After having so much fun looking for missiles in the Wing Commander movie, I decided to spend an evening unraveling another blind spot in my understanding: the decoys, drones, buoys and probes of Wing Commander Prophecy! One (or two… or more?) parts of the game's plot have never been particularly clear for me. The game opens with a scene in which a planetological research ship is cracking asteroids with a flight of drones collecting samples for study. As the Devereaux is destroyed, we follow a beacon which rockets off into the distance. Later in the game, Casey must hunt down a Nephilim buoy which is sending a jamming signall. Soon after, Finley is studying a "Confed signal buoy" that she claims he recovered. How do these all go together, if at all? We have extensive documentation of the making of the game so I thought it would be fun to try and sort out all these questions… and in the process, put together an informal guide to the 'little guys' of Wing Commander Prophecy! We'll be covering all the drones, FMV-only spacecraft and cut ships below based on their presence in the game's various art scheduling docs!
Terran and Kilrathi Ships
TOBY Drones
Wing Commander Prophecy begins with the TCS Devereaux launching a TOBY drone (named in the manual) flown by someone named Priest aka "Drop Three". He speaks with "Drop One" (Murdoch) and "Drop Two" about their sample gathering mission before his drone is damaged by a shockwave generated by the arriving wormhole and ultimately destroyed when it impacts with the newly arrived Kraken. Priest launches from slot two on the Devereaux, confusing the numbering somewhat and while the other two characters are assumed to be flying similar drones they aren't seen (and of course a strong argument could be made that they aren't really drones since they're clearly piloted). The drones are so striking and were so prevalent in Prophecy's marketing that they feel very important to the player even though they're only seen the once.
At first glance, it always seemed that the TOBY drones were self-explanatory: little parasite spacecraft with remote manipulator arms for the researchers to gather mineral samples for study back aboard their mothership. It may surprise you to know that this was not what the ships were designed for! The original plan for the introduction was to show a pair of scientists inside a little ship which would've been filmed in live action. "Packed with instrumentation; there is barely enough room for its two person (human) crew, MONROE (female, 38, sharp, knowledgeable) and O'NEIL (48, balding, and a longtime colleague.) Sunlight pours through the craft's forward observation dome; illuminating their faces." There was ultimately no budget for the introduction as pitched and it was decided to tell roughly the same story only using in-house CG. With a short deadline to come up with something spectacular, the team repurpose two extant ship designs for totally new jobs.
What are we looking at in the final product? The crab-like space pod was actually designed for a gameplay mechanic that was dropped from the game: capital ship repair. As designed, fleets of drones would be able to skitter around capital ships during defense and attack missions reducing the overall damage. So when the Midway was under siege, repair drones would automatically subtract damage as long as they continued to function… and during capital ship attack missions, you would need to eliminate enemy drones before they could rebuild shield generators, engines, launchers and so on. The feature was dropped from the game fairly late and as a result, a mesh of the original repair drone is still present in the game's files (as is its Nephilim equivalent, see below). The incomplete damage design resulted in one of the game's biggest bugs: the Midway can sustain damage that isn't automatically reset during missions leading to a crash if you try to take off after the ship's launchers have been previously hit. After the capital ship repair feature was cut and the budget for a live action introduction wasn't available, the design became the TOBY drone we're all familiar with!
This just leaves one further question: who is Toby, anyway? Eagle-eyed Wing Commander experts may remember that "TOBI" also appeared in Wing Commander III, the name of the Victory's computer interface and the AI pilot generated by the simulator. What are these references talking about? The original Toby, it turns out, was a dog which belonged to Wing Commander III programmer Alan Perez. Toby would come to work during the development of the game and was beloved by the team… until company policy changed and banned dogs from the office. It's funny how such an ordinary bit of work drama could have such an unexpected impact on the history of the 27th Century!
Distress Beacon
In the scene above, the TCS Devereaux launches a distress beacon just before she is destroyed by a Kraken. The beacon launch is very clearly defined and it features pretty detailed shots of both the rocket itself and its launch tube on the research ship. In short, it's clearly supposed to matter! But… does it? Yes: the beacon is intended to be the device which Spyder reports capturing at the end of G'mar G3. During the mission, he contacts Finley to report: "Lieutenant Commander, it's some kind of distress beacon. My computer says it's from a Confed ship, but it's certainly not a newer model. I'm bringing it home." Then, at the end, Anderson repeats this news: "Here's some news, Lieutenant: Delta Wing's retrieved an outlying distress beacon. It's Confed in origin, but not one of the newer models. Even so, it might help us find out a bit more about what we're up against here. And... you're cleared to land." The intended tell was the reference to it being an older model of beacon. It's opaque, though, because it's difficult to immediately connect that back to a ship briefly seen in the introduction.
