEPT: This was one of my very earliest concepts - I wanted a unique way to include the weapons in the manual, which is something other booklets haven't done. What I was picturing was those cheap newsprint advertisements for car dealerships or grocery stores -- just badly put together and BUSY as all hell. I think it ended up being slightly too slick to get that across... but it's close! So many fonts, colors, text directions all at once...

REFERENCES-

• "Gar's Emporium" - The smugglers den from Action Stations - apparently it escaped the event horizon!
• The image in the corner is Bhurak Starkiller, taken from the original Claw Marks.
• The images are all from Origin's Privateer source models, rendered out anew. Note the cheapo rainbow effect to cover their jaggy edges.
• Gun specifications come from the original Privateer.
• Credit pricing is my own; although there were plans for an economy in Arena early on, this was created well after that was dropped.
• The "Mark" numbers on the guns tribute/add to the Wing Commander I blueprints, which gave these designations for the holy trinity of Wing Commander guns (laser, mass driver, neutron).
• "most efficient" - A nod to Wing Commander fans like Mark Minasi who calculated that the Tachyon was by far the most cost effective gun in the original Privateer.
• "Hades class ships" - There's a retcon! The massive awkward plasma weapons in Privateer are the same type found years later in Secret Ops. Go figure!
• The font along the side is the Kilrathi font from the Wing Commander movie, as published in the Confederation Handbook. I used a downloaded version someone made and tried not to use any of the 'non canon' letters... but that may have been abandoned in order to spell something in the background.
• In general, the gun descriptions are all designed not to hurt any of the 'how-it-works' descriptions from past titles.

powell99	Kilrathi Gauntlet	Stiletto	0
FireFly	Convoy Strike	Wraith	2880
scamander	Confed Gauntlet	Wraith	707
aditps	Convoy Strike	Morningstar	400
overmortal	Kilrathi Gauntlet	Rapier	210

2008.278 (October 4, 2008)

[# 3286 | 10/4/2008]

Wingnuts Help Themselves Out of a Jam
This week Crius.net posters blazed through the Pasqual and Peleus Systems in their community replay of Wing Commander 4. Battle hardened Wingnuts fought alongside the Kilrathi and took out the jammer that was crippling Border Worlds communications. Here's DaveO with some recollections and screenshots.

Peleus 1: Three Border Worlds Banshees are flying in the Peleus system on patrol when their ship systems get disrupted. A pair of Excaliburs comes from behind the Banshees, and one Banshee is quickly eliminated. A Banshee pilot manages to get a missile lock on an enemy Excalibur, but the missile takes out a fellow pilot’s Banshee. One of the Excaliburs swoops in and finishes off the final Banshee.

On the Intrepid, Sosa relays a communication from Wilford to me. The Vice Admiral tells me that there are ships being lost in Peleus without evidence of an enemy behind it. Due to the importance of Peleus to provide fuel for our forces as well as its strategic location, we are to investigate the area. I tell the navigator to jump to Peleus, and we get a surprise. All of our ship systems go offline, and even emergency systems are useless. The Intrepid just got a big bull’s eye painted on it since we’re sitting ducks. Maniac points out the obvious about having to fly blind without way of knowing what is waiting for us. I point out that we’re not entirely blind, but we’ve already found out why ships are being lost in this area. Something is interfering with ship systems including our fighters, so we need to find the cause of this disruption quickly or risk an attack we’ll have little chances to fend off. Maniac wants a refund for this little tour of Peleus, and I’m sure there will be opportunities for paybacks on both sides. We manage to pull to the edge of this jamming ‘black hole’, but it does not help matters much. The only choice left is to do a search and destroy. Due to the missile guidance issues, dumb fire missiles will be the only options. I talk to Pliers before I take off, and he recommends increased power to engines since the armor for the fighters has been increased. I go with his recommendation, and pick an Avenger due to its durability.

