How is determined if and which award or promotion you get

W

wiese.hano

1st Lieutenant
I'm still thinking about which algorithms are used in WC1, WC2 and WCS to determine if and which award or promotion you get. Does anybody know anything about this?
 
Wing Commander I tracks 'medal points' in each mission which are largely based on your kills (7 points for a Salthi, 10 for a Dralthi, etc.) Any given mission has its medal type scripted... which means that you will always get the same medals on the same missions if you score enough points (or no medals for missions where they aren't scripted.) For example, Enyo 2 gives you a Bronze Star if you score 52 medal points while Enyo 1 gives you nothing because there's no medal assigned. A similar point tracking system is used for promotions, although when they happen has an additional random element.

Wing Commander 2 doesn't have any awards and the only promotion is scripted as part of the storyline.
 
Well, that's exactly the info I've been looking for. But I'm interested in the background details. How many points am I supposed to get for which enemy ship. How else may I gather points during a mission?
 
wiese.hano said:
That's great! But what about Wing Commander Saga. Is there an equivalent system built in?
Click to expand...
Yes, WCS or the FreeSpace Engine in general uses a similar system. You can script medals and promotions in any way you'd like, including having a certain number of kills, completing mission objectives etc.
WCS in particular offers medals for overall kills and completing a set of missions. The promotions to 1st Lieutenant and Captain are determined by the story itself.
 
I’m actually in the midst of a playthrough (Corsair 1 is next. Ugh) and I’ve been keeping track of my medals. A few things that I noticed that differ from your list:

Kurasawa 1: I don’t get a medal. With 6 Dralthi, 3 Krant, 2 Jalthi and 3 Dorkir (165 points), there aren’t enough points.

Kurasawa 3: No medal. With 6 Dralthi and 4 Krant (100 points).

Wedge009’s script also doesn’t have medals for these two.

Venice 1: This one is a bit more complicated. It apparently requires Hunter to be killed by the Kilrathi during the mission:

WC1 "The Path of Most Medals" + helpful links

It begins... with me, a "long lost" Wing Commander fan/fiend. I played Wing Commander on my parents 386 in the early-mid 90's. I had massive, detailed blueprints of the ships that I thought were awesome! We had a joystick JUST FOR THE GAME! A number of years ago, I went in search of a...
www.wcnews.com
https://twitter.com/x/status/939724993998368770

Jotunheim 3: I got a Bronze, not a Silver.
 
I checked these out - you are right, Kurasawa 1 and 3 aren't achievable and Venice 1 is a wingman+ace kill bug mission. I'm going to divide up the tables to be a bit more readable too, separate out the impossible ones.
 
Just as a curiosity, if you look into the mission data (MODULE.000) for Kurasawa 1 (S09M0) you can see three additional ships which are not referenced in any of the spheres: one additional Krant (ship 16) and two Gratha (ships 20 and 21). This would represent an additional 40 points (10 points for a Krant and 15 points for a Gratha), putting you at 205 points, well over the 185 points needed for the Silver Star.

Code: 
S09M0 (Kurasawa 1)

Sphere  0: Name: Tiger's Claw; Ships: [ 0, 3, 4,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1]
Sphere  1: Name: Nav 1a      ; Ships: [ 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,10,11,-1,-1,-1]
Sphere  2: Name: Nav 2       ; Ships: [12,13,14,15,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1]
Sphere  3: Name: Nav 1b      ; Ships: [17,18,19,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1]
Sphere  4: Name:             ; Ships: [-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1]
...

Ship  0: Type:  8; Tiger's Claw
Ship  1: Type:  1; Rapier
Ship  2: Type:  1; Rapier
Ship  3: Type:  2; Scimitar
Ship  4: Type:  2; Scimitar
Ship  5: Type: 15; Dorkir
Ship  6: Type: 10; Dralthi
Ship  7: Type: 10; Dralthi
Ship  8: Type: 10; Dralthi
Ship  9: Type: 10; Dralthi
Ship 10: Type: 10; Dralthi
Ship 11: Type: 10; Dralthi
Ship 12: Type: 15; Dorkir
Ship 13: Type: 11; Krant
Ship 14: Type: 11; Krant
Ship 15: Type: 11; Krant
Ship 16: Type: 11; Krant
Ship 17: Type: 15; Dorkir
Ship 18: Type: 13; Jalthi
Ship 19: Type: 13; Jalthi
Ship 20: Type: 12; Gratha
Ship 21: Type: 12; Gratha
Ship 22: Type: -1;
...
 