We went back to earlier game design documents to determine the original plan. In the earliest plans for the game, the player would have picked up the distress beacon themselves in a cut mission after the shipkiller assault. The interaction was moved back to G3 and now happens in the background in the final game. The series description confirms that it is the same distress beacon seen at the start of the game ("The recovery of the distress beacon launched by the doomed Monroe and O'Neil in the Prologue adds further to our heroes' knowledge.") and then the connection would've been explained much more clearly in the next briefing where the game would present to Casey the footage of the intro. The idea here is that the Nephilim's arrival at Kilrah was supposed to be a mystery to the characters themselves and this is where it would've been "revealed". In the final game, this is replaced with a scene where Finley explains she gained this information from the ship killer's database. So the beacon ends up being a bit of an appendix even though the mission designers kept it in there. (The beacon would've also marked an improvement in intel on the aliens, unlocking VDU information and translations of their language. In the finished game this happens much earlier.)
Copernicus
It's not quite a 'little guy' but we thought we'd include the 'FMV only' ships in this article. The doomed TCS Devereaux is a Copernicus-class planetological (not a word) research ship. It's destroyed in the introduction and we never really think about it again! Like the drones, the fact that the Devereaux featured prominently in the marketing also felt at odds with its limited role in the story. Another odd cut content element has been found in the portfolio of David Russ: a seeming gameflow menu screen that appears to show the flight deck of the Devereaux complete with a Condor and a TOBY drone ready to launch. It's not known what this was for but it was potentially connected to the game's cut multiplayer scenarios.
Like the TOBY drones, an in-engine version remains in the game's files (though it is broken). And like the TOBY drones, the Copernicus-class originally had a completely different purpose: it was supposed to be a Confederation D-5 Nautilus-class destroyer! In earlier iterations of the game's design, the Midway was supported by a fleet of capital ships that included destroyers, cruisers and a standard fleet carrier. All of these ships had been concepted when the story was changed to cut the Midway off from the rest of the Confederation (though the carrier, now named the TCS Eisen, does appear off screen in act three).
Jump Buoy
The standard Confederation jump buoy has gotten an upgrade since Wing Commander IV! The new design looks more like a tiny space station or even a mine.
SAR-23 Condor Shuttle (cut)
We see the red (Search & Rescue) and yellow (Refueling) Condors in the finished game but the art list also specifies that the team create a third all purpose shuttle version. There is a Condor shuttle mesh in the game but it is broken and does not display. But the cinematic model was built and appeared in some marketing (though the final coloring may have been more distinct).
CA-31 Mercury Heavy Cruiser (cut)
As mentioned above, Wing Commander Prophecy was originally intended to have a fleet of Confederation support ships. The destroyer became the Copernicus planetological research ship and the cruiser, even less complete, was dropped entirely… until Secret Ops where it had a star turn as the Hades-class TCS Cerberus! An incomplete and non-functional version of the mesh is present in the game files.
CV-8 Poseidon Carrier (cut)
Is this the TCS Eisen? Maybe. The Poseidon-class carrier was to be the Confederation's standard carrier and, yes, would've filled the role of the Eisen in the initial design of the game. The Poseidon is still present in the game files labeled internally as 'cruiser'.
Cargo Containers (cut)
Is it really a 1990s space sim without big, beautiful and boxy cargo containers? Wing Commander Prophecy was originally intended to have a set of three different Confederation cargo containers which would've been used primarily in multiplayer scenarios. Art direction indicates that the three variants, Red Cross, Ammo and Generic, should each have a distinctive identifying logo so that players can identify them by sight during battles. The variants were apparently not completed but a container remains hidden in the game's files.
Kilrathi Mining Facility (cut)
Early art lists call for a Kilrathi Mining Facility which was intended as a setpiece in the game's first act. It was one of the first assets cut and no concept artwork is known to have been prepared.
Nephilim Ships
Decoy Emitter Buoy Types 1 & 2
T'lan Meth E1 "Treasure Hunt" asks the player to identify a jamming source from a collection of eighteen Nephiilm buoys, which include seventeen decoy emitter buoys set up by the Nephilim to hide the jamming device you are seeking. Ten of these are of a wholly alien design, six with a flat top and a longer tendril and four with a more rounded top.
