Dralthi

frostytheplebe

frostytheplebe

Seventh Part of the Seal
The Kilrathi Dralthi and its aparent sister the Drakhri, have been staples of the Kilrathi war since its begining. So two questions... one: how did Dralthis pull a Pearl Harbor style assault on the Vega Fleet headquarters? They don't carry torpedos, and all they have are two forward firing lasers (dralthi, WCM, WC1). I find it very hard to believe that the Dralthi could wreak that sort of havoc on the Confed fleet, which included Concordia class supercruisers!

Second... why was the Dralthi such a staple fighter? It was slow, unwieldy, and didn't really have much armor for it's size. I had little to no problem shooting them down during the Kilrathi Saga, they never survived during WC4, and in Prophecy, it was pure luck if one of them ever made it back.
 
They seem to be outfitted as dive-bombers in the movie. The actual story is that the movie was originally supposed to have three distinct Kilrathi designs: Dralthi interceptors, Salthi light fighters and Krant dive-bombers. The 'Pearl Harbor bombing' was supposed to be done by the Krants.

(Because the decision to stop work on the other renderings came late in the game the Confederation Handbook includes specifications for all three... and gives the 'dive bomber variant' history to the Krant instead of the Dralthi. C'est la vie. I wonder if any art was ever done for the other two ships...)

The Dralthi is a staple fighter for exactly the reasons you listed - the most *advanced* fighters are never the most common... you'll find a lot more Mig-21s than you ever will F-22s. Cheap, resource-light and easy to build will trump super-high-tech on the production lines.

Space Point
 
Bandit LOAF said:
They seem to be outfitted as dive-bombers in the movie. The actual story is that the movie was originally supposed to have three distinct Kilrathi designs: Dralthi interceptors, Salthi light fighters and Krant dive-bombers. The 'Pearl Harbor bombing' was supposed to be done by the Krants.
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:mad: Damnit, they left so many things out that would have made the movie sooo much better. The Pilgrim back story (a major mistake in my opinion) and the other fighters. It made it look like the Dralthi was all the Kilrathi had...

The plot confused the audience? No offense to anyone intended, but I'm willing to bet the test audience was a bunch of teenie boppers who came to see Mathew Lillard and FP Jr. You can't go by that!
 
The plot confused the audience? No offense to anyone intended, but I'm willing to bet the test audience was a bunch of teenie boppers who came to see Mathew Lillard and FP Jr. You can't go by that!
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Test audiences are randomly selected - you don't know what movie you're seeing until it starts. That said, you *do* have to go by teenie boppers who came to see Matthew Lillard and FP Jr., since there are a lot more of them then there are of us. :) Remember that as much of a failure as the Wing Commander movie was, more people have seen it than have ever bought the computer game - by a large amount.

(Also, on a historical note, it was actually *after* the WC movie was made that Lillard and Prinze became teen stars of the moment... it happened around the time the movie came out.)
 
Bandit LOAF said:
(Also, on a historical note, it was actually *after* the WC movie was made that Lillard and Prinze became teen stars of the moment... it happened around the time the movie came out.)
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I went to go see She's All That with Lillard and Prinze a month before Wing Commadnder was released, and that was pretty much their first big hit. Prior to that they had Scream/I Know What You Did Last Summer, but that's about it.
 
See, a real pilot like Hunter sees a cockpit with an engine strapped to it and realizes what a ride it'd be... :)
 
A pack of Dralthi in Wing Commander 3 was my most feared enemy. If you had your difficulty on nightmare setting (also, I had the Mac version, so I'm not sure if PC is different), they were probably the toughest foe. The reason is, they fire missiles that lock onto you like glue. They even fire these missiles backwards at you while you're on the tail of a Dralthi.

Even when you use decoys and hear on your missile lock warning that the decoy fooled the missile, that same missile is back on you a few seconds later. So there you are lining up on the tail of the Dralthi and closing in for a missile kill (assuming you're flying a faster ship like an Arrow or Excalibur, FORGET the slower fighters)... and it fires a missile back at your face! If it doesn't smack into your front, it's right back on your tail. Meanwhile it's buddies fire some at you that are also sticking to you like glue. You have to dodge those things constantly until you hear them go 'boom'.

You hit afterburners and spend the next few minutes with the missile lock warning blaring at you as you're running out of 'burners and decoys. You're pretty much stuck doing this until they run out of missiles, making the occasional pot shot at random enemies. By the time they're out, you're about out of decoys and afterburners.

I found that I had to avoid packs of Dralthii by hitting afterburners and autosliding away from them, running them out of missiles and afterburners as they chased me. Then I'd turn around and mop them up pretty easily. Other than that though, I couldn't take them on without a good load of fuel and decoys that I was prepared to part with.
 
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