Missing Pilots?

Lt.Overload

Lt.Overload

Rear Admiral
In Wing Commander Prophecy on CD 3, one of the movies shows Casey gives Maniac a pep talk. Maniac talks about 2 pliots dieing on his wing. Vanguard and someone else, i forgot. But these pliots were NEVER ON THE KILLBOARD! All of a sudden 2 pliots go KIA but they never existed on the Killboard, even after the pep talk. What's going on here?! :p
 
So why would they use pliots that don't exist? Why didn't they use useless pliots like Boomboom and Amazon? Something like that.
 
Lt.Overload said:
So why would they use pliots that don't exist? Why didn't they use useless pliots like Boomboom and Amazon? Something like that.
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Don't touch my Boomboom and Amazon.

It could just be that the people who made up the killboard and red-shirt pilots didn't consult the script to see that he needed to add two empty names and code them to go KIA later in the game.
 
Little off topic but if you are really reckless with your wingmen and enough of them die the game will crash with the error "not enough pilots in roster" or something along those lines.
Makes sence game wise, but it would be more realistic with newbie pilots dropping left and right for your ranks to thin. Sometimes it does seem like your the one doing all the killing half the time anyways. :p
Goblin seems to be one of the best pilots on the Midway. Might want to take him out first. ;)
 
Deadman_ny said:
Little off topic but if you are really reckless with your wingmen and enough of them die the game will crash with the error "not enough pilots in roster" or something along those lines.
Makes sence game wise, but it would be more realistic with newbie pilots dropping left and right for your ranks to thin. Sometimes it does seem like your the one doing all the killing half the time anyways. :p
Goblin seems to be one of the best pilots on the Midway. Might want to take him out first. ;)
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Then I guess it's a good thing he's not in Secret Ops. :p

But seriously, all of a sudden 2 pliots come out of nowhere to drop dead. That's stupid.

Theroy:Maybe they were part of the Esien Carrier Group and died on patrol before they were registered into the ICIS system...but they still sould have put them under KIA...Hmm...
 
There are so many aspects in making a game like Prophecy. Sure the WC fangroup is "geekie" but I doubt that they thought or cared. There are alot of continuity problems with Prophecy. Once they got so far with something...and we all do it...you look back and say 'damn I forgot to do yada yada' and say screw it...good enough. Looks good from my house.
Where the hell were you then LOAF? You shoulda been on their asses the entire time about crap like this. :)
____________________

Hell has layed it's egg her, and it has hatched.
 
I miss 2nd Lieutenant Pliots as well. He was a damned good pilot, or chef, or engineer or something.
 
Okay, good topic.

The list of pilots on the killboard is not the ship's entire complement - when all three wings are aboard the carrier should have ~252 pilots. There are only fifty or so red-shirts on the killboard.

There are actually quite a few 'other' pilots mentioned in the FMV sequences: Vanguard and Cantrell (from Maniac's story), Hill, Renko and Furillo (from a losing endgame... and Hill Street Blues), Lisa and Capp (from when Maestro is handing out drinks) and then Fish and T-Bone (from Dallas' memorial plaque).

There are so many aspects in making a game like Prophecy. Sure the WC fangroup is "geekie" but I doubt that they thought or cared. There are alot of continuity problems with Prophecy. Once they got so far with something...and we all do it...you look back and say 'damn I forgot to do yada yada' and say screw it...good enough. Looks good from my house.
Where the hell were you then LOAF? You shoulda been on their asses the entire time about crap like this.
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Actually, the list of redshirts was established very early on (well before the film shoot) -- and we'll be providing proof of that fact in a massive document release in the near future! :)
 
Lt.Overload said:
But seriously, all of a sudden 2 pliots come out of nowhere to drop dead. That's stupid.
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Deadman_ny said:
There are alot of continuity problems with Prophecy.
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It's not a continuity problem at all. The killboards the player sees never represent the entire pilot roster of a ship. When you first fire up Wing Commander 1, you're presented with a list of high score names in the TrainSim. Then you go over and click on the killboard, and none of the eight other people there are on the first list. You hear about and see other pilots constantly throughout all the games, so this one instance in Prophecy is more consistent to the standard practice than if they actually made people drop off the board.
 
I always figured that the killboards were meant to show the top-scoring pilots, not be an exhaustive list of all pilots.
 
Yeah, top scorers, individual squadrons/wings, pilots who frequent a particular lounge/ready room, and so on.
 
Fighter pilots probably divide into shifts, too -- at any given time, barring magnum launches, a sizable portion of the group is going to be asleep or otherwise stood down.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
Okay, good topic.
and then Fish and T-Bone (from Dallas' memorial plaque).
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I thought those two may have been the two pilots mentioned in the Way Point magazine that were lost during the skirmish with the Kilrathi Pirate/Smugglers, rather that pilots lost to Nephilem fighters, hence their absence from the killboard, they'd already been replaced but not had the memorial service for some reason
 
I thought those two may have been the two pilots mentioned in the Way Point magazine that were lost during the skirmish with the Kilrathi Pirate/Smugglers, rather that pilots lost to Nephilem fighters, hence their absence from the killboard, they'd already been replaced but not had the memorial service for some reason
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That doesn't really make sense, for several reasons:

* The fight with the pirates wasn't an especially recent event; it took place nine to ten weeks before the end of the G'wriss Series. It was also an entirely unrelated conflict. It would be odd to wait that long to memorialize two earlier KIAs and then also immediately do so for Dallas.

* All three of the pilots on the plaque were 1st Lieutenants; one of those killed fighting the pirates was a Wing Commander. While it's possible he was a junior officer for some reason, it's also very unlikely.

Wasn't T-Bone a killboard registered pliot?
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My mistake: T-*Dog* is the pilot from the plaque. T-Bone is an ordinary redshirt.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
* All three of the pilots on the plaque were 1st Lieutenants; one of those killed fighting the pirates was a Wing Commander. While it's possible he was a junior officer for some reason, it's also very unlikely.
redshirt.
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Good arguement LOAF, except that I just looked over the Way Point manual, both my hard copy and a copy on here, and it does not say anywhere that one of the pilots lost was a Wing Commander. Way Point just says:
As I write this, it’s been 58 days since we took out the pirates in the Valgard
system. We won that fight, but we lost two good pilots in what should have
been a clean operation. By way of comparison, Col. Dekker’s men on the
ground faced a much tougher fight than we did, but came out with no
casualties at all. I’m not pointing fingers at anybody except myself for the
loss of those men,
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Also, was Stiletto a Wing Commander as an Acting First Lt? She was a Squadron Commander, and according to the books Carriers had one "Wing" assigned to them IIRC, with the Squadrons broken down into the types of craft they flew (Wing Commander III book), while Stilletto flew with whatever craft was needed.

Jean “Stiletto” Talvert has received a brevet promotion to acting
first lieutenant, in conjunction with her assignment as commander of
the Diamondback Squadron. Congratulations, Stiletto, we’re
confident you’ll get that “acting” flag off your new rank real soon
now.
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Okay the last one may be me reading the whole Wing Commander/ Squadron Commander thing wrong, but surely if the Wing Commander is in cahrge of all wings, and there's three squadrons on the ship, then the Wing Commander would be the CAG as they are in charge of all three squadrons and there for, the Wing?

**EDIT**

This may make less sense to me when I've slept a little
 
Ahh! The answer to both of your first points comes from the Wing Commander Prophecy official guide. From Stiletto's biography:

"In the engagement against the Demon's Eye pirates, Stiletto was assigned to a flight of five Piranhas making a fly-by recon of the pirate base. On the way back to the Midway, they were ambushed by nine Dralthi. Although two ships (including the flight's wing commander's) were destroyed in the first seconds of the ambush, Stiletto managed to rally the other two survivors and fight through to the Midway. Six of the Dralthi were destroyed in the chase (three by Stiletto herself) even before relief arrived from the Midway and the remaining three pirates were dispatched.

As a result of this action, and her generally high evaluations and flight scores, Stiletto was given interim command of the Midway's junior Diamondback Squadron."

Okay the last one may be me reading the whole Wing Commander/ Squadron Commander thing wrong, but surely if the Wing Commander is in cahrge of all wings, and there's three squadrons on the ship, then the Wing Commander would be the CAG as they are in charge of all three squadrons and there for, the Wing?
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The issue here is that Wing Commander Prophecy switches around the terminology - what is a *wing* in previous games is now called a squadron for some reason. So when Stiletto is the acting squadron commander (or Maniac is made squadron commander), they're actually being assigned the same role Blair had in Wing Commander III. In every other game and in real life, a wing is an autonomous fighting force that is further subdivided into specialized squadrons (ie, the 56th Fighter Wing in Wing Commander III consists of a bomber squadron, a heavy fighter squadron, an interceptor squadron and so forth.) The Midway (in the terminology of the previous games) is a large carrier that has three separate fighter wings - each one with smaller fighter units (previously squadrons) capable of individual roles. The CAG's role is to coordinate between the three wings and their respetive Wing Commanders.
 
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