Turbo and I take off, and instantly the Avenger is a life saver. An enemy fighter runs right into my rear while I’m trying to shake him off at the first nav point. The second nav point is clear, so we head on to the third. There are multiple enemy fighters here, but it’s hard to sight them and keep them in view with the sluggish Avenger. I manage to get lucky after doing evasive maneuvers and see an enemy Bearcat heavy fighter. I get on its tail, and destroy it with several direct hit blasts. I don’t see any other fighters, so we go onwards to the fourth nav point. This area is also empty, so we head to a fifth nav point area. More Bearcats are here, and I sight one and engage it. It’s destroyed by multiple shots, but my Avenger is critically damaged. I can’t afford to take many more hits. I’m doing some evasive swerving in an attempt to see the other Bearcat, but Turbo pitches in and destroys the fighter. At the next nav point, Sosa manages to make communication to tell me about enemy forces approaching the Intrepid’s position. Turbo and I head for that area, and there are two Excaliburs here. I decide to try my luck, and I get one of the enemy fighters with a dumb fire missile. I get behind the other one, and finish him off with my guns. The pilot ejects, and Decker comes on the communication line thinking the pilot may know something to help us find the source of our ship system troubles. I pull the ejection pod of the pilot into my ship with the tractor beam, and head back to the Intrepid. Sosa tells me that we’ll be questioning the pilot as soon as I land.

• Community Replay - General Discussion
• WC1 Week 1 - Enyo, McAuliffe, Gimle, Gateway, Cheng-du
• WC1 Week 2 - Brimstone, Dakota, Kurasawa, Rostov, Port Hedland, Hubble's Star
• WC1 Week 3 - Venice, Hell's Kitchen, Alternate Paths
• Secret Missions Week 1 - Goddard, Border Zone, Midgard
• Secret Missions Week 2 - Jotunheim, Bifrost
• Secret Missions Week 3 - Valgard, Vigrid
• SM2: Crusade Week 1 - Firekka
• SM2: Crusade Week 2 - Corsair, Near Firekka
• SM2: Crusade Week 3 - Corsair, Charon
• WC2 Week 1 - Gwenydd, Niven
• WC2 Week 2 - Niven, Ghorah Khar
• WC2 Week 3 - Novaya Kiev, Heaven's Gate
• WC2 Week 4 - Heaven's Gate, Tesla
• WC2 Week 5 - Enigma
• WC2 Week 6 - K'tithrak Mang
• SO1 Week 1 - Pembroke
• SO1 Week 2 - Rigel
• SO1 Week 3 - Ghorah Khar 1
• SO1 Week 4 - Ghorah Khar 2
• SO2 Week 1 - Canewdon 1
• SO2 Week 2 - Canewdon 2
• SO2 Week 3 - Canewdon 3
• SO2 Week 4 - Ayer's Rock
• WC3 Week 1 - Orsini
• WC3 Week 2 - Tamayo, Locanda
• WC3 Week 3 - Blackmane, Ariel/Delius
• WC3 Week 4 - Caliban, Torgo
• WC3 Week 5 - Loki, Alcor
• WC3 Week 6 - Freya, Hyperion
• WC3 Week 7 - Kilrah
• WC4 Week 1 - Hellespont, Tyr, Masa
• WC4 Week 2 - Silenos, Orestes
• WC4 Week 3 - Pasqual, Peleus

Star*Soldier Gloss: Page 53
This is the Star*Soldier gloss for the fourth Port Broughton page:

CONCEPT: See the previous post!

REFERENCES-

• The pictures on this page are the amazing promotional image of the TCS Midway from Prophecy and one of the 'prototype' renders from Gaia. I told you I would sneak them in!
• "F-44X Rapier II Cavaliers" - I mostly avoided giving the new fighters letter designations, I'm not sure why the mood struck me here. The idea here is to casually mention that there have been a LOT of models of Rapier IIs over the years.
• "3129th InSys" - Wing Commander's setting has hundreds upon hundreds of systems, thousands of people fighting in space every minute of the day for thirty years... and the unit designations we see are all really low. This is a slight attempt to fix that.
• "Interview with a Frontiersman" - The article (supposedly a series of articles) from the Privateer manual.
• "Heroic CrabSpider, frontman for the Kirankan Pulse-Funk Warcore group HamTwosLices" - I really wanted to make up some futuristic music. HamTwosLices is a hosting site connected to WCNews (here spelled in a way that tributes tHE lOVE aNIMALS from Victory Streak). Kirankan would be coming from the Kilrathi Kiranka clan. As for the rest... well, who really knows?

2008.277 (October 3, 2008)

[# 3285 | 10/3/2008]

CD-ROMantics
Ars Technica has published a look back at Myst in the context of having created the CD-ROM gaming market. It begins by acknowledging Wing Commander:

On September 24, 1993, Broderbund Software released the game Myst, and in the process, substantially contributed to kick-starting the nascent CD-ROM software industry. Myst, to be fair, was only one of several excellent games that shipped around this time and made good use of that new-fangled CD-whatsis thingy—The Seventh Guest, Wing Commander III, and Alone in the Dark were all popular titles that sold well. But Myst shattered sales records and set marks that stood until The Sims came along in 2002.

