Star*Soldier Gloss: Page 28

This is the Star*Soldier gloss for the second Dralthi page:

CONCEPT: This excerpt was a late addition, an easy way to fill an extra page when it was decided that the manual would be printed. I actually sat down and wrote about 50 pages of Maniac's book at one point, as sort of an exercise in tone. If Wing Commander is ever a smash hit again I'd love to see me or someone else take a crack at doing the whole thing. I will also note that the format (down to the introductory quote) and some of the tone here are based on Chuck Yeager's fantastic and entirely enjoyable autobiography.

REFERENCES-

• "Not a Dralthi" - I'm sure you're as tired as I am of hearing post-FMV fan going on about how every Wing Commander game has to have a Dralthi (or worse, how X Wing Commander game isn't a real title because it doesn't have one). Wing Commander II didn't have one, people, and (as you can see from the silhouette) the Drakhri wasn't even close.
• "KF-507 Drakhri" - The designation fits with the Wing Commander movie's Kilrathi numeral system. I use it sparingly in this manual.
• "missile rack" - The unspoken sentiment being that the Super Wing Commander Dralthi, which used the same 3D model as the Dralthi Mk. VII, *did* have the rack -- so is the Drakhri a pre-WC1 ship? Also, over-cockpit missiles (sans rack) are seen in Wing Commander Academy.
• "Dralthi III" - First official name for the Wing Commander Armada Dralthi. As you can see it looks a bit different from the Dralthi IV seen in later games.
• "speed record" - The ships in Wing Commander Armada were, for whatever reason, really really fast! Note that the service entry dates for all these ships were chosen to be somewhat before we first see them (2658 for the Armada ship, 2662 for the WC3 ship, etc.)
• "Dralthi IV" - This is the Wing Commander III, IV and Prophecy Dralthi; previously it hadn't been confirmed that the WCIV and Prophecy versions were variants rather than newly numbere Dralthi. My apologies, if you were betting on the latter.
• "most produced starfighter" - The Kilrathi equivalent to the ME-109 - a good enough Dralthi-analogue as can be found.
• "Dralthi Mk. VII" - The Mk. VII is named in an unlikely place - the cover art to Wing Commander Academy, a game featuring NO Dralthi! The ship itself appears in Privateer and the description here is an attempt to pass it off as an independant commerce raider (which is what they seem to be doing in the Gemini Sector).
• "Fusion Cannon" - The upgraded version of the VII, seen in Righteous Fire.
• Screenshot - This page probably suffers the most in terms of trying to fit a moderate amount of text into more space than it needs. The giant picture and the space around the Drakhri box give it away...
• "Hundreds of thousands" - Take that, Star Wars!
• "underground caves and rudimentary facilities" - To show you how the Kilrathi have suffered and also to create another World War II analogue -- the Nazis and the Japanese were both ultimately forced to resort to piecing together their fighters in caves.
• "Attack Fleet!" - Attack Fleet was an early Wing Commander fan project... an RTS game that went nowhere.
• "F-10 Merlin: Glory over Peron" - The Merlin was the class of fighter Blair's father flew at Peron, during the Pilgrim War... so this is one of those hated movie references. I mostly included it to give an 'F' designation to an early design - those debating the meaning of the Confederation's contradictory designation systems would do well to start here.
• "Nemesis, Predator & Crusader" - These were Border Worlds fighters created for one of the Privateer Online concepts. I wanted to make them 'canon' somehow. If I were thinking harder I would have included designations for more early ships (Gladiator, Wildcat, etc.). Also, I'll note that we came up with very cool World War 2/United States Navy style designations for the Border Worlds ships that were supposed to be printed in an EA Arcade site update... but it never went up.