Church of Man

LividLiquid

Rear Admiral
I've been absent from these boards for a few days due to the fact that I was sick and lazy.

But being sick and lazy gave me the opportunity to fix my DOS box, and play some Privateer. I replayed Rightious Fire, and a couple questions popped into my mind.

Firstly, what the hell happened to the Church of man? Aside from an obscure, vague mention in P2, in which the church wasn't even mentioned by name, we never heard from them after Privateer, and there have been six WC games since then. They went from being the secondary focus of the Confederation's war effort in Gemini to complete obscurity after Jones's death? WTF?

Secondly, why did Origin not capitalise on the Steltek? I had hoped, upon seeing the ship designs in early Prophecy enemy artwork, that they would tie up that big ol' loose end, but no. Nothing. Nothing ever came of the Steltek at all.

Thirdly, and this one I don't expect various opinionated answers to, doesn't Privateer kick serious ass even all these years after it's release? I thought for the longest time that I was getting tired of computer games. No so! I just think that pretty much everything released after Privateer has failed to capture me in the same way except for maybe Fallout2.
 
This is because the Retros are a Privateer mainstay. THey would probably be seen again in the next Privateer game, if one is actually made.
 
Liquids got a point. If they were finally wiped out I think a game should have been made about it.

I liked the Steltek too. I would have liked to see what they looked like. That cut scene in P1 where they communicate with you via comms is really bad. You can't really see anything. I miss my steltek gun. Is it me or was that the only green gun in the WC games?

Privateer does indeed kick some serious ass. Even with it's dated graphics and engine it's a brilliant game. Fallout 2 also kicks ass. Your tribe getting killed off really annoied me. You work so hard to get the G.E.C.K and they die. New Reno was cool though. I became a porn star!
 
Originally posted by steampunk
I miss my steltek gun. Is it me or was that the only green gun in the WC games?

I don't think so. I know that the Light Plasma Cannon on the Nephilim Manta is green. There are probably some others. That's the only one I can recall off the top of my head.
 
Privateer indeed kicks some SERIOUS arse...

I think it has a LOT of potential to be an online game. Isn't jumpgate like that? Never played it though, has anyone here?
 
Yeah, The Bugs use quite a couple of green Blasters, and in Armada the Kilrathi have the Flux cannon which also fires green. I always thought the Retros were a specific Gemini sector problem and as we do not play in any games there, this was my explanation why we do not hear anmore of them. A little weak I know but still an explanation. And Privateer really rocks. It had cool graphics, a gripping story and was fun to play. OK some minor things I found were a bit strange (why would cost a single gun (The Plasma/Fusion gun) cost more than an entire ship, the Orion?) but compared to the pros, Privateer was definetly one of the best WC games.
I do not understand too, why they had to create a completely new enemy for WCP which such a stupid stroy about ancient stargods. The Mantu or the Steltek found nothing more than a brief mentioning in the WCP manual. I would really have liked to know more about the Mantu. I just hope that they get mentioned in the next WC game (it will come, I know!) that the Mantu were destroyed by the Nephilim or sth like that. Did the one of the novel hint, that the Mantu had to withdraw from Kilrathi space to fight another menace? It would really be cool if they had to fight the Nephilim and perhaps become allies for Confed (although you do not really need allies against those puny bugs). And if the bugs are such an ancient race, then a connection to the Steltek could easily be made. It could really rock!
Oh my, I guess a man can only dream...

[Edited by Mekt-Hakkikt on 03-15-2001 at 08:39]
 
Retro: Our leader has been stricken down! His mighty temple, destroyed. You have survived and returned for initiation, but in vain. The light shines in the temple no longer.
Burrows: Darn. Guess I'd better be going, then.
Retro: The tears of the faithful will flood the land. A new, dark age has risen for the Church of Man. Will we survive? I do not know.

Apparently, they didn't.

