Spirit

I've always wondered about automatic ejections. I figure if you are a pilot and focusing on other things, you wouldn't want to have to worry about pulling the eject lever too. I do remember reading in "End Run" Bear talking about a system like that, which activated when the shields disappeared (or something like that). Apparently, pilots would forget to de-activate the system and smear themselves on the flight deck roof when shutting off their fighters. Hmm, not too bright. I can see where this kind of system would be prone to malfunction, but wouldn't it have also prevented Hunter's death?
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The automatic eject, per End Run, is activated in the event of a full power and shield failure - and it gives the pilot five seconds to override. That wouldn't really apply in Hunter's situation, though, since his death came from six missiles hitting his fighter at once (a system that predicts whether or not a missile is going to hit you and if so how much damage it will then do would be a good bit messier than the already apparently-messy system Confed has).

Also, in that specific situation it wouldn't save Hunter so much as it would kill Paladin. Hunter had time to eject, his hand on the d-ring and everything... and he decides not to because he sees a fighter lining up to destroy the Bannockburn.
 
thanks for the clarification. I guess I figured technology in the 27th century, namely AI, would be more advanced and sleek, but who can really predict the future? :D The auto eject five seconds after "power/shield failure" sounds like it's got limited utility, if even that. My reasoning for an "auto eject" system would be so that a pilot can focus all energies on flying and fighting till the very last second, instead of thinking "hey, I might die soon, maybe I should eject!" You don't get this feeling in the games since if the mission counted, death and ejection usually carried the same penalty - failure. Though the hilarious dressing down from Eisen in WC3 might have been some incentive to bail rather than die...

With Hunter, I got the impression that he simply didn't have time to pull the d-ring manually after destroying the fighter, and if he had just a split second more, he may have made it. An auto-eject system may or may not have helped him here, as it's anybody's guess whether a computer could know the right timing to let him both destroy the fighter and eject. It was obviously too quick for human capabilities. But then I guess you may well have computers doing all the flying too, if they were that good.

Of course, as ninjaLA says, not a whole lotta point ejecting into bumblefvck, Kilrathi-ville.
 
My guess is that the automatic ejection system isn't really for combat situations -- it's for catastrophic malfunctions and cases where pilots are incapacitated and left drifting in space... that sort of thing.

I'm sure, given time, Hunter would have ejected -- but it's clear that he consciously made the choice between defending the Bannockburn and allowing the missiles to hit and ejecting and allowing Paladin to fend for himself.
 
I was also confused by how the fighter explodes when the pilot ejects. I understand that they might want to scuttle the ship, but how does the pilot not die in the explosion? It seems like there isn't even a pod (hell, in Wc1 and 2, it didn't even look like the player was wearing a pressurized suit).
 
I don't think the ship self-destructs, if that's what you mean. I think it gets blown right after you leave. Dramatic timing and all that.
 
then again, maybe the explosive force of the rockets that fire the seat (and pilot) free combined with the structural weakness produced by a) losing compression and b) having the roof and half the cockpit ripped out would cause the rest of the ship to explode anyway
 
Dyret said:
It self-destructs so whoever you're fighting won't get their hands on confed tech.
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This is directly countered in SO2 when Maniac says that prototype Morningstars are rigged to explode if you eject, so as to prevent them from falling into Kilrathi hands. Why would Maniac have said that if EVERY fighter was rigged to explode the same way? And further, I'm pretty certain we don't see them explode in 3 or 4... Prophecy, maybe.
 
As a side note, I liked how the cartoon actually had pods for ejection. The pilots didn't look like they wore presurized suits, so I think that they would have died int he vacuum.
 
ViolentAJ said:
As a side note, I liked how the cartoon actually had pods for ejection. The pilots didn't look like they wore presurized suits, so I think that they would have died int he vacuum.
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well you never know. They may have been wearing super high tech pressurized suits that weren't bulky. It is the 27 century after all (but then why can't they come up with good AI ejection systems? ok, I digress).

I find it interesting you mention the cartoon, because they always seemed to be the only part of the wc universe where ejecting seemed realistic. With the game pilots either always ejected (wc2), never ejected (wc1) or ejected if the story demanded they stay alive (wc3+4). In the books, pilots rarely ejected. The exception might be Hunter when he stole the Dralthi and rammed it against the Claw (iirc). In the movie, just Angel ejected, because it was dramatically convenient. I might be missing something here, but ejecting just never made sense in the wc universe. Except for academy. Usually they ejected, sometimes they didn't. It looked realistic, and the rescue complications were usually considered.
 
Academy is simply a more rigid application of the "eject if the story demands it" principle - the main characters always ejected unless the story specifically required them to die, and nobody knows what happened to the redshirts (...so basically, it was exactly like WC2). The rescue complications were also a direct result of story demands - gotta have some excuse to drop people planet-side every second episode :).
 
well you never know. They may have been wearing super high tech pressurized suits that weren't bulky.
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Levi's, a leather jacket and a motor helmet can survive anything!

