Wing Commander RPG

Good Monday, Wingnuts! Time for the weekly WCRPG Update; this one's going to be short.

Well, I didn't quite get as far along as I had intended this past week with the capital ship catalog (Chapter 7.3). This was largely due to the fact that, when I was writing last week's update, I had forgotten I would be going out of town towards the end of the week and wouldn't have time to work on the game. There was some substantial progress made with the catalog, though. After the last update, I went ahead and made the cost correction calculations for all existing capital ships and affected those changes. Surprisingly, the mistakes were limited to the WC1 Kilrathi capital ships (where there were some substantial errors); the WC2 ships were just fine as it turned out. Still trying to figure out how that one happened. I went ahead and uploaded the Clydesdale- and Free Trader-classes on Monday, and after retrieving ship names from Bandit LOAF's list had the rest of the WC2 craft up on the Wiki by the middle of the day on Wednesday. I was also able to get stats ready for the Lexington- and Shiraak-classes (the Armada carriers) and had them up on the wiki by the end of the day on Wednesday. This puts the first three sections of the catalog fully complete at this point; the next ship in the chute is the Paradigm-class. The only other thing I have in my log for the week is an adjustment to the craft prices for Prelude to Goddard and the addition of a legal page (which I'm don't recall if I uploaded or not; I need to make sure about that today).

Plan for this week - keep churning out new capships. Since I didn't get any work done over the weekend, the best I can hope is to be into the WC4 ships by the end of the week.

I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; just post your ideas to this thread. Please.

WCRPG remains at 80.18% complete as of this morning.
 
Good Monday, Wingnuts!

Got a busy day in RL today, so I'm going to have to try to keep this brief. Worked continued in 7.3 this week. On Monday, I readied a set of stats for the Paradigm-class and began initial work on the other Privateer capships (the Kamekh variant and the Drayman-II). I had all three ships ready to go by Tuesday and added them to the wiki, rounding out the Privateer section. For good measure, I skipped ahead to do some preliminary work on the Indomitable- and Kiranka-classes from Arena. Work on those actually went by extremely fast (thanks to the concept pics of the two ships available at CIC) and I was also able to knock them out on Tuesday. After a break on Wednesday for Independence Day, I began initial work on ships from WC3 and WC4. Work on them took up the remainder of my time this week; I got stats ready for four Confed ship classes on Saturday, but have not yet had time to post them. The only other thing in my log for this week had to deal with inquiries into fan-built ships for Standoff and Saga, and the addition of those ships to the wish lists for the non-canonical vehicle and capital ship chapters.

Plan for this week - keep churning out new capships. I'll probably be doing the WC3 and WC4 craft all week; if things go better than expected, though, I might be able to begin initial work on Prophecy-era craft late in the week.

I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; just post your ideas to this thread. Please.

WCRPG remains at 80.18% complete as of this morning.
 
Good Monday, Wingnuts! Time for another WCRPG Update.

Work on the game continued in Chapter 7.3 (the capship catalog) this week, though at this point I'm beginning to make out the light at the end of the tunnel. WC3 and WC4 capital ships were the focus of the week, with stats on the Clarkson-class finished and posted on Monday, the Caernaven-class posted on Tuesday, the remaining WC3 Confederation capships posted on Wednesday, and after getting data ready on everything else during the course of the week through Thursday, the final posting of the WC3 Kilrathi craft, both the Ella and Pasqual starbases and the Vesuvius-class on Friday. At this point, the WC3 and WC4 craft are all completed. Only the Prophecy and Privateer 2 capships remain, a total of twenty-five capships to go - and I anticipate the Privateer 2 ships will go very quickly. On Saturday, after some issues getting the treman file to work, I was able to delve into the Prophecy models and begin analyzing the positions of weapons hardpoints for Prophecy ships. The Confed ships shouldn't offer too big of a problem; I can already tell, however, that some of the Nephilim craft are going to give me problems.

