Rank and File (January 30, 2005)

[Bandit LOAF]

When the original Wing Commander was released in 1990, it featured an easy to understand system of Space Forces ranks based on those used by the United States Air Force. When the series made the jump to full motion video, the rank insignia's changed to a series of geometric shapes -- and while the amazing Victory Streak manual gave a comprehensive inter-service rank chart, it did not provide an explanation of what the new symbols meant. With that in mind, the CIC is proud to present an all new article collecting all available information on military ranks in the Wing Commander continuity! We've collected information and graphics relating to ranks from every branch of the service in both the 'talking head' and 'FMV' games... in addition to information on the systems used by factions like the Landreich, Border Worlds, Kilrathi and CIS. There's also some neat color scans from rare Japanese ports of the original Wing Commander, which show the original ranks in an unusual light. We hope that this will be a valuable reference for fans interested in writing fiction or adding background to their mods! (Special thanks to Halman, for helping to locate information from the novels!) You can find the ranks article here.

Commodore, Terran Confederation Space Navy​

If you have anything to add, contact us... we'd love to include it -- I'm sure there's a reference to a TCMC Lance Corporal somewhere!

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Original update published on January 30, 2005

 

[Wedge009]

That's some great stuff.

One question, though: why did you choose to duplicate the admiral's rank symbol for space marshal? Or is the 'medal' presented to Tolwyn in WC4 only a commemorative symbol?

 

[Edfilho]

Great work...
It was funny to notice that the Japanese chart swappes the english captions for Colonel and Major... You people might want to include that on the article

But it's really cool.

Pitty there's no official story on how and why the insignias changed.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

One question, though: why did you choose to duplicate the admiral's rank symbol for space marshal? Or is the 'medal' presented to Tolwyn in WC4 only a commemorative symbol?

I've never been clear on what the medal means.

It was funny to notice that the Japanese chart swappes the english captions for Colonel and Major... You people might want to include that on the article

I believe the Japanese text is correct -- but it also mixes up the colors of several ranks.

Pitty there's no official story on how and why the insignias changed.

I believe the hope was that with simple geometric shapes they could eventually do a FMV game where the ranks are generated by the computer.

 

[Edfilho]

Interesting. But I was also refering to some ingame explanation.