Wingnuts Restart The War

The Community Replay is back in full swing after a brief winter recess. After almost a full year of replaying the Wing Commander series, some of the most dedicated Wingnuts kick off 2009 with the final game in the main series. Secret Ops recently became completely free again, so now is still a great time to join the effort. In the meantime, here's Lorien reporting in from the Courage system:

The Midway is just pulling into the Sol system for some well deserved celebrations when the word comes down from on high, Stilletto, Spyder and myself have been assigned to the Confederation's newest ship, the Cerberus. Zero and Maestro will be joining us there once they've completed their escort mission. I barely have enough time to email my mother and tell her to freeze the remains of my welcome back celebration before I'm boarding a shuttle for my new home.

As we meet up after their landing I have to agree with what Zero reports to be Maestro's first reaction to the Cerberus. She does indeed look fast and that big plasma gun slung under the bow makes her look pretty dangerous as well. The captain, a blunt man covered with scars, gives us a bit more information when we land. The Cerberus has been assigned to the Courage system where we'll be putting her and some new Black Ops fighters through their paces. These new ships obviously comes with new toys. I hope I get used to them quickly.

Our first mission seems like the perfect opportunity to give the Black Panther a whirl, it's a simple patrol route to help the Cerberus calibrate her sensors. The extra speed with the Panther is good, though I'm not sure how convinced I am with the new guns. I really liked the normal Panther's layout. I certainly get a chance to try them out at the first nav point when we're jumped by some Morays. I order my wing to break and attack, we outnumber the bugs for once. I'm swiftly converted to the new guns as I open up on the first Moray from close behind, the guns tear it to bits very quickly. As the dogfight goes on, though, I discover that you really need to let them charge up enough to unleash both at the same time, otherwise the blasts just tend to bounce off. We quickly clear out these Morays and the small force to reinforce them as Zero informs the Cerberus of our situation.

We're ordered to continue on our patrol and encounter some slightly smarter Morays at Nav 2, who take off straight to the jump point while their Manta escorts move to engage. I order my wing to hold back the Mantas as I finish off the runners. Some gun blasts and a few ELRIR missiles later and the engagement is over. We head back to the Cerberus to the congratulations of the captain.