I also began initial ground work on another WCRPG mission set this week, after the announcement that the CIC will be celebrating its birthday on the 10th of August (as usual). I'm trying to get this mission set ready to go for that event, and I've got a discussion going on under the thread "CIC's 12 Birthday" here at CIC (I was later informed that this is not the CIC's 12th birthday, but I have no idea how to change the thread's title so I'm sticking with it). I'll be doing the Enyo Engagement, and I'll simply be calling the project "Enyo" unless I can think of a better name. The game is going to require me to do some custom ship work due to the "early era" nature and I plan on putting this work in the appropriate non-canonical chapters in WCRPG. I've got some big plans, and I'm hoping I have sufficient time to bring them all to fruition.

Plan for this week - keep churning out new capships as I can. The work on Enyo will likely take some time out of my work on WCRPG, especially if I want to actually have a product ready to go prior to August tenth. I'm currently on Prophecy era craft and my usual techniques for diving weapons systems are now out of play, so work will likely be slow in any event.

I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; just post your ideas to this thread. Please.

WCRPG remains at 80.18% complete as of this morning.
 
Good Monday, Wingnuts! Time for another WCRPG Update.

In some respects, this was a slow week for WCRPG; in others it was a busy one. First thing's first: in 7.3 (the capship catalog) this week I was able to finish up the stats for all the Confederation craft in the Prophecy era. Midway was the last craft up and with Indomitable done a few weeks ago, she became the last of the Confederation craft that will be added to the chapter. That work was completed on Tuesday and since then I've been on hiatus - the Nephilim craft have proven to be completely resistant to attempts to analyze the locations of their weapons. My efforts now are to get a copy of WCP Pascal working so I can go into Prophecy and attempt to get the data manually. If that fails, I'll have no choice but to "select their positioning logically". In other words, I'll have to guess. Plus side is that at this point all that's left to do in 7.3 is the Nephilim ships and the capships from Privateer 2. I should mention that I am going to be changing the mechanic just a bit for Nephilim craft, in that blowing them up without attacking their "weak points" will be possible in WCRPG (though it will be easier to kill them if the weak points are targeted first). And yes, they will blow up - whether or not they leave a hulk is a decision I've devided to place in the hands of the game's GMs. Other work in the game this week included some changes to a couple of the accessories in Chapter 6.2.3 and 7.2.2 to account for additional armor and shield generators - mainly to account for Prophecy-era craft - and a clarification of the effects of the Target action in Chapters 9.3 and 9.4.

Work is also continuing on Enyo, a planned miniature campaign being built for CIC's upcoming birthday. This week I finished up stats for the campaign's "early era" craft, including versions of the Ranger and Durango-classes, stats for the Wildcat and early Arrow fighters, and stats for the Kilrathi Gamorgin-class battleship, KF-100 Dralthi and Gamora fighter/bomber (all of which have also been added to WCRPG's non-canon craft chapters, Chapters 6.4 and 7.4). On Friday, I copied over the lite rule set from Prelude to Goddard into a new file, and work on editing the campaign has begun in earnest at this point. I still need to finish putting together the pre-made pilot stats and a map of the system before mission work can begin in earnest, but that shouldn't take more than a day or two. Until I can get further work done with the Nephilim ships, work on Enyo will probably be taking up more of my time (and with only seventeen days left, I probably should be cracking the whip on myself a bit more anyways).

Plan for this week - keep churning out new capships if possible; the work on Enyo will probably take precedent this week.

I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; just post your ideas to this thread. Please.

WCRPG remains at 80.18% complete as of this morning.
 
Good Monday, Wingnuts. Time for another WCRPG Update.

Short update this week I'm afraid. As I suspected, I spent most of my time working on Enyo while trying to figure out how I was going to get data on the placement of weapons on Nephilim ships. I will say that I finally had success in that regard on Saturday - ultimately it was Thomas Bruckner's mission editor (combined with HCl's mission compiler) that let me set up a mission where I could encounter each Nephilim ship in turn and look at the weapons without getting shot at or worrying about my wingmen blowing the ships up first. I have the data to proceed now, and with any kind of luck I should be able to proceed with building the ships as the week progresses.