Added something that might be of interest to the Wiki: https://www.wcnews.com/wcpedia/Wingleader_Medals_and_Ribbons

This is the original design document from June 1990 that planned the medal system. Interesting to note that the plan at the time was for every mission to award a medal which is likely why the system is designed as it is in the final game with medals simply being made impossible when they're unwanted.

Also interesting that there was a little more planned for the Golden Sun, with the original requirement being that your fighter actually had to be crippled (as it is, the medal is awarded when you eject for the first time in any situation).

Also debunks the old claim that they got the medals 'wrong' by having Gold better than Silver... you can see here that was the plan all along (in the US military a Silver Star is the superior decoration).
 
UnnamedCharacter said:
Just as a curiosity, if you look into the mission data (MODULE.000) for Kurasawa 1 (S09M0) you can see three additional ships which are not referenced in any of the spheres: one additional Krant (ship 16) and two Gratha (ships 20 and 21). This would represent an additional 40 points (10 points for a Krant and 15 points for a Gratha), putting you at 205 points, well over the 185 points needed for the Silver Star.

Code: 
S09M0 (Kurasawa 1)

Sphere  0: Name: Tiger's Claw; Ships: [ 0, 3, 4,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1]
Sphere  1: Name: Nav 1a      ; Ships: [ 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,10,11,-1,-1,-1]
Sphere  2: Name: Nav 2       ; Ships: [12,13,14,15,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1]
Sphere  3: Name: Nav 1b      ; Ships: [17,18,19,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1]
Sphere  4: Name:             ; Ships: [-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1]
...

Ship  0: Type:  8; Tiger's Claw
Ship  1: Type:  1; Rapier
Ship  2: Type:  1; Rapier
Ship  3: Type:  2; Scimitar
Ship  4: Type:  2; Scimitar
Ship  5: Type: 15; Dorkir
Ship  6: Type: 10; Dralthi
Ship  7: Type: 10; Dralthi
Ship  8: Type: 10; Dralthi
Ship  9: Type: 10; Dralthi
Ship 10: Type: 10; Dralthi
Ship 11: Type: 10; Dralthi
Ship 12: Type: 15; Dorkir
Ship 13: Type: 11; Krant
Ship 14: Type: 11; Krant
Ship 15: Type: 11; Krant
Ship 16: Type: 11; Krant
Ship 17: Type: 15; Dorkir
Ship 18: Type: 13; Jalthi
Ship 19: Type: 13; Jalthi
Ship 20: Type: 12; Gratha
Ship 21: Type: 12; Gratha
Ship 22: Type: -1;
...
Click to expand...


Interesting. Most of the missions where you don't get a medal have a rediculous number of medal points. I wonder if in cases like Kurasawa 1, the mission got tweaked to make it less difficult, but the medal points required for the medal wasn't adjusted accordingly.

Bandit LOAF said:
Added something that might be of interest to the Wiki: https://www.wcnews.com/wcpedia/Wingleader_Medals_and_Ribbons

This is the original design document from June 1990 that planned the medal system. Interesting to note that the plan at the time was for every mission to award a medal which is likely why the system is designed as it is in the final game with medals simply being made impossible when they're unwanted.

Also interesting that there was a little more planned for the Golden Sun, with the original requirement being that your fighter actually had to be crippled (as it is, the medal is awarded when you eject for the first time in any situation).

Also debunks the old claim that they got the medals 'wrong' by having Gold better than Silver... you can see here that was the plan all along (in the US military a Silver Star is the superior decoration).
Click to expand...

I find it amusing that they were considering other rank insignia for Major and Lt. Col. because they thought the oak leaves wouldn't look good, but ended up using them anyway.
 
I didn't see it already mentioned here, but I remember medal conditions being listed in a guide by David S Raley. I'm pretty sure I got it from CIC, but I don't remember where - it's probably not the same document that's in https://www.wcnews.com/wcpedia/WCSAV (I wasn't able to decompress that file so I don't know if it's a valid upload.)
 
Wedge009 said:
I didn't see it already mentioned here, but I remember medal conditions being listed in a guide by David S Raley. I'm pretty sure I got it from CIC, but I don't remember where - it's probably not the same document that's in https://www.wcnews.com/wcpedia/WCSAV (I wasn't able to decompress that file so I don't know if it's a valid upload.)
Click to expand...

We can put aside these older guides... back when they were put together it was a process of trial and error to figure out how we thought the game was working... now that fans have taken everything apart from the inside we have a significantly more accurate list of what medals are possible!
 
I had a feeling that was the case, but I thought it might be a good starting point. If more accurate information can be obtained from the binaries themselves, by all means that should be the authoritative version.
 
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