Star*Soldier Gloss: Page 52
This is the Star*Soldier gloss for the third Port Broughton page:

CONCEPT: See the previous post!

REFERENCES-

• The screenshots on this page are both from Arena itself, from the Midway map. Is it just me or does the exploding Dralthi look more like a Vaktoth in that frame?
• "lighting seem almost Kilrathi" - References Hobbes' preference that for a red light to emulate Kilrah, from the Wing Commander III novelization.
• "Cube-warren" - ... is a funny word.
• "Xanadu" - Pleasure planet mentioned in Victory Streak and the Kilrathi Saga manual.
• "Centrax" - The type of Nephilim facility where Blair was tortured in Wing Commander Prophecy.
• "Celeste" - Celeste was introduced in Wing Commander III, where Vaquero plays "rockero" music from it.
• "Varni" - Another race of lizards from Action Stations; in so far as non-trifecta Wing Commander races go, the Varni have been fairly developed.
• "Warlord" - The 'highest' class of Nephilim from Wing Commander Prophecy; Blair was kidnapped/killed by Warlords.
• "Army Ranger" - Another reminder that there's an Army in Wing Commander - as touched on by the Wing Commander I & II Guide ("BEAT ARMY") and Fleet Action.
• "habicubes" - ... is a funny word.
• "gold-bordered holoframe" - I'm constantly impressed by those fakey gold framed pictures of Jesus you can buy at dollar stores. Who is the audience? People who love their religion but don't want to spend a lot of money?
• "Lance Casey" - The player character from Wing Commander Prophecy.
• "President Harrison" - Addressed earlier; he's my own character. He actually comes from an old IRC joke involving elaborate Presidential quotes about waffles.
• "Maverick Blair" - The player character from Wing Commander I - IV.
• "Sorn, Ka" - More conquered races listed in Fleet Action. I believe I was trying to make a point of mentioning all of them.
• "Hector Paz" - Grunt from Wing Commander Academy. This is where I try to explain that medicine in the 28th century means that it's ordinary for humans to live longer... I've done that for a few reasons, not the last of which being that I wanted to sue some pilots who were flying in the 2650s (Doomsday, in particular). There are also a few other examples of very old humans in Wing Commander, including Admiral Wilson in the movie (presumably a result of an earlier script).
• "Chameleon BUD" - This concept came from End Run and if you don't read carefully you gloss right over it - the Confed marine outfits change color to match their surroundings in that book. Here it's stuck on purple.
• "not protected by the carrier's phase shields" - It has always bugged me that occasionally turrets (and in this case structures) on capital ships can be knocked off with ordinary weapons. Ah well...

2008.276 (October 2, 2008)

[# 3283 | 10/2/2008]

Nintendo Backs Away from Advance
Joystiq is reporting that Nintendo has announced the 'DSi', the presumptive successor to the Nintendo DS. The new handheld gimmick is a pair of digital cameras, which it combines with a 12% thinner casing and enhanced online capabilities... in exchange for, and here's the trouble for Wing Commander fans, loss of GameBoy Advance legacy support. So: Wing Commander Prophecy Advance fans should consider themselves warned to keep an older system on hand -- and that now may be the time to stock up on those brighter GameBoy Advance SP units.

Star*Soldier Gloss: Page 51
This is the Star*Soldier gloss for the first Port Broughton page:

CONCEPT: See the previous post! I do want to note that this article is a pastiche - it's supposed to sound like an overly dramatic popular magazine article, not attempt to be a piece of great writing.