Enyo is still my area of focus at the moment, though, seeing as how I only have eleven days to finish building it. Last Monday saw the construction of the Enyo system map and the bulk of the week I worked on the composition of mission briefings, from which work on mission outlines sprung up. Friday I finished up the last of the briefings and completed the "what's next" section. I also got started on work on the pilot profiles. I'd like to be able to add more data on the pilots than I was able to for Prelude, but I'll have to see how much time I actually have. I'd like to finish up at least one mission per day at this point; don't know if I'll be able to go at that pace or not.

Plan for this week - keep churning out new capships and get as much work done on Enyo as I can. In my wildest dreams, both Enyo and Chapter 7.3 would see completion by the end of the week, but I'm not optimistic about that happening.

I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; just post your ideas to this thread.

WCRPG remains at 80.18% complete as of this morning.
 
Good Monday, Wingnuts! Time for the weekly WCRPG Update.

This past week WCRPG hit two big milestones. The first of these happened on Wednesday, when, after several months of work (my logs show work began in earned back in May), I finally completed the entries for capital ships in Chapter 7.3. The capital ship catalog is now complete; aside from those craft whose stats were poorly defined, every capital ship from the Wing Commander universe is now in. Much thanks goes out to all of you who helped me in my efforts to finish those up, particularly to those of you who contributed to the discussion of weapon emplacements.

The second big milestone happened on Saturday, the 4th of August. My first log entry for WCRPG was on August 4th, 2011, so I've now officially been working on the WCRPG project for one year. I'm hopeful that I'll finish everything else up before next August rolls around.

Work also continued on Enyo this past week, with significant progress on the campaign's completion done on Friday and Saturday. As of this morning, only one mission remains to be complete and the bulk of the remaining work involves the pre-made characters. I would like to add some interludes involving a bartender character, but I'm going to need to book it if I want to get those in (I also need to settle on a nickname for the bartender).

My plan for this week is to finish Enyo. I'll want to get as much proofreading done as I can, and I'm hopeful the final product will be a little more polished than Prelude was. Got to finish the thing before I can even think of getting started with proofreading it, though; still a possibility it may not happen. Once it's done, my to-do list is pointing me next in the direction of Chapter 8.5, Navigational Data; it'll be time to move on to the maps...

I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; just post your ideas to this thread.

WCRPG now stands at 81.08% complete as of this morning.
 
Good Monday, Wingnuts! Time for the weekly WCRPG Update.

This past week started with my efforts to finish up Enyo in time for the CIC's 14th birthday. Monday saw the conclusion of mission writing and the addition of the interlude texts, with initial work on the Kilrathi characters beginning later in the day. On Tuesday, I was able to complete the Kilrathi and the NPCs, and was also able to complete the bulk of the PC characters as well (I had a little writer's block with the character of Battleaxe). I was able to get a little bit of proofreading done on Enyo on Tuesday (though not nearly enough; most of what I did get through was front-end stuff). Wednesday, I resolved the problems I had with Battleaxe and was able to call the rough draft done at that point. I spent the bulk of the rest of the day getting materials ready for publication, and uploaded them to Lulu very late in the day on Wednesday. I was going to say thank you to the both of you who had downloaded the uncorrected proof of Enyo since it went online, but I checked again this morning and the number of downloads has doubled (to a total of four). For you, and for the five of you who downloaded Prelude to Goddard, I want to give a quick word of thanks and my assurance that when I get more time, I will be re-releasing corrected versions of both games. In the meantime, if you have any suggestions, advise, questions, complaints, if you spot glaring typos, or have any feedback of any kind whatsoever, please let me know. It'll help me improve as a writer and will help create a better game overall.