I don't really think the story behing the Nephilim is stupid -- it's a mythological archetype gone horribly real... Anyhow, the point of the ICIS manual was to discount the possibility that the Mantu or the Steltek were behind all this -- the Mantu, especially, are clearly *not* what the Kilrathi implied them to be...
 
Of course the Mantu are no evil race, just paranoid. But I just do not like it when you are hinted in almost every book that the Mantu will return and then we do not hear a single word anymore. What I did not like about the WCP bugs was:
-I did not see the need to create a new enemy. There were plenty of alien races mentioned. Perhaps some former slaves of the Kilrathi do an uprising and you have to defend the cats, or the Yan, or the Mantu, and so on. But this is not so important.
- Why had it to go mystical? I mean which sane race would visit some primitives and say: "Hey, you are too weak, we will not subjugate you or whatever until you've proven worthy." I think they just thought it would be modern to use something like Armageddon or so. But they completely failed to make sth out of it. They are foretold in an ancient Kilrathi Prophecy, you really have to fear to fight for your life and Confed's and Kilrathi's and then some stupid, incredibly weak ships appear and get beaten very very quickly (I mean the forces that entered our space region, I know the race as a whole might not be beaten). It just does not fit to give you such a seemingly scary story and then nothing threatening appears. Just another space faring race which poses no threat at all.
 
But... we do hear more than a single word about the Mantu... the ICIS manual explains why they aren't around.

The need to create a new enemy was (at least) twofold...

- It lets the writers to develop an entirely new culture, without worrying about continuity errors and such. This allows for far more freedom in creating future stories. For instance, the attacking race can't be mysterious if we already know what they are.
- There was no pre-existing hostile alien race -- WCIV already did the 'make an existing force *evil*' bit... it would be seen as a cop out to suddenly have evil Firekkans, Steltek or what-not. Further, there's very, very little interest in the Yan, Steltek, Mantu and so forth... the Wing Commander games appeal to the masses, the novels and spinoffs only to the cult fans.

The Prophecy isn't *mystical* -- it's *mythical*... the idea is that every culture has created similar mysthe idea that a culture creates myths to explain the unknown: you find the same stories of creation, armageddon and what not in every society. The Nephilim are taking advantage of that mythology to inspire fear...

You also apparently don't have a full understanding of what happened in Prophecy and Secret Ops -- yes, the Cerberus and Midway defeated the aliens (can you honestly expect anything else? Did you want a game where you *lose*?)... but the Nephilim launched a full scale attack on our worlds, killing millions. We see them easily defeat some of the Confederation's finest warships in the Secret Ops cut-scenes...
 
Did you ever get the feeling in WCP or SOPS that Confed was in danger? We never got any messages in the games about terrible losses, only the SOPS Fiction which does not sound very convincing to me, given how easily the bugs were defeated. Of course we are supposed to win (although I can imagine a game where I would "lose", perhaps a fighting retreat) but they could have had the decency to make it a challenge. And why did the Nephilim not subjugate the Kilrathi? If it is only a race which uses myths to inspire fear they could have established a rule as gods over the Kilrathi. Okay, it is certainly true that the Yan and so on are nothing for the masses, surely the game was supposed to be understandable for a beginner with no knowledge about former WC games. And for the Mantu: Yes, I know that they are mentioned and all the excuses why the bugs are not the Mantu but as I said: A man can dream.
I will now use one of my favourite methods: I say, it is a matter of taste. You might have found the WCP/SOPS story gripping, the atmosphere intense and the idea of the Nephilim original and good. I did not like it. I found it dumb and lame and completely unconvincing.
But nevertheless were WCP/SOPS great games that were much fun to play.
 
There are so many things wrong with what you just said, but I'll be brief anyway.

The bug's strengths were not the same is the Kilrathi's. It wasn't about Technology. It was about numbers. They had more. Much more. Ostensably we saw a very small fleet in WCP\SOPS. Were a new WC game to materialize, I guarantee that we ain't seen nothin' yet.
 