Modified Kilrathi Buoy
Finally, the asteroid field of buoys in T'lan Meth E1 includes eight of a third, more distinct object which features a central body with distinctly alien tendrils attached. If you look closely at the main structure of these buoys you will see they feature the Kilrathi Empire's insignia. Seven of these are additional decoy emitter buoys while one of these can be scanned and found to contain the mission-winning jamming device. After the mission, you speak to Finley in the briefing room where she is studying a silver metal tube. She says: "Recognize this? It's the transmission assembly from that Confed signal buoy you guys brought back. Ah! No touch!" Adding confusion, there's still the unresolved beacon from the start of the game. It is not related! The intent is that the object Finley is working on is the "signal buoy" which you have recovered. What's confusing (and in error) is the origin of the probe. The very earliest game designs call for a "Confed Spy Eye (Alien Mods)" to be created for the mission and this description is what the FMV script was based on. Later, however, the design was changed to Kilrathi and a line in a briefing from Rachel was added explaining that "best we can tell the source is a Kilrathi signal buoy that's been rigged with a scrambler." Sadly, this line was also dropped and the change was applied only to the art list (from which the team's artists worked) and never applied to the prop description for Finley's scene. So when Finley refers to a "Confed signal buoy" you aren't really sure what she means since you've only seen a distinctly alien one (that has a Kilrathi portion if you look very closely). What's more, you've only heard it referred to as a "signal buoy" if Stiletto wins the mission instead of you!
Confed Spy Eye (Alien Mods) (cut)
Early art lists call for the team to develop a Confederation probe for T'lan Meth E1. This was incorrectly replaced with a Kilrathi version in a snafu discussed above. The game's script does continue to refer to the Midway's network of "spy eyes" although they are never seen and no art is known to have been developed.
Repair Ship
See the entry above on TOBY drones for the history of the repair ship mechanic. The Nephilim repair ship survives in the game's files and it's a particularly cool design! While it doesn't show up in fight it DOES appear in the game… a little bit too far away to actually see! Seven of them appear in a cutscene that plays after T'lan Meth E4 showing the wormhole gate under construction. The script reads: "MEANWHILE at Kilrah: Alien ships put towers and structure in place around wormhole." Unfortunately, we never get a clear look at the ships themselves: they're just points of light in the distance buzzing around the wormhole gate structures.
Probe (cut)
Here's one that doesn't appear in the finished game: a small, octopus-like Nephilim probe. The probe was created for the original design of G'wriss C1 and then T'lan Meth F6 but the unique mechanic it required was ultimately dropped from the game. The original version of the missions designs reads:
(C1) There will be an alien 'spy eye' probe sitting just outside of the Midway NAV point that the player can destroy if he notices it. If the probe is destroyed, the aliens assault on the Midway wll be less effective, and they will be more likely to break formation and run.
(F6a) There is a small probe, not unlike the one in Series C, hovering near the Midway which will provide considerable annoyance to the player until he destroys it. He will have a fairly generous time limit in which to kill this probe, and if he does so, will dramatically change the aliens' attack strategy against the Midway. It should be something the player will remember from Series C, and can be used again later, if necessary.
Launch: Near the Midway, there is a small probe which allows aliens to track specific damage to the Midway; with this thing alive, the Alien Command back at the starbase can put specific fighters onto specific areas of the Midway. The player has a very limited time to do this (20 seconds?), and it will be difficult and annoying. If he cannot do it, he is told to go on with the mission anyway. If he lingers, the aliens are able to form more formidable formations at Nav 1. If he destroys it, he goes to Nav 1 and the aliens begin attacking the Midway via a direct frontal assault (much more difficult for them). If he cannot destroy it and goes on, he may be able to take out a good number of aliens, but when they finally make it to the Midway they attack vulnerable areas first, making the mission considerably more difficult. This probe will not figure into the success/failure of the mission proper.
Launch: A small probe which whips around quickly and is difficult to kill. It will fly according to a pattern, however, and sharp pilots will be able to see pattern and destroy it.
The followup mission that plays if you chose to attack the Kilrathi was intended to feature three probes instead of one! How close was the probe to appearing in the game? Not only is the model still stored in Prophecy's files but the finished mission still references it! Anderson begins the battle with a comm message: "There's an alien probe in the area. We must assume that it could be used to direct an enemy attack against the Midway. Seek and destroy same."
Alien Mines (cut)
Larger scale alien mines were originally intended for Series E where they would have protected a jump point from Confederation capital ships. The mission was changed early (and most of the capital ships dropped) which rendered the mines unnecessary. While they do not appear in the game's files, concept artwork was created.
Floating Turret (cut)
In the tradition of Wing Commander IV's turret mines, these alien space emplacements would've created additional challenges during capship strikes. They would've likely had some kind of animated turret or turrets. Their mesh survives in the game's files.
Containers (cut)
Like the Confederation containers mentioned above, the Nephilim were originally intended to have alien variants for health, ammo and generic purposes. They would've appeared as additional targets in various capship strike missions. No art is known to exist.
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