With Enyo out of the way on Wednesday, I was able to get back to WCRPG in earnest on Thursday, and checking my master plan, I saw that my next order of business for the game is work on Chapter 8.5 (Navigational Data), which I worked on for the remainder of the week. I didn't have much besides a placeholder for that page and navigational links in place, so Thursday saw the addition of notes and the composition of the chapter preamble paragraphs. Work then progressed into a count of the number of systems in the WC universe. This put me at cross-purposes with the WCPedia project (the bulk of the Stellar Cartography section there is still in need of major construction), so I've been working with them in trying to figure out what's "official" and what's not. I've also been updating my own copies of the CIC maps to match using MS Paint and GIMP; these altered versions will ultimately wind up in Chapter 8.5. My choice there was either to figure out how to remove extraneous systems and jump lines from the CIC maps or figure out how to add them to the Prophecy map; removing things from an image is generally easier than adding things as a rule, so that's the direction I've taken. I've actually finished up my system count and maps for eleven sectors at this point and I anticipate work will progress quickly in the Chapter in general. I've also been looking out for points of interest in each Sector. Naturally, Gemini will be the most well-defined of the Sectors since we know the most about it, but there will likely be some good highlights in Vega and Enigma Sectors as well.

My plan for this week is to continue work on 8.5, to finish up the Sector maps and get as much navigational information as I can into the Chapter. This will probably also involve continued work in WCPedia as well. If work goes even more quickly than I anticipate and I finish the chapter before the week is out, the to-do list says the remaining species in 2.2 are up next, starting with the Double Helix.

I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; just post your ideas to this thread. I'm also opening up this thread for discussion on Prelude and Enyo, if any is necessary.

WCRPG remains at 81.08% complete as of this morning.
 
Trying to resolve the Kilrah system in-game today. It's one of three systems in-universe that I know of that have actual star system models (with the others being Sol and Enigma) and so I'm trying to build it with the in-game solar system model. Naturally, I'm hitting walls; from what I know of K6V-type stars and the way the system is depicted on the Prophecy map, Kilrah Prime should be a ball of ice. Assuming a different scaling of the system, I can get it within the star's ecosphere...but how would everybody here feel about a tidally locked Kilrah? Okay, okay, okay...there's just enough room to put it in the ecosphere and not have it locked to the sun, but then you've got T'Mog, which is also depicted as being life-bearing (and thus should also be in the ecosphere). And then there's Igrathi...to be truthful, for my purposes, it'd be easier for me to swap out the positions of the Mog/T'Mog group and Igrathi.

Oi.

If anyone wants to chime in, feel free. Here are the calculated critical radii for the Kilrah system's star as calculated by the in-game formulas (in AU):
0.04 Roche Limit
0.51 Tidal Lock Radius
0.36 Inner Ecosphere
0.52 Outer Ecosphere
0.74 Frost Line
24.8 Outer Planetary Limit
 
Got my issues ironed out with the Kilrah system yesterday. Now I get to turn around and do it all over again with the Enigma system; I think I originally set up the star system creation system such that the very notion of planets in a system with a black hole in it was absurd. Gonna have to think about what I want to do here.
 
Enigma is a sector, not a star system. The black hole is in the center of the sector and allows ships to jump to different systems on the other side of the sector without having to jump through the intervening star systems.
 
Check the map that came with Prophecy - it's a system near the border of Isaac and Roddenberry Quadrants, from which the Sector gets its name. Moreover, there's a model of the system presented on the Prophecy map.

I got it all resolved anyway, but I am going to have to make some adjustments to the system creation rules in Chapter 10.2.3 and 10.2.4; had some bad assumptions about stellar fragments going on.
 
Good Monday, Wingnuts! Time for the part of the week where I bore you all to death for a few minutes......er, the weekly WCRPG update.