The same thing was said about the Kilrathi. They had more, much more. Confed experienced fighting against superior numbers already, so what is the big deal about the bugs?
And it is no good strategy to say: "You are so wrong" and then not to prove it.
But I realize I have to be more specific about my statement that we do not hear from terrible losses in the games: Of course we hear of the loss of E'loy and Blair but we never get said that Confed or terran Systems are endangered. Not even in SOPS, where the bugs struck into human core systems did I ever get the feeling that mankind was fighting for survival.

But again: It is a matter of taste. If you liked it, fine by me.

P.S.: Is there any real confirmed hint that we only saw a small fleet of the bugs? Don't remember if something was said in the SOPS fiction...

[Edited by Mekt-Hakkikt on 03-15-2001 at 14:05]
 
Originally posted by Mekt-Hakkikt
Of course we hear of the loss of E'loy and Blair but we never get said that Confed or terran Systems are endangered.

What exactly happened to E'loy? We know that its capital
city was destroyed, and its population was captured by
the Nephilem. We also know that the K. on E'loy that
transmitted technical data suddenly ceased transmitting ..
"as if they had been consumed."

Be that as it may, we also know that there was a major
battle fought around E'loy, and that there must have been
at least some survivors, since "a cat on E'loy" sent a
wing of Vaktoth to assist the Midway against an alien
strike -- and this was AFTER Finley's twilight zone encounter.

So ... what happened? If E'loy was totally destroyed,
where did the military craft come from? If it wasn't
destroyed, why not? The Nephilem seemed to completely
destroy every other Kilrathi they encounter, why make
an exception here? And why did the Nephilem let the
E'loy send its comm data to the Midway? The fact that they
were shut down immediately after transmission suggests that
the N. were aware of the Kilrathi, and waited until after the transmission because they *wanted* Confed to have that
information. Similarly, they *let* Confed recover
Blair from the Dula 7 starbase. Why?

Anyone have a clue?

Respectfully,

Brian P.
 
Maybe some of E'loy's defending fighters could escape the Nephilim. Perhaps the bugs are stupider than we thought (or the cats smarter than we thought). Perhaps they only detected the Kilrathi because of their transmission.
Only some thoughts.
 
Those Kilrathi were not from the Kilrathi Defence Force but Raiders, I dont belive that pirates would be on that planet, either they had a very small base in that system that was undiscoverd or they use small ships to keep from being detectade.
 
We're told in Prophecy that we're fighting only an RIF group (the Victory's battlegroup served such a function at Ariel) -- that the main fleet is still on the other side of the wormhole. Still, they were capable of enflicting horrible casualties on the Confederation and Kilrathi -- look at the SO fiction articles on the situation in Vega (The aliens attacked six Confed systems, leaving over two million dead and 100,000 captured... all with a recon force).

The Kilrathi had more than we did -- but not such vast numbers... based on technology and numbers, the Kilrathi and the Confederation were roughtly in parity... in the case of the Nephilim, our only hope for winning was to prevent them from physically being able to move their forces into our area.

The capital city of E'loy was attacked, the survivors sent the data packet to the Midway and were then destroyed. The Sivar loyalists (J'Ron nar T'Agg A'Bren's raider squadron) based elsewhere on the planet survived.

The attack in Secret Ops was far more serious -- an attempt to bring the brunt of their fleet in. By destroyined the wormhole, we prevented them from doing that... but look at the damage we see inflicted on ConFleet in the SO cutscenes.
 
That raises an interesting point LOAF, since in WCP the wormhole was destroyed, the question never got answered as to how the bugs got back into Confed space, or did I miss something during play of SO?. Does the fiction describe how they got back to Confed space and so deep into our boarders?

RFBurns
 
The bugs obviously can open a wormhole wherever they wish, as demonstrated in Prophecy, in which they didn't have any forces in Confed or Kilrathi space to set up a wormhole.

So they could have either opened a new wormhole, or the fleet we see in SO split off from the fleet we fought in Prophecy and moved deep withing Confed space while the Confederation fleet was distracted.
 
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