Have we ever known anything like this?

[Quarto]

Yeah! Isn't that strange? I wonder what could possibly have motivated the change.

Possibly the fact that the Arrow had already appeared in Armada (...by the time WC3 was out), while the Hellcat could be 'iconic' to WC3? It's about the only explanation I can think of.

There was another strange Hellcat/Arrow substitution, too... the Kilrathi Saga replaces the Hellcat with the Arrow in one of the Victory Streak excerpts, doesn't it?

...And then there's the WC4 intro, which shows Hellcats, while the WC4 novel replaces them with Arrows (though that can be discounted as a separate event).

 

[Bob McDob]

...And then there's the WC4 intro, which shows Hellcats, while the WC4 novel replaces them with Arrows (though that can be discounted as a separate event).

It surely is - the names are different for everything (and the callsigns are different in the preview booklet, for absolutely no reason that I can imagine)

 

[Bandit LOAF]

There was a rumor back in early 1996 that Origin was NOT happy with the Wing Commander IV novel and requested major changes--if that's true that may be where the names were changed (the novel ended up coming out quite a while after the game).

 

[JKM]

Yeah! Isn't that strange? I wonder what could possibly have motivated the change.

Can the Arrow fly in the atmosphere? For some reason I'm thinking that of the WC3 ships only the Hellcat and Excalibur could fly planetside, but I have no idea if that thought is actually based in reality. That could explain why they were replaced.

 

[ChrisReid]

Can the Arrow fly in the atmosphere? For some reason I'm thinking that of the WC3 ships only the Hellcat and Excalibur could fly planetside, but I have no idea if that thought is actually based in reality. That could explain why they were replaced.

It certainly can! We see an Arrow take off from a planet in the very first episode of Wing Commander Academy.

There's very little that can't fly in the atmosphere. We even see bulky Avenger/Longbows land planetside in Academy and Galaxy/Tarsuses in Privateer.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Can the Arrow fly in the atmosphere? For some reason I'm thinking that of the WC3 ships only the Hellcat and Excalibur could fly planetside, but I have no idea if that thought is actually based in reality. That could explain why they were replaced.

That's a very good thought (that is: you are doing a good job of thinking-people don't say that enough) but I don't think it's right. The belief among players that only Hellcats can fly in an atmosphere doesn't come about until the next game, where the game forced you to use them on atmospheric missions (and this was more about a limited amount of video for the transition scenes rather than something said in the game). If anything, the "feeling" in WC3 was that only Excaliburs can fly in the atmosphere since you had to pick them for the planetary missions.

 

[JKM]

I haven't played a WC3 planetary mission in 10 years, so my memory was really fuzzy. Also, I've always hated the Arrow (or super light fighters in general) so I rarely picked it.

On an unrelated note, one of my old childhood friends was in town for a visit and thought it was really awesome that sitting on top of a stack of current gen games was the longbox for 3do Wing Commander 3.

 

[TCSTigersClaw]

The belief among players that only Hellcats can fly in an atmosphere doesn't come about until the next game, where the game forced you to use them on atmospheric missions (and this was more about a limited amount of video for the transition scenes rather than something said in the game). If anything, the "feeling" in WC3 was that only Excaliburs can fly in the atmosphere since you had to pick them for the planetary missions.

I always thought that some ships have better capabilities within atmosphere than others , but every single one (including freighters and shuttles) can fly with no problems.

Consider tha WcAcademy Scimitar , within atmosphere ,it turned the edge of its wings to have better performance obviously.

Now think of the "multirole" hellcat`s wings ,they are the same .They just dont go straight in space flight just like Scimitar did.

Aerodynamics will always be the same....so ,some fighters have better atmosphere performance (Ekapsi?!?) , maybe some are designed exclusively for space flight but they can also fly within atmosphere,with some or a lot limitations(Arrow etc) or others do both as well (Hellcat,Scimitar,Vindicator etc).You can clearly see some similarities in aerodynamics

Thats my opinion anyways

 

[Death]

Ekapshi is a purely atmospheric design, though in general your point still stands.

 

[-danr-]

There's a cool thread buried somewhere in which Bandit LOAF and others have discussed atmospheric capabilities of fighters and listed the known capable craft. I think it transpired that there are more craft known to fly in both space and atmosphere than there are space-only ships. I'll try and find the link, it makes for interesting reading.

Edit: Here it is.