REFERENCES-

"first ten Midways" - The ICIS Manual establishes that the Navy plans to build ten Midway-class ships. I call this the 'first ten' because I assume the war changed the goal to building as many as possible...
• "Midway... Tripoli" - The ten names come from a list posted by Captain Johnny some years ago. It's one of my favorite pieces of trivia and I wanted to make sure it was 'canonized'. Note that the prose specifically avoids giving a fate to Midway herself. It's up to a full fledged game designer to sink a 'hero' ship!
• The picture is the ready room from Wing Commander Prophecy. There were no characters standing around, so I didn't mind lying in the caption...
• "Shrike" - One of the attack fighters assigned to the Midway in Prophecy.
• "Jarma lizards" - One of several 'background aliens' mentioned in Action Stations.
• "Platolum jewelry" - Platolum was the amazing laser-proof metal discovered on Ghorah Khar in Victory Streak.
• "optic nerves" - A commodity from Privateer 2. Creepy!
• "Firekkan feather trinkits" - I'm not sure if Firekkans can lose their feathers or not... but this was certainly inspired by the fact that the Kilrathi are eating Firekkan roasts in Voices of War.
• "Marine dog tags" - Borrowed from a similarly nasty reality where shady street markets in Vietnam sell (fake) GI dog tags.
• "Hell's Kitchen" - Drink mentioned in Wing Commander IV's intro. The ingredients aren't mine save for the addition of 'Brimstone' (a system from Wing Commander I).
• "Kilrathi guave-ape" - I guess this is some kind of monkey that tastes like fruit? Mmmmm.
• "Terran hamburger" - Inspired by the early episode of seaQuest where Krieg is trying to smuggle an illegal hamburger onto the ship.
• "Wu stringo" - Made up instrument. The Wu are elephant-sized aliens from Action Stations, so the idea of a human playing whatever their instrument is is amusing.
• "credit chit", "dol chit" - Ah hah! I used both 'credits' (mentioned in everything but Armada) and 'dols' (Armada) as the currency. So... what's the difference? You decide!
• Kilrathi, hookers and mercenaries - That'd be a great game.
• "Gorth" - The Gorth were a species conquered by the Kilrathi, according to Fleet Action. For some reason what I'm envisioning here is that Gorth is the future equivalent of Spanish - a good second language to have in the Confederation. I don't know why, I think it's just a fun word to say.
• "Brilliance, Ultimate, Elysium, Warp Steroids, Happy Death" - A veritable whose-who of Wing Commander's narcotics! In order: Privateer, Privateer, Privateer 2, Privateer 2, Action Stations.
• "Kilnip" - And my own addition to that pantheon! I think the inspiration is clear.
• "Durasteel" - Here's where we get to those pods everyone hates so much -- literally!
• "Kennedy Annex" - Kennedy is just a popular name for anything in space.

2008.275 (October 1, 2008)

[# 3282 | 10/1/2008]

Red Alert Free, Tiberium-Free
As part of a promotion for the upcoming Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, EA has made the original Red Alert available as a free download. You can get both the Soviet and Allied discs from their site here. Be sure to read the instructions provided on the site to set up the included patch for playing the game in Windows XP or Vista.

What's more, Red Alert 2 is also being made free for those that pre-order Red Alert 3 from participating retailers such as the EA Store, Gamestop, and EB Games. Should EA announce that they are revisiting the Wing Commander series soon, it will be interesting to see what kind of promotions will come our way.

In other news, our future is going to be Tiberium-free as Gamespot is reporting that EA has pulled the plug on its Command & Conquer-themed first person shooter. The article cites corporate communications spokesperson Mariam Sughayer on Tiberium, "The game was not on track to meet the high quality standards set by the team and by the EA Games Label. A lower-quality game is not in the best interest of the consumers and would not succeed in this market." As Wing Commander fans who've endured our own share of heartbreak (Privateer 3, anyone?), we truly feel for any C&C fans that were looking forward to this title.

Star*Soldier Gloss: Page 50
This is the Star*Soldier gloss for the first Port Broughton page:

CONCEPT: This was another late addition, which basically came about when I realized this would probably be my only chance ever to write prose set in the Wing Commander universe. It's supposed to give a little more life to the much-abused Midway map. It's patterned after the 'Interview with a Frontiersman' article in the Privateer manual.

REFERENCES-

• "Chandra Karr" - The same person who wrote the already-mentioned Privateer article.
• The screenshot is from Wing Commander Prophecy; presumably all Midway-class ships have similar bars. I ended up labeling it as being from the Midway, though, lest anyone complain that they could spot Hawk.
• "towers and habipods" - Yet another explanation for the extra modules on the Port Broughton.
• "massive plate... bank of terminals" - I'm describing the bridge of a Midway based on the exterior; there was no whole bridge set in Wing Commander Prophecy.
• "commissioning pennant" - We first see a comissioning pennant on a ship in the Wing Commander universe in Fleet Action, aboard the Tarawa.
• "Commodore Strevell" - References the earlier background article about the ship's history.
• "erected weekly" - ... because the ship is magically repaired when you restart the map!
• "turbolift" - Do turbolifts exist outside of Star Trek?
• The obnoxious 'text captures' are straight out of Readers Digest.

Wallpapers Files SETI@home Music Cheats Links

Added nineteen wallpapers. Recent files added. CIC group stats updated. Dozens of tracks added. Prophecy Advance and WC IV Playstation cheats added. Fifteen links removed, ten updated, fifteen added.

17:25 11:39 18:43 13:07 14:37 10:44