I spent the bulk of this past week working on Chapter 8.5. As I anticipated, work has progressed quickly and I'm to the point where all it's lacking is specific system data at this point. After finishing up the last adjustments to my maps on Monday, I began the task of listing out specific information on Tuesday. This included finishing up the identification of points of interest in each Sector, updating the final overall system count, revising the chapter's preamble, setting the final organization of the chapter, uploading the finished Sector maps to the wiki, createing a general Sector information framework/template for each Sector, and filling out the known native denizens. By the end of Tuesday, work had been completed on the Vega, Landreich, M'Shrak, Argent, Hawking and Avalon Sectors, with the remaining Sectors falling in place on Wednesday with the exception of the aforementioned specific systems data. I spent Thursday and Friday building specific system information for the three known "solar system model" type systems in the WC universe (the Kilrah System, the Enigma System, and the Sol System) using the procedures in Chapters 10.2.3 and 10.2.4 (creating star systems and creating worlds, respectively); the work there gave me a good opportunity to check the models in those two chapters and make some minor adjustments to them, the bulk of which were affected on Saturday. Work on information gathering on the Sol system was concluded on Saturday and I spent part of my day on Sunday beginning the process of uploading all that data to the wiki. Other work this week included a change to Chapter 2.2.1 (the Terran species profile) to account for a change I'd made to one of the Quadrant names in the Landreich Sector, an update to the timeline in Chapter 12.1 to reflect the removal of the Warsaw system from the Vega Sector map, and a decision on Wednesday to move the bestiary in Chapter 12.4 up on the to-do list; I now plan on working on the bestiary after work on 8.5 is complete, prior to continuation of work on the race profiles in Chapter 2.2.x.

My plan for this week is to continue work on 8.5. I intend to try a mail merge later this morning that should seed the rest of the planetary data I need for the Kilrah and Sol systems. I'm also investigating ways to adjust the images of the systems as they appear on the Prophecy map to match the data I'm presenting, so that I can include a picture of those maps in the chapter (as I was able to do with the Enigma system). I may still change my mind on that. Work on the Gemini Sector systems will follow that, after which I may or may not include a sample developed planet and community. Should I finish up work on the Chapter this week, I will proceed to the bestiary in Chapter 12.4, and try to get that out of the way.

I'm still accepting submissions for the game's non-canonical sections; just post your ideas to this thread.

WCRPG remains at 81.08% complete as of this morning.
 
Now, one thing about this new medal/ranking system I need to ask real quick: I notice there's a 60,000 point "Origin Systems Medal" down there at the bottom, with the qualification for that medal saying "User Created Worlds". I'm assuming the work I did this week does not actually qualify me for that medal, right? I mean, I have been creating worlds for the better part of the week... :):p:rolleyes:

I do think it's funny and kinda ironic that I wound up as a Commodore again...but that's another story.
 
starfox1701 said:
Enigma is a sector, not a star system. The black hole is in the center of the sector and allows ships to jump to different systems on the other side of the sector without having to jump through the intervening star systems.
Click to expand...

You actually visit the Enigma System in the Enigma Sector during Wing Commander 2: https://www.wcnews.com/guides/wc2enigma.shtml

asteroids.png
 
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Which mission is that screenshot from, just out of curiosity? I did stick a jump point in the Enigma system's asteroid belt...just checking to see if it's headed to the right place...
 
Now, one thing about this new medal/ranking system I need to ask real quick: I notice there's a 60,000 point "Origin Systems Medal" down there at the bottom, with the qualification for that medal saying "User Created Worlds". I'm assuming the work I did this week does not actually qualify me for that medal, right? I mean, I have been creating worlds for the better part of the week...
Click to expand...

Hah, that's for our ExOrigin contingent. You need to have worked at Origin or on a licensed Wing Commander product. :)
 
capi3101 said:
Which mission is that screenshot from, just out of curiosity? I did stick a jump point in the Enigma system's asteroid belt...just checking to see if it's headed to the right place...
Click to expand...

The first one, I believe. You get a shot each time your carrier enters a new system, and the Concordia is cruising into that asteroid field prior to the first mission so she can power down for repairs.
 
Thanks. And thanks for the spread in today's news feed.

Went back and looked at the Enigma missions in WC2. From the order of the missions, it looks like Concordia came in from Tesla, hid in the rocks for a while, and found a jump to K'Tithrak Mang just outside the inner edge of the asteroid belt. I think what I've got for the system is consistent with that sequence of events.
 
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