As for the ejection systems in the cartoon, we only them used on several occaisions, the pods are also flyable(Archer rams a Kilrathi Carrier, and maniac rigs it to bust a Kamekh while he is on the hospital ship), however they are similar to the detached-cockpit thingies you see angel use in the movie.
 
As a side note, I liked how the cartoon actually had pods for ejection. The pilots didn't look like they wore presurized suits, so I think that they would have died int he vacuum.
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Don't you get a 'first person' view as you eject in the original game that shows some graphic about pressurization?

I never liked the pods, myself; I know there have occasionally been real-life equivalents... but they just feel like a magic smaller fighter to me, more of something for the Kilrathi to attack than a desperate method to survive. (There was going to be one in Wing Commander Prophecy, too - the 'front' of the Shrike was supposed to pop off and give you a tiny fighter you could fly around with a single laser cannon.)

I find it interesting you mention the cartoon, because they always seemed to be the only part of the wc universe where ejecting seemed realistic. With the game pilots either always ejected (wc2), never ejected (wc1) or ejected if the story demanded they stay alive (wc3+4). In the books, pilots rarely ejected. The exception might be Hunter when he stole the Dralthi and rammed it against the Claw (iirc). In the movie, just Angel ejected, because it was dramatically convenient. I might be missing something here, but ejecting just never made sense in the wc universe. Except for academy. Usually they ejected, sometimes they didn't. It looked realistic, and the rescue complications were usually considered.
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I think ejection was always a story issue; my favorite is probably Wing Commander III, where the hero pilots *can* die instead of eject after they're no longer absolutely necessary for the plot.

I think we do see more ejection than that in the books; Hunter ejects when he's shot down by the Kilrathi stealth that's spying on the Landreich... Maniac and Vagabond both eject at the end of the Wing Commander III novelization... they recover two ejected pilots as prisoners in the WC4 novelization, and Blair notes a bunch of other times when pilots he shoots down either do or don't eject.

Archer rams a Kilrathi Carrier
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This was actually a blockade runner (much smaller than a carrier).

however they are similar to the detached-cockpit thingies you see angel use in the movie.
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I assume these 'pods' exist on some ships and don't on other -- since even though it's all seats in WC3, the "popping the pod" expression exists (like how a few American bombers have had escape pods while most aircraft have ejection seats).
 
In WC1, you never saw the pilot floating in space (besides yours), but there have been times when they must have ejected, since they were alive in the debreifing and the next mission despite being shot down. It seemed to be totally random though.
 
Wingmen can't be shot down in the original Wing Commander; if one disappears and shows up later then it's because they went home.

(The entire game is set up so that anyone can be removed at any time... of course, they couldn't do that as the story became more personal and elaborate.)
 
Bandit LOAF said:
I think we do see more ejection than that in the books; Hunter ejects when he's shot down by the Kilrathi stealth that's spying on the Landreich... Maniac and Vagabond both eject at the end of the Wing Commander III novelization... they recover two ejected pilots as prisoners in the WC4 novelization, and Blair notes a bunch of other times when pilots he shoots down either do or don't eject.
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Ejection is noted and talked about in the books, but it doesn't happen all that much. It's similar to the games in the sense that a pilot will eject if necessary for the plot, otherwise probably not. It's more horrifyingly dramatic to write about a miscellaneous pilot frying in the cockpit. WC3's is probably the most extreme example. I'm pretty sure Maniac and Vagabond were supposed to die by the original authors intent, but the ejection note was put in as an after thought so they could be around for WC4. Other than that, I can't remember one pilot ejecting in that book. Blair talks about looking for somebody's pod after an attack (Sandman, I think) but gives up quickly. I mean, of all the places to eject and expect survival, I don't think downtown Kilrah would be on the top of my list. The only caveat might be that the cats were too pre-occupied with invasion preps to care about random humans floating around in their space.
 
Eh? I'm pretty sure when a character's ship explodes in WC1 they get killed off. Funeral, everything.
 
Powell99, that is generally the case, but I am sure that I have seen my wingman's ship explode and occasionally, they'd still be alive.
 
No,

When you lose your wingman he/she dies, sometimes they ignore orders and fly away away when they are extremely damaged, but usually they get killed off in seconds because they are being chased by whoever was firing on them in the first place.

I know of one bug in this, with knight, he dies in one mission on your wing, this is confirmed by halcyon, you see his funeral, next mission you fly solo, after it you get debriefed(standing solo) on the deck, and during the debriefing knight's face suddenly appears in the dialogue talking with you about the mission. He does not go "South Park's Kenny", he stays listed as KIA on the chalkboard, and does not magically revive until the secret